from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 02:53:44 +0100, Walter Vermeir <walter at wikipedia.be> wrote:
> "External Linkz" is bot changing external links and put them in a
> template whitout authorization of WikipediaNL. And this very fast whit
> many pages.
>
>  From his userpage;
> "I will not ANSWER Questions or DISCUSS. So please do NOT give reactions
> here. They will be DELETED"
>
> after blocking he use a other ipadress and keeps doing it.
>
> Look out for this imbecile on your wiki

He has come back the next day, using various IP addresses when one
after the other is getting blocked. His template might actually have
gotten accepted if he had just proposed it, but putting it on tons of
pages, and then making phrases like the following (in English, it
seems English is his first language, why he's coming to nl: is not
clear to me) when asked to discuss are not the way to get people's
sympathy. This is just about the whole text that he has added to the
discussion, although the order of the comments is somewhat changed.

"I will not ANSWER Questions or DISCUSS. So please do NOT give
reactions here. They will be DELETED"

"I have been blocked withous consensus, for making positive changes. I
ask the users of wikipedia.nl to judge me on my edits. Don't listen to
your mods for their personal opinion on changes."

"Let me work and NEVER talk to you all again. Whats wrong with that.
It isnt against the rules when you are NOT willing to TALK."

"I GOT forced to TALK to you. I dont Like that"

"I dont like to talk Dutch as well but ik kan het wel lezen"

"I have been blocked withous consensus, for making positive changes. I
ask the users of wikipedia.nl to judge me on my edits. Don't listen to
your mods for their personal opinion on changes."

"Why are you guys reverting my work! Noobs."

"You Dutch moderators are dictators. You dont accept any positive
changes. Dont %$$ call this vandalism! Dont worry. Your system is
totally @$%%%, and I will come back again. You guys should be happy
that I am no 'bad' guy destroying your articles but Improving your
$###$% wiki. Stop this discussuion, I dont LIKE to Talk. Is that a
prerequisite? Its free encyclopdia god$$###"

"Cause one of your highly respected moderators thinks its not OK and
deleted it. Dictators"

"POINT me at the rules which say I can not make positive changes?
There is no such rule."

"And dont call my edits Vandalism. Your reverts are vandalism and the
oppsite of the anarchistic wikipedia goals."

"POINT MY AT THOSE RULES OF THE COMMUNITY. YOU CANT. Cause they dont
exist. As I am part of the community, I say my changes are desirable.
Your turn."

"I use Complete Anonymous software, its great cause you can enter
sites after being blocked"

"How long does this discussion take, I want to work without this bullshit"

"Cause I HATE Dutch and it is not my first language."

"182 hours You crazy? Why should I wait for so long to make the
changes I want using the username I want. And where is the discusion
about my changes? '''External Linkz''' ps. did you never heard of
surfing with free proxies? Lots of good programms out there for free.
I could make this night horrible for you if I want. Just let me add
{{extern|site = template"

"Dont talk about blocking me, talk about the template! In about 170 hr
my user name is back on and I want to use it for adding 34.000
external links"

"noobs, emptying the template WHY? Do you like to have work?"


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject:
[WikiEN-l]
	One	reason	why	Wikipedia	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Nicholas Knight said:
>
>
>>You're avoiding addressing the issue that YOU are responsible for
>>bringing up.
>
>
> At this point, having warned you enough, I will just have to ignore you.

You could have saved a lot of time if you'd just shown me where to
click. You keep saying everyone can use one click to show an image, but
I can find no evidence of that.

> I have truthfully described the capabilities of IE and Firefox.  That is
> sufficient for this list, which is not a forum for browser tutorials.

I can find no evidence that your description of Firefox's capabilities
is not flat-out wrong, and you are declining to provide any evidence
whatsoever, inviting people simply to take your word for it.

If you're going to cite the capabilities of a browser as a reason not to
do something with regards to Wikipedia, you need to show us those
capabilities in fact exist.

> Your recent emails are insulting, off-topic and clearly calculated falsely
> to imply that I have been untruthful.

Insulting? Off-topic? You're the one telling me I don't know how to use
my browser, and you're the one that alleges the browser has capabilities
that are better than server-side filtering. If you're not prepared to
demonstrate these capabilities, why did you bring it up in the first place?


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: mailing list floods --> can't we have a wiki
	with	E-mail notification ?

body:
Kate Turner schrieb:

>have you tried reading the lists through gmane (http://www.gmane.org/)?
>it's a mail-to-news gateway which lets you read (and post to) mailing lists
>from a news reader.  as news readers are rather more suited to the threaded
>discussion style that occurs on newsgroups and mailing lists, it's a fair
>bit easier.
>
Kate:
A wiki was asked for, not a newsgroup-style thing. A wiki, where you
work together to solve a problem - basically one "page".
The GMANE interface also lacks this feature. Thus, if you want to have
the "whole" story and all information, you must also visit all postings
in a thread.

This is, why I and several others have proposed to "go wiki" with the
mailing lists
Tom


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request,
	and Chinese Wikipedia again

body:
If these are only phonetic differences, then how on earth is it
different from a Baihuawen equivalent of the same story?

I don't feel right now like lecturing you on linguistic human rights
(re Singlish), if it's really nessecary somebody else can jump in for
me.

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:50:26 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You are squarely wrong about Singlish. It is not a dialect of English,
> > it is an English-based creole. The difference between the way you
> > write that sentence and the way I write it is this: I write it "yu kan
> > go o no'" but you write it "You can go or not?", this is because you
> > use an English-based orthography that doesn't reflect extreme phonetic
> > differences
>
> Everybody speaks English differently. Should we all "reflect extreme
> phonetic differences" rather than using proper spellings?
>
> > I wouldn't support a Wikipedia for colloquial English because it is
> > the exact same language as written English. A Wikipedia for Scots or
> > AAVE or Singlish, I would support, but just normal colloquial English,
> > I would not. Nor would I support separate Wikipedias for Mandarin and
> > Baihuawen - they are one and the same.
>
> So now we have a person supporting Singlish Wikipedia. I think
> Wikipedia will soon grow into an encyclopedia with 1 million
> languages, rather than articles.
>
> And anyway you cannot split between Mandarin and Baihuawen: one is
> spoken, one is written, how do you split?
>
> > > > Also there is much differences in Shanghainese too, if you want I can
> > > > maybe type some examples later.
> > >
> > > Pray show me something I have never learnt about my own mother tongue.
> >
> > I have a story to tell you Mr Sheng Jiong. Sit back and read please.
> >
> > ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
> >
> > The moral of the story is that nobody likes the sun and nobody likes
> > the north wind either. But they both like to write in colloquial Wu.
> > Very much.
> >
>
> You are just using "extreme phonetic differences" to express. If it is
> written in baihuawen, Shanghainese can still understand and read out
> in Shanghainese.
>
> So now I begin to realise the difference between you and me: you think
> there is a need to set up Wikipedias to "reflect extreme phonetic
> differences" between a standard language and a not so standard spoken
> language. But I want just to have 1 Wikipedia in the standard
> language, and let the reader to read it in any different ways they
> want. To me that is the most sensible thing to do because everybody
> else do this: after all we created language to communicate, not to
> "reflect extreme phonetic differences".
>
> formulax
>


body:
What I meant is, how is the written version any different? I see many
differences but you act as if there is only phonetical and not
grammatical difference.

Why do you hate so much the separate Wikipedias? You must have a
selfish personal reason, not just "put foundation to shame" because it
is redeculous to assume such large shame can come of some few new
Wikipedias - some people shames over Klingon Wikipedia, but not much.
I think there would be a lot less for the Cantonese.

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 02:59:31 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> If these are only phonetic differences, then how on earth is it
> different from a Baihuawen equivalent of the same story?
>
> I don't feel right now like lecturing you on linguistic human rights
> (re Singlish), if it's really nessecary somebody else can jump in for
> me.
>
> Mark
>
> On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:50:26 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > You are squarely wrong about Singlish. It is not a dialect of English,
> > > it is an English-based creole. The difference between the way you
> > > write that sentence and the way I write it is this: I write it "yu kan
> > > go o no'" but you write it "You can go or not?", this is because you
> > > use an English-based orthography that doesn't reflect extreme phonetic
> > > differences
> >
> > Everybody speaks English differently. Should we all "reflect extreme
> > phonetic differences" rather than using proper spellings?
> >
> > > I wouldn't support a Wikipedia for colloquial English because it is
> > > the exact same language as written English. A Wikipedia for Scots or
> > > AAVE or Singlish, I would support, but just normal colloquial English,
> > > I would not. Nor would I support separate Wikipedias for Mandarin and
> > > Baihuawen - they are one and the same.
> >
> > So now we have a person supporting Singlish Wikipedia. I think
> > Wikipedia will soon grow into an encyclopedia with 1 million
> > languages, rather than articles.
> >
> > And anyway you cannot split between Mandarin and Baihuawen: one is
> > spoken, one is written, how do you split?
> >
> > > > > Also there is much differences in Shanghainese too, if you want I can
> > > > > maybe type some examples later.
> > > >
> > > > Pray show me something I have never learnt about my own mother tongue.
> > >
> > > I have a story to tell you Mr Sheng Jiong. Sit back and read please.
> > >
> > > ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
> > >
> > > The moral of the story is that nobody likes the sun and nobody likes
> > > the north wind either. But they both like to write in colloquial Wu.
> > > Very much.
> > >
> >
> > You are just using "extreme phonetic differences" to express. If it is
> > written in baihuawen, Shanghainese can still understand and read out
> > in Shanghainese.
> >
> > So now I begin to realise the difference between you and me: you think
> > there is a need to set up Wikipedias to "reflect extreme phonetic
> > differences" between a standard language and a not so standard spoken
> > language. But I want just to have 1 Wikipedia in the standard
> > language, and let the reader to read it in any different ways they
> > want. To me that is the most sensible thing to do because everybody
> > else do this: after all we created language to communicate, not to
> > "reflect extreme phonetic differences".
> >
> > formulax
> >
>


body:
Oh, and I think there won't be 1 million Wikipedias.

Most dialects, or closely intelligible varieties, are 100% happy
sharing the Wikipedia. So far nobody has requested a Singlish
Wikipedia, so it isn't even a case to consider.

If a native speaker requests a Wikipedia in what is not considered by
all to be an independent language, some criteria should be considered:

1. Does ANYBODY (not the majority, just anybody) write in the
dialect/language often, ie beyond SMS and such?
2. What is mutual intelligibility of it and existing Wikipedia's
language, when written?
3. Is there any desire, among even a small community, for some small
seperation in literature?

Ethnologue considers Voro to be a dialect of Estonian, as do many
linguists. But the mutual intelligibility with standard Estonian when
written is not above 90% (I don't believe), many people write in Voro,
and it has entirely separate literature.

Platt is perhaps more comparable here. It was similarly said then,
that standard German text can be read as regional pronunciation. But
it meets these 3 criteria: Quite a few people (not the majority
though) write often in Platt; when written its mutual intelligibility
is below 90%, and there is some desires for a separate literature
which is already emerging.

This case is similar here. I estimate pure written Cantonese at
between 70 and 89% intelligibility with Guanhua-Baihuawen depending on
specific instance (maybe 85% on average). This is /casual/ mutual
intelligibility, that you can read it without having to stop over and
over to guess what words might mean. I'm much less sure about Wu but I
think it is in the same range, especially when etymologically correct
hanzi are used rather than using etymologically incorrect hanzi for
their Baihuawen meaning. (the hanzi that means "run" in Minnan for
example, means "walk" in Baihuawen, but often it is used for "walk" in
Minnan because of uneducation of etymology)

It makes no sense regularly to say "Bite is", but "m-sik" is Cantonese
for "isn't" and the way it is written means "bite is" in
Baihuawen/Mandarin which is the same.

Mark

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 17:50:26 +0800, Sheng Jiong <sheng.jiong at gmail.com> wrote:
> > You are squarely wrong about Singlish. It is not a dialect of English,
> > it is an English-based creole. The difference between the way you
> > write that sentence and the way I write it is this: I write it "yu kan
> > go o no'" but you write it "You can go or not?", this is because you
> > use an English-based orthography that doesn't reflect extreme phonetic
> > differences
>
> Everybody speaks English differently. Should we all "reflect extreme
> phonetic differences" rather than using proper spellings?
>
> > I wouldn't support a Wikipedia for colloquial English because it is
> > the exact same language as written English. A Wikipedia for Scots or
> > AAVE or Singlish, I would support, but just normal colloquial English,
> > I would not. Nor would I support separate Wikipedias for Mandarin and
> > Baihuawen - they are one and the same.
>
> So now we have a person supporting Singlish Wikipedia. I think
> Wikipedia will soon grow into an encyclopedia with 1 million
> languages, rather than articles.
>
> And anyway you cannot split between Mandarin and Baihuawen: one is
> spoken, one is written, how do you split?
>
> > > > Also there is much differences in Shanghainese too, if you want I can
> > > > maybe type some examples later.
> > >
> > > Pray show me something I have never learnt about my own mother tongue.
> >
> > I have a story to tell you Mr Sheng Jiong. Sit back and read please.
> >
> > ????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
> >
> > The moral of the story is that nobody likes the sun and nobody likes
> > the north wind either. But they both like to write in colloquial Wu.
> > Very much.
> >
>
> You are just using "extreme phonetic differences" to express. If it is
> written in baihuawen, Shanghainese can still understand and read out
> in Shanghainese.
>
> So now I begin to realise the difference between you and me: you think
> there is a need to set up Wikipedias to "reflect extreme phonetic
> differences" between a standard language and a not so standard spoken
> language. But I want just to have 1 Wikipedia in the standard
> language, and let the reader to read it in any different ways they
> want. To me that is the most sensible thing to do because everybody
> else do this: after all we created language to communicate, not to
> "reflect extreme phonetic differences".
>
> formulax
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Scott Keir

subject: [Foundation-l] UK Foundation (was Day 1 Fund Drive Report)

body:
Given the UK support is about 10% of the total support, has there been
consideration given to setting up a UK Foundation, to promote Wikimedia
and raise funds in the UK?

UK law means that for donations to UK charities, either the donor can
reclaim the tax they've paid on the donation, or the charity can (so if
a donor gives GBP10, the charity can receive a total of GBP12.80). This
is obviously more attractive to both donor and charity.

There would be practical issues to consider - of administration, legal
matters for setting it up, how trustees etc would be decided, and how
the donations received from this charity could be put to use for
Wikimedia, but I thought it was worth raising, as I haven't seen it yet
on this list.

(On a related note, has consideration been given to providing a
"proper" facility for people to donate via credit or debit card (Visa,
Mastercard, Diners etc)? Not everyone has Paypal, and their fees are
quite high. If there's going to be this quantity of donations received
on a regular basis, the investment in a WorldPay type system might pay
off. [I've investigated this for a small UK charity I'm a trustee of,
so the issue is fresh in my mind - apologies if this has been discussed
before])

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 01:43:46 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer, Wikimedia CFO
> wrote:
>
> On Day 1 (Friday eastern US timezone since PayPal data are not
> available in
> UTC) we made $9,939.47 (USD equivalent) through a combination of
> PayPal and
> MoneyBookers.
>
> PayPal breakdown:
> AUD   314.03 (247.27 USD)
> CAD   334.40 (271.58 USD)
> EUR  3413.75 (4464.75 USD)
> GBP   475.17 (899.77 USD)
> JPY  28340   (269 USD)
> USD   3424.63
> Total 9576.78 (USD equivalent)

Scott Keir
scottkeir at yahoo.co.uk


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Sj

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 03:20:07 +0000, Scott Keir <scottkeir at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Not everyone has Paypal, and their fees are quite high.

Paypal allows you to donate with a credit card... and their fees are
among the lowest I've seen.  Are you sure you're referring to their
current fee schedule, and not remembering what it was like two years
ago?

--
+sj+


from_name: James D. Forrester

body:
On Sunday, February 20, 2005 3:20 AM, Scott Keir <scottkeir at yahoo.co.uk>
wrote:

[Snip]

> has there been consideration given to setting up a UK Foundation, to
> promote Wikimedia and raise funds in the UK?

I had a quick look into it, and it looks do-able, but there are some issues
(for example, the Wikimedia Foundation United Kingdom could not merely send
collected monies overseas to the Wikimedia Foundation and expect to be
granted charity status, but would have to be a proper institution in its own
right, with a Plan and so on); however, it does look like it would be a not
entirely insensible thing for us to do.

Obviously, long-term, WMFUK would be sub-ordinate to WMFEU (or perhaps just
WMFE?) which, in turn, would function at the behest of the WMF; however,
only the last of these three organisations currently exist, so... :-)

As I have said a few times before (;-)), I would be happy to help out with
the establishment of a UK Foundation.

[Snip]

Yours,
--
James D. Forrester -- Wikimedia: [[W:en:User:Jdforrester|James F.]]

Mail: james at jdforrester.org | jon at eh.org | csvla at dcs.warwick.ac.uk
IM  : (MSN) jamesdforrester at hotmail.com


from_name: NSK

subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV

body:
On Sunday 20 February 2005 02:34, Chad Perrin wrote:
> where the $ symbol is used for several different currencies.

There are Canadian dollars and Australian dollars. I think there are other
states using dollars, too.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV


from_name: Kate Turner

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: mailing list floods --> can't we have a wiki
	with	E-mail notification ?

body:
Thomas Gries wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> Kate Turner schrieb:
>
>>have you tried reading the lists through gmane (http://www.gmane.org/)?
>>it's a mail-to-news gateway which lets you read (and post to) mailing
>>lists
>>from a news reader.  as news readers are rather more suited to the
>>threaded discussion style that occurs on newsgroups and mailing lists,
>>it's a fair bireplying.
>>
> Kate:
> A wiki was asked for, not a newsgroup-style thing. A wiki, where you
> work together to solve a problem - basically one "page".

wiki is not a good forum for general, open discussion; see
<http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ThreadMode>,
<http://c2.com/cgi-bin/wiki?WhyWikiWorksNot> for example.   ThreadMode
should be used for discussions related to forming a eventual page in
DocumentMode; on Wikipedia, this means talk pages being used to shape the
content of an article.  trying to read long discussions on a talk page is
rather difficult, as is finding (and replying to) archived discussions.

what wiki is good for is archiving the results of previous discussions. when
i open a list in my news reader, i see a list of current threads, and can
read which ones i want.  what i don't have, that wiki has, is a whiteboard
for preserving permanent discussion.  i can link to a previous mailing list
post, but the content i want to give someone may be split over several
messages.  what wiki can help with is taking the results of a discussion
and allowing the participants to write up a concise summary of the
important discussion points.  for example, asking typical mediawiki-l
questions, or wikitech-l things such as discussion of how to
implement .htaccess authentication, wiki offers little benefit.  there's no
easy way to locate new discussions, and a talk page on its own offers
nothing over a newsgroup.  however, once a basic strategy for the .htaccess
method has been designed (for example), it can be written up on the wiki,
and changes can be discussed on the talk page.  similarly, once a
discussion on something has taken place on mediawiki-l, the result can be
written up as a MediaWiki FAQ entry on the wiki.

that's where wiki is useful.  it's not a replacement for mailing lists--it's
just another discussion platform.

> The GMANE interface also lacks this feature. Thus, if you want to have
> the "whole" story and all information, you must also visit all postings
> in a thread.

> This is, why I and several others have proposed to "go wiki" with the
> mailing lists

> Tom

kate.


from_name: Cool Hand Luke

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
> Zoney said:
> >
> > it damn well should be acceptable to
> > block someone on sight for being a Nazist
>
> Why?  We'd lose all our neo-nazi editors if we did that.
>

To quote you on forking Wikipedia: "that would be a bad thing?"

But then, I do see some sort of argument for diversity. I'm strongly
believe that trolls (proudly neo-Nazi or otherwise) should be blocked
on sight, however.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not presently
	classroom-safe

body:
> Nicholas Knight said:
>
> > You're avoiding addressing the issue that YOU are responsible for
> > bringing up.
>
> At this point, having warned you enough, I will just have to ignore you.
> I have truthfully described the capabilities of IE and Firefox.  That is
> sufficient for this list, which is not a forum for browser tutorials.
> Your recent emails are insulting, off-topic and clearly calculated falsely
> to imply that I have been untruthful.
>

How strange. You apparently thought Talk:Clitoris was such a forum,
and even provided instructions for turning off the images in several
browsers. I already knew how to do that, but I honestly don't know how
to do select individual images for display. You've already spammed the
place with your anti-"demand spam", surely one more reply at least
pointing us in the direction to selectively block images won't kill
the mailing list.

Incidentally, I like John Lee's proposal.


subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV

body:
On Sunday 20 February 2005 02:34, Chad Perrin wrote:
> developed for use with US currency.  I don't really think there's an
> NPOV violation going on if the "US" is omitted when representing US

Wikipedia is international, not a US site. Canadians expect to read Canadian
values when they see $. It should be US$ to maintain NPOV.

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request, and Chinese Wikipedia
	again

body:
Sheng Jiong wrote:

>Same thing with Singlish. People love using Singlish in BBS, but you
>get an immediate F if you write your thesis in Singlish. So should we
>have a Singlish Wikipedia?
>
>
I see no particular reason not to, if it's the case (which I don't know)
that a significant number of people communicate largely in Singlish and
find it more natural than "standard English".  We already have a
ht.wikipedia.org for the Haitian creole, which is basically a French
dialect with significant influences from a number of African languages.
For a long time it was considered basically "improper French", and
people spoke it but didn't write it---indeed, writing in it would earn
you an F on your essay in school.  More recently, that's been recognized
as a sort of cultural elitism, and it's becoming recognized as an
acceptable language to write in, and in fact the standard language of Haiti.

It might be worth pointing out that "standard English" for Wikipedia's
purposes is itself already different from what your English teacher
might say is standard.  We tend to avoid (for the most part) not only
local dialects that are "improper" but also avoid "proper English" that
is not commonly used, or is only used in some regions of the world.

This is in some sense basically the [[en:Prescription and description]]
debate.  Should we be enforcing handed-down rules of "correct language",
whatever that might mean, or should we merely be documenting language as
it is actually used by real people?

(Of course, whether written Cantonese and Singlish are used by many
people or not is another issue.  I'm just arguing that the fact that the
Chinese and Singaporean governments dislike them and consider them
"improper" shouldn't be the deciding factor.)

-Mark


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
We try to write rulings which are tailored to the situation which is
presented to us, in this case, a morbid fascination with Ashlee Simpson
exhibited by an otherwise good editor. In our attempt to fashion a remedy
which addressed the problem area, while preserving Everyking's freedom to
edit we have left a loophole. Everyking made a choice to exploit that
loophole when he ought to know we have had enough. Obviously the decision
can be tightened up if needed. This is very similar to the Hershelkrustofsky
case where there was a problem with inserting of Lyndon LaRouche related
material into articles only slightly related to the topic. This was
eventually resolved with a more extensive ban.

The Arbitration Committee could create its own notice board and may, but is
best contacted now by either posting on the individual arbitrators' talk
pages or by a note on Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration. Leaving a note on
the finished arbitration case can be missed.

Fred

> From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 10:46:00 -0000 (GMT)
> To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Clarification of ArbCom rulings (was Everyking again)
>
> I think the recent incidents involving Everyking's reverts on
> [[History_of_SNL:2000-2010]] and [[October 24]] suggest that we need a
> mechanism whereby we can ask ArbCom to clarify its rulings.  There is
> debate on this on
> [[Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Everyking_Reverting_Again]
> ],
> but as far as I can see no current member of ArbCom has commented yet.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents
> #Everyking_Reverting_Again
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SNL:2000-2010
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_24
>
> Everyking and Jquk are right to say that the articles in question are not
> directly related to Ashlee Simpson, but as the passages he is reverting
> are those that pertain directly to Ashlee Simpson (some kind of
> embarrassing incident on an American TV program involving a backing
> track), it appears to me that Luigi30, Carnildo, Calton, Rhobite, silsor,
> RickK have a point.
> I think that, as Calton has suggested, the point needs clarification, but
> I know of no specific forum where this kind of request, requiring a
> response from ArbCom, would be appropriate.
> Might I suggest that a page be created where ArbCom can be petitioned for
> clarification by two or more users in dispute over an ArbCom ruling
> pertaining directly to one of them?  They would have to demonstrate a
> substantive ambiguity in interpretation that requires clarification.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocking policy over personal attacks

body:
>> ! Your actions have been documented and have, so far, been
> > circulated to thousands of aryans who do not look kindly on your type
> > of hatred. You know what happens to people who ignore history......
> > 88 !!"

>
> I must be missing something.  How do these (highly offensive) remarks
> expose this sysop to "political, religious or other persecution by
> government, their employer or any others"?

You don't think the above was a threat?

> Unless the sysop lives in
> a state with a Nazi government, it is clear to me that there is no
> such exposure.

Not from the government no. But what about the "thousands of aryans" ?

> I think it would be a very bad idea to allow sysops to block people
> who insult them, except in the most extreme cases.

You'll get no argument from me there. However I don't think it was an
insult, I think it was a threat.

Theresa


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not
	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Christiaan Briggs said:
> Bummer, thought it sounded too easy.
>
> But following this theme, as long as we get down to the task of tagging
>   images then targeted filtering, whether it be site-based or browser
> based, is always going to be an option. One day web browsers may well
> support some kind of image/content filter system, in which case all
> we'd need to do is hook our tagging system into it, at which point we
> could dispense with a site-based preference option.
>
I suggest that you (and all those suggesting site-based filtering) look at
the votes on that page.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Graphic_and_potentially_disturbing_images
particularly the summary.

You may notice that the only proposals that got a consensus were:

1. "Do nothing now, as there's not really a problem now. Revist this if it
ever becomes a widespread problem that can't adequately be handled on a
case by case basis on individual article talk pages as it is now. Policy
should only ever be developed on an as needed basis, as excessive policy
is both wasteful and harmful." -Shane King, 33 ayes, 5 nays2. "1) checkbox for hiding all text from articles. 2) checkbox for hiding
all images from articles, and replacing them with links."-Chmod007, 10
ayes, 4 nays3. "Users should also be provided the option to hide all sections except
for lead sections"-Eequor, 2 ayes 1 nay
The Shane King option to "do nothing now, [handle] on a case by case basis
as it is now" attracted the most support and the least opposition, and
also achieved a clear consensus, over 85%.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is
	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Nicholas Knight said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>> I have at no time mentioned IE; I mentioned Firefox solely in
>> connection with a claim by a Firefox user who didn't think his browser
>> was capable of being controlled in the manner that I described.
>
> It's NOT.

It is (I use it every day), but I'm not going to get involved in a browser
war.


body:
Nicholas Knight said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>
>> Not really.  It would place the discrimination in the hands of someone
>
> No, it allows you to CHOOSE what categories you want to automatically
> load, and if an image falls in one of the cats you don't want to load,
> you're presented with a mechanism to load it right where it should be
> in  the article.

That would be good.  The proposal I've seen suggested only a link, however.

It's still considerably more difficult than the browser-based option.


body:
Nicholas Knight said:
>
> http://runawaynet.com/~nknight/dsblimgs.png
>
> Show me where to click.

There is no html at that URL.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Zoney stated for the record:

> On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 17:21:49 -0800, Nicholas Knight
> <nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
>
>>Zoney wrote:
>>
>>>There are views which are unacceptable in civilised society.
>>
>>There are actions which are unacceptable in civilised society. Any
>>society that holds a given view/opinion to be unacceptable is not civilised.
>>
>
> No, rather than just actions, the expressing of such views is also unacceptable.
>
> Zoney

If you want to hang out with us, you are required to accept our right to
express such views.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Modern art is what happens when painters stop
  sean at epoptic.com | looking at girls and persuade themselves
                   | that they have a better idea. --John Ciardi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Zoney said:
>
> it damn well should be acceptable to
> block someone on sight for being a Nazist

Why?  We'd lose all our neo-nazi editors if we did that.


body:
Zoney said:
> On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 20:32:57 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
> <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
>> > If you start thinking like the average internet user (i.e. those
>> > affluent middle class people who got so riled up about the Super
>> > Bowl last year)
>>
>> Only in one country.  The rest of the world was left scratching its
>> heads and wondering what all the fuss was about.  US news programs
>> even carried th images with the breast pixellated out, while non-US
>> news programs showed the incident uncensored.  Please do not assume
>> that the standards of one country are universal.>
>
> Yeah - pity about you ignoring the entire Islamic world, and much of
> the rest of the world too that would have standards clashing with such
> an occurance.

I think this makes my point with even more power.  As I've pointed out
recently, if we're going to adopt the standard that we should take notice
of whether blocks or readers get a bee in their bonnet about this or that
visual, we're going to have to take account of a lot more than the extreme
right of the USA.  I suggest that a two-finger response is the only sane
response in this situation.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] This is becoming relatively urgent.

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Can somebody PLEASE create the Ossetic and Voro Wikipedias and the
>Amis Wiktionary? Ossetic -> os:, Voro -> fiu-vro:, Amis -> i-ami:.
>
>I mean, seriously!!! The Voro people already even have the entire
>language file translated! They are clearly very eager to get started.
>Why are we holding them back like this?? The other groups are also
>very clearly eager to get started. We created a chiTumbuka Wikipedia
>with many less supporters, and almost as soon as it was requested, but
>developers have practically turned a blind eye to these
>widely-supported requests with next to no detractors.
>
>Mark
>
The Ossetic is not problematic the other two are. These do not have
ISO-639 codes and we use these for our codes. Ask the board if they
support the startup of these wikipedia.

There are the new ISO-639 codes, they would be a better choice if these
languages are on there. If they are not, you can ask them to be included
in this list. Then again you are of the opinion that these codes are not
relevant..

Pity,
    GerardM


body:
Nicholas Knight said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>> Up to a point.  With cat-based disabling you're at the mercy of
>> cat-vandalism (possible solution: the cats in question are permanently
>
> Vandalism is not and _HAS NEVER BEEN_ at issue here.

The teacher's supervisor walks into the class and finds a child staring at
a picture of a male penis where a picture of the Vice President should be.


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] ISPs are private when logged in?  Good idea

body:
If I understood a previous recent letter here, then Admins
and Sysops cannot find out a user's ISP when they are
logged in.  Is this correct?

If so, this strikes me as a good idea.  On occasion I do
some travelling, and I sometimes access Wikipedia while on
the road.  Other contributors do a substantial of
travelling.  We would greatly appreciate the privacy
afforded by a block on reading ISP's when logged in.  It
would probably be unwise to allow Sysops and Admins to
track where people travel, for reasons of privacy.  (As I
understand it, following one's ISP effectively allows one
to know approximately which city or town is logged in, in
many cases.)

It does not matter at all for me today, as I decided to
take another three-day Wiki-break.  (We'd have fewer edit
wars if more people took such breaks.)  Nonetheless the
principle is worth asking about.  Is my understanding
correct?

Robert (RK)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


subject: [WikiEN-l] Great article!

body:
Mark Pellegrini said:
> While I hate to interrupt the usual bickering,  recriminations, and
> complaining
> that I've come to expect from this mailing list, I just wanted to point
> out this little
> gem:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_music
>
> It's the current Collaboration of the Week and, if the trend continues,
> will probably be a featured
> article soon enough.

It needs a cleanup.

A paragraph that caught my eye: "Ancient music is monophonic music after
prehistoric music. In European musical history, the era of ancient music
begin in 1500 BCE, ended in 476 CE, and was followed by the Early music
era."
Gibberish.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia
	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Nicholas Knight said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>> There is no html at that URL.
>
> I'm sorry? It's a screenshot of Firefox with images disabled looking at
>  [[Mount St. Helens]].

Jolly nice.  Now please stop spamming your demands.


body:
Nicholas Knight said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>> Nicholas Knight said:
>>
>>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>>
>>>>Up to a point.  With cat-based disabling you're at the mercy of
>>>>cat-vandalism (possible solution: the cats in question are
>>>>permanently
>>>
>>>Vandalism is not and _HAS NEVER BEEN_ at issue here.
>>
>>
>> The teacher's supervisor walks into the class and finds a child
>> staring at a picture of a male penis where a picture of the Vice
>> President should be.
>
> Which has _NOTHING_ to do with our editorial choices.

Indeed it does not.  The title of this thread, however, is " One reason
why Wikipedia is not presently classroom-safe."


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking Nazis is not about blocking for mere insults

body:
Someone wrote "You want TBSDY desysopped because he blocked
SS-88 after he said this:"

> "You consider the right side of the fence to be on the
side of the
> haters. You call us stupid, but you should know that we
have a log of
> your hatred and abuse of "power" against one of our
comrades. THAT WAS
> STUPID! Your actions have been documented and have, so
far, been
> circulated to thousands of aryans who do not look kindly
on your type
> of hatred. You know what happens to people who ignore
history......
> 88 !!"

>> I refer you to the blocking policy:
>> "Blocks may be imposed in instances where threats have
been made or
>> actions performed (including actions outside the
Wikipedia site)
>> which expose other Wikipedia editors to political,
religious or other
>> persecution by government, their employer or any others.
In such
>> a case a ban for a period of time may be applied
immediately by any
>> sysop upon discovery. "

Teresa responded, very rationaly:

> This looks like a pretty straightforward case to me

It also sounds straightforward to me.  If we allow violent
hatespeech by Nazis, white supremacists, Nation of Islam
black supremacists, "Heil Hitler" comments, and the like on
Wikipedia, we will instantly become a joke.

The use of Wikipedia would then rightly be banned by all
high schools, and by most colleges.  Professional scholars
and academics will be forced to see Wikipedia not as an
encyclopedia, but rather as some sort of sick experiment in
using the phrase "free speech" as an excuse to shove the
most violent hate and lies, and as a forum where
dispassionate and rational contributors are scared off.

Many present and potential black contributors will
*certainly* be driven away if allow them to be the victims
of such abuse and persecution. The same is true for many
present and potential Jewish, Gay, and other contributors.
The project will simply cease to exist as it presently
does.

Already I have been pursued by one many who openly
identified himself as a Nazi (John Hoode, aka Mr. Natural
Health) and was threatened by Craig, Entmoots of Trolls,
who promised to send me identity to fundamentalist Islamist
groups, who at the time (and now) were mass murdering Jews
and many others.  Now we have a number of individuals with
similar beliefs attacking non-"Aryans", saying "88" (code
for "Heil Hitler", and abusing and driving away decent
contributors.

Any rational person should see this as the death of
Wikipedia, and most of our Sysops rightly ban such actions.
 So I was hurt and stunned when Zero 0000 _again_ defended
Nazi hatespeech and harassment, and called for its
acceptance on Wikipedia.

Zero 0000 writes:
> I must be missing something. How do these (highly
offensive)
> remarks expose this sysop to "political, religious or
other
> persecution by government, their employer or any others"?

These attacks in of themselves are persecution and
harassment.  Maybe you don't know what it is like to be a
black person, a gay person, or a Jew, but many of us do.
Being cyver-followed around by hatemongers who scream "Heil
Hitler" and who abuse us, and who advocate violence, is by
the very definition of the word "persecution".  How can
people not recognize this?

> Unless the sysop lives in a state with a Nazi government,
it
> is clear to me that there is no such exposure.

Is this an ironic joke, or are you writing as if such
hatespeech does not exist?  Do you have any idea how many
Jews, gays and blacks are beaten each year by the very
people who engage in such harassment and hatespeech?  In my
own town in the USA a Jewish synagogue was burned less than
four years ago by people spewing this hatespeech.  In my
own school we have had Jews taunted and swastikas drawn on
the walls and posters.  We also have had death threats made
against blacks by certain white groups...and these threats
led to serious beatings of black students less than three
months ago.

Free speech about killing Jews always leads to killing
Jews. The same is true about speech towards killing
"niggers" or "queers".  Have we learned nothing from the
20th century?

I find Zero's acceptance of this violent, explicitly Nazi
hatespeech to be a clear danger to Wikipedia.  We can be an
encyclopedia where hatemongers are not welcome, working to
create a peer-reviewed NPOV open-source encyclopedia.  Or
we can allow those people Zero continually defends to
destroy our own work, and make us a laughing stock in the
eyes of the rest of the world.

The choice is clear.

Robert (RK)

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why
	Wikipedia	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Nicholas Knight said:
>
> Please address the issue.

Please learn how to use your browser.


from_name: Richard Holton

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] National Public Radio (US): "Wikipedia's Growth
	Comes with Concerns"

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 10:37:32 -0500, Henry Tan-Tenn
<share2002nov at lomaji.com> wrote:
> NPR's Weekend Edtion has run an article on Wikipedia, focusing on the
> usual pro/con views.
>
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4506421
>
> This follows 2003's "All Things Considered" article:
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1344426
>
> _______________________________________________

Apparently, the audio will not be available online until noon US
Central ltime (UTC -6),

-Rich Holton


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Great article!

body:
Pete wrote: "Problem is the audio is trapped inside a .avi video file from my
video camera... wasn't there a tutorial somewhere about all the tricks and
tips you can get up to to get video/audio from the formats provided by
popular consumer gadgets into acceptable free formats?"

In unix, to rip the audio out of most basic movie files (including mpg and avi)
to mp3:

>mplayer -dumpaudio file.mpg
>mv stream.dump output.mp3

The first command runs mplayer and dumps the audio to a stream file
in the local directory (stream.dump)

The second command moves (renames) it to an mp3.

Sorry, but I don't know how to do it in Windows.

--Mark (Raul654)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason
	why	Wikipedia	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Nicholas Knight said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>> Nicholas Knight said:
>>
>>>Please address the issue.
>>
>>
>> Please learn how to use your browser.
>
> Teach me. Where do I click?

Please learn how to use your browser *off this list*.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One
	reason	why	Wikipedia	is	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
Nicholas Knight said:

> You're avoiding addressing the issue that YOU are responsible for
> bringing up.

At this point, having warned you enough, I will just have to ignore you.
I have truthfully described the capabilities of IE and Firefox.  That is
sufficient for this list, which is not a forum for browser tutorials.
Your recent emails are insulting, off-topic and clearly calculated falsely
to imply that I have been untruthful.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV

body:
NSK wrote:

>On Sunday 20 February 2005 02:34, Chad Perrin wrote:
>
>
>>developed for use with US currency.  I don't really think there's an
>>NPOV violation going on if the "US" is omitted when representing US
>>
>>
>Wikipedia is international, not a US site. Canadians expect to read Canadian
>values when they see $. It should be US$ to maintain NPOV.
>
It's not a matter of NPOV at all.  It's a matter of avoiding
ambiguities.  Canadians are far more experienced at recognizing which $
is intended by the context than people in the US who get very confused
when any curency than their own is mentioned.  It's quite common for US
merchants, even ones near the border, to refuse Canadian currency
because they don't understand it.  A Canadian merchant will except the
US currency, and have some idea about what to do with exchange rates.

This leaves Canadians bemused, and contributes much to putting our
streotypes about confused Americans on a solid footing.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] currency POV


from_name: Henry Tan-Tenn

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] National Public Radio (US): "Wikipedia's Growth Comes
	with Concerns"

body:
NPR's Weekend Edtion has run an article on Wikipedia, focusing on the
usual pro/con views.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4506421

This follows 2003's "All Things Considered" article:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1344426


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
I certainly think a Wiki UK foundation would be a good idea. So good
luck in setting it up!

Walter van Kalken


body:
Yes, you have it right, although we are having discussions about granting
some access due to problems with sockpuppets. It was suggested that some
administrators have this power as developers often have other things to do
and inquiries to developers are sometimes not answered as soon as we might
like.

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 09:28:01 -0800 (PST)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] ISPs are private when logged in?  Good idea
>
> If I understood a previous recent letter here, then Admins
> and Sysops cannot find out a user's ISP when they are
> logged in.  Is this correct?
>
> If so, this strikes me as a good idea.  On occasion I do
> some travelling, and I sometimes access Wikipedia while on
> the road.  Other contributors do a substantial of
> travelling.  We would greatly appreciate the privacy
> afforded by a block on reading ISP's when logged in.  It
> would probably be unwise to allow Sysops and Admins to
> track where people travel, for reasons of privacy.  (As I
> understand it, following one's ISP effectively allows one
> to know approximately which city or town is logged in, in
> many cases.)
>
> It does not matter at all for me today, as I decided to
> take another three-day Wiki-break.  (We'd have fewer edit
> wars if more people took such breaks.)  Nonetheless the
> principle is worth asking about.  Is my understanding
> correct?
>
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail - Find what you need with new enhanced search.
> http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Michael Ciesielski

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Distributed proofreading

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Another approach to proofreading is to have it done independently from
> the beginning by two different people and using a file compare
> function to compare the results.  The benefit here is that it reduces
> the possibility that one person might be influenced by another's errors.

Double-key entry works very well for typed material because the errors
made by typists are random. The biggest problem with proofreading OCRed
material isn't the errors introduced, but the errors already in the text
that are missed ("he" instead of "be"; "arid" instead of "and"; etc.).
Because of this, it makes the most sense to have the proofreading rounds
build on the work of the previous round.

> I looked at the volume 1 material, notably at "Algae", but the
> illustrations are not there.  How does PG plan to deal with
> illustrations?
> How searchable is the PG version?  Would I be able to easily find an
> article without downloading the whole volume?  The Algae article
> includes a "q.v." to "Bryophyta".  Does PG anticipate that I* would be
> able to follow that link with a simple click of the mouse?

Volume 1 was not done by DP. The HTML version of Volume 2,
<http://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/gutenberg/1/3/6/0/13600/13600-h/13600-h.htm>
is a better model for how the rest of the EB will be done. Illustrations
are included, but linking q.v.'s won't be feasible until the entire
encyclopedia is finished. Luckily, thanks to the wonders of modern
technology, it's fairly easy to jump to the entry you want :)

Michael


subject: [WikiEN-l] Clarification of ArbCom rulings (was Everyking again)

body:
I think the recent incidents involving Everyking's reverts on
[[History_of_SNL:2000-2010]] and [[October 24]] suggest that we need a
mechanism whereby we can ask ArbCom to clarify its rulings.  There is
debate on this on
[[Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Everyking_Reverting_Again]],
but as far as I can see no current member of ArbCom has commented yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents#Everyking_Reverting_Again
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_SNL:2000-2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_24

Everyking and Jquk are right to say that the articles in question are not
directly related to Ashlee Simpson, but as the passages he is reverting
are those that pertain directly to Ashlee Simpson (some kind of
embarrassing incident on an American TV program involving a backing
track), it appears to me that Luigi30, Carnildo, Calton, Rhobite, silsor,
RickK have a point.
I think that, as Calton has suggested, the point needs clarification, but
I know of no specific forum where this kind of request, requiring a
response from ArbCom, would be appropriate.
Might I suggest that a page be created where ArbCom can be petitioned for
clarification by two or more users in dispute over an ArbCom ruling
pertaining directly to one of them?  They would have to demonstrate a
substantive ambiguity in interpretation that requires clarification.


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Richard Holton wrote:

>
>Do we have confidence in the Wikipedia way, or do we not?
>
There are fewer than you might think, a la US high school
students not understanding freedom of speech.

There is also a large contingent who are all for the "wiki way"
as long as all the editors of an article agree with them; one
discordant voice, and it's "WP is doomed unless the system is
changed to lock out morons and vandals". You can always tell,
because further inquiry reveals that the deluge of "morons
and vandals" just consists of the one person who disagrees.

Stan


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not presentlyclassroom-safe

body:
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050220 07:38]:

> I hope we stay with (roughly) the same content guidelines and find a way
> to filter content for school use, which would also make a site that could
> be browsed unsupervised by children (though not necessarily by small
> children).

If that ten-minute delay mechanism can be implemented (anon readers don't
see an edit for ten minutes), that would also help a *lot*.

- d.


body:
Christiaan Briggs (christiaan at last-straw.net) [050220 11:24]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> >If that ten-minute delay mechanism can be implemented (anon readers
> >don't see an edit for ten minutes), that would also help a *lot*.

> That's a nice idea!

Jimbo suggested it, Magnus Manske said it would be a nightmare to
implement :-(

I think a lot of the current debate will be solved if we all learn PHP and
start hacking on MediaWiki ;-)

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Jack Lutz (jack-lutz at comcast.net) [050220 06:52]:

> > Everyone is entitled to make a mistake now and then,
> > even admins.

> TBSDY did not restore the wrong version of a disputed article or
> accidentally block a proxy, he used his sysop privileges to block a user
> whose views he does not agree with.
> That is not a mistake, that is abuse.

I note your objection appears not to be gaining traction. Can you suggest
why that might be?

- d.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Henry Tan-Tenn <share2002nov at lomaji.com> wrote:

> NPR's Weekend Edtion has run an article on Wikipedia, focusing on the
> usual pro/con views.
>
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4506421
>
> This follows 2003's "All Things Considered" article:
> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1344426

Nice story. It focuses on our strong points and on areas where we need more
work (aside: which could be helped-along by some type of approved article
system and then outreach to librarians and educators).

The new Britannica FUD was interesting: Their new take is that Wikipedia is too
detailed and one of the things that makes EB great is that they make careful
decisions on what is most important to include.

So that looks to me like they are giving up and declaring their much smaller
size and long time between updates to be 'features.' :)

What they have lost grip of is that Wikipedia is redefining what an
encyclopedia can be or even what one should be.

That said, we do need to make sure that long articles are started with
good-sized lead sections that give a quick summary of the topic (we might even
want to encourage larger lead sections so they could approach the size of
concise encyclopedia articles in their own right). We also need to make sure
long articles do not present more detail on a page that is appropriate for that
level of article and to make sure that the detail stays on-topic.

See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lead_section
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Summary_style

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Ossetic Wikipedia: how will we know?

body:
V. Ivanov wrote:

>?? ??? ???? ??!
>
>How will we know, when the Ossetic Wikipedia is created? Will there be
>any notification?
>
>Is any data needed to start the Ossetic Wikipedia? I mean, the
>language's self-name or similar things.
>
>Thank you in advance,
>Slavik Ivanov
>http://vicerveza.homeunix.net/osetio
>
>
>
Hoi,
I have started a page in the Dutch Wiktionary for Ossetisch, I would
like to have many translations for this word so I welcome any
translations. I am particularly interested in the word Ossetian in
Ossetian :)  http://nl.wiktionary.org/wiki/Ossetisch

The official codes for Ossetian are os and oss. Wikipedia would use the
os code.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Erdal Ronahi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Two scripts/directions in one Wiki?

body:
Hi,

We at the Kurdish Wikipedia/Wiktionary have the (maybe unique) problem,
that Kurdish is not only written with two different alphabets (latin and
arabic-based), but that these two scripts are written in different
directions. I am looking for technical support here before I post
anything as a feature request to the bugtracker.

While the majority of all articles is (and probably will be) left to
right, often both directions are needed on one page, while some can be
entirely right-to-left. Until now, noone has proposed to split the
Wikipedia, on the contrary we want to include both scripts and provide
optimal usability for both. Following are some problems for the
right-to-left support:

*Page titles are partially incorrectly displayed, because all browsers
interpret left-to-right words different that left-to-right paragraphs
*Lists appear incorrectly. Example:
http://ku.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%87%E2%80%8C%D8%B4%D8%A7%D9%86%DB%8E%D9%86_%D8%B3%DB%8C
*Font problems.

The main problem seems to be that it is not possible to define a whole
page as right-to-left. After a lot of trying we found a patial solution.
Pages that are RTL use a template with a <div>-tag with a .rtl-class.
This works, but it is a suboptimal solution, especially because a
newcomer who wants to write RTL faces problems.

A solution would be something that defines whole pages as RTL, optimal
would be a connection with the pagename: when the pagetitle is in arabic
script, the page content should be RTL.

I would be glad about any help on the issue.

Greetings,
Erdal


from_name: Sheng Jiong

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Quenya language request,
	and Chinese Wikipedia again

body:
> Sheng Jiong, you have lied about speaking Shanghainese as your native
> language. I know this because there are large grammatical differences
> between Shanghainese and Baihuawen that you seem to overlook,
> suggesting you don't know it at all.

Well, it is extremely impertient of you accusing others of lying when
you do not have any proof. I am a native Shanghainese, I was born in
Shanghai, both of my parents are Shanghainese, we speak Shanghainese
at home.

> One example is the existance in Wu of the particle "teuq7" meaning
> "with", that doesn't exist in Mandarin. There is a character to write
> it, I have seen it before, but I cannot remember it.

Yes, but that is not a "grammatical difference". It is only a
different use of a word. Grammatical difference means there is an
entirely different sentence structure. But Shanghainese has almost the
same sentence structure as written Chinese. If you take out a book
written in Chinese, it is perfectly possible for one to read it out in
Shanghainese and be understood by another person who can speak
Shanghainese.

Interesting example would be a story I heard: one Taiwan-born
Shanghainese(who obviously speak only Shanghainese at home, as
Shanghainese always find it more natural to speak Shanghainese than
Mandarin with someone close to them) only use Shanghainese to read the
novellas by Zhang Ailing, a popular writer who writes a lot about
Shanghai in the 1930s and 40s.

> Some examples of Cantonese grammar differences:
>
> Mandarin/Baihua: ??????.
> Cantonese: ??????. (notice position of "?")
>
> Mandarin/Baihua: ???????.
> Cantonese: ??????. (notice position of "?" and use of ? vs ?, and
> vocabulary difference of monosyllabic Cantonese word for "things" vs
> disyllabic Mandarin word)
>
> Mandarin/Baihua: ????.
> Cantonese: ????. (notice use of "?" vs "?", entirely different sentence order)
>
> Mandarin/Baihua: ????
> Cantonese: ???.
>
> Mandarin/Baihua: ?????.
> Cantonese: ????.
>
> Mandarin/Baihua: ???.
> Cantonese: ????.
>
> Mandarin/Baihua: ??????
> Cantonese: ??????

Yes, I know that Cantonese has slight differences in the order of
words compared with Mandarin. But again you are mixing Mandarin with
Baihuawen. Hong Kongers speak only Cantonese, but they write in
Baihuawen. So whatever the difference there are between Baihuawen and
Cantonese, that's the difference between spoken and written language.
Many colloquial English is also different from standard, formal
English (Take Singapore English as a best example: "Would you be able
to attend?" in English would become "You can go or not?" in Singlish.
Totally different grammar, but is Singlish a written language? No. It
is still a dialect in English). Does that mean we need to have an
Colloquial English Wikipedia?

> Also there is much differences in Shanghainese too, if you want I can
> maybe type some examples later.

Pray show me something I have never learnt about my own mother tongue.

formulax


subject: [Wikitech-l] Two scripts/directions in one Wiki?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Desysoping

body:
Cool Hand Luke said:
>> Zoney said:
>> >
>> > it damn well should be acceptable to
>> > block someone on sight for being a Nazist
>>
>> Why?  We'd lose all our neo-nazi editors if we did that.
>>
>
> To quote you on forking Wikipedia: "that would be a bad thing?"
>
> But then, I do see some sort of argument for diversity. I'm strongly
> believe that trolls (proudly neo-Nazi or otherwise) should be blocked
> on sight, however.

I think we're in agreement.  This guy was quickly identified as a troll;
the name was borderline offensive and the nazi uniform picture sealed it.


body:
> After not replying to most of the things you have said for obvious
> reason that you ignore my truths, I have still some question for you.

I cannot make sense of your strange logic.

> It is: How do you know majority of Chinese cannot read Minnan
> Wikipedia? I invite your evidences.

I guess you mean why the majority of Taiwanese cannot read Minnan
Wikipedia, for it is obvious that all mainland Chinese cannot read,
even if he speaks Minnan.

The reason that most Taiwanese cannot read Minnan Wikipedia is:
1) they don't teach this strange Romanization in school (although they
do teach students how to speak Minnan)
2) there is no newspaper or publication in Taiwan that publishes in
such romanization

Then the rest is common sense, I hope?

formulax


body:
Robert stated for the record:

> We can be an
> encyclopedia where hatemongers are not welcome, working to
> create a peer-reviewed NPOV open-source encyclopedia.  Or
> we can allow those people Zero continually defends to
> destroy our own work, and make us a laughing stock in the
> eyes of the rest of the world.
>
> The choice is clear.
>
>
> Robert (RK)

You are absolutely right.  The choice is clear.  Freedom of speech,
especially of speech we find hateful, is infinitely more important than
sanctimonious attempts to create a controlled "classroom" environment.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Modern art is what happens when painters stop
  sean at epoptic.com | looking at girls and persuade themselves
                   | that they have a better idea. --John Ciardi


body:
John Lee said:
>>
>>
> 40% of *editors*. Not readers. Big difference. People like us who have
> so much time to spend on an online "open source" encyclopedia probably
> have far more liberal mind sets than average folk.

We take votes to try to gauge consensus of *editors*.  We should take into
account the sensibilities of readers, but it would be wrong to base
decisions on the presumed opinions of people who have not expressed any.
> I do not want to have to block
> ordinary images from Wikipedia just not to have shock images thrown in
> my face.

Nor do I.  There should not be shock images on Wikipedia.  All images
should be there solely because they appropriately illustrate an article.
> our readership is generally American.

So are our editors, but a minute ago you were using their liberal cultural
bias as a reason to ignore the 40% minority who favored inlining a
potentially objectionable image.  Now you seem to want to use the
conservative cultural bias of some Americans who complained about the
half-time entertainment in a televised football game as an argument for
linking it.
> If we were to link
> instead  of inline an image, I doubt the "non-offended" would complain,
> and if  they did, it would be hardly as much as the furore from the
> other side  were we to carry the image inline.

I agree completely.  But I still don't think we should be making such
content decisions on the basis of American public's problems with nipples.
 Presumably those who voted in the way the did were fully aware of the
Janet Jackson incident but felt that comparisons between an article on
Autofellatio and an annual televised football final traditionally watched
by families as a group were inappropriate.

>>
> I spent four or five years of my life using IE and I've never run
> across  the option to block images on an individual basis.

I found it in about thirty second on Internet options.  Now pages download
images as placeholders and each image can be displayed or hidden at will.>>
> I think it's just cultural. Europe and Australia have always been far
> more open to these things than America and Asia. But still, I would
> laugh if somebody were to tell me, "Hey, John, that encyclopedia's a
> bunch of rubbish. Don't you know they have pictures of caterpillars in
> the open for all to see? How disgusting!"

Ah.  I think we have crossed wires somewhere. I thought you were referring
to the Lolicon image.

>>>
>>
>>*I* don't see anybody laughing, John.  Also I doubt that you would find
>>the average person to be more shocked by a man sucking his own penis
>>than an eroticised little girl holding a teddy with a huge dildo.
>>
>>
> There's a big difference: The former is a full-blown photograph with
> vivid colours. The latter is an illustration. Technically, both are
> equally disgusting, but in the real world where people's emotions don't
>  make sense, one is more offensive than the other.

I think we differ on which one is more offensive.  I'd be very surprised
if more people agreed with you than with me.

>
>>>Of course. However, this group would be far larger if we made it a
>>>common practice of displaying shockingly offensive images _by
>>>default_.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Which we do.
>>
>>
> Which we shouldn't.
>

Possibly not.

>>
>>
> I am not arguing for toning down our encyclopedia for educational use.
> I  am arguing for doing something to at least maintain some of our
> reputation. Text has far less impact than a photograph.

Yes.  We're probably arguing to cross purposes a bit.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not presently
	classroom-safe

body:
Cool Hand Luke said:
>>
>
> You've already spammed the
> place

No.  Don't be naughty.


from_name: Sebastien BARRE

subject: [Wikitech-l] I need to defeat the cache

body:
Hello,

I wrote a couple of tag extensions that really need to bypass the cache
mechanism, i.e. any page that uses that tag should always be re-created.

I know, this obviously impact performances, but we are talking "small
server" here, not Wikipedia :)

Nevertheless, there must be a way to achieve that, am I wrong ? I mean, it
seems pretty reasonable that an extension might perform SQL queries, or
inspect the current context, return time-dependent values, etc., and
therefore the caching mechanism will just make them useless most of the time.

So far, the only two settings that I know that disable the cache are:
- User preferences: misc settings: Disable page caching
- DefaultSettings.php: $wgCachePages

In my extension callback, I tried the following code:
   $wgOut->addMeta("http:Pragma", "no-cache");
   $wgOut->addMeta("http:no-cache", NULL);
   $wgOut->addMeta("http:EXPIRES", "TUES, 31 DEC 1996 12:00:00 GMT");

which adds the following headers to the page:
   <meta http-equiv="Pragma" content="no-cache" />
   <meta http-equiv="no-cache" content="" />
   <meta http-equiv="EXPIRES" content="TUES, 31 DEC 1996 12:00:00 GMT" />
but without success.

So I assume my extension callback is called *after* the decision is made
that the page should be served from the cache and not re-created ?

Unless I'm wrong, OutputPage::checkLastModified() seems to be the point
where that very decision is made. Is there anyway to influence the outcome
of that function from an extension ? It sure tests for $wgCachePages, and
the user's "no-cache" option, then do some magic on HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE.

Any clue ?

Thanks

--
Sebastien Barre


body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 13:12:03 -0500, AndyL <andyl2004 at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >> Unless the sysop lives in a state with a Nazi government,
> > it
> >> is clear to me that there is no such exposure.
>
> By this argument comments such as "when we take power we will put you up
> against a wall and shoot you" should be perfectly acceptable in Wikipedia
> talk exchanges. After all, until and unless the person making the statement
> is in power the statement shouldn't be regarded as a threat.
>
> Andy
>
It seems to me that there are two separate but related issues at hand:
1. Banning uses who make threats; and
2. Banning users due to their professed beliefs or  associations.

For me, the first is beyond question. We even ban users for making
legal threats. If someone makes a threat to health, life, family,
safety, or even to privacy, that user should be dealt with swiftly and
emphatically. Such behavior has no place on Wikipedia.

However, the second is also beyond question -- in the negative. There
is no way to reconcile such banning of contributors by POV with
Wikipedia's mission and culture. How would we be able to claim NPOV
when certain groups are not allowed to participate?.

Do we have confidence in the Wikipedia way, or do we not?

-Rich Holton


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not
	presently	classroom-safe

body:
On Sat, Feb 19, 2005 at 09:30:56PM +0000, Christiaan Briggs wrote:
> A user is not always going to know what is going to offend them until
> they have looked at the content. By then it's too late.

What's so bad about offending people?

Why is it something to avoid?

A reader who can open up the book of human knowledge to any page at all,
and be certain not to be offended, has no need for an encyclopedia.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: mailing list floods --> can't we have a wiki
	with	E-mail notification ?

body:
I'm a member of the Green Party in New Zealand and we are increasingly
using email lists for announcements, phpBB for general discussion, and
MediaWiki for document creation and relevant discussion.

They all have their pros and cons. A wiki can be a very messy and
difficult way to follow discussion.

Christiaan

On 20 Feb 2005, at 1:53 am, Thomas Gries wrote:

> Kate Turner schrieb:
>
>> have you tried reading the lists through gmane
>> (http://www.gmane.org/)? it's a mail-to-news gateway which lets you
>> read (and post to) mailing lists
>> from a news reader.  as news readers are rather more suited to the
>> threaded
>> discussion style that occurs on newsgroups and mailing lists, it's a
>> fair
>> bit easier.
>>
> Kate:
> A wiki was asked for, not a newsgroup-style thing. A wiki, where you
> work together to solve a problem - basically one "page".
> The GMANE interface also lacks this feature. Thus, if you want to have
> the "whole" story and all information, you must also visit all
> postings in a thread.
>
> This is, why I and several others have proposed to "go wiki" with the
> mailing lists
> Tom


from_name: AndyL

body:
>
>
>> Unless the sysop lives in a state with a Nazi government,
> it
>> is clear to me that there is no such exposure.

By this argument comments such as "when we take power we will put you up
against a wall and shoot you" should be perfectly acceptable in Wikipedia
talk exchanges. After all, until and unless the person making the statement
is in power the statement shouldn't be regarded as a threat.

Andy


subject:
[WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is
	not	presently	classroom-safe

body:
John Lee wrote:

> I wouldn't dare chuckle were someone to say, "Hey, that site's
> disgusting. I can't believe they had the nerve to show me directly a
> picture of a man sucking his dick."

I would, absolutely I would. They would have been reading an article
about sucking your own dick.

Christiaan


body:
John Lee wrote:

> As I said, in Europe and Australia, you guys are probably used to
> depictions of lifelike nudity and didn't really notice the image, but
> the same cannot be said for those of us from America and Asia.

Who's from Australia?

Christiaan


body:
John Lee wrote:

> Based on the system I envision, for anons, there will be nothing to
> change in the preferences, and viewing the image inline would be as
> simple as clicking. For those logged in, it would be "set and forget"
> in the preferences.

That's generally the way I see it too:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/End-user_content_suppression

Christiaan


body:
Yes I've already seen that. I'd still like to see us develop a system
that could handle downstream filtering (and I think we should be
tagging/categorising media in any case). It's arguably becoming a more
widespread problem, and if/when there's agreement that it is we'd have
a tangible system that people could vote on rather than just an idea.

Christiaan

On 20 Feb 2005, at 9:02 am, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> Christiaan Briggs said:
>> Bummer, thought it sounded too easy.
>>
>> But following this theme, as long as we get down to the task of
>> tagging
>>   images then targeted filtering, whether it be site-based or browser
>> based, is always going to be an option. One day web browsers may well
>> support some kind of image/content filter system, in which case all
>> we'd need to do is hook our tagging system into it, at which point we
>> could dispense with a site-based preference option.
>>
> I suggest that you (and all those suggesting site-based filtering)
> look at
> the votes on that page.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:
> Graphic_and_potentially_disturbing_images
> particularly the summary.
>
> You may notice that the only proposals that got a consensus were:
>
> 1. "Do nothing now, as there's not really a problem now. Revist this
> if it
> ever becomes a widespread problem that can't adequately be handled on a
> case by case basis on individual article talk pages as it is now.
> Policy
> should only ever be developed on an as needed basis, as excessive
> policy
> is both wasteful and harmful." -Shane King, 33 ayes, 5 nays2. "1)
> checkbox for hiding all text from articles. 2) checkbox for hiding
> all images from articles, and replacing them with links."-Chmod007, 10
> ayes, 4 nays3. "Users should also be provided the option to hide all
> sections except
> for lead sections"-Eequor, 2 ayes 1 nay
> The Shane King option to "do nothing now, [handle] on a case by case
> basis
> as it is now" attracted the most support and the least opposition, and
> also achieved a clear consensus, over 85%.


from_name: V. Ivanov

subject: [Wikipedia-l] OS.wikip... (was: This is becoming relatively urgent)

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 09:17:21 +0100, Gerard Meijssen
<gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Ossetic is not problematic the other two are.

The main problem seems not to be about the ISO-code. The Ossetic has
it, but we don't have our constant Wikipedia yet, toying with
http://vicerveza.homeunix.net/osetio from time to time. They say,
exporting does not work -- and that doesn't add enthusiasm to our
editing there.

Who can tell, what's the progress about the Ossetic Wikipedia? Is any
help needed to get it started? Will there be any notification or we
should just keep refreshing the page at os.wikipedia.org?

Still not having lost all hope,
Slavik Ivanov

--
Esperu cxiam!


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] no/nb interwiki links

body:
Andre Engels said:
> Having recently tried a bot run on nn:, I learned that there is a
> difference between nb: and no: interwiki links. They both go to
> no.wikipedia.org, but nb calls it "Norsk (bokm?l)" whereas no calls it
> "Norsk". What policy should be used for deciding which one to apply?

nn is Norsk (nynorsk) so it probably won't do any harm to refer to the
bokm?l version as Norsk (bokm?l).


body:
On Sat, 19 Feb 2005 15:12:39 -0700, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know the answer to this, but what I do know is that the self
> name of the language would eventually be needed although it's not an
> obstacle to creation.

"??????" is a good text for the interwiki-links to the articles in Ossetic.

Sl.

--
Esperu cxiam!


body:
On Sun, Feb 20, 2005 at 08:21:08PM +0800, John Lee wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> >Well, that's precisely what I am *not* seeing.  I'm seeing a substantial
> >minority, nearly 40%, who are in favor of inlining.  This tells me that
> >there is not a consensus that it's such an offensive image.>
> >
> 40% of *editors*. Not readers. Big difference. People like us who have
> so much time to spend on an online "open source" encyclopedia probably
> have far more liberal mind sets than average folk.

To pretend to speak in the name of those who don't care to speak for
themselves is very easy to do, but the words thus spoken carry no added
weight.  They are merely the words of the speaker himself, dressed in
the Potemkin-village clothes of the "Silent Majority".  Indeed, such
words are weakened by the false banner under which they travel.  By
pretending to a voice that is not your own, you give up yours.

When you speak for "the readers", nobody can hear the readers.  One can
hear only you, putting on the voice of "the readers" as a phony accent,
like a bad American actor pretending to Cockney.

> >Only in one country.  The rest of the world was left scratching its heads
> >and wondering what all the fuss was about.  US news programs even carried
> >th images with the breast pixellated out, while non-US news programs
> >showed the incident uncensored.  Please do not assume that the standards
> >of one country are universal.>
> >
> That may be true, but our readership is generally American. I'm not
> denying a substantial portion of our patronage would not be offended,
> but a substantial amount *would* be offended. If we were to link instead
> of inline an image, I doubt the "non-offended" would complain, and if
> they did, it would be hardly as much as the furore from the other side
> were we to carry the image inline.

What, precisely, is so terrible about being offended once in a while?
In truth, being offended regularly is quite educational, and betters a
person.  Those who go for too long without the experience of being
offended become fossilized in their opinions of Mankind, and develop the
false belief that all others are like unto themselves.  When, later,
this belief is suddenly shown false, such persons are caught entirely
unprepared, and retreat to childish outbursts and violence.

I propose that offending people is a Virtue and not a Vice, if one does
so in a manner which is simultaneously informative & educational.  It is
of no use to offend gratuitously; that is, to rehash tiresome offenses
which no longer teach the offended person anything.  But to be offended
and to receive knowledge at the same moment, is to receive knowledge
twice over.

> >This is not part of my argument.  IE is available to 95%+ of the web-using
> >population and it will download images or not at the user's option.
> >
> I spent four or five years of my life using IE and I've never run across
> the option to block images on an individual basis. I did find the
> ability to disable all images, but I should not need to throw out the
> baby with the bathwater.

You have the power in your hands to prevent the terrible offense to
yourself, which offense you so vehemently decry.  Yet you choose
willingly not to use that power, insisting that it is Someone Else's
Job.

Either the offense is not really so bad, or else you are cutting off
your nose to spite your face.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] no/nb interwiki links

body:
Having recently tried a bot run on nn:, I learned that there is a
difference between nb: and no: interwiki links. They both go to
no.wikipedia.org, but nb calls it "Norsk (bokm?l)" whereas no calls it
"Norsk". What policy should be used for deciding which one to apply?

Previously, the bot used no: always, I have now changed it to use nb:
if there is also an nn: link (and of course if working on nn:).
Perhaps I should always use nb:? What are people's opinion on this,
both from the no: community and from outside?

Andre Engels


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking Nazis is not about blocking for mere insults

body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 19:07:41 -0000, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Richard Holton wrote
>
> >How would we be able to claim NPOV
> > when certain groups are not allowed to participate?.
>
> I think that is one of those over-interpretations of what NPOV says.
>
> Take an example: non-English speakers.  In effect they can't access the
> English Wikipedia.  Can we make the English Wikipedia reflect the aspect of
> the world, that well under 10% of people are native speakers of English,
> and, what, another 10% learn to speak English?  Well, I hope so; NPOV means
> that all contributions should take into account that not everyone is a
> native anglophone.  It is anyway not the same issue as saying writing in
> English (or any other language) excludes most of the planet.
>
Try not to introduce entirely separate topics into the discussion, and
try not to quote out of context. Yes, we exclude people who can't read
English from participating in the English Wikipedia (though of course
there are MANY other language Wikipedias).. Literacy in a particular
language has nothing to do with dis-allowing participation based on
beliefs or affiliations.

> > Do we have confidence in the Wikipedia way, or do we not?
>
> Actually, I do, pretty much.  The way says 'come one, come all'.  Doesn't
> say that people can behave as they like.

This is precisely my point. We do not tolerate certain _behaviors_.
But people of all beliefs are welcome to participate.

> What is more, the way is
> distrustful of legalism - and all the better for that.  Those who push the
> limits of the system start rowing away from the bulk of the community.  The
> important part of that is that those who _do not do that_ should expect
> protection.
>
No, Charles. The "Wikipedia way" is to assume good faith until proved
otherwise. That is a core principle of Nikis in general, and Wikipedia
in particular.

Do you really believe that the Wikipedia way is "distrustful
legalism"? I hope I have misunderstood you.

-Rich Holton

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


from_name: Kate Turner

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Re: mailing list floods --> can't we have a wiki
	with	E-mail notification ?

body:
Thomas Gries wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> Christiaan Briggs schrieb:

>> [...] A wiki can be a very messy and difficult way to follow discussion.

> Not, if you use email notification ;-)) .Then everyone interested in a
> subject can follow (but is not obliged to)

i'm not sure about anyone else, but for me it's significantly harder to
receive every message as a notice in my inbox, and then have to load a web
browser to actually participate in the discussion, as well as having to
follow some kind of thread index page and "subscribe to" (watch) every
thread i want to read.  not to mention the problems with deeply threaded
conversations on a wiki becoming rather hard to read (but i already
discussed that earlier...)

also, most news clients will allow you to watch threads you're interested
in, and ignore the ones you aren't.

> Tom

kate.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] alphabetical order

body:
James R. Johnson wrote:
>
>             Is there any way to alter the alphabetical order used to sort
> lists of articles?

Alphabetical order is not used. In those rare cases that things are
listed ordered by name on the wiki, a binary string sort is used, which
is dependent on the Unicode code point order.

No, it's not pretty. :)

In category listings you can fudge the order by manually specifying a
sort key in the category link, eg: [[Category:Bigcat|000Foobar]]

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Great article!

body:
Sj-

>Thanks for lightening the mood... though I feel compelled to point out
>that our multimedia and "hey, cool!" offerings still pale in
>comparison to those of Encarta and BO.
>
>
Only if by multimedia you mean videos and "flashy interactive stuff".
The Wikimedia Commons is already 14 gigabytes large and growing rapidly.
This, according to my count, currently includes about 40,000 GIF, JPG
and PNG images and over 3,000 .ogg sound files. The data I have for
Encarta says that it has 20,000 pictures and 1,000 sounds. Furthermore,
many of our images are very high resolution, whereas Britannica and
Encarta compress things down to screen res. True, a lot of that stuff is
not linked from anywhere else, though on the other hand, all the wikis
have their own local repositories in addition to that.

We suck at videos, though. Part of the problem is that once we increase
the file size limit on Commons, people will upload all the stuff that is
on archive.org and similar free archives. That may well be our long term
goal (*cough* world domination *cough*), but in the short term we should
probably have a policy like "Don't upload very large files if they are
easily availabe from an existing, free resource".

As for interactive content - we need native SVG support in at least one
major browser before this becomes feasible, unless we want to use
something like Flash, where the only decent implementation is non-free.

Regards,

Erik


body:
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 19:56:28 -0000, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> Richard Holton wrote
>
> >Literacy in a particular
> > language has nothing to do with dis-allowing participation based on
> > beliefs or affiliations.
>
> I thought I was illustrating why my reading of NPOV was not yours.
>
> > Do you really believe that the Wikipedia way is "distrustful
> > legalism"? I hope I have misunderstood you.
>
> What I wrote was of course "distrustful of legalism".  Big difference.
>
My sincere apology, Charles. I _did_ misunderstand, er, mis-read you.
And I am relieved to find that I did.

-Rich Holton

en.wikipedia:User:Rholton


from_name: Fredrik Johansson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Great article!

body:
Erik said:
> We suck at videos, though. Part of the problem is that once we increase
> the file size limit on Commons, people will upload all the stuff that is
> on archive.org and similar free archives. That may well be our long term
> goal (*cough* world domination *cough*), but in the short term we should
> probably have a policy like "Don't upload very large files if they are
> easily availabe from an existing, free resource".

Are there any plans on cooperating with archive.org?

Fredrik


from_name: Thomas Gries

body:
Christiaan Briggs schrieb:

> [...] A wiki can be a very messy and difficult way to follow discussion.

Not, if you use email notification ;-)) .Then everyone interested in a
subject can follow (but is not obliged to)
http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454
Tom


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report

body:
On Day 2 (Saturday eastern US timezone since PayPal data are not available in
UTC) we made $9257.65 (USD equivalent) through PayPal (no updates available for
other sources at this time).

Day 2                       Day 1 comparison
Breakdown:
               USD equiv    USD equiv  %change
PayPal
AUD    326.13   256.80       247.27    + 3.85
CAD    211.78   172.00       271.58    -36.67
EUR   2354.98  3080.02      4464.75    -31.01
GBP    454.36   860.37       899.77    - 4.38
JPY  27182      257.80       269.00    - 4.16
USD   4888.47  4888.47      3424.63    +42.74
               9257.65      9576.78    - 3.33

MoneyBookers
               no data      362.69    -100
----------------------------------------------
Total          9257.65    9,939.47    -6.86

For the most recent grand total and other details visit
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1

Some selected comments from Day 2:
See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_2

"A wonderful resource, which has already become the Amazon of online
encyclopedias!" by Anonymous

"Wikipedia is what the internet was meant for: The building of a great
information network" by Industrial Hypertext

"For one of the most exciting enterprises of mankind!" by Renato Cintra

"Wikipedia is my favorite site and an extreme benefit to the world" by Seth
Weisberg

"Wikimedia captures the true spirit of the Internet, and is priceless for
that." by Michael Herring

"Probably the most useful website in the world (and proof that wiki's work).
Well done!" by Mr D A Whiting

"Continue doing your great work, I use wikipedia as much as google" by
MetaFilter

"This model of information transfer will change humanity." by Anonymous

"What can I say? I owe half of what I know to the Wikipedia! Keep up the good
work." by Jonathan Grose

Some of my favorites:

"Wikipedia is dangerous. It is free, it is fair, it is informative, it is fun.
Nothing beats it. Nothing even comes close." by Christopher Hutten-Czapski

"much much less annoying than an NPR fundraising drive, which just makes me
reach for a blank check to stuff into my ears" by Anonymous

"Because knowledge may be free, but servers are not." by Anonymous

"Free knowledge is even better than free porn." by Steve Guy

"What did we do before Wiki?" by Anonymous

Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report

body:
On Day 2 (Saturday eastern US timezone since PayPal data are not available in
UTC) we made $9257.65 (USD equivalent) through PayPal (no updates available for
other sources at this time).

Day 2                       Day 1 comparison
Breakdown:
               USD equiv    USD equiv  %change
PayPal
AUD    326.13   256.80       247.27    + 3.85
CAD    211.78   172.00       271.58    -36.67
EUR   2354.98  3080.02      4464.75    -31.01
GBP    454.36   860.37       899.77    - 4.38
JPY  27182      257.80       269.00    - 4.16
USD   4888.47  4888.47      3424.63    +42.74
               9257.65      9576.78    - 3.33

MoneyBookers
               no data      362.69    -100
----------------------------------------------
Total          9257.65    9,939.47    -6.86

For the most recent grand total and other details visit
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1

Some selected comments from Day 2:
See http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q1/Day_2

"A wonderful resource, which has already become the Amazon of online
encyclopedias!" by Anonymous

"Wikipedia is what the internet was meant for: The building of a great
information network" by Industrial Hypertext

"For one of the most exciting enterprises of mankind!" by Renato Cintra

"Wikipedia is my favorite site and an extreme benefit to the world" by Seth
Weisberg

"Wikimedia captures the true spirit of the Internet, and is priceless for
that." by Michael Herring

"Probably the most useful website in the world (and proof that wiki's work).
Well done!" by Mr D A Whiting

"Continue doing your great work, I use wikipedia as much as google" by
MetaFilter

"This model of information transfer will change humanity." by Anonymous

"What can I say? I owe half of what I know to the Wikipedia! Keep up the good
work." by Jonathan Grose

Some of my favorites:

"Wikipedia is dangerous. It is free, it is fair, it is informative, it is fun.
Nothing beats it. Nothing even comes close." by Christopher Hutten-Czapski

"much much less annoying than an NPR fundraising drive, which just makes me
reach for a blank check to stuff into my ears" by Anonymous

"Because knowledge may be free, but servers are not." by Anonymous

"Free knowledge is even better than free porn." by Steve Guy

"What did we do before Wiki?" by Anonymous

Daniel Mayer,
Wikimedia CFO

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Easier than ever with enhanced search. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


subject: [Foundation-l] Day 2 Fund Drive Report


body:
Fred Bauder said:
>
> The Arbitration Committee could create its own notice board and may,
> but is best contacted now by either posting on the individual
> arbitrators' talk pages or by a note on Wikipedia:Requests for
> arbitration.

I've taken up David Gerard's suggestion (made here I think but also on
[[Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration]]) to make a concise (oh well, I
did my best) formal requestion on [[WP:RfAr]].


from_name: apw at ap-woolrich.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] One reason why Wikipedia is not presently class-room safe

body:
John Lee wrote:

As I said, in Europe and Australia, you guys are probably used to
depictions of lifelike nudity and didn't really notice the image, but
the  same cannot be said for those of us from America and Asia.

I agree with John it is clearly a cultural problem. Yet it is a
curious paradox that so much pornography comes from America, the
nation that got so up-tight last year about exposed breasts in TV.
The press there evidently became very shrill, while in the UK we have
our 'Page 3 girls' in main-stream tabloids. I must confess I laughed
when  I read the original story, but I am concerned that attempts
will be  made to impose these up-tight values on the rest of western
society.

That there are cultural differences is clear from a study of erotica.
Chinese erotica is far kinder and consenual that Japanese, with its
emphasis on violence. Yet these are both Asian countries. Modern
Japanese pornography makes great use of the airbrush, of course, from
the little I have seen on the web.

Until this thread began I was  not aware of the Autofelletion image
but remember the shock I felt when looking up some months ago an
innocuous topic and was confronted with an image from Goatse, put
there by a  Troll which I promptly deleted, not just reverted. And I
pride myself on being a liberal! I am sure somebody will now say I
was wrong and  I ought to have gone through VfD procedures first.:-)

I can well imagine the reaction we are going to get if we don't get
our act together and devise a policy we all can live with.

It strikes me it falls into two halves, in no order:

1) We need to have a policy or policies which preserves Wikipedia'a
reputation as a vehicle for liberal values, and does not make us
liable for a concerted attack by bigots, with all that means in
wasted energy for the management. [Jimbo et al]

This might mean working up a policy to make sure that editors work in
a self-disciplined way. After all, we have NPOV and 'No original
research' now. While technical fixes to turn images on or off are
fine, more thought could also be given to the choice of images in the
first place. But I do accept this is very difficult in the area of
sex, which ranges from loving consensual behaviour on the one hand
through BDSM to pure violence and bestiality at the other.

2) We also need to be able to protect the young and the vulnerable
adult who ARE upset by images like these, which in my view OUGHT to
be on WP.

For the latter maybe something like the system UK newsagents have,
with the raunchy stuff being on the 'Top shelf' , and everything else
lower down where even children can reach it.

But there is, in my view, no easy answer.
A final thought is that a number of our editors are youngsters, one
or two not yet in their teens. How do we stand in regard to their
parents on this?

Tony Woolrich (Apwoolrich)

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