body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>>Does anyone have a strong objection to banning Lir for an hour or so, to
>>let him cool off?
>>
>I'm a little late to weigh in on this, but my personal mode of conduct
>is that instead of banning someone to let them cool off, I should let
>them have their way for an hour to let them cool off.  Just come back
>to the article tomorrow or the next day and fix it.  Probably he won't
>feel as emotional about it then -- and neither will I.
>
>Banning, even for an hour, should be reserved for pure vandalism.
>Disagreements about content seldom rise to that level.
>
In some respects one-hour bans are useless.  If by pure chance the
offender had just finished his evening's efforts and gone to bed hoping
to take the matter up again in the morning, he might not even notice
that he has been banned.
Ec

>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Lir and Christopher Columbus

body:
> I read all Lir's talk page comments. Nothing anti-Wikipedia
> there. She says Columbus was a slave-trader, and she won't
> shut up about it; well, as I suppose LDC would agree, we have
> free speech on the talk pages...

Absolutely. If Lir's actions took place /only/ on talk pages
there'd be no problem, even with the rudeness--talk is just
talk, and doesn't hurt anything.  The problem is that she
insists on editing the real encyclopedia pages /her/ way or
no way, and utterly refuses to listen to anything anyone else
has to say on the matter.  She's /right/ dammit, and simply
won't countenance any disagreement.

No one argues that Columbus traded slaves--that's well known,
and it was already covered in the article from day one.  But
that's not good enough for Lir--she insists that calling him an
explorer in the first paragraph is /wrong/, and refuses to hear
all the arguments for that.  She also seems to think that stating
her opinion on the naming issue 20 times makes a consensus even
though it's already been decided long ago.

As Far as Lir is concerned, all of the other Wikipedians don't
exist; they are all inferior minds not worth listening to,
because she and only she has the received wisdom, and silly
little things like PhDs don't matter.  The attitude is not a
problem--arrogance can be quite constructive sometimes.  But
hte fact that she continues to /act/ on that attitude in the
encyclopedia pages is a problem.

I am gratified that she's now on the list, but even here you
can see that she simply refuses to admit being wrong about
anything.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Spellchecking in SQL

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>There's no way we can use SQL to correct spelling errors automatically.
>
>But even if I fooled around with a SQL query that changed, say, "althought" to "although" -- I wouldn't trust that task to a bot. I would insist on reading every change in context, using probably the article's History page for the link marked "(last) = difference with preceding version".
>
>I think the mispeelings Maintenance Page is wonderful, and we should now rest on our laurels. That's enough automation for this year.
>
Very good!  And how would an automaton correct this sentence: "With
automatic spell correction althought is abandoned?" :-)
Ec


from_name: Tom Parmenter

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Lir and Christopher Columbus

body:
|From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
|Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 15:46:03 -0700
|
|On Monday 21 October 2002 03:17 pm, Ortolan88 wrote:
|> I'll suggest this again.  Banning a contributor forces some authority
|> figure to decide who is right and wrong.  Why not freeze the topic
|> instead?
|
|But then which version gets frozen? Choosing one over the other is taking
|sides so that shouldn't be a reason why a page gets frozen. Page freezing
|should only be done when somebody is trying to hijack a page and therefore
|starts an edit war - which IMO is a form of highly-directed vandalism that
|saps user recourses. But this should only be uses as a last resort.
|

I would freeze the last version before the edit wars started and
include a clear statement that the topic was frozen but could be
discussed on the talk page (or, if the talk page was also frozen, on
the Metawiki).  In the worst cases, some neutral party could draft a
standin article while the storm raged elsewhere.

There are never more than a half dozen of these hot topics at one
time, maybe no more than two or three, and it could only help to
provide a way to mediate these discussions without driving people
away.  (See next mail from me.)

Tom P.
O88

|>There is no hurry to complete any topic, but edit wars are
|> fueled by adrenaline and adrenaline doesn't last.
|
|I agree. We would have to change some wording on the Main Page that would make
|us look not as open though....
|
|> ....
|
|-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
|
|[Wikipedia-l]
|To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
|http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
|


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

> Lir is now at work on the VANDALISM IN PROGRESS page, deleting any
> references to herself, while accusing all other editors of the
> Christopher Columbus page of being vandals.
>
> But far be it from me to suggest that anything be done about it!  I've
> learned my lesson.

Lir is not a "vandal" -- but a contributor who disagrees with other contributors. I just spent an hour yesterday trying to fix up the Columbus article myself -- trying to minimize any addition of my own POV and focusing mostly on grammar, sequence and neutrality. I haven't even taken a look at this morning's version yet, though.

I read all Lir's talk page comments. Nothing anti-Wikipedia there. She says Columbus was a slave-trader, and she won't shut up about it; well, as I suppose LDC would agree, we have free speech on the talk pages. Also, I did a little googling and found 2 online sources that say Columbus transported slaves from the New World to Europe. Unless he "donated" the slaves to a museum or something, he probably got paid -- and slave transport + got paid = slave trader.

I had never heard about this in grade school or even high school. I always thought Columbus was a pure, noble adventurous hero -- who well deserves an annual holiday. But if he kidnapped people into slavery, I gotta downgrade his heroism at least one notch (on my own personal list of historical figures).

And the article should say that "some sources" indicate that Columbus initiated the [[Transatlantic slave trade]].

I'll see if I can straighten this out.

Ed Poor
Amateur and Utterly Unofficial Self-appointed Neutrality Umpire


subject: [Wikipedia-l] It's about its

body:
> Is there a way to tell SQL just to return the first 20 records?

"SELECT ... LIMIT 20".  You can also add an offset;
"SELECT ... LIMIT 100, 20" will give you 20 records starting
at the 101st.


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

body:
>>Banning, even for an hour, should be reserved for pure vandalism.
>>Disagreements about content seldom rise to that level.
>
>I think that Jimbo has the right idea here.

Yes.  Where's the fire, anyway?  It's not like the final version of any article is due tomorrow.

Maybe I'm emphatically naive, but I think Lir can still be a valuable contributor.  I believe that so much that I've unblocked Lir--or tried to, anyway.  There are two entries about Lir at http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Ipblocklist&action=success&ip=129.186.80.133, and only one of them disappeared.  Anyway, I'd rather be wrong about something generous than right about something cynical.

kq


subject: [Wikipedia-l] banning in general

body:
Let's talk about this--if not here, then somewhere, because it's an issue now and will only become more of an issue if bannings are being applie arbitrarily or unfairly.

1) When is it appropriate to ban someone from wikipedia?
2) Who should be able to ban?
3) When should people hesitate or refuse to ban people?
4) How long should people be banned for?

I'm not saying we need another policy or "rule to consider"--God knows everyone seems to stop at "rules", forgetting "to consider."  But honestly, I think the issue needs some thought.

Personally, my feelings are that 1) when defacing articles or when adding profanities or ridiculous statements (In 1496, Columbus flew to Pluto with his friend from K-Pax) and doing that not just once but several times.

2)  Fewer people should be able to ban than are able to now.  It was a burden for Larry, and he was criticized severely for it, but one person is not a cabal; and several people making debatable decisions quickly turns into de facto policy.

3) We should not ban a contributor when involved with the situation personally or emotionally.

4) People should not be banned for long at all.  Give people the benefit of the doubt.  Several people on wikipedia, and on this list, started out dubbed "trolls" or something else; and we could just as easily argue that Lir was simply a highly accomplished troll, and that trolling therefore is vandalism.  Is it?  No, I don't think so.

How long do we intend to keep people banned?  There are people on the list from August.

Anyway, I don't expect everyone to agree with me, and I'm putting on my asbestos suit now.

kq


body:
> Maybe I'm emphatically naive, but I think Lir can still be a
> valuable contributor.  I believe that so much that I've
> unblocked Lir--or tried to, anyway.  There are two entries
> about Lir [in the block list], and only one of them disappeared.
> Anyway, I'd rather be wrong about something generous than right
> about something cynical.

The other was the block by user name; there's no interface for
doing that yet, so only developers can do it.  But since you
chose to unblock the IP, I've unblocked the user name on your
behalf.

I happen to agree that Lir might be a valuable contributor when
she grows up.  I just don't think we need to waste /our/ time
being her nanny.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Spellchecking in SQL

body:
There's no way we can use SQL to correct spelling errors automatically.

Not even MS Word's spellchecker is so reliable that one can simply let it proceed on full automatic. All it can do is point out a word that isn't on its list. Then you have to decide (A) to ignore this instance; (B) to ignore all instances in this session; (C) to add this word to your custom dictionary; (D) to accept the offered "correction"; or (E) to change it manually. This process takes human brainpower.

The page which automatically looks up common misspellings is a great idea -- don't get me wrong. It has already made me 20-30% more efficient in rooting out misspellings.

But even if I fooled around with a SQL query that changed, say, "althought" to "although" -- I wouldn't trust that task to a bot. I would insist on reading every change in context, using probably the article's History page for the link marked "(last) = difference with preceding version".

I think the mispeelings Maintenance Page is wonderful, and we should now rest on our laurels. That's enough automation for this year.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] It's about its

body:
Most of us can readily apply the following two rules:
* to show possession, it's correct to use: its
* we may change "it is" to its contraction: it's

So, I would like to be able to search for instances of:

   it's

...so I can check whether it's being used as a contraction for "it is" (correct) or as a possessive (incorrect: change to "its").

But when I tried to use Wikipedia search, entering:

   it\'s

I got a bunch of articles with the following 2 characters highlighted in red:

   's

...which is a superset of what I want.

What is the correct search string to enter?

Ed Poor


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikitech-l] Quick RC filter?

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> I wasn't referring to filtering by posting frequency but to filtering by
> user ID. Filtering by frequency would affect malicious trolls as well,
> which we obviously don't want. I have no clue where microfarads come
> into play, I was thinking about a software-based solution ;-).

More generally, it might be interesting to have a whitelist/blacklist
system where you can choose to show _only_ edits by a set of people or
_everything but_ edits by some set of people.

Thus, you can filter out known contributors to do spot checks for newbie
formatting problems or vandalism, or show just edits by people you think
you'd be interested in what they had to say.

Er, random thought anyway.

As far as the double-click patch -- was there any general agreement on
using it? I seem to remember a mention of conflict with standard browser
behavior (dblclick = selection)....? It's kind of a cute feature, I
wouldn't mind it if there's consensus.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Zoe

body:
The question was never whether Columbus took slaves from the New World to Europe or elsewhere.  Lir claimed that he was a slave trader before 1492.  She never supplied any proof of it, and objected when people asked her to prove it.
Zoe
 "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:Sean Barrett wrote:

> Lir is now at work on the VANDALISM IN PROGRESS page, deleting any
> references to herself, while accusing all other editors of the
> Christopher Columbus page of being vandals.
>
> But far be it from me to suggest that anything be done about it! I've
> learned my lesson.

Lir is not a "vandal" -- but a contributor who disagrees with other contributors. I just spent an hour yesterday trying to fix up the Columbus article myself -- trying to minimize any addition of my own POV and focusing mostly on grammar, sequence and neutrality. I haven't even taken a look at this morning's version yet, though.

I read all Lir's talk page comments. Nothing anti-Wikipedia there. She says Columbus was a slave-trader, and she won't shut up about it; well, as I suppose LDC would agree, we have free speech on the talk pages. Also, I did a little googling and found 2 online sources that say Columbus transported slaves from the New World to Europe. Unless he "donated" the slaves to a museum or something, he probably got paid -- and slave transport + got paid = slave trader.

I had never heard about this in grade school or even high school. I always thought Columbus was a pure, noble adventurous hero -- who well deserves an annual holiday. But if he kidnapped people into slavery, I gotta downgrade his heroism at least one notch (on my own personal list of historical figures).

And the article should say that "some sources" indicate that Columbus initiated the [[Transatlantic slave trade]].

I'll see if I can straighten this out.

Ed Poor
Amateur and Utterly Unofficial Self-appointed Neutrality Umpire
[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021022/69a6c88a/attachment.htm


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Strange problems

body:
(moving thread to tech list)

Jens Frank wrote:
> it starts happening again. Server performance is
> very slow, saving edits result in "No data"
> error popups but the page is saved.
>
> And now it says:
>
> Could not select database wikidb
>
> Commands out of sync; You can't run this command now

Well, this should hopefully start to narrow it down. Thanks for the report!

in DatabaseFunctions.php::wfGetDB():
     if ( ! $wgDBconnection ) {
         $wgDBconnection = mysql_pconnect( $wgDBserver, wgDBuser,
             $wgDBpassword ) or die( ..... );
         mysql_select_db( $wgDBname, $wgDBconnection ) or die( .... );
     }

The error message comes up on the mysql_select_db, and is the first
thing we do after opening a connection; but since we're using persistent
connections, it could be left in an odd state after the last process...?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #776 - 1 msg

body:
--- "Matt M." <matt_mcl at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Is anyone else getting the error, "Could not select
> database wikidb"? I've
> been getting this on a number of different pages
> since last night, and it
> has since spread. I can't even access the main page
> now. What's going on?
>
> Matt
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

It has been going on and off the whole day on several
wikis. See on meta
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bug_reports

To be reported on wikitech...

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


body:
Well, if she comes back and continues to cause trouble, I may have to walk away from Wikipedia.
Zoe
 koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:>>Banning, even for an hour, should be reserved for pure vandalism.
>>Disagreements about content seldom rise to that level.
>
>I think that Jimbo has the right idea here.

Yes. Where's the fire, anyway? It's not like the final version of any article is due tomorrow.

Maybe I'm emphatically naive, but I think Lir can still be a valuable contributor. I believe that so much that I've unblocked Lir--or tried to, anyway. There are two entries about Lir at http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Special:Ipblocklist&action=success&ip=129.186.80.133, and only one of them disappeared. Anyway, I'd rather be wrong about something generous than right about something cynical.

kq

[Wikipedia-l]
To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021022/e2e9f2fe/attachment.htm


subject: [Wikipedia-l] It's about its

body:
> There are 1,178 pages in article space containing the word "it's". If
> you _really_ want to wade through them looking for the erroneous ones,
> go to the SQL query page and run:
>
>   SELECT cur_title from cur where cur_namespace=0 and
>   cur_text regexp "[[:<:]]it's[[:>:]]" order by cur_title
>
> It takes a while -- hence my idea to cut the list down in most cases!

Is there a way to tell SQL just to return the first 20 records? I don't want to slow down the server -- nor would I really want to wade through more than 20 pages at a time -- my brain might spring a leak :-)

Ed Poor


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Quick RC filter?

body:
Hi,

the auto-bot on WP is really messing up the RC file. I think it
shouldn't be too hard to put a filter interface for admins in there,
making it easy to filter changes by specific users. (This probably will
come up again.) I'm ready to write this if there's interest from the
maintainers. I'm aware of the potential problems (filtered users could
abuse the system), but this would only be done for trustworthy users,
and there are remedies (check user contributions etc.).

So far I haven't heard back regarding my first patch (edit on
doubleclick), so I am reluctant to do more work.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:
> The error message comes up on the mysql_select_db, and is the first
> thing we do after opening a connection; but since we're using persistent
> connections, it could be left in an odd state after the last process...?

I've tweaked it so if it can't select the database, it will try again
with a spankin' new connection (via mysql_connect()) and make a note in
the logfile. So, with any luck, this should at least work around the
problem.

Restarting apache should clear the mysterious borken connections, since
the persistent connections are associated with individual child
processes. (At least, that's what the documentation leads me to believe...)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com


body:
>Brion VIBBER wrote:
>> The error message comes up on the mysql_select_db, and is the
>> first thing we do after opening a connection; but since we're
>> using persistent connections, it could be left in an odd state
>> after the last process...?

> I've tweaked it so if it can't select the database, it will try
> again with a spankin' new connection (via mysql_connect()) and
> make a note in the logfile. So, with any luck, this should at
> least work around the problem.

I doubt such a band-aid will help; this looks like a symptom of
a more fundamental problem, though I don't know what it might be.
I'm afraid I'm not much of a MySQL/PHP guru either (I'd never
seen or used the language before I wrote this software), so I'm
not familiar with its capacity problems.  I'm pretty confident
that they can be fixed, or else there's no way a site like
Slashdot could use them, but I'm not sure where to tweak first.
I'll have to investigate.


body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>>Brion VIBBER wrote:
>>I've tweaked it so if it can't select the database, it will try
>>again with a spankin' new connection (via mysql_connect()) and
>>make a note in the logfile. So, with any luck, this should at
>>least work around the problem.
>
>
> I doubt such a band-aid will help; this looks like a symptom of
> a more fundamental problem, though I don't know what it might be.

Well, there's definitely _some_ root cause which I wish I could
identify, too. But, with any luck, the band-aid will keep the site
usable until we ferret it out.

> I'm afraid I'm not much of a MySQL/PHP guru either (I'd never
> seen or used the language before I wrote this software), so I'm
> not familiar with its capacity problems.  I'm pretty confident
> that they can be fixed, or else there's no way a site like
> Slashdot could use them, but I'm not sure where to tweak first.
> I'll have to investigate.

Slashdot's problems with mysql are notorious. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] map namespace?

body:
Brion VIBBER wrote:
> I dug around some more; the software Caltrop has been using is GMT
> (Generic Map Tools; http://gmt.soest.hawaii.edu/) via the on-line map
> creator at http://www.aquarius.geomar.de/omc/omc_intro.html

Yes, that's the one that generates the dead ugly blue and yellow maps
that are used in some Wikipedia pages.  It is free, but I consider it
useless.  The amount of information is very low and the mapping data
for Sweden totally sucks (lakes appear in the wrong place, etc.).
The fact that generating a map takes about a minute (so it cannot be
used as a real-time web service to save storage space) is a minor
deficiency in comparison.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Spellchecking in SQL

body:
> > There's no way we can use SQL to correct spelling
> > errors automatically.
> >
> > But even if I fooled around with a SQL query that
> > changed, say, "althought" to "although" -- I wouldn't
> > trust that task to a bot. I would insist on reading
> > every change in context, using probably the article's
> > History page for the link marked "(last) = difference
> > with preceding version".
> >
> > I think the mispeelings Maintenance Page is wonderful,
> > and we should now rest on our laurels. That's enough
> > automation for this year.
>
> Very good!  And how would an automaton correct this
> sentence: "With
> automatic spell correction althought is abandoned?" :-)
> Ec

Thanks, that's my point exactly: "all thought is abandoned" when we turn over to machines, decisions that we must make ourselves.

Ed Poor


body:
>> > Is anyone else getting the error, "Could not select
>> > database wikidb"? I've
>> > been getting this on a number of different pages
>> > since last night, and it
>> > has since spread. I can't even access the main page
>> > now. What's going on?

>> It has been going on and off the whole day on several
>> wikis. See on meta
>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bug_reports

>Agreed.  This problem has been happening for the last 16 hours at
least.  I
>have been unable to make any contributions as a result.

We don't have a fix yet, but here's an ugly workaround and
a possible clue to the cause: I too was getting the error at
work using I.E., but not using Lynx, and not from home using
Galeon.  I cleared I.E.'s browser cache, and now I.E. is
working too (though I had to log in again because I deleted
the cookie as well).


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
> Maybe we should revive the idea of a partial ban:
>* Contributor blocked from editing articles -- stops the edit war
>* But can still edit talk pages -- which keeps dialogue open

I proposed exactly that once, but the idea got little support.
I'm all for it, though I don't think even a complete block
really shuts down dialog.  After all, Bridget did show up here
on the list, and she's quite free to e-mail anyone (the "you're
blocked" page shows the user who blocked you, and the "e-mail
this user" function is not blocked).

But the real issue is acceptable criteria for imposing such a
block.  While we all agree that outright vandalism and obscenity
are legitimate reasons and that "point of view" and "emotional
involvement" are really bad reasons, I hold that "demonstrated
unwillingness to work with others" is a perfectly legitimate one
as well, so long as one judges this on genuine content-neutral
grounds.  Others may disagree.

Here's another thought experiment.  Suppose you are organizing
a conference to dicuss some topic, and preparing for it by hosting
a mailing list discussion.  A troublemaker appears on the list
and disrupts things.  It is discovered that the troublemaker is
in fact a bright 9-year-old. Is there any question in anyone's
mind that it would be a perfectly legitimate exercise of control
to simply drop the kid from the list and the conference, because
it's clear that a child that young doesn't yet have the maturity
or experience to effectively work with the group or understand
the deeper issues?  "Free speech" and other freedoms are marvellous
things, but such rights only apply to adults whom we can hold
responsible for their actions.

On Wikipedia, we can't see whether the troublemakers are adults
or not, so we give them the benefit of the doubt.  But some of them
probably are, in fact, children.  It wouldn't surprize me a bit to
discover that Lir is a very bright 14-year old.  Why should we
bend over backwards to give such a person presumed rights here that
even the most liberal of us wouldn't grant in real life?

And since we can't know the physical age of someone here, it is
perfectly reasonable for us to evaluate the /actual actions/ of
of contributors, and to judge whether or not they have the maturity
to work within this system. If someone acts like a 10-year-old,
they should be treated like one.  A block isn't saying "you're an
awful person" or anything--it's just saying "go to your room for
a while, the grown-ups are talking".


from_name: Matt M.

body:
Is anyone else getting the error, "Could not select database wikidb"? I've
been getting this on a number of different pages since last night, and it
has since spread. I can't even access the main page now. What's going on?

Matt


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Put your text for the new page here

body:
Stephen Gilbert wrote:

>--- tarquin <tarquin at planetunreal.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>(this list really has a problem with short-term
>>memory -- we only seem
>>to manage 3 or 4 "current" issues, and things get
>>dropped off the
>>agenda, such as the TeX [[math:]] markup idea.)
>>
>>
>
>The problem is the traffic. I don't have two hours a
>day to follow every issue that comes up.
>
>What we need is to encourage the habbit of bringing up
>an issue on the mailing list, then taking the detailed
>conversation to meta.wikipedia.org or an appropriate
>talk page in the pedia. That way, people's inboxs
>don't have to explode whenever there's a hot topic.
>
With that in mind, I have started a short list of "current issues" on
Meta's main page.
I also plan to shunt off all the old stuff (establishing the principles
of NPOV, 24, etc) to archive pages.

I have compiled what I could find on math markup here:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_Markup


from_name: d3p1k at yahoo.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #777 - 11 msgs

body:
On Tuesday, October 22, 2002, at 03:27  PM, wikipedia-l-
request at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 15:06:41 -0700
> To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>, "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban
> From: lcrocker at nupedia.com
> Cc:
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
>
>
>> Maybe we should revive the idea of a partial ban:
>> * Contributor blocked from editing articles -- stops the edit war
>> * But can still edit talk pages -- which keeps dialogue open
>
> On Wikipedia, we can't see whether the troublemakers are adults
> or not, so we give them the benefit of the doubt.  But some of them
> probably are, in fact, children.  It wouldn't surprize me a bit to
> discover that Lir is a very bright 14-year old.  Why should we
> bend over backwards to give such a person presumed rights here that
> even the most liberal of us wouldn't grant in real life?
>
> And since we can't know the physical age of someone here, it is
> perfectly reasonable for us to evaluate the /actual actions/ of
> of contributors, and to judge whether or not they have the maturity
> to work within this system. If someone acts like a 10-year-old,
> they should be treated like one.  A block isn't saying "you're an
> awful person" or anything--it's just saying "go to your room for
> a while, the grown-ups are talking".
>

That's a good point and a good analogy. I never considered that Lir
might, in fact, be a kid. It was hard to imagine someone so belligerent
would survive very well in university (I assumed she was student based
on her thankfully now - forgotten Iowa State jag), but then again, I've
been out of school for a while. Maybe things have changed.

Dave De Paoli


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mispeelings

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:

>>>>If we change all "it's" to either "its" or the more formal "it is", then
>>>>that list will gradually diminish.
>>>>
>>>>
>
>
>
>>>So we're at the point now where it's been suggested
>>>to remove a word ("it's") entirely from Wikipedia
>>>because it's difficult to tell when it's misspelled?
>>>This is far more zealous than we need to be.
>>>Correct them when you find them, but don't go overboard --
>>>they're just mispeelings!
>>>
>>>
Sheesh. Yet another minor issue that blows out of all proportion -- can
we drop it now?
If I were going on a hunt for incorrect uses of "it's", correcting most
to "its" or "it is" has the advantage of shortening the next list of
search results.
I certainly wasn't suggesting changing "it's a long way to tipperary".
I can't speak for AmEnglish, but in BrEnglish, a contraction such as
"it's" is considered a little too informal for a work such as an
encyclopedia or a dictionary.

Perhaps it was UK-centric of me to assume that that holds in AmEng too,
in which case I apologize (but note that many US wikipedians could do
with a healthy dose of culture shock to shake a few us-centric attitudes.)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Quick RC filter?

body:
Pierre,

I wasn't referring to filtering by posting frequency but to filtering by
user ID. Filtering by frequency would affect malicious trolls as well,
which we obviously don't want. I have no clue where microfarads come
into play, I was thinking about a software-based solution ;-).

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


subject: [Wikipedia-l] It's about its

body:
earlier post by brion:

There are 1,178 pages in article space containing the word "it's". If
you _really_ want to wade through them looking for the erroneous ones,
go to the SQL query page and run:

  SELECT cur_title from cur where cur_namespace=0 and
  cur_text regexp "[[:<:]]it's[[:>:]]" order by cur_title

It takes a while -- hence my idea to cut the list down in most cases!

Poor, Edmund W wrote:

>Most of us can readily apply the following two rules:
>* to show possession, it's correct to use: its
>* we may change "it is" to its contraction: it's
>
>So, I would like to be able to search for instances of:
>
>   it's
>
>...so I can check whether it's being used as a contraction for "it is" (correct) or as a possessive (incorrect: change to "its").
>
>But when I tried to use Wikipedia search, entering:
>
>   it\'s
>
>I got a bunch of articles with the following 2 characters highlighted in red:
>
>   's
>
>...which is a superset of what I want.
>
>What is the correct search string to enter?
>
>
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
We want to keep good people like Zoe, dave (dograt), et al. BUT we don't want to overdo this banning thing.

Maybe we should revive the idea of a partial ban:
* Contributor blocked from editing articles -- stops the edit war
* But can still edit talk pages -- which keeps dialogue open

To maintain impartiality, I propose that parties to the conflict get at least one other contributor, who is not involved in the conflict, to agree. In other words, if I'm fighting with Jacob about "Palestinian Territories", I should not block him -- but Lee (if he agreed Jacob was being anti-Wikipedian) could step in and block him.

What do people think about a Selective Block? How would things have been different if we had done this with any of the following?
* 24
* Helga (H. Jonat)
* DW
* Lir

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Zoe [mailto:zoecomnena at yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 3:59 PM
To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Lir and Christopher Columbus

Well, if she comes back and continues to cause trouble, I may have to walk away from Wikipedia.

Zoe

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021022/179c1c73/attachment.htm


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Less than an outright ban

body:
Jeronimo proposed:
>Anyway, maybe it is better to have something like this: If a user
>repeatedly violates some rule, convention, whatever and has ignored
>pleas from others to follow that rule, we could raise some flag in the
>database and show the user a page with "Other Wikipedians have not you
>have repeatedly violated X. Please read this documentation over X. If
>you disagree with X, please go to Talk:X or Wikipedia-L. If you continue
>to disrespect X, other measures may follow...".

This I don't like because it puts undue emphasis on rules to consider.  Except for NPOV and respect of copyrights, all "rules" here are simply "to consider".

Lee pointed out that the underlying issue is working with others.  Perhaps on some prominent page (even the main page?) we could make it explicit that in order to keep this thing going (and we've got a good thing going), playing nice with others is a must.  Not so much as a rule or something draconian and non-negotiable, but just a reminder--"hey, look what you're doing.  Let's try to work together, and make contributions pleasant and respectful."

Maybe this is too flower-powery an idea to work, but really so is wikipedia itself.  :-)

kq


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Quick RC filter?

body:
On Tuesday 22 October 2002 10:13, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Pierre,
>
> I wasn't referring to filtering by posting frequency but to filtering by
> user ID. Filtering by frequency would affect malicious trolls as well,
> which we obviously don't want. I have no clue where microfarads come
> into play, I was thinking about a software-based solution ;-).

"RC filter" to an electrical engineer means a filter made of a resistor and a
capacitor.

phma


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
|content-class: urn:content-classes:message
|X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.0.6249.0
|X-MS-Has-Attach:
|X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
|Thread-Topic: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Lir and Christopher Columbus
|Thread-Index: AcJ6CXDAg7Yp0ILET6iftbmJzR5anAACBr1A
|From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
|X-OriginalArrivalTime: 22 Oct 2002 21:36:24.0399 (UTC) FILETIME=[11F45DF0:01C27A13]
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at nupedia.com
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at nupedia.com
|Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 17:36:24 -0400
|
|This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
|
|------_=_NextPart_001_01C27A13.11D3D4AA
|Content-Type: text/plain;
|	charset="iso-8859-1"
|Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
|
|We want to keep good people like Zoe, dave (dograt), et al. BUT we don't =
|want to overdo this banning thing.
|=20
|Maybe we should revive the idea of a partial ban:=20
|* Contributor blocked from editing articles -- stops the edit war
|* But can still edit talk pages -- which keeps dialogue open
|=20
|To maintain impartiality, I propose that parties to the conflict get at =
|least one other contributor, who is not involved in the conflict, to =
|agree. In other words, if I'm fighting with Jacob about "Palestinian =
|Territories", I should not block him -- but Lee (if he agreed Jacob was =
|being anti-Wikipedian) could step in and block him.
|=20
|What do people think about a Selective Block? How would things have been =
|different if we had done this with any of the following?
|* 24
|* Helga (H. Jonat)
|* DW
|* Lir
|=20
|Ed Poor

I missed 24, but in every other case there was a single article or an
easily identifiable set of articles that were the locus of the
trouble.  Freezing those articles for a day, week, month, quarter,
might have solved the problem.

Helga- Copernicus
DW - Canadian noteworthies
Lir - Columbus

Did we so much need an article this quarter on these three topics that
we could tolerate the kind of abuse (let's don't mince words) that
these people dealt out?

As for the "one other contributor" this is what I had in mind with my
"master in chancery" proposal, not "police", just someone to filter
the conflict before it got into an article.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] banning in general

in_reply_to: <200210221739.g9MHdRP13826@ross.bomis.com>; from koyaanisqatsi@nupedia.com on Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 10:39:27AM -0700

body:
On Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 10:39:27AM -0700, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Let's talk about this--if not here, then somewhere, because it's an
> issue now and will only become more of an issue if bannings are being
> applie arbitrarily or unfairly.
>
> 1) When is it appropriate to ban someone from wikipedia?
> 2) Who should be able to ban?
> 3) When should people hesitate or refuse to ban people?
> 4) How long should people be banned for?

> I'm not saying we need another policy or "rule to consider"--God
> knows everyone seems to stop at "rules", forgetting "to consider."
> But honestly, I think the issue needs some thought.

I agree.

The traditional wiki way to handle people making a mess is to clear it
up, rather than ban. There are two points worth making:

- if you're keeping an eye on recent changes, it's easy to feel you're
the only one cleaning up, or one of only a few. From here it's easy to
believe that you _have_ to do this work or else the wiki will go to the
dogs. In fact, it's likely that others will pick up the slack.

- reverting changes is relatively quick; it's explaining and arguing
that really takes up time. So one option short of banning is to decide
that everything has been explained to a particular individual already,
and come to a consensus that any problematic changes they make should
be silently reverted, unless a genuinely new issue comes up.

> Personally, my feelings are that 1) when defacing articles or when
> adding profanities or ridiculous statements (In 1496, Columbus flew
> to Pluto with his friend from K-Pax) and doing that not just once but
> several times.
>
> 2)  Fewer people should be able to ban than are able to now.  It was
> a burden for Larry, and he was criticized severely for it, but one
> person is not a cabal; and several people making debatable decisions
> quickly turns into de facto policy.
>
> 3) We should not ban a contributor when involved with the situation
> personally or emotionally.
>
> 4) People should not be banned for long at all.  Give people the
> benefit of the doubt.  Several people on wikipedia, and on this list,
> started out dubbed "trolls" or something else; and we could just as
> easily argue that Lir was simply a highly accomplished troll, and
> that trolling therefore is vandalism.  Is it?  No, I don't think so.

I agree with kq here.

-M-


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
>Ed wrote:
> > Maybe we should revive the idea of a partial ban:
> >* Contributor blocked from editing articles -- stops the edit war
> >* But can still edit talk pages -- which keeps dialogue open

On Tuesday 22 October 2002 03:27 pm lcrocker wrote:
> I proposed exactly that once, but the idea got little support.
> I'm all for it, though I don't think even a complete block
> really shuts down dialog.  After all, Bridget did show up here
> on the list, and she's quite free to e-mail anyone (the "you're
> blocked" page shows the user who blocked you, and the "e-mail
> this user" function is not blocked).

I vote for this too - this would give a person who is trying to "hijack" a
page time to focus on crafting their arguments on why the page should be
changed. Most contributors want us to have the best encyclopedia there is so
we will listen and consider the arguments. But I would probably freeze the
page as Ortolan suggests before I would block a user.  I would also only
resort to blocking the "hijacker" from editing anything in the 'article
namespace'  if they did something to subvert the process like copying their
version under a different page name and then proceded to orphan the frozen
page by pointing all links to it to their version at the new page title.

> But the real issue is acceptable criteria for imposing such a
> block.  While we all agree that outright vandalism and obscenity
> are legitimate reasons and that "point of view" and "emotional
> involvement" are really bad reasons, I hold that "demonstrated
> unwillingness to work with others" is a perfectly legitimate one
> as well, so long as one judges this on genuine content-neutral
> grounds.  Others may disagree.

Not me - I find it odd that we tend to bend over backwards to try and
accommodate people who exhibit anti-social behavior when this very behavior
/has/ resulted in the loss of great contributors in the past (and is
threatening to do so for at least two others now - and those are just the
ones we have heard from). Do we really want to encourage this type of
behavior and thus decrease the average quality of our contributor base? I
hope not.

>....

> And since we can't know the physical age of someone here, it is
> perfectly reasonable for us to evaluate the /actual actions/ of
> of contributors, and to judge whether or not they have the maturity
> to work within this system. If someone acts like a 10-year-old,
> they should be treated like one.  A block isn't saying "you're an
> awful person" or anything--it's just saying "go to your room for
> a while, the grown-ups are talking".

That's right.  We are a community of contributors and if somebody can't work
with the community then they are working against it. Nobody gets paid to
contribute to Wikipedia and the only reason people do contribute is because
they derive some enjoyment from it.

The question before is this; What type of "enjoyment" do we want to encourage?
I for one enjoy working with very intelligent people from all around the
world  while writing a unique, neutral, free and useful encyclopedia. Other
people enjoy being anti-social and/or starting fights while pushing their own
POV agendas.

Which type of contributor should be bend over backwards to keep?

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


body:
Jeroen Heijmans wrote:

> Same point. The Canadian thing wasn't the first time DW "violated"
> wikipediquette. Also: these were mainly on the talk page, which
> wouldn't have helped. The Canadian thing seems to go quite well now,
> we all seem to be satisfied with a new approach on which we're working
> at a temporary page.

Even DW has been co-operating there now.

> Anyway, maybe it is better to have something like this: If a user
> repeatedly violates some rule, convention, whatever and has ignored
> pleas from others to follow that rule, we could raise some flag in the
> database and show the user a page with "Other Wikipedians have not you
> have repeatedly violated X. Please read this documentation over X. If
> you disagree with X, please go to Talk:X or Wikipedia-L. If you
> continue to disrespect X, other measures may follow...".
>
> In this way, the use "gets reminded" all the time, and can't deny
> knowing about the rule. Next measures be a ban from editing specific
> articles, all articles (or talks if appropriate), etc.

This is an interesting approach.  When the offender tries to post he
would be redirected to such a page that would explain his offense
followed  by "Do you understand and agree to the above?"  He would then
have yes and no buttons.  A yes would bring him back on track; if he
presses no he would ban or suspend himself.  This all assumes that this
is technically feasible.

Eclecticology


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikitech-l] Error message report enclosed: Could not select database wikidb

body:
The error report is as follows:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Could not select database wikidb

Commands out of sync; You can't run this command now

If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache,
please notify the Wikipedia developers.


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Strange problems

body:
On Mon, Oct 21, 2002 at 11:36:22PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
> Hi,
>
> some strange things happening on the wikipedia:
>
> - If I try to save an article, I get the error
> message "Document contains no data" as response.
> The article is saved correctly.
>
> - Some users seem to save an article two times,
> the second time it is empty. It's unclear whether
> this is caused by clicking "reload" after the
> above message or caused by the server itself.
>
> Can this be related to Ram-Man's bot? He stopped
> it already but problems are still occuring.
>

Hi,

it starts happening again. Server performance is
very slow, saving edits result in "No data"
error popups but the page is saved.

And now it says:

Could not select database wikidb

Commands out of sync; You can't run this command now

If this error persists after reloading and clearing your browser cache, please notify the Wikipedia developers.

Regards,

	jeluf


body:
On Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 01:28:49AM +0200, Kurt Jansson wrote:
> > (this list really has a problem with short-term memory -- we only seem
> > to manage 3 or 4 "current" issues, and things get dropped off the
> > agenda, such as the TeX [[math:]] markup idea.)
>
> And the easy table markup ... Or did I miss something?
>
> Do we need more programmers? Or is it that the concepts aren't ready for
> implementation?
>
>
During the last week or two, it seemed like "stability" being the
primary subject the programmers were working on. New features
shouldn't be added to an unstable system.

Regarding tables: No consens was made on any kind of markup. Lee
announced to provide some kind of markup roadmap, but I didn't
see anything like it.

The TeX-code (aka [[math:]]) I did not submit to Lee because I've
been waiting for his roadmap.

	Regards,

		JeLuF


body:
>>koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
>>Maybe I'm emphatically naive, but I think Lir can still be a valuable contributor.

Zoe Wrote:
>Well, if she comes back and continues to cause trouble, I may have to walk away from Wikipedia.

Well, I wish you wouldn't.  She's intelligent, but I don't think anyone believed her accusations of racism etc.  She's a bit flammable, but (again, maybe I'm wrong) she may calm down.  And, who knows, maybe we'll all decide that I'm taking the wrong approach and we should ban people more often, and sooner.  :-)

kq


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
LDC wrote in large part:

>Here's another thought experiment.  Suppose you are organizing
>a conference to dicuss some topic, and preparing for it by hosting
>a mailing list discussion.  A troublemaker appears on the list
>and disrupts things.  It is discovered that the troublemaker is
>in fact a bright 9-year-old. Is there any question in anyone's
>mind that it would be a perfectly legitimate exercise of control
>to simply drop the kid from the list and the conference, because
>it's clear that a child that young doesn't yet have the maturity
>or experience to effectively work with the group or understand
>the deeper issues?  "Free speech" and other freedoms are marvellous
>things, but such rights only apply to adults whom we can hold
>responsible for their actions.

Rights only for adults?  What contemptible, unprincipled garbage!

>On Wikipedia, we can't see whether the troublemakers are adults
>or not, so we give them the benefit of the doubt.  But some of them
>probably are, in fact, children.  It wouldn't surprize me a bit to
>discover that Lir is a very bright 14-year old.  Why should we
>bend over backwards to give such a person presumed rights here that
>even the most liberal of us wouldn't grant in real life?

You may count me as insulted at the suggestion
that I would care for one moment about the person's age.

>And since we can't know the physical age of someone here, it is
>perfectly reasonable for us to evaluate the /actual actions/ of
>of contributors, and to judge whether or not they have the maturity
>to work within this system. If someone acts like a 10-year-old,
>they should be treated like one.  A block isn't saying "you're an
>awful person" or anything--it's just saying "go to your room for
>a while, the grown-ups are talking".

Your argument seems to be that, if you knew the person to be an adult,
then you would grant them certain rights of free speech
that you wouldn't grant to children.  But since you don't know this,
you have to give them the detriment of the doubt.
Well, nothing surprising -- this is the usual result of prejudice.

Having thus criticised Lee, I'd like to point out
that I'm not actually commenting on his main point,
which is that people should be blockable for antisocial behaviour.
You could remove all the age-linked bullshit from his post
and still have something reasonable left over,
based on an assumption that even adults
don't have unrestricted free speech rights.
But I can't let these unconscionable slurs against 9-year-olds stand.

-- Toby


from_name: Derek Ross

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Anthere" <anthere5 at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Cc: <att_mcl at sympatico.ca>
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 8:41 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #776 - 1 msg

>
> --- "Matt M." <matt_mcl at sympatico.ca> wrote:
> > Is anyone else getting the error, "Could not select
> > database wikidb"? I've
> > been getting this on a number of different pages
> > since last night, and it
> > has since spread. I can't even access the main page
> > now. What's going on?
> >
>
> It has been going on and off the whole day on several
> wikis. See on meta
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bug_reports
>
Agreed.  This problem has been happening for the last 16 hours at least.  I
have been unable to make any contributions as a result.

Cheers

Derek


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Parmenter" <tompar at world.std.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Cc: <wikipedia-l at nupedia.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 22, 2002 11:15 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

> I missed 24, but in every other case there was a single article or an
> easily identifiable set of articles that were the locus of the
> trouble.  Freezing those articles for a day, week, month, quarter,
> might have solved the problem.
>
> Helga- Copernicus
> DW - Canadian noteworthies
> Lir - Columbus
>
> Did we so much need an article this quarter on these three topics that
> we could tolerate the kind of abuse (let's don't mince words) that
> these people dealt out?
>
> As for the "one other contributor" this is what I had in mind with my
> "master in chancery" proposal, not "police", just someone to filter
> the conflict before it got into an article.
>
Helga wasn't just Copernicus.  She edited and wrote articles on many Central
European historical issues from an anti-Polish, pro-Germanic POV, quasi
historical point of view.  Copernicus was just the last of many edit wars
which she was involved in.

DW also caused trouble over French historical articles when others
questioned his "One True Way" in much the same way as he did with the
Canadian stuff.  Trivial changes and a mite less arrogance on his part would
have avoided the problems.

Freezing articles would not have changed the attitudes of these
contributors, since despite the fact that trouble flares up over particular
articles, it wasn't really a particular article that was the problem.  The
problem was Helga's Point of View and it is DW's and LIr's egos in my
opinion.

Cheers

Derek


body:
On Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 02:44:36PM -0700, lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>
> >> > Is anyone else getting the error, "Could not select
> >> > database wikidb"? I've
> >> > been getting this on a number of different pages
> >> > since last night, and it
> >> > has since spread. I can't even access the main page
> >> > now. What's going on?
>
> >> It has been going on and off the whole day on several
> >> wikis. See on meta
> >> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bug_reports
>
> >Agreed.  This problem has been happening for the last 16 hours at
> least.  I
> >have been unable to make any contributions as a result.
>
> We don't have a fix yet, but here's an ugly workaround and
> a possible clue to the cause: I too was getting the error at
> work using I.E., but not using Lynx, and not from home using
> Galeon.  I cleared I.E.'s browser cache, and now I.E. is
> working too (though I had to log in again because I deleted
> the cookie as well).

Got the above using Netscape 4 on a diskless box (Linux thinclient)
without any local cache. After hitting Reload the correct page
showed up.

regards,

jeluf


from_name: Jeroen Heijmans

body:
>
>
>What do people think about a Selective Block? How would things have been =
>different if we had done this with any of the following?
>
>
>* Helga (H. Jonat)
>
I don't think a partial ban would have helped here. As far as I've
followed it, there were many articles where she kept on "violating"
certain agreements/rules. Freezing an article (for Helga alone) might
have stopped a problem at one article, but it wouldn't have kept her
from doing the same with other articles.

>* DW
>
Same point. The Canadian thing wasn't the first time DW "violated"
wikipediquette. Also: these were mainly on the talk page, which wouldn't
have helped. The Canadian thing seems to go quite well now, we all seem
to be satisfied with a new approach on which we're working at a
temporary page.

Anyway, maybe it is better to have something like this: If a user
repeatedly violates some rule, convention, whatever and has ignored
pleas from others to follow that rule, we could raise some flag in the
database and show the user a page with "Other Wikipedians have not you
have repeatedly violated X. Please read this documentation over X. If
you disagree with X, please go to Talk:X or Wikipedia-L. If you continue
to disrespect X, other measures may follow...".

In this way, the use "gets reminded" all the time, and can't deny
knowing about the rule. Next measures be a ban from editing specific
articles, all articles (or talks if appropriate), etc.

Jeronimo


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On Tue, 2002-10-22 at 20:47, koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com wrote:
> Jeronimo proposed:
> >Anyway, maybe it is better to have something like this: If a user
> >repeatedly violates some rule, convention, whatever and has ignored
> >pleas from others to follow that rule, we could raise some flag in the
> >database and show the user a page with "Other Wikipedians have not you
> >have repeatedly violated X. Please read this documentation over X. If
> >you disagree with X, please go to Talk:X or Wikipedia-L. If you continue
> >to disrespect X, other measures may follow...".
>
> This I don't like because it puts undue emphasis on rules to consider.  Except for NPOV and respect of copyrights, all "rules" here are simply "to consider".
>
> Lee pointed out that the underlying issue is working with others.  Perhaps on some prominent page (even the main page?) we could make it explicit that in order to keep this thing going (and we've got a good thing going), playing nice with others is a must.  Not so much as a rule or something draconian and non-negotiable, but just a reminder--"hey, look what you're doing.  Let's try to work together, and make contributions pleasant and respectful."
>
People are all missing a reasonable course of action.

Ignore the bad edits for a while.

Noone will die if the Christopher Columbus article is imperfect for 10
minutes, or 24 hours, or even a week.

People are encouraged by feedback, both positive and negative. A
complete lack of feedback will generally lead to boredom. Especially if
you let "radical idiots" (my term) expend lots of energy, then silently,
without making a big deal, revert 90% of their effort (90% because even
absurd edits usually have some level of validity).

An implacable and slow reaction to extreme behavior is one of the best
courses to take.

No need to ban people.

Remember: we're in this for the long haul.

--tc


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

in_reply_to: <200210222206.g9MM6fs15502@ross.bomis.com>; from lcrocker@nupedia.com on Tue, Oct 22, 2002 at 03:06:41PM -0700

body:
lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
> But the real issue is acceptable criteria for imposing such a
> block.  While we all agree that outright vandalism and obscenity
> are legitimate reasons and that "point of view" and "emotional
> involvement" are really bad reasons, I hold that "demonstrated
> unwillingness to work with others" is a perfectly legitimate one
> as well, so long as one judges this on genuine content-neutral
> grounds.  Others may disagree.

Well, I agree with you, except that I think that the risks of "point
of view" and "emotional involvement" posing as "demonstrated
unwillingness to work with others" is very high.

--Jimbo


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Not me - I find it odd that we tend to bend over backwards to try and
> accommodate people who exhibit anti-social behavior when this very behavior
> /has/ resulted in the loss of great contributors in the past (and is
> threatening to do so for at least two others now - and those are just the
> ones we have heard from). Do we really want to encourage this type of
> behavior and thus decrease the average quality of our contributor base? I
> hope not.

We certainly don't want to encourage this type of behavior, nor do we
want to lose good contributors because we are coddling jerks.

At the same time, though, we want to be very careful to preserve what
has proven to work, i.e. openness.  I mean, we could "close the club"
and only allow new people to edit after they have applied to a review
board, but I think we would all agree that this would be a disaster
for our overall goals.

Openness is important here.  Tolerance is important.  The encyclopedia
is improved, from an NPOV perspective, by having a diversity of
contributors.

At the same time, progress towards NPOV goes very quickly when the
people with diverse opinions approach an article in a collaborative,
rather than competitive, spirit.  Mean people who just want to argue
and fight do delay the process.

Here's the key: finding ways to not encourage anti-social behavior,
and finding ways to retain good contributors, but WITHOUT resorting to
heavy-handed tactics that risk doing more harm than good.  (I'm not
saying that any particular strategies that have been proposed are
heavy-handed or not-heavy-handed, I'm just saying that we should be
careful about that.  Very careful.)

One of the reasons that I'm not generally supportive of locking
articles is that "it takes two to tango" in an article edit war.  If
we want an edit war to stop, we have the power to stop it -- by
stopping ourselves.  This may not always suit a sense of cosmic
justice -- letting the bad guy win for awhile, until we can sort out
some agreement in the Talk pages.  But I think it will be as effective
at stopping edit wars, and demonstrates a certain level of goodwill.

--Jimbo


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> People are all missing a reasonable course of action.
>
> Ignore the bad edits for a while.
>
> Noone will die if the Christopher Columbus article is imperfect for 10
> minutes, or 24 hours, or even a week.
>
> People are encouraged by feedback, both positive and negative. A
> complete lack of feedback will generally lead to boredom. Especially if
> you let "radical idiots" (my term) expend lots of energy, then silently,
> without making a big deal, revert 90% of their effort (90% because even
> absurd edits usually have some level of validity).
>
> An implacable and slow reaction to extreme behavior is one of the best
> courses to take.
>
> No need to ban people.
>
> Remember: we're in this for the long haul.

I think this is all basically correct and well said.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
--- The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2002-10-23 at 09:17, erik_moeller at gmx.de
> wrote:
>
> > As regards the topic at hand, I tend to agree that
> banning anti-socials
> > from certain editorial functions may be necessary.
> I am concerned,
> > however, in whose hands we place such powers. I
> think the more we expand
> > the powers of the Wikipedia admins, the more we
> need to formulate a
> > democratic process within which these powers are
> exercised.
>
> Voting is basically a bad idea. Jury-style voting,
> where everyone must
> vote, and everyone must agree, is not a terrible
> idea.

Probably worse than voting, is voting in a hurry.
Which could happen in case somebody is threatening the
peace of the board. Without taking time to discuss it
first.

A vot? !

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


from_name: Mirko Thiessen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
>
>But the real issue is acceptable criteria for imposing such a
>block.  While we all agree that outright vandalism and obscenity
>are legitimate reasons and that "point of view" and "emotional
>involvement" are really bad reasons, I hold that "demonstrated
>unwillingness to work with others" is a perfectly legitimate one
>as well, so long as one judges this on genuine content-neutral
>grounds.  Others may disagree.
>

I completely agree with you. Lir is not aware at all of the basic netiquette. Insulting other
users and changing their quotes is in my opinion equivalent to vandalism. How could
someone be called a useful contributor, if he calls other users "racists" or "idiots", and this
more than once. We should not make so many efforts to protect persons behaving this
way.

Mirko (Cordyph)


subject: [Wikitech-l] Quick RC filter?

body:
Am Die, 2002-10-22 um 22.05 schrieb Brion VIBBER:

> More generally, it might be interesting to have a whitelist/blacklist
> system where you can choose to show _only_ edits by a set of people or
> _everything but_ edits by some set of people.

I agree, I'll see what I can come up with.

> As far as the double-click patch -- was there any general agreement on
> using it? I seem to remember a mention of conflict with standard browser
> behavior (dblclick = selection)....? It's kind of a cute feature, I
> wouldn't mind it if there's consensus.

Oh, that's not a problem, the patch creates an option in the user prefs,
and we can leave it turned off by default. It's true that if you turn it
on, double clicking a word to select it no longer works, but I know
relatively few people who do that (some browsers allow you to quickly
search Google etc. for the selected phrase), which is why I would prefer
turning it on by default after it's been in use for a few weeks.

Regards,

Erik
--
FOKUS - Fraunhofer Insitute for Open Communication Systems
Project BerliOS - http://www.berlios.de


subject: [Wikipedia-l] mailing lists

body:
Here is a message that was just posted on fr.wikipedia
by Aoineko. I think it is pretty interesting to ponder
about it.
Without the smallest desire to "represent" anybody
(far from it, please), I think it could be interesting
for some of you who care about international matters
to *know* about it, and to draw your own conclusions
about how cross-fertilisation could work.

I just copied sooner today some stuff about mailing
list-s here, that were posted on this list some days
ago. http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mailing_list-s.

-----

Some time ago, Aoineko has been asking for a specific
french mailing list on the international mailing list.
I have absolutely no idea where the discussion about
it with Jimbo is. But what I was able to read today is
this

-------
Liste de diffusion - Mailing list
Comme je n'avais toujours pas de reponse de la part de
Bomis au sujet de l'ouverture d'une liste de diffusion
pour les participants au Wikipedia francophone, j'en
ai cree une sur un site qui en propose des gratuites
([CoolList]).
Pour ceux qui ne connaisse pas, une liste de diffusion
est un liste a laquelle on peux s'inscrire et qui
permet d'echanger des messages entre tout les membres
de la liste.
Pour les info et l'inscription, ca se passe ici:
http://www.coollist.com/group.cgi?l=wikipedia.fr
Note: Le mot de passe pour gerer la liste est le meme
que pour les administrateurs de Wikipedia.
------

Which can be translated by

------
Mailing list
As I still had no answer from Bomis about the creation
of a specific mailing list for all the french-speaking
wikipedians, I decided to create one. [CoolList] is
providing free mailing lists.
For those who don't know what a mailing list is, it is
a place where one can register, and exchange messages
with all the other members of the list.
For more information and registration, please go to
http://www.coollist.com/group.cgi?l=wikipedia.fr
Note: the password to manage the liste is the same
that the one used by wikip?dia admin.

-----

"Pour dire les choses brutalement, si l'?conomie
mondiale peut mettre sur la touche une minorit? de
pays pauvres jug?s ?conomiquement sans int?r?t et
n?gligeables, elle peut ?galement se passer des plus
pauvres ? l'int?rieur m?me de ses fronti?res, du
moment que le nombre de consommateurs potentiellement
int?ressants reste suffisamment important."

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] [iwsmith@mimos.my: Fw: Wikipedia in Malay]

body:
----- Forwarded message from Imran William Smith <iwsmith at mimos.my> -----

From: "Imran William Smith" <iwsmith at mimos.my>
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 13:22:01 +0800
To: <jasonr at bomis.com>
Subject: Fw: Wikipedia in Malay

Can we get the Malay language Wikipedia started?  I notice
there is content on http://ms.wikipedia.com , but
http://ms.wikipedia.org just links through to Wikipedia-EN.

What else is needed?  Does each language need an
Ambassador (mentioned in
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Embassy ) .
If so, I would not be an ideal Ambassador, maybe Sujita
(cc'd) would be.

Thanks
--
Imran William Smith
Project Manager, Open Source Development
Mimos Bhd, Malaysia

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sujita Purushothaman" <sujita at mimos.my>
To: <iwsmith at mimos.my>
Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 12:14 PM
Subject: Wikipedia in Malay

| Perhaps you should start off, since it's your idea :-)
|
|                       Please notice that all contributions to Wikipedia
| are considered to be released under the GNU Free
|                       Documentation License. If you don't want your
| writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will,
|                       then don't hit submit. You are also promising us
| that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public
|                       domain resource. DO NOT USE COPYRIGHTED WORK
| WITHOUT PERMISSION!
|
| Translation :
|
| Sila ambil perhatian bahawa semua sumbangan kepada Wikipedia adalah
| dianggap diterbitkan dibawah GNU
| Free Documention License (Lesen GNU untuk Dokumentasi Terbuka). Jika
| anda tidak mahu hasil tulisan anda
| diubahsuai tanpa belas kasihan dan diedar sesuka hati, jangan sumbang.
| Anda juga berjanji yang sumbangan anda
| adalah hasil kerja anda sendiri atau diambil dari sumber yang terbuka.
| JANGAN GUNA BAHAN HAKCIPTA TERPELIHARA
| TANPA KEBENARAN.
|

----- End forwarded message -----

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
I like:
* what Jeronimo said about etiquette
* what Jimbo said about giving others some slack
* what Lee said about requiring rational participation
* what Maveric said about not bending over backwards to retain anti-social people
* what Toby said about a voting mechanism

Because:
* when I was new, people were courteous to me and gave me some slack
* when I was new, people insisted I be rational instead of anti-social
* I like holding elections! :-)

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
On Wed, 2002-10-23 at 09:17, erik_moeller at gmx.de wrote:

> As regards the topic at hand, I tend to agree that banning anti-socials
> from certain editorial functions may be necessary. I am concerned,
> however, in whose hands we place such powers. I think the more we expand
> the powers of the Wikipedia admins, the more we need to formulate a
> democratic process within which these powers are exercised.

Voting is basically a bad idea. Jury-style voting, where everyone must
vote, and everyone must agree, is not a terrible idea.


from_name: lcrocker at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
> You may count me as insulted at the suggestion that
> I would care for one moment about the person's age.
> ...
> I can't let these unconscionable slurs against 9-year-olds
> stand.

Heavens!  I said that children were immature and irresponsible.
Next thing you know I'll be saying that Africans have dark
skin or that women have breasts.  Shame on me for making such
sweeping generalizations.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Admin privileges

body:
On Wednesday 23 October 2002 12:01 pm, wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com wrote:
> So I think I will have to do so. I always resisted becoming an
> admin since admin privileges are always combined with admin duties,
> but since maveric is not the first to complain that I always list
> even the most stupid pages on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]
> instead of deleting them myself, I think I should take this burden.
>
> I promise not to delete any page that has similarities with an=20
> article without prior discussion on the above page.
>
> Best regards,
>
> JeLuF

Speaking of which, what is the status of making a user rights promotion
interface available to Admins again? I remember somebody else asking for
Admin privileges before and I don't think anybody followed-up on it.
Wikipedia is growing so fast that we need more people like JeLuF to be Admins
and there currently is a bottleneck at the developer/Jimbo level.

IMO somebody should be able to simply ask the list for Admin privileges and
then if a current Admin agrees then that Admin should be able to go ahead and
do the promotion so long as nobody else disagrees.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Admin privileges

body:
Hi,

I just found this on my talk page:

> Thanks for doing the grunt work seeking out copyright violations
> and marking them for deletion. This is something I used to do
> a lot of but lately I haven't \ had much time to do this. I've
> also noticed that you don't appear to be an Admin. You might
> want to consider posting a note on the Wikipedia mailing list
> asking to be one -- I'll make sure it happens. Then instead of
> having to post pages like Cervidae on the votes for deletion
> page you can just delete the page yourself (these are recoverable
> by other Admins if you make a mistake). Thanks again for doing
> Wikipedia weeding. --mav

So I think I will have to do so. I always resisted becoming an
admin since admin privileges are always combined with admin duties,
but since maveric is not the first to complain that I always list
even the most stupid pages on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]
instead of deleting them myself, I think I should take this burden.

I promise not to delete any page that has similarities with an
article without prior discussion on the above page.

Best regards,

JeLuF
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 232 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20021023/fb5ff09b/attachment.pgp


from_name: erik_moeller at gmx.de

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
(Sorry if this arrives badly formatted, trying out a new MUA here ..)

>> On Wikipedia, we can't see whether the troublemakers are adults
>> or not, so we give them the benefit of the doubt.  But some of them
>> probably are, in fact, children.  It wouldn't surprize me a bit to
>> discover that Lir is a very bright 14-year old.  Why should we
>> bend over backwards to give such a person presumed rights here that
>> even the most liberal of us wouldn't grant in real life?

> You may count me as insulted at the suggestion
> that I would care for one moment about the person's age.

I have to agree with Toby here. I have known and communicated with many
people who have accomplished great things at an early age, such as Aaron
Swartz, who joined the W3C's RDF working group at age 15, IIRC, or Tom St.
Denis, who has written an encrypted messaging client at a similar age.
These people often have social skills that most adults lack.

Social skills are hardly a function of age, and much more a function of
upbringing. See http://www.violence.de - children who are raised with
affection and love will grow up to become peaceful and socially skilled
individuals. Much if not most of the impulsiveness of many juveniles is
the result of the way they are treated: bullied in school, abused at home,
often prevented from engaging in loving relationships with each other. To
repeat the myth that juveniles are naturally socio-emotionally inferior to
adults only perpetuates the mistreatment that these people receive, and
thus makes their "lack of social skills" a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Of course society draws lines when granting privileges. Even though many
young kids may be bright enough to drive a car, it is certainly easiest to
work with a fixed age limit. But free speech is not a privilege, it is a
fundamental right. That being said, editing Wikipedia *is* a privilege,
but Wikipedia should try to endorse openness and condemn prejudice.

As regards the topic at hand, I tend to agree that banning anti-socials
from certain editorial functions may be necessary. I am concerned,
however, in whose hands we place such powers. I think the more we expand
the powers of the Wikipedia admins, the more we need to formulate a
democratic process within which these powers are exercised.

It could work like this (note that I haven't really looked at the admin
interface yet, so sorry if this already exists in some form):
In the top Wikipedia bar, all admins see a "Admin Polls: 3/5", where the
"3", in a red font, would indicate the polls which are new, and the 5 the
total number of polls that exist.

When an admin bans a user, he gets this interface:

        Ban user:
        [ ] immediately
        [x] if majority agrees

        [x] from edits
        [ ] completely

        Describe reason:
        ....

If the option "if majority agrees" is chosen, a new admin poll is
generated. This poll then allows all admins to participate within the
voting period (24 hours or so), and after that period, an automatic
decision is made on whether or not to ban the user. Optionally, the poll
could have a Talk page linked to it, so that the ban can be discussed
during the voting period. It doesn't matter how many people participate in
the poll, the automatic decision mechanism simply works with the number of
votes it gets.

This way, we can hopefully prevent unfair bans and other abuses of
administration power. The poll system could be extended to include other
admin decisions later. (Side note: If we create something like this, it
would be nice to reuse the poll code to add poll functionality to wiki
pages as well.)

Why not make the polls totally open? Generating fake accounts is just too
easy, and recognizing forged results would put an additional burden on the
administration. However, the permission to vote in polls should be
separate from other administrator permissions, so that we can grant this
right to virtually every identifiable person who asks for it.

I am proposing this because I have seen how other systems become very
user-hostile because of arbitrary editorial decisions. This includes
Everything2. Much of the power behind wikis arises from their democratic
nature, and we should do everything we can to prevent the rise of an
oligarchy.

All best,

Erik


body:
KQ wrote:

>This I don't like because it puts undue emphasis on rules to consider.  Except for NPOV and respect of copyrights, all "rules" here are simply "to consider".
>
I think etiquette is another important one. Being nice to others, and
being constructive, as you also wrote in the remainder of your e-mail.
And people calling names aren't nice, and people repeatedly ignoring
rules and refusing to accept or discuss them are not constructive.

Jeronimo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
LDC wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>You may count me as insulted at the suggestion that
>>I would care for one moment about the person's age.
>>...
>>I can't let these unconscionable slurs against 9-year-olds
>>stand.

>Heavens!  I said that children were immature and irresponsible.
>Next thing you know I'll be saying that Africans have dark
>skin or that women have breasts.  Shame on me for making such
>sweeping generalizations.

You also said that free speech rights are reserved only for adults
(I suppose because valid speech requires maturity and responsibility).
You might as well argue that agricultural labour rights
are reserved to Europeans and people of European descent
(because only they have the delicate white skin
that needs protection from hard work under the hot sun)
or that travel rights are reserved only for men
(because only they are not tied down by nature to
feeding and otherwise taking care of the children).
These arguments have been made, from time to time,
and they are of the same nature.

There is also the issue of simple factuality.
Just as not all women have larger breasts than all men
and not all Africans have darker skin than all Europeans,
so also not all children are less mature and responsible than all adults.
Presumably you knew all of these facts already,
but they're just more reason why rights shouldn't be restricted,
at least not on this sort of demographic basis.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Less than an outright ban

body:
Ed Poor wrote:

>I like:
>* what Jeronimo said about etiquette
>* what Jimbo said about giving others some slack
>* what Lee said about requiring rational participation
>* what Maveric said about not bending over backwards to retain anti-social people
>* what Toby said about a voting mechanism

I didn't mention the voting;
that was somebody else (a fairly new person whose name I've forgotten)
that was replying to a post of mine.

I actually don't like all these suggestions for voting mechanisms
(this and the others that come up from time to time).
When a final decision must be made in the absence of consensus,
then it's certainly best to put it to a democratic vote.
But it's better to avoid making final decisions at all when possible.

But now that I'm commenting:
I think that Jimmy is saying the wisest things here
(not that nobody else is saying anything wise either).

>Because:
>* when I was new, people were courteous to me and gave me some slack
>* when I was new, people insisted I be rational instead of anti-social
>* I like holding elections! :-)

I'm afraid that Wikipedia will someday evolve into the sort of place
where Ed would have gotten banned shortly upon arrival.
We're nowhere near that point yet, thank goodness,
but I see a trend in that direction.
But maybe I'm just paranoid, we'll see.

-- Toby


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Admin privileges

body:
Sysop he is ;-)

Daniel Mayer wrote:

>On Wednesday 23 October 2002 12:01 pm, wikipedia-l-request at nupedia.com wrote:
>
>
>>So I think I will have to do so. I always resisted becoming an
>>admin since admin privileges are always combined with admin duties,
>>but since maveric is not the first to complain that I always list
>>even the most stupid pages on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]
>>instead of deleting them myself, I think I should take this burden.
>>
>>I promise not to delete any page that has similarities with an=20
>>article without prior discussion on the above page.
>>
>>Best regards,
>>
>>JeLuF
>>
>>
>
>Speaking of which, what is the status of making a user rights promotion
>interface available to Admins again? I remember somebody else asking for
>Admin privileges before and I don't think anybody followed-up on it.
>Wikipedia is growing so fast that we need more people like JeLuF to be Admins
>and there currently is a bottleneck at the developer/Jimbo level.
>
>IMO somebody should be able to simply ask the list for Admin privileges and
>then if a current Admin agrees then that Admin should be able to go ahead and
>do the promotion so long as nobody else disagrees.
>
>-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>
>[Wikipedia-l]
>To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
>http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re:SVG Graphics

body:
Magnus and LDC wrote respectively

>> SVG graphics support was suggested on wikipedia-l. I like the
>> idea; that's why I tried it for Nupedia once, but... :-(
>> Proposal: [[svg:foobar]] is just plain-text editable, but
>> displays as an image; A link to [[svg:foobar]] is displayed as
>> an image as well.  Optional, after saving an edit to
>> [[svg:foobar]], an image (foobar.png) could be created via
>> svg2png (never tried that, though). The image would then be
>> displayed instead of the SVG, and "real" SVG display could be
>> turned on in the user options (until most browsers support
>> native SVG).

>That's pretty much what I had in mind as well, but SVG isn't
>mature enough yet to think about.  For now, people can upload
>the "source file" for a drawing in SVG, as well as uploading a
>PNG version, and just link to the PNG in the article.

I was just at:

http://bitflux.ch/developer/misc/xml_svg2image.html

http://cvs.php.net/co.php/pear/XML_svg2image/README.svg2image?r=HEAD

It sounds like Magnus proposal might be implementable but:

1.  Integration may be tough or not yet reliably feasible
2.  The required java/apache batik module may load the server


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] competition

body:
Dear list,

Maybe we should take part in the comptition "Les troph?es du libre".
It's a good chance to get publicity, and I guess we could also win
something ... :-)

I propose to register for the "Educational" category.

http://www.tropheesdulibre.org/

When I tried to register Wikipedia I was a bit irritated. I guess they
assume a strong tie (link?) between a "developer" and the project. But
maybe I didn't understand this fully. But anyway, I think a person who
has invested more(time/money) into the project should register Wikipedia
for the competiton. I propose Jimbo, of course.

Kurt


from_name: Giskart

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML versus Wiki-tags

body:
HTML versus Wiki-makeup

I see that more and more people are use Wiki-makeup and removing HTML tags.
But i like to use HTML-tags.

Is there, from a technical point of view any difference between the folowing notations;

= Foobar =    (-> This does not seems to work)

Foobar

== Foobar ==

Foobar

=== Foobar ===

 Foobar

==== Foobar ====

Foobar

''Foobar''
Foobar

(and not:Foobar)

'''Foobar'''
Foobar

(and not:Foobar)

'''''Foobar'''''
Foobar

(and not:Foobar)

----

Giskart


subject: [Wikipedia-l] competition

in_reply_to: <002001c27af4$4e8149e0$9eb5e6d9@maximilian>; from jansson@gmx.net on Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 02:27:51AM +0200

body:
Perhaps a French person might better make the application?  Or anyhow, someone
who can read and speak French?

The English part of their site is written in very bad English (but
better than my French, eh).  But it sounds like we can win "a famous
server".

Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Dear list,
>
> Maybe we should take part in the comptition "Les troph?es du libre".
> It's a good chance to get publicity, and I guess we could also win
> something ... :-)
>
> I propose to register for the "Educational" category.
>
> http://www.tropheesdulibre.org/
>
> When I tried to register Wikipedia I was a bit irritated. I guess they
> assume a strong tie (link?) between a "developer" and the project. But
> maybe I didn't understand this fully. But anyway, I think a person who
> has invested more(time/money) into the project should register Wikipedia
> for the competiton. I propose Jimbo, of course.
>
> Kurt
>
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML versus Wiki-tags

body:
> I see that more and more people are use Wiki-makeup
> and removing HTML tags. But I like to use HTML-tags.
> Is there, from a technical point of view any difference
> between the folowing notations;

> == Foobar ==
> (h2)Foobar(/h2)

Wiki markup is preferred because a good Wikipedia article
is not only useful to read, but easy to edit.  We want non-
compter nerds to be able to easily edit and add to topics
in which they are interested.  Also, I still have a long-
term plan of eliminating most HTML for security reasons.

I also treat Wiki markup specially in the software in a
few places; for example == Foobar == will cause a page
to be ranked higher in a search for "Foobar", but the
equivalent HTML tag will not.


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] user:hello.jpg

body:
beware the new "user" "hello.jpg", who just uploaded the notorious
goatse.cx image.

kq


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] competition

body:
Very good idea !

I'll look at that this evening and will report (;-))

Including server specifs if described !

But, then, I hope the fr.wiki will be on that server,
hein ???

Anth?re

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Perhaps a French person might better make the
> application?  Or anyhow, someone
> who can read and speak French?
>
> The English part of their site is written in very
> bad English (but
> better than my French, eh).  But it sounds like we
> can win "a famous
> server".
>
>
>
> Kurt Jansson wrote:
>
> > Dear list,
> >
> > Maybe we should take part in the comptition "Les
> troph?es du libre".
> > It's a good chance to get publicity, and I guess
> we could also win
> > something ... :-)
> >
> > I propose to register for the "Educational"
> category.
> >
> > http://www.tropheesdulibre.org/
> >
> > When I tried to register Wikipedia I was a bit
> irritated. I guess they
> > assume a strong tie (link?) between a "developer"
> and the project. But
> > maybe I didn't understand this fully. But anyway,
> I think a person who
> > has invested more(time/money) into the project
> should register Wikipedia
> > for the competiton. I propose Jimbo, of course.
> >
> > Kurt
> >
> > [Wikipedia-l]
> > To manage your subscription to this list, please
> go here:
> >
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> [Wikipedia-l]
> To manage your subscription to this list, please go
> here:
> http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: www.wikipedia.org design

body:
>Hello,
>
>just a quick and dirty design study for
>www.wikipedia.org (not all links are working,
>some text isn't translated yet and no colors
>are defined)
>
>http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia.html
>
>(tested on IE (Mac), Mozilla, lynx, links,
>iCab and Omniweb)
>
>Maybe after Cunctator could be convinced that no
>old links will be broken we can progress a little
>bit in this affair.
>
>Comments, critics, other drafts and so on welcome,
>greetings,
>elian

I like it, I like it a lot. IMO the logo should be
centered with the text (meaning it needs to go up
more) and I also think the search engine should have a
link to "advanced options" (so that a person could
select which languages to search and which namespaces
- the default should be to search all languages in the
article namespace -- this would exclude Metapedia).
But then, we won't be able to do this type of search
until/if we have a multilingual Phase IV wiki where
all the languages are on the same wiki (as previously
explained in some detail). A combined database would
also be needed for your Log in link to work as
expected (meaning for the whole Wikipedia). But your
proposal greatly improves upon mine in that you
devised a way to naturally have /direct/ links to each
of the different language's Recent Changes and Main
Pages -- kudos! I still think we should wait for a
multilingual Phase IV before we implement a
multilingual Welcome Page for the whole project,
however.

One thing that was in my proposal that isn't in yours
are links to different welcome pages in several
different languages (Willkomen / Bienvenue / Welcome /
Bonvenon / Bienvenidos / Bienvenidos / Boa vinda ...
). In spite of the attitude that some Americans
exhibit, not everybody can read or even *gasp* ever
wants to be able to read English.

I personally think it would then be neat for
www.wikipedia.org to sniff the language setting of a
visitor's browser and then automatically direct them
to their language's welcome page if it exists -- if it
doesn't then it would bring them to the English
welcome page. I don't think that matching the language
a person's browser is in with a welcome page in the
same language is going to harm the user when several
other welcome pages in different languages are just a
click away. If this sniffing is done then all the
different languages can equally use www.wikipedia.org
for promotional purposes without having to explain why
the default is in English and how to get to their
language's welcome page. It would also be neat to be
able to set your user preferences to bypass the
multilingual Welcome Page or to over-ride the language
sniffing and go directly to your language of choice
(but typing xx.wikipedia.org or clicking on a
different welcome page isn't that hard so this isn't
too important).

I will go into greater detail at
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_to_do_with_www.wikipedia.org
on Friday.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] user:hello.jpg

body:
Koyaanisqatsi wrote:

>beware the new "user" "hello.jpg", who just uploaded the notorious
>goatse.cx image.

An uploaded image can at least be deleted.
But what happened to the idea of forbidding links to external images?
I still think this is a good idea,
especially since an external image might be changed
without our noticing it.
Changes to articles should show up in Recentchanges,
but changes to external images don't.

-- Toby


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Law and Reality

body:
I notice that on topic Law (in which I am trained) that I want Law to be
about the law I was trained in and practice.  I definitely don't want Law to
be about principles of science or law as the ordering principle of life.

Reality, on the other hand, having no training in philosophy, I want to be a
far reaching and broad article, with philosophical considerations, being
just a part, an important part, but leaving plenty of room for everyday
socially constructed reality and reality as seen from a scientific
perspective.

So, the point. We all like to shape articles so we can contribute to them
and so that they fit into our world view.

Fred

_________________________________________________________________
Surf the Web without missing calls! Get MSN Broadband.
http://resourcecenter.msn.com/access/plans/freeactivation.asp


subject: [Wikitech-l] mailing list software

body:
I have installed mailman on the new server to server the wikipedia
lists.  More specifically, someone requested a list "francais-l" be
added to the nupedia domain, but I found that a list by that name is
already in use for Nupedia's purposes, so I made it
francais-l at wikipedia.org instead.  So, we now have the ability to make
any wikipedia lists point to wikipedia.org...

So, my question is this:  On the old scheme, we prefixed the list name
with 'wiki' to indicate that it was for wikipedia.  As I copy the old
lists to the new server, should I convert the list-names as well?  I
think not, but I thought I should ask.

Also, are these the only wikipedia lists?  I think they are.

Intlwiki-l
Wikitech-l
Wikipedia-l
WikiNL-l

And I think this begs another question.  The Dutch list is WikiNL, and
the french list is francais-l (though this new list is not yet
public).  Should we go with a standardized naming scheme on the
language-specific (or is it country-specific?) lists.  Should I change
francais-l to wikiFR-l?

Jason

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Intlwiki-l] www.wikipedia.org design

body:
The Cunctator wrote in part:
>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>The Cunctator wrote:
>>>elian wrote:

>>>>http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia.html

>>>Changing the front page into something like this is a profoundly bad idea.

>>What are your specific objections?

>3. This kind of page promotes the view that Wikipedia is a coalition of
>largely distinct projects, balkanized by language (and implicitly branded by
>nationality). I think this is very much the wrong approach.

OTC, this is what the current system does.
An international <www.*> is primarily being advanced
to fix precisely this problem.

>Just because something can be done without coding doesn't mean it's a good
>idea.

Actually, it *can't* be done without coding.
Specifically, elian's suggestion can't be done without coding,
which is why mav is right to say that we need to get
an integrated Phase IV software (PediaWiki 4.0),
allowing integrated Recentchanges, integrated searches, etc.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] I'm seeing a trend here or How to keep driving away good contributors

body:
I hope we are all proud of ourselves about how
tolerant we are with people who consistently exhibit
anti-social behavior. Andre has left the project due
to fatigue with having to deal with these miscreants
and I am so /disgusted/ with loosing yet another great
en.wiki contributor that for at least the next several
days I am going to concentrate on the Spanish
Wikipedia and contemplate priorities on my own future
involvement in en.wiki.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com/


from_name: Brion VIBBER

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] www.wikipedia.org design

body:
elian wrote:
> AFAIK there is no multilingual search, yet.
> Until this is implemented, I'd say the biggest wikipedia merits some kind
> of special treatment - at least the possibility that you get good search
> results on the english is a lot higher than in the other languages.

http://www.wikipedia.org/tools/wikisearch.php

It's kind of hackish and ugly, but functional.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 10/24/02 10:07 AM, "elian" <elian at gmx.li> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> just a quick and dirty design study for www.wikipedia.org (not all links
> are working, some text isn't translated yet and no colors are defined)
>
> http://www.djini.de/Uploads/wikipedia/wikipedia.html
>
> (tested on IE (Mac), Mozilla, lynx, links, iCab and Omniweb)
>
> Maybe after Cunctator could be convinced that no old links will be broken we
> can progress a little bit in this affair.
>
Changing the front page into something like this is a profoundly bad idea.


subject: [Wikitech-l] test

body:
I got word that posting to this list was not working...  Just testing.

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>