subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
Cheney Shill wrote:
> Raphael Wegmann <raphael at psi.co.at> wrote:
>
>     Cheney Shill wrote:
>     > I see a block for censorship and another for vandalism, the other is a 3RR violation
>     > for reverting it, which isn't enforced because the changes being
>     reverted are rule violations.
>     > This is consistent with what I've seen before, which is a nice
>     change. Because the page is
>     > in fact about the comics, the comics (or a link to it if the
>     copyrights were enforced) really
>     > does belong on the page.
>
>     WP:BP does not mention "censorship" as a case for a block. No admin
>     would block anyone for removing the Goatse.cx image from the Goatse.cx
>     article or any porn from any porn stars article.
>     What rules do the reverted changes violate, so the other 3RR violations
>     are not enforced?
>
> Blanking, whether in whole or "significant parts",
 > is considered vandalism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism#Types_of_vandalism.
 > Also, this is policy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:NOT#Wikipedia_is_not_censored.

True. WP:NOT censored states:
   "Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images are tasteful
    to all users or adhere to specific social or religious norms or
    requirements."
It doesn't state:
   "It is Wikipedias mission to publish tasteless articles or images
    and breaking social or religious norms or requirements."

WP:Profanity is more specific in that matter. It states:
   "Including information about offensive material is part of
    Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not."

The current state of the JP article *is* offensive, whereas a linkimage
compromise would still include all information about offensive material.

> You do bring up a good point about the consistency of application,
 > and you probably are correct, but you need actual examples of that
 > happening.  I'd keep in mind that shock material, like goatse images,
 > is considered vandalism unless it's within the context of an article
 > that's clearly about it.  Most people don't know what to expect
 > reading goatse.  An article titled "Extreme sex acts", however,
 > because people know by the title that they aren't entering an article
 > about goats or facial hair, would be allowed a lot more discretion on
 > what is and is not shock, at least as long as it involves sex.
 > Consider these articles:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagina
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitoris
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreskin
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumcision
> ~~~Pro-Lick
>

Where would you expect to see the cartoon image?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
or
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jyllands-Posten-Muhammad-dr.png

--
Raphael


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia CH Founding Assembly on May 14th

body:
Hello,
I'd like to notify you of the fact that on May 14th the Founding
Assembly of "Wikimedia CH - Verein zur F?rderung Freien Wissens"
(official translation: Wikimedia CH - Association for the advancement
of free knowledge) will take place at Olten in Switzerland. More infos
as well as the agenda can be found at
http://ch.wikimedia.org/wiki/Events/Founding_Assembly
Of course everybody is invited to join us as guest or as future
member, everybody is eligible for membership (Swiss nationality is not
a requirement).
Our (proposed) bylaws can be found at
http://ch.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws (De, En, Fr, It), however they are
*theoretically* subject to change during the Founding Assembly)
A statement towards the press and towards WMF and the
Wikimedia-projects-participants including the names of the board
members etc. will be released soon after the successful foundation.
Please direct any questions, that you for some reason do not want to
publish on any mailinglist, to info-ch at wikimedia dot org

Regards
Michael Bimmler
(Preliminary Board of Wikimedia CH)


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia CH Founding Assembly on May 14th


list: wikien-l

from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
On Sun, 07 May 2006 23:43:35 +0200, you wrote:

>I'd say, that at least WP:NPA would need to be rewritten to
>reflect what you say. WP:NPA starts with
>   "Do not make personal attacks *anywhere* in Wikipedia."

Would that include raising RfCs against admins who block people for
sustained edit warring?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
On Sun, 7 May 2006 20:04:44 -0700 (PDT), you wrote:

>I see a block for censorship and another for vandalism, the other is a
>3RR violation for reverting it, which isn't enforced because the
>changes being reverted are rule violations.  This is consistent with
>what I've seen before, which is a nice change.  Because the page is in
>fact about the comics, the comics (or a link to it if the copyrights
>were enforced) really does belong on the page.

What you actually see is multiple blocks for disruptive edit warring.

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Plyd

subject: [Wikitech-l] lien externe sur un document

body:
Bonjour,

Pour l'utilisation de fichiers sur le m?me serveur que wikimedia, deux
possibilit?s s'offrent ? toi :
- soit tu uploades tes fichiers un par un sur wikimedia via
[[Special:Upload]], et donc tu n'as besoin de rien d'autre (pas de serveur
ftp, juste le serveur http/php/mysql pour faire tourner wikimedia)
- soit tu utilises un autre syst?me pour y mettre tes fichiers, et tu fais
des liens externes vers ton site intranet (exemple avec un serveur http : [
http://192.168.0.1/repexemple/monfichier.pdf lien vers monfichier.pdf]
tu mets le fichier au bon endroit sur le serveur)
(NB : ni file://   ni \\toto\ ne sont reconnus sur Wikimedia)

Dans ce deuxi?me cas, il faut mettre les fichiers dans le r?pertoire
www/repexemple/ du serveur http, mais tu n'auras pas d'outil int?gr? au
browser pour uploader tes fichiers.
La premi?re solution a l'inconv?nient de t'obliger ? y mettre les fichiers
un par un, et ne dispose pas clairement d'aborescence d'organisation de
fichiers (d'autres m?thodes peuvent ?tre utilis?es mais c'est un autre sujet
je crois). De plus, il faudra que tu le configures pour qu'il accepte les
diff?rents types de fichiers (notamment .doc).

Pour avoir mon avis sur cette m?thode, je ne crois pas que Wikimedia ne soit
[encore] adapt? ? ce genre d'utilisation. Si tu n'utilises pas la partie
wiki, tu trouveras sur le net des outils php simples pour uploader des
fichiers, ou des outils g?rant via le web les fichiers disponibles sur le
serveur http.

Cordialement,
Plyd

On 5/8/06, thomas bulliard <thomas.bulliard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Bonjour,
>
> J'utilise wikimedia en intranet et je souhaite faire un lien sur un
> document
> (a t?l?charger) et aussi pouvoir linker un r?pertoire d'un serveur mais
> malheureusement je suis tomb? sur l'info qu'il n'?tait pas possible de
> faire
> [files:\\toto\rep\tata.pdf] ou [\\toto\rep\].
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Aide:URL  ->  # 1 URL dans les liens
> externes
>
>
> Mes documents sont stocker dans des volumes r?seau o? sont placer des
> fichiers Template (pour la mise en place d'une m?thodologie de projet).
>
> Pour information, j'ai choisi d'utilis? wiki pour ne pas utiliser de ftp
> ou
> autres... car le contributeur devront upgrader les doc directement dans le
> volume r?seau (r?pertoire serveur) via leur browser de fichier.
>
> qqun aurai une solution ? Merci d'avance pour son aide.
>
> Bonne journ?e !!!   que le wiki soit avec vous....
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An "approved" project ??

body:
Gerard, you're quite wrong. BUA is a perfectly valid iso 639-2 code.

Mark

On 07/05/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> I read on the list of "approved" project a proposal for a
> bua.wikipedia.org The code bua is NOT an ISO-639 code. The article about
> this language on the en.wikipedia is almost a stub. I find the quality
> of the requests for many new projects really low. Have a few people,
> find yourself a code .. or make one up who cares .. :(
>
> This is not the first time we have projects started where it is assumed
> that the facts given are solid. This is definitively another one of them.
>
> I object to the start of this project under this code. As it is for the
> special projects committee to accept new language versions or projects,
> I urge them to be diligent in the checking of the basic facts.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking

body:
On 5/8/06, Craig Whitford <craigwhitford1 at emailaccount.com> wrote:
> Perhaps the best policy against vote-stacking:
> 1. Run a checkuser on all accounts that ONLY participate in the AFD concerning
> the article.
> 2. If the checkuser is positive, block the user for sockpuppetteering for a week
> and leave note on talk page.
> 3. Block sockpuppets indefinitely.
>
> This might deal with AFDs on 'fancruft' and other controversial matters... certainly worth a try!

Votes and comments from users that *only* participate in the AfD in
question have long been routinely discounted.


from_name: Raphael Wegmann

subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
charles matthews wrote:
>  "Raphael Wegmann" wrote
>
>> . WP:NOT censored states:
>>   "Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images are tasteful
>>    to all users or adhere to specific social or religious norms or
>>    requirements."
>> It doesn't state:
>>   "It is Wikipedias mission to publish tasteless articles or images
>>    and breaking social or religious norms or requirements."
>>
>> WP:Profanity is more specific in that matter. It states:
>>   "Including information about offensive material is part of
>>    Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission; being offensive is not."
>
> So, Wikipedia editors need not self-censor, while engaged in writing the
> encyclopedia articles.  As decent people, they will self-censor in talk page
> discussion.  Self-censorship is of course a basic social requirement.

So decency in article pages is forbidden, even if you
can be decent without loosing any informational content?
The problem with this approach is, that you will loose a lot of
readers and editors that way. Some of you will even be happy about
that, but NPOV is in severe danger, if you are offending
editors, who are members of a cultural resp. religious minority.
In the end you will have an American/British/Christian encyclopedia.
If this is what you're aiming at, I would not be interested.
You'd waste a big chance for intercultural exchange and
a true neutral point of view.

> This is comparable to the common understanding about academic freedom: you
> can say anything, independent of the popularity of the opinion.

That's not true for Wikipedia. For example you cannot write
a half-decent article about a controversy concerning Islam.
Decency is blasphemy for some members of the free speech cult.

--
Raphael


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Fri, 05 May 2006 14:29:35 +0200, you wrote:
>
>> Thank you for pointing out that distinction. Back on this issue:
>> Anti-Islam bias (regardless of whether it's systematic or systemic)
>> results in one-sided articles on certain topics, which is IMHO
>> derogatory to an encyclopedia. And putting the JP cartoons in the
>> article increases systemic bias by driving away muslim editors.
>
> And the solution is discussion not edit-warring.  HTH.
>

Please look at the talk pages. I've never shied away from
any discussion. And 3 reverts in 5 days can hardly be called
edit-warring, nor does it explain a block for 1 week.

--
User:Raphael1


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
"Raphael Wegmann"  wrote

>> So, Wikipedia editors need not self-censor, while engaged in writing the
>> encyclopedia articles.  As decent people, they will self-censor in talk
>> page
>> discussion.  Self-censorship is of course a basic social requirement.
>
> So decency in article pages is forbidden, even if you
> can be decent without loosing any informational content?
> The problem with this approach is, that you will loose a lot of
> readers and editors that way. Some of you will even be happy about
> that, but NPOV is in severe danger, if you are offending
> editors, who are members of a cultural resp. religious minority.
> In the end you will have an American/British/Christian encyclopedia.
> If this is what you're aiming at, I would not be interested.
> You'd waste a big chance for intercultural exchange and
> a true neutral point of view.

Too many assumptions.  I don't know why you think that Christians might not
be offended, at some things: experience suggests otherwise.  A secular point
of view itself offends some religious people.  I would certainly defend the
idea that you can be secular and 'decent'.  Who knows, even Richard Dawkins
might be offended by something here.

I don't want to lose editors from any point of view.  But there is a real
problem with modifying articles, in order to incorporate the sensibilities
from any one side.  Think for example if we had to write about Armenia, in a
way so as not to offend any Turkish readers.  Or Nanjing, in a way so as not
to offend any Japanese readers.  The list goes on.

Actually the only way not to offend anyone is  to avoid all controversial
topics.  It was decided, long ago, not to do that, and not to give the kind
of treatment you might find in government-approved history books.

Charles


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Criticism sections on bios of living people

body:
On 5/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/8/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > True.  But at the same time, while I'm sure one could find 100 quotes
> > from celebrities who have called Howard Stern "disgusting", I'm not
> > sure any of them deserve mention in his Wikipedia article - maybe in
> > Wikiquote (*).
>
> I think the normal way this would be handled is you would just say
> "has been called disgusting by a large number of celebrities"[1], and
> in the footnote, you would say "For example, Winona Ryder [ur], ...."
> and just give a couple.
>
> Steve

But what would that add to the article, other than a bit of length?

Anthony


from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania registration opens

body:
Dear all,

Registration is now open for this summer's Wikimania, which will run
from August 4-6 at Harvard Law School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

http://wm06reg.wikimedia.org/
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

We are hoping to limit registration to community members this week,
before opening registration to the rest of the world.

The registration rate for community members is $70 for all three days
of the conference; housing is available in the law school dorms right
next to the venue.  Register soon if you want this on-campus housing;
as space in the dorms is limited.

Cheers,
    Sj

PS - Please help translate and distribute a short notice to your
favorite projects:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/Wikimania/Announcements
  ...and note where you've sent it :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Translation_requests/Wikimania/Announcements


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimania registration opens


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimania registration opens (fwd)

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
Date: May 8, 2006 8:23 PM
Subject: Wikimania registration opens
To: Wikipedia general list <wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia
Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>, Wikimedia
Translators <translators-l at wikimedia.org>
Cc: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)" <wikimania-l at wikipedia.org>

Dear all,

Registration is now open for this summer's Wikimania, which will run
from August 4-6 at Harvard Law School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

http://wm06reg.wikimedia.org/
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

We are hoping to limit registration to community members this week,
before opening registration to the rest of the world.

The registration rate for community members is $70 for all three days
of the conference; housing is available in the law school dorms right
next to the venue.  Register soon if you want this on-campus housing;
as space in the dorms is limited.

Cheers,
    Sj

PS - Please help translate and distribute a short notice to your
favorite projects:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/Wikimania/Announcements
  ...and note where you've sent it :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Translation_requests/Wikimania/Announcements

--
++SJ


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] The status of smaller languages on the Wikimedia
 Commons

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:

>--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>You do not get my point. When policies are to be changed, when the way
>>things work are to be changed, this is when you should inform the
>>communities in advance. Some careful marketing communication is what is
>>needed. Marketeers call it customer relations. And you /need /to inform
>>your customers; when you do, you talk to all your customers when you
>>don't you have to deal with them one at a time and you may find that
>>customers do no longer give you their custom. Given how busy you are,
>>you would not even notice.
>>
>>
>I disagree with this sentiment in general terms.  If
>the "customers" are not making an effort to watch the
>pages where policy decisions are disscused, they
>should not expect to courted by those wishing to
>change policy.  The community that is actually doing
>the work of maintaining a project should have the
>ability to set policy without going out of their way
>to court the fly-by-night users of the project.  I do
>not think it is wise to try and alienate the less
>active userbase, but it is unrealistic to wait for
>their reaction before making any decisions.
>
This seems like a somewhat frigid approach.  It's true enough that
policies are developped by the most active members, but many policies
should allow for viable alternatives.  If a newcomer has a different way
of doing things that does not conform with established formatting norms
there should be room to develop those ideas without his being pilloried
because he does things differently.  "Ignore all rules" should always
remain a viable policy.  This does not mean that we need to accept every
bit of idiocy that comes along.  Nor does it mean that core principles
must be abandoned.  Good rules support existing practice rather than
shape it.  Poor rules, even by the most active members, tend to be
ignored as people go ahead and do their own things.

Almost all rules should be open to change, because a community thrives
on new ideas.  Very few rules should be the subject of persistent
enforcement.

>The English Wikisource recently made a major change to
>it's incluson guidelines (which involves the eventual
>deletion of around 200 pages).  We held open
>disscusion for over three weeks, and the material is
>now being slowly phased out without a mass deletion.
>Although there was a small amount of advertising
>amoung people with a specific interest, the
>participants in the disscusion did not vary from the
>regular editors.  I cannot agree that it should have
>been advertised at large across projects.  I am very
>happy with the way we have handled this situation
>which quite at odds with your sentiments.
>
I presume you're referring to the source code articles.  With many of
these the contributors haven't been around for a long time, and that's
probably an indicator of a failed sub-project.  Still, the safe and fair
approach is to give personal notice to any contributors that are still
around, and leaving them ample time to respond.

>It would not be productive during a major policy
>disscussion to issue an invitation to people who have
>no idea how a project operates on a day-to-day basis.
>The community which actually *works* on a project
>needs to be the ones to set policy.  If the people you
>consider "customers" find that the community no longer
>serves their needs, they should work to carve out such
>a niche themselves.  These projects are all operating
>with a limited amount of volunteers and I cannot
>imagine any of them would ignore the corcerns of
>people willing to get their hands dirty.  But when
>someone has the mindset that they are a "customer" and
>want to reallocate these existing voluteers to take
>care of their pet issues, well I won't be so impolite
>as to express what I think of that.  Now they are
>welcome to share these concerns.  Many people can
>vouch that I am willing to drop my current project to
>help them deal with issue I agree is important when
>they bring to my attention.  But to say projects
>should not attempt to set policy unless they
>personally invite over all the people who are standing
>on the sidelines is ridiculous.  Even if such people
>are the most informed, intelligent, reasonable people
>on earth, they will not be a useful addition to policy
>disscusions until they have worked within the project
>and achieved such understanding that can only be
>gained by experience.  The fact that infrequent users
>may not *like* the communities policy descision is not
>reason enough to hold off on any decision till they
>have been consulted.
>
I don't know about the applicability or implications of the term
"customers", but I can certainly discuss the matter without using it.

Most people have little interest in getting involved in policy matters.
They may be interested in specific content areas, and see unending
debates about policy as a total waste of time.  They continue to work
well on their specialty, and will only discuss policy when their own
area is affected.  That's fine.  For them the discussion _starts_ at
that point.

I very strongly believe in the autonomy of the projects; I had a big
argument with a significant Wikipedian about that during the earliest
days of Wikisource.  Although it would be patently ridiculous to invite
absolutely everyone to participate in some of these discussions, it is
just as ridiculous and even unjust and arrogant to suggest that informed
Wikimedians cannot make useful contributions to a current debate.
Absence of input may not be a valid reason to hold off decisions, but it
is a valid reason to hold off enforcement in inappropriate circumstance.

Ec


from_name: bernhard blum

subject: [Wikitech-l] small letters for an account

body:
I updated my wiki (gondi-online.de) from 1.4 to 1.5.
In the old version I added a line to localsettings to allow accounts
beginning with small letters. I added the same line in the new version,
but it did not work. I found no other information.
could anybody help me?
Thanks a lot
bernie


from_name: Redvers @ the Wikipedia

body:
> From: Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com>
> That doesn't mean
> their votes count more, less, or the same as
> everyone else's, because
> AfD isn't supposed to be a vote.

<aol>Me too!</aol> I agree wholeheartedly with Phil,
including the rest of the email that I've snipped.

The main problem is that people love to vote; and "my
vote is to..." is a shorthand that continues to imply
that we're voting. (I've started to use "My opinion
is..." and the like to make it clear that I'm not
voting). We deny new users and anons a "vote" on AfD
to prevent "votestacking" by sockmeat, thus dismissing
what could be a very knowledgeable vote once in a
while; we sometimes announce at the top of a debate
that we will be ignoring votestacking by anons, thus
reinforcing the impression of a vote taking place.

AfD is often just putting a mark in a box - nn, del or
keep, WP:V - which again reinforces the idea that
we're voting /and/ newbies with their first article
suddenly feel bitten because the community is /voting/
against /them/.

I think we need to make it clearer that the process is
not a vote; that reasoned arguments are appreciated
(and therefore that unreasoned arguments - Xfoo has an
article so Yfoo deserves one; John Foobar is
well-known to all my friends in the greater
Nowheresville area who are into mud wrestling;
Wikipedia must keep my article else I'll leave before
my 3rd edit - don't hold water); and that the final
decision is made by an admin based on the debate and
/other factors/, not on the tally of "votes".

We also need greater protection for our admins from
being hounded for deleting an article where the
majority said keep or for keeping an article where the
majority said delete - some sort of nice big notice
somewhere that says "admins are just janitors, not
gods or new Hitlers - please take your argument to
[[X]] location" perhaps?

At the moment, I really can't see a difference between
the old VfD and the newer AfD, other than cosmetic
ones. Unless we do something to make it clear that
voting is not taking place, we'll be stuck with the
current broken process.

"Wikipedia:Opinions about removal", anyone?

=REDVERS=

___________________________________________________________
NEW - Yahoo! 360 ? Your one place to blog, create, publish and share! http://uk.360.yahoo.com


from_name: geni

body:
On 5/8/06, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I point out that we don't need voting for AfD, which is why we
> changed it away from VfD, and that the proper way to close an AfD is
> to look at the arguments and how they adhere to Wikipedia policy,

In the last 24 hours I've had to deal with two admins who appear to
think that alt accounts were not allowed under policy.

The point of psudo voteing is that it allows people to say yes I view
person x's argument as correct. This gives the closer some help in
assesing X's argument.

Personaly a prefer to comment on AFDs rather than vote. People tend to
be more likely to respond to comments.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
charles matthews wrote:
> "Raphael Wegmann"  wrote
>
>>> So, Wikipedia editors need not self-censor, while engaged in writing the
>>> encyclopedia articles.  As decent people, they will self-censor in talk
>>> page
>>> discussion.  Self-censorship is of course a basic social requirement.
>> So decency in article pages is forbidden, even if you
>> can be decent without loosing any informational content?
>> The problem with this approach is, that you will loose a lot of
>> readers and editors that way. Some of you will even be happy about
>> that, but NPOV is in severe danger, if you are offending
>> editors, who are members of a cultural resp. religious minority.
>> In the end you will have an American/British/Christian encyclopedia.
>> If this is what you're aiming at, I would not be interested.
>> You'd waste a big chance for intercultural exchange and
>> a true neutral point of view.
>
> Too many assumptions.  I don't know why you think that Christians might not
> be offended, at some things:

I never said so. But since Christians are the majority, their opinion
will be heard in the poll surveys, that are IMHO carried out way too
often. Why do you distract the discussion to countries like Armenia or
Nanjing? I am talking about 1.3 billion people, who happen to be a
minority on the english language Wikipedia.

[...]

> Actually the only way not to offend anyone is  to avoid all controversial
> topics.  It was decided, long ago, not to do that, and not to give the kind
> of treatment you might find in government-approved history books.

I disagree. It is possible to present controversial topics in
a non-offensive way by presenting the differing point of views,
balancing their weight and establishing a consensus among all
interested parties. It happens all the time on Wikipedia.

Unfortunately sometimes polls decide how a controversial topic
should be presented. Thereby Wikipedia will become an Ochlocracy
resp. Mobocracy, which is bad - even for articles like Armenia
and Nanjing.

--
Raphael


from_name: Rob Church

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Wikimedia network restructure: possible
	interruptions

body:
On 08/05/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 08, 2006 at 10:11:04PM +0200, Mark Bergsma wrote:
> > For those interested, the new setup is described at
> > https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/BGP
>
> Woo hoo, and *very* nice writeup.

Part of our network setup is documented? I'm speechless...

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] "should not be written by an interested party"

body:
jf_wikipedia at mac.com wrote:

>On May 3, 2006, at 10:51 AM, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>The philosophy that NPOV is achieved by warring parties is one that I
>>have always rejected, and in practice, I think we can easily see
>>that it absolutely does not work.
>>
>>
>Sometimes it *does* work, if there is a commitment to Wikipedia
>content policies.
>
When I think about it there's an ambiguity to Jimbo's comment.  It is
both right and wrong.  It is right in the sense that NPOV is not
achieved when the warring parties persist in their war.  It is also
wrong because it is best achieved when those same warring parties come
down from their fixed positions and begin exploring common ground.
Mediators may help, and may even be necessary, but when you get down to
it is movement by the warring parties that counts.

Ec


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 5/8/06, Philip Sandifer <snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with the subject line of this e-mail wholeheartedly.
>
> May I suggest that the best way to prevent vote-stacking would be to
> stop voting?
>
> (Someone responds here that we need voting for AfD)

Actually this someone responds that I already suggested this :) So, I
agree - replace the vote with reasoned, explicit arguments either way,
and have the discussion period closed by someone with half a clue. Not
necessarily an admin, but someone somehow designated as being clueful.
Then an admin can carry out the delete if needed.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
On 5/8/06, Raphael Wegmann <raphael at psi.co.at> wrote:
> Please look at the talk pages. I've never shied away from
> any discussion. And 3 reverts in 5 days can hardly be called
> edit-warring, nor does it explain a block for 1 week.

Well it can - but I tend to consider most reverts a form of edit
warring. If you revert because the person vandalised, you know they
were wrong, or you know for sure that you know the context of the
article a lot better than them, that's one thing. If you revert
because you disagree with them as an equal, you're edit warring.

But I'm trolling.

Steve


body:
On 5/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/8/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > * Delete, subject is not appropriate for an encyclopedia.
> > * Keep, subject _is_ appropriate for an encyclopedia.
> >
> > which is about as subjective a standard as you can get.  We can
> > certainly appoint someone to judge the relative arguments and decree
> > an outcome, but the question is fundamentally one of differing
> > perceptions of what Wikipedia should strive to be, not one of simply
> > applying existing policy.
>
> Perhaps it should be more "subject is not appropriate for *this*
> encyclopaedia *at this time*". There may come a time when Wikipedia
> has 40,000,000 articles, including in depth articles on  tens of
> thousands of garage bands. At such a time, it may be appropriate to
> include them.
>
> Just another thought - could we consider forcing an AfD to be a
> fact-finding mission about a single question? That is, the nominator
> asserts that the subject is not notable. The comments should all be
> about the notability of the subject - if a cogent argument can be made
> that the subject is notable, then it should be kept. Remarks about
> verifiability, spelling etc would then be kept out of that discussion.
>
> Steve

Nope. Apart from anything else questions on copyright status are
always relivant.

--
geni


from_name: Mark Bergsma

body:
Mark Bergsma wrote:
> Later today - around 18.00 UTC - we will be performing network
> maintenance to improve network redundancy, reliability and performance.
> We hope that this will be more or less transparent, but it's not
> impossible that interruptions occur around that time. Of course, we will
> try to keep that to a minimum.

The network changes yesterday have been performed successfully. Things
went very smoothly, and indeed the maintenance didn't incur any downtime
at all.

For those interested, the new setup is described at
https://wikitech.leuksman.com/view/BGP

--
Mark

mark at nedworks.org


body:
On 5/8/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/8/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Nope. Apart from anything else questions on copyright status are
> > always relivant.
>
> Don't you usually point out that copyvios don't need to go through AFD? ;-)
>
> Kirill Lokshin

However they often have to go through WP:CP which is normaly slower.

--
geni


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 03/05/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Cleanup_by_month
>>15000 articles.
>>Looks like anyone who might be that someone has enough work on their
>>hands already.
>
> Yep. But the vast majority of those articles are good enough that
> they're better than a conspicuous hole where they used to be.

That's true almost by definition; if they were worse than a conspicuous
hole, most of them would already have been replaced by one.

--
Ilmari Karonen


body:
On 5/8/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> * Delete, subject is not appropriate for an encyclopedia.
> * Keep, subject _is_ appropriate for an encyclopedia.
>
> which is about as subjective a standard as you can get.  We can
> certainly appoint someone to judge the relative arguments and decree
> an outcome, but the question is fundamentally one of differing
> perceptions of what Wikipedia should strive to be, not one of simply
> applying existing policy.

Perhaps it should be more "subject is not appropriate for *this*
encyclopaedia *at this time*". There may come a time when Wikipedia
has 40,000,000 articles, including in depth articles on  tens of
thousands of garage bands. At such a time, it may be appropriate to
include them.

Just another thought - could we consider forcing an AfD to be a
fact-finding mission about a single question? That is, the nominator
asserts that the subject is not notable. The comments should all be
about the notability of the subject - if a cogent argument can be made
that the subject is notable, then it should be kept. Remarks about
verifiability, spelling etc would then be kept out of that discussion.

Steve


body:
On Mon, 8 May 2006 21:20:11 +0100, you wrote:

>In the last 24 hours I've had to deal with two admins who appear to
>think that alt accounts were not allowed under policy.

For what purpose?  Which admins?

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


body:
On Mon, 8 May 2006 16:31:37 -0400, you wrote:

>Once you strip away all the arguments about "notability" and
>the sea of guidelines and pseudo-guidelines and random acronyms, you
>get something like:
>* Delete, subject is not appropriate for an encyclopedia.
>* Keep, subject _is_ appropriate for an encyclopedia.


body:
On 5/8/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 8 May 2006 21:20:11 +0100, you wrote:
>
> >In the last 24 hours I've had to deal with two admins who appear to
> >think that alt accounts were not allowed under policy.
>
> For what purpose?  Which admins?
>
> Guy (JzG)

Different reasons. [[User:23skidoo]] and [[User:Tony Sidaway]].
Neither caused any real problems.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
On Mon, 08 May 2006 19:45:17 +0200, you wrote:

>Please look at the talk pages. I've never shied away from
>any discussion. And 3 reverts in 5 days can hardly be called
>edit-warring, nor does it explain a block for 1 week.

It can if it's against consensus, and you *know* it's against
consensus, and you repeatedly do it anyway.  Your version of debate
appears to be to re-state your position.  Which, to be fair, is pretty
much where everybody else there comes from.

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


body:
On Mon, 8 May 2006 23:12:02 +0100, you wrote:

>Different reasons. [[User:23skidoo]] and [[User:Tony Sidaway]].
>Neither caused any real problems.

I venture to suggest that Tony Sidaway understands more of Wikipedia
policy and practice than most of us will ever learn.

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


from_name: Molu

body:
You put it very well. The matter is demonstrated best by the question of notability. I believe all professors can have their articles, in an AfD debate many will disagree with me. Consensus doesn't exist. What is the closing admin supposed to do? If he is to apply his personal opinion regarding the debate then I most certainly disagree. We will be better off with voting than giving admins more power.

  This system of weighing arguments collapses when there is no argument to weigh. Either I think he is notable or I think he is not notable, neither viewpoint can be established with logic, only numbers. There's a reason that voting is so prevalent in modern democratic societies, it's because better alternatives are very hard to come by.

Molu
  On Mon, 8 May 2006 16:31:37 -0400, "Kirill Lokshin" wrote:

>On 5/8/06, Philip Sandifer wrote:
>> I point out that we don't need voting for AfD, which is why we
>> changed it away from VfD, and that the proper way to close an AfD is
>> to look at the arguments and how they adhere to Wikipedia policy...

>And here we come to the key problem with the entire model: there
>_isn't_ an objective policy to deal with these things. (Certainly
>there are some policies, like verifiability, that can be used; but the
>lack of consensus for a more comprehensive "notability" policy is the
>issue.) Once you strip away all the arguments about "notability" and
>the sea of guidelines and pseudo-guidelines and random acronyms, you
>get something like:

>* Delete, subject is not appropriate for an encyclopedia.
>* Keep, subject _is_ appropriate for an encyclopedia.

>which is about as subjective a standard as you can get. We can
>certainly appoint someone to judge the relative arguments and decree
>an outcome, but the question is fundamentally one of differing
>perceptions of what Wikipedia should strive to be, not one of simply
>applying existing policy.

>Kirill Lokshin

---------------------------------
Blab-away for as little as 1?/min. Make  PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


body:
I differ.

  Molu

    On Mon, 08 May 2006 23:18:19 +0100, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>I venture to suggest that Tony Sidaway understands more of Wikipedia
>policy and practice than most of us will ever learn.

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

---------------------------------
New Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Call regular phones from your PC and save big.


body:
On 5/8/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 8 May 2006 23:12:02 +0100, you wrote:
>
> >Different reasons. [[User:23skidoo]] and [[User:Tony Sidaway]].
> >Neither caused any real problems.
>
> I venture to suggest that Tony Sidaway understands more of Wikipedia
> policy and practice than most of us will ever learn.
>
> Guy (JzG)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Userbox_debates&diff=52033437&oldid=52031925

To justify the deletion of this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:User_Alternate_Acct

No version of our policy on alt accounts has ever officially
deprecated them or any particular method of informing people what they
are (I use text).

Understandable. I doubt it is really posible to keep track of every
bit of policy these days let alone guidelines.

--
geni


body:
On 5/8/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Interesting idea, but I would explicitly exclude verifiability from
> that; if we sit for a few days debating notability and then someone
> drops by and point out that the subject is a hoax and doesn't actually
> exist, we probably don't want too much red tape in the way of deleting
> the thing.

Very true, we should probably invent a shortcut procedure for hoaxes
and copyright violations. I propose we call it "speedy deletion".

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright?

body:
Guettarda wrote:

>On 5/3/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>
>>SPUI has repeatedly tagged http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sbekele
>>as a copyvio of http://www.cbsintl.com/people.htm.  I refused to
>>speedy it on that basis, so SPUI blanked it and added the copyvio
>>template.  Sbekele self-identifies as Sophia Bekele, CEO of CBS
>>International, and therefore presumably the copyright owner.  Since
>>this is user space, and the content is an "about us" bio, not
>>commercial content, I think that blanking and deletion are a bit
>>excessive.  On the other hand, copyright is copyright I guess.  What
>>does the panel think?
>>
>>
>Yeah, it's a copyvio.  Since the user doesn't appear to have explicitly
>released the material under a GFDL-compatible license, and since the user
>has not provided an proof that they are who they say they are, it's correct
>to consider it a copyvio.  Please note, the original says:
>
>*Copyright (c) 1997-2005 CBS International All rights reserved.*
>
Such notices are irrelevant to the determination of whether something is
copyright, except perhaps in establishing when the copyright will
expire, but that problem is moot until 2067.

Release under GFDL is implicit whenever anyone saves an edit.  Why
should it be any more explicit in this case?

Whether she is who she says she is is more problematic.  What kind of
proof are you looking for?  Can we ever be sure that anyone who posts
with his "real" name is identifying himself truthfully?  "Assume good
faith" favours keeping the material.  If you doubt the good faith, you
would do better by trying to contact the person through independant
channels.

Ec


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Mon, 8 May 2006 23:35:01 +0100, you wrote:

>> I venture to suggest that Tony Sidaway understands more of Wikipedia
>> policy and practice than most of us will ever learn.

>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Userbox_debates&diff=52033437&oldid=52031925
>To justify the deletion of this
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:User_Alternate_Acct
>No version of our policy on alt accounts has ever officially
>deprecated them or any particular method of informing people what they
>are (I use text).

Apart from [[WP:SOCK]], obviously.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
On Tue, 09 May 2006 00:37:32 +0200, you wrote:

>>> Please look at the talk pages. I've never shied away from
>>> any discussion. And 3 reverts in 5 days can hardly be called
>>> edit-warring, nor does it explain a block for 1 week.

>> It can if it's against consensus, and you *know* it's against
>> consensus, and you repeatedly do it anyway.

>Many editors think that numerical supermajority equals
>consensus (it doesn't). Consensus is strictly reached only
>when all concerned have accepted a position.

Wise words - I winder who said that?  But the lack of 100% agreement
does not mean you can go ahead and enact the minority view in the mean
time.

>30 image removals per week clearly shows that no consensus
>has been reached, this is what I know.

No, it means that most people think one thing and a small coterie of
edit warriors think another.

>> Your version of debate
>> appears to be to re-state your position.  Which, to be fair, is pretty
>> much where everybody else there comes from.

>Well, I don't think so. Please look again at
>Talk:Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons
>controversy/Arguments/Image-Display
>I've been responsive to almost all arguments stated,
>leaving out only personal attacks.

You've been responsive in the sense of not changing your view.  As has
pretty much everyone else.

Come up with a new compromise.

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


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-05-09

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Magic Word: {{NUMBEROFFILES}}... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!

Passed 303 of 313 tests (96.81%) FAILED!


body:
On 5/9/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Apart from [[WP:SOCK]], obviously.
>
> Guy (JzG)

Where?

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Mon, 08 May 2006 19:45:17 +0200, you wrote:
>
>> Please look at the talk pages. I've never shied away from
>> any discussion. And 3 reverts in 5 days can hardly be called
>> edit-warring, nor does it explain a block for 1 week.
>
> It can if it's against consensus, and you *know* it's against
> consensus, and you repeatedly do it anyway.

Many editors think that numerical supermajority equals
consensus (it doesn't). Consensus is strictly reached only
when all concerned have accepted a position.

30 image removals per week clearly shows that no consensus
has been reached, this is what I know.

> Your version of debate
> appears to be to re-state your position.  Which, to be fair, is pretty
> much where everybody else there comes from.

Well, I don't think so. Please look again at
Talk:Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons
controversy/Arguments/Image-Display
I've been responsive to almost all arguments stated,
leaving out only personal attacks.

lG.
--
Raphael


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
Guettarda wrote:

>If you have unpublished photographs taken by a deceased relative which you
>wish to use on Wikipedia, how would you license them?  Assuming that you
>have survivor rights or permission from other heirs of the photographer,
>would it be possible to release them under the GFDL or cc by sa?  If they
>were taken by, say, your grandfather, and there is nothing in his will
>dealing with "other stuff", would you have to get permission from all of his
>surviving children, or their heirs (if the children are deceased)?  I'm
>assuming here that the photographs are otherwise unpublished, and were taken
>recently enough/the person was alive recently enough that they would still
>be covered by copyright.
>
I'm assuming that you are talking about US law.  In some other places
photographs have a shorter copyright life than texts.  In the US now
these photographs should follow the manuscript and fall into the public
domain 70 years after the photographer's death unless they have
previously been published.  If you have the survivor rights you can
license them in any way that you want.  You can probably also do it
alone if the rights are shared.  Fortunately for me, my paternal
grandfather (who died in 1948)  left nothing copyrightable; he had 16
children (now all dead) and 48 grandchildren, many of whom are now dead;
one of his daughters was a nun who would have taken a vow of poverty and
made the church her heirs.  To the best of my knowledge, he did not have
a will.  Many of his deceased offspring did not have wills, and lived in
different jurisdictions.  There are times when the decision that one
makes must be guided by practicality rather than an overstrict adherence
to the letter of the law.

It is rare for persons who are not published to think of copyrights.
Most wills, however, do have a residual clause for anything that is not
otherwise specified, and copyrights would be transferred along with
other things.  If the will is defective in that way the law of intestate
succession where he lived would apply.  More problematic would be a box
of family snapshots where you cannot determine who took which picture.

Ec


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 5/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> It can be established with logic if we define what we mean by notable,
> and some up with some guidelines. This has helped a lot with articles
> on music groups.

So long as they remain only default guidelines, that's one thing - but
many, I among them, have problems with the general applicability of
WP:MUSIC, especially outside the genres of English-language popular
music.

I remain extremely sceptical about how good an idea such things are,
and about the advisability of extending such an idea any more widely.

They do, at least, provide a way of defending the notability of an
article, and thus overriding the "nn never heard of them" opinions.  I
like such mechanical rules better if they are interpreted as "any
subject that meets these guidelines can be considered automatically
notable" rather than "If a subject fails these tests it's
automatically Not Notable".  The latter permits no special cases.

-Matt

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] User script inclusion (was: Watchlist feature requests)

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 03/05/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Oh yes, there's
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_User_scripts on en:
>>which has a heap of these sort of things (somewhere). I've crosslinked them.
>
> It would be cool if there was a simple way where a user could click to
> include all these functionalities. They're quite modular, and often
> don't conflict with each other. So wouldn't it be nice if you could
> just click to include some code, rather than copy-pasting. Personally,
> I find after about 3-4 functions included, my monobook.js is totally
> out of control. Or maybe it's possible to {transclude} subpages to
> make it tidier?

There's [[Template:Js]], which unfortunately is rather underpublicized.
  You use it by adding {{subst:js|Script to include}} to your
monobook.js; it expands to the code posted by Pete Bartlett.  You may
also want to look at my own monobook.js for a slightly more compact
solution:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilmari_Karonen/monobook.js

Of course, you probably shouldn't include the unprotected versions at
[[Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts]] directly.  I've been thinking for
a while that the project ought to provide "stable" protected versions of
each script for ease of inclusion.

One possibility might be to register a dummy user account, such as
User:Scripts, for this purpose, and maintain the stable versions as js
subpages of that user.  Besides providing shorter page names, that would
guarantee that the stable versions are always protected.

I think I'll propose something like this at [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject
User scripts]].  Of course, any such stable version system requires
admins to promptly merge in any valid changes, but it seems to me that
there are enough active admins on that project to make this feasible.
There probably also ought to be an easy way for users to list their
personal forks of each script.

I think I'll sleep on it, and write up a proposal tomorrow.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 5/9/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> The only thing that isn't undoable as an admin is image deletion.  The
> rest has become pretty much fixable.  Yes there are wheel warring
> dangers and the like, but once you take an eventualist approach, it all
> settles down a lot.

Err, not quite.  There are a number of other things that are
"undoable" -- in the sense that once an admin does them, they can't be
directly reversed -- leaking deleted revisions chief among them.
Whether this is a real problem is up for debate, of course; but it's
worth pointing out that the question of admin trust is a bit more
complicated than merely "will he go on an image deletion spree?"


from_name: Keith Old

body:
On 5/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/8/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Interesting idea, but I would explicitly exclude verifiability from
> > that; if we sit for a few days debating notability and then someone
> > drops by and point out that the subject is a hoax and doesn't actually
> > exist, we probably don't want too much red tape in the way of deleting
> > the thing.
>
> Very true, we should probably invent a shortcut procedure for hoaxes
> and copyright violations. I propose we call it "speedy deletion".
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Hoaxes as such are not grounds for speedy deletion. You might want to argue
that they are vandalism but that would be contentious. If I come across
something that is dodgy and there seems to be no verifiable material for it,
I normally propose it for deletion.

Whether hoaxes should be grounds for speedy deletion is of course another
issue.

See our grounds for speedy deletion for clarification.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:CSD

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old


body:
On 5/9/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I think the normal way this would be handled is you would just say
> > "has been called disgusting by a large number of celebrities"[1], and
> > in the footnote, you would say "For example, Winona Ryder [ur], ...."
> > and just give a couple.
> >
> > Steve
>
> But what would that add to the article, other than a bit of length?

The info seems relevant to me. Not all celebrities get called
"disgusting" by other celebrities.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
On 5/6/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> If you have unpublished photographs taken by a deceased relative which you
> wish to use on Wikipedia, how would you license them?

I'd put them into the public domain.

The rest of this assumes US law and the law of most US states (you
didn't specify).

> Assuming that you
> have survivor rights or permission from other heirs of the photographer,
> would it be possible to release them under the GFDL or cc by sa?

If you own the copyright (alone or as a joint owner), you can grant
these non-exclusive licenses.  You need the permission of all owners
to grant an exclusive license.  If you profit off the use of the
copyright and there are other owners, you have to split the profits
with the other owners.

> If they
> were taken by, say, your grandfather, and there is nothing in his will
> dealing with "other stuff", would you have to get permission from all of his
> surviving children, or their heirs (if the children are deceased)?  I'm
> assuming here that the photographs are otherwise unpublished, and were taken
> recently enough/the person was alive recently enough that they would still
> be covered by copyright.
>
That's the interesting question.  I agree with the others that the
ownership would pass by will or by intestate succession.  Since you're
saying the will doesn't deal with this, it would pass by intestate
succession.

This last part I have no idea about.  Presumably during the probate
process one or more people would be assigned the copyright on those
photos (either directly or through some sort of order for "other
stuff").  But I have no idea how that works.

Anthony


body:
On 5/9/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> Because then the judges (closing admins) have discretionary power,
> and in that situation, decisions are made by admin aristocracy, not
> consensus.

Consensus already requires interpretation by admins, who have
discretinary power to ignore it.

Steve


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] The lovely world of celebrities

body:
It's Fox's entertainment gossip.   They aren't held to the same "reporting" standards as the "news".  Equally ironic, the entertainment "reporters" apparently lack an actual sense of humor.

This does bring up the question, are "news" and PR broadcasters blocked from Wiki like congress?  Or can Coulter, Rush, and Oreilly edit their entries with the aid of their staff?

Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:

    How is it that Fox can get "Wikipedians" right, when even articles
    *about* Wikipedia came up with "Wikitopians"?

    Steve

    On 5/9/06, Mathias Schindler wrote:
    > http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194757,00.html
    >
    > "Meantime, I left the Time Warner center just as my pal Ann Coulter
    > was busy chastising Jimmy Wales about her Wikipedia entry, and finding
    > out from him how to change it. Listen, you Wikipedians, be nice to Ann
    > Coulter. I leave you with this thought: she's got great legs no matter
    > what her politics are, and you're lucky she has a sense of humor,
    > too."

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. Make PC-to-Phone Calls to the US (and 30+ countries) for 2?/min or less.


body:
On 5/9/06, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> You put it very well. The matter is demonstrated best by the question of notability. I believe all professors can have their articles, in an AfD debate many will disagree with me. Consensus doesn't exist. What is the closing admin supposed to do? If he is to apply his personal opinion regarding the debate then I most certainly disagree. We will be better off with voting than giving admins more power.

You raise a very good point. I quite strongly believe that general
principles should be sorted out in one forum, and AfD should be
strictly about applying those principles to individual articles up for
deletion. It's exactly the same issue as with RfA - I believe we
should as a group decide how many edits are required for an admin, and
set that in stone. Then for any individual candidate, we can simply
check that he meets all the requirements.

In the case of AfD, and more particularly, notability, we can vote on
the proposal "all published academics are notable". Should it pass,
then no "not notable" argument should ever be accepted on a published
academic. And should it fail, then you would need to find another
argument for keeping an individual article on an academic.

Again: too much freedom in votes/consensus discussion is bad. Vote
stacking in AfD, and vote extortion ("if you don't answer my 3
questions in 24 hours, I'm opposing you") on RfA are two symptoms of
this.

>   This system of weighing arguments collapses when there is no argument to weigh. Either I think he is notable or I think he is not notable, neither viewpoint can be established with logic, only numbers. There's a reason that voting is so prevalent in modern democratic societies, it's because better alternatives are very hard to come by.

It can be established with logic if we define what we mean by notable,
and some up with some guidelines. This has helped a lot with articles
on music groups.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

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

    Numerically consensus is something like 80% approval, but of course a purely
    numerical criterion is not useful.

It's equally important that consensus is applied to the writing of policies and guidelines, not to the writing of articles.  That is policy, which by definition already "reflects consensus".~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
Get amazing travel prices for air and hotel in one click on Yahoo! FareChase


body:
Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:

    On 5/9/06, Philip Welch wrote:
    > Because then the judges (closing admins) have discretionary power,
    > and in that situation, decisions are made by admin aristocracy, not
    > consensus.

    Consensus already requires interpretation by admins, who have
    discretinary power to ignore it.

Consensus really shouldn't be getting interepreted at all, however.  To put it another way, policies and guidelines are determined by consensus, so by definition the decisions admins make are consensus.  The presumption here is that admins are following policy.  If they aren't, they are ignoring consensus (behaving like aristocracy).~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
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from_name: Steve Block

body:
Philip Welch wrote:
> On 5/6/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Why not just scrap the concept of a vote entirely, and make it more
>> like a judge deciding a case.
>
> Because then the judges (closing admins) have discretionary power,
> and in that situation, decisions are made by admin aristocracy, not
> consensus.
>
> I'm willing to accept a degree of admin aristocracy, so I consider
> this worth consideration. But we should be under no illusions about
> what's going on here.
>

But that's the process as stands now, in that per [[Wikipedia:Deletion
guidelines for administrators]], "Administrators necessarily must use
their best judgment, attempting to be as impartial as is possible for a
fallible human, to determine when rough consensus has been reached."

An admin is supposed to weigh the debate, and also take into account
that the three key policies cannot be over-ridden by a consensus formed
in a deletion debate.

The admin has always had the discretion in calling the outcome.  Killing
the idea it was about counting votes was the whole reason the name was
changed to afd.

Steve block

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from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] SoC: MediaWiki Export

body:
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 03:46:00PM +0100, Ben Francis wrote:
> I'm interested in how much work has gone into this already because it
> would be such a useful feature (both the exporting and the native
> DocBook storage). Actually, once the API gets implemented there are
> enormous possibilities for using MediaWiki as a document management tool
> and calling the API from different internal systems.
>
> An organisation could write documents using a desktop application but
> use MediaWiki for the back end storage. They could then log in remotely,
> access and edit the documents from anywhere via a web interface or other
> application.
>
> Imagine MediaWiki for help systems where the help appears inside a
> desktop or web application but is stored and collaboratively edited
> using a MediaWiki installation.
>
> If the XHTML wiki web pages only have to be one representation of the
> data, the possibilties are endless!
>
> The PHP tool written by Magnus Manske
> (http://magnusmanske.de/wiki2xml/w2x.php) looks good

Yeah; at the moment, Magnus seems like the go-to guy on that.  I've
badly wanted to see something like this for some time, and would be
glad (with 20 years system analyst experience :-) to kibitz on the
design, if you like.

My personal target was mostly being able to extract a partial tree from
a running MW install, and dump it into a DocBook source file,
processing xrefs and the like in some useful fashion, so that flat-file
documentation can be extracted from a MediaWiki used to maintain it.

(Read: I talked the MythTV people into converting from Moin, and this
was one of the selling points.  :-)

That usage, of course, implies a few extra requirements that the
general case wouldn't require, but I think it's one of the most useful
targets for such a processing chain.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


body:
Molu wrote:
> You put it very well. The matter is demonstrated best by the question
> of notability. I believe all professors can have their articles, in an
> AfD debate many will disagree with me. Consensus doesn't exist. What is
> the closing admin supposed to do? If he is to apply his personal opinion
> regarding the debate then I most certainly disagree. We will be better
> off with voting than giving admins more power.

This argument is supposed to be countered by the guidance at
[[Wikipedia:Deletion guidelines for administrators]], namely first that
admins be "be as impartial as is possible" and then that "When in doubt,
don't delete."

> This system of weighing arguments collapses when there is no argument
> to weigh.

If there are no arguments to weigh, then the admin should refer frist to
existing guidelines and policy, and use that as the determining factor,
and if that does not aid, then a decision of no consensus is entered or
the admin relists for a further five days and expresses the reasons why
it has been relisted, calling for arguments to be made.

Steve block

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subject:
[Wikitech-l] Feature suggestion: See all redirects to a page as
	aliases

body:
Hi,
  I think it would be useful to have a way of seeing all the redirects
for a given page, presented as a list of "aliases" that could easily
be modified. It's currently not particularly easy to be sure that all
the given permutations/combinations of spelling of a name exist. "What
links here" mixes them in with other links, for instance. It's also
fairly tedious to add redirects, particularly if you have to do it for
a number of articles at a time.

So I was thinking it might be nice - if someone, such as an SoC'er :)
- had the time, to display all the redirects to a given page in an
editable format. At its simplest, it could be a simple multi-line edit
box with a redirect on each line. When you add new lines, they would
be converted to new redirects. Deletion of redirects via this method
would require consideration...

Steve


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright?

body:
On 5/8/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Guettarda wrote:
>
> >On 5/3/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>SPUI has repeatedly tagged http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sbekele
> >>as a copyvio of http://www.cbsintl.com/people.htm.  I refused to
> >>speedy it on that basis, so SPUI blanked it and added the copyvio
> >>template.  Sbekele self-identifies as Sophia Bekele, CEO of CBS
> >>International, and therefore presumably the copyright owner.  Since
> >>this is user space, and the content is an "about us" bio, not
> >>commercial content, I think that blanking and deletion are a bit
> >>excessive.  On the other hand, copyright is copyright I guess.  What
> >>does the panel think?
> >>
> >>
> >Yeah, it's a copyvio.  Since the user doesn't appear to have explicitly
> >released the material under a GFDL-compatible license, and since the user
> >has not provided an proof that they are who they say they are, it's correct
> >to consider it a copyvio.  Please note, the original says:
> >
> >*Copyright (c) 1997-2005 CBS International All rights reserved.*
> >
> Such notices are irrelevant to the determination of whether something is
> copyright, except perhaps in establishing when the copyright will
> expire, but that problem is moot until 2067.
>
> Release under GFDL is implicit whenever anyone saves an edit.  Why
> should it be any more explicit in this case?

Because they may not own the copyright in the first place.  If you
don't own the copyright, you can't release your contributions under
the GFDL -- it's why we delete copy-and-pastes from Britannica.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


body:
On 5/9/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> They do, at least, provide a way of defending the notability of an
> article, and thus overriding the "nn never heard of them" opinions.  I
> like such mechanical rules better if they are interpreted as "any
> subject that meets these guidelines can be considered automatically
> notable" rather than "If a subject fails these tests it's
> automatically Not Notable".  The latter permits no special cases.

At first glance, that seems a reasonable supposition. Someone is not
notable only because of lack of notability - not because they meet
some special criteria that made them so. For example, there would be
every reason to create an article on [Matt Brown's Garage Band], if it
was notable for having sparked yet another major Wikipedia controversy
about notability....

Steve


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 5/9/06, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> You put it very well. The matter is demonstrated best by the question of notability. I believe all professors can have their articles, in an AfD debate many will disagree with me. Consensus doesn't exist. What is the closing admin supposed to do? If he is to apply his personal opinion regarding the debate then I most certainly disagree. We will be better off with voting than giving admins more power.
>
> You raise a very good point. I quite strongly believe that general
> principles should be sorted out in one forum, and AfD should be
> strictly about applying those principles to individual articles up for
> deletion. It's exactly the same issue as with RfA - I believe we
> should as a group decide how many edits are required for an admin, and
> set that in stone. Then for any individual candidate, we can simply
> check that he meets all the requirements.

Being an admin is about earning community trust.  Sadly there are people
who vote at RFA who forget that means they are commenting on whether
they trust the user and instead have this notion that there are
standards to be achieved.  The default position at RFA should be trust
is given until it is proven that there is a reason not to.  Too many
people take the reverse view, with-holding trust until a number of hoops
have been jumped through.  These kind of people place trust in their
standards rather than the admins.  I saw someone oppose on the strength
of a number of nominators a candidate had the other day, something
somewhat inane.   People are hedging their bets too far, trying to
ascertain whether their trust will be broken.  We should simply be
stating our trust as it stands there and then.  We have a procedure in
hand to deal with times when admins go round the bend. They're called
"Tell Jimbo and keep out of the way until the dust settles". :)

The only thing that isn't undoable as an admin is image deletion.  The
rest has become pretty much fixable.  Yes there are wheel warring
dangers and the like, but once you take an eventualist approach, it all
settles down a lot.

>
> In the case of AfD, and more particularly, notability, we can vote on
> the proposal "all published academics are notable". Should it pass,
> then no "not notable" argument should ever be accepted on a published
> academic. And should it fail, then you would need to find another
> argument for keeping an individual article on an academic.

The problem with notability is that it's situated in muddy water, and
all attempts to clean the water up are resisted.  It's an issue that's
never going to be sorted out until the community settles the issue one
way or another.  Either the three key policies are all we need, and the
concept of notability is linked to them, or a concept of notability
separate from the three is established. Sadly too many people seem to
reject any defining of the concept, although I've never been clear why,
since their argument seems to be that the three key policies are enough.
  To me that makes the case that the concept should be linked to the
three key policies, but it appears that proposal is doomed to fail.

But as it stands no not notable vote should ever be considered, since it
presents no argument as to why the topic in question is not notable.
I've been involved in discussions where an article asserts that it's
topic is thought to be one of the first in its field, and this isn't
deemed notable enough.  Someone even argued that it either was the first
or it wasn't, something which to me contradicts NPOV policy.  We should
never assert something is the first, we should assert it is claimed to
be the first by such and such a source, or it is widely held to be the
first.  But that's my take on it.

Steve block

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from_name: Robert Rapplean

subject: [Wikitech-l] Threads: any plans

references:
<87y7xhlsho.fsf@mat.ucm.es>
	<295fb610605051123q3ccca886i2cf0e428b29c8cb1@mail.gmail.com>
	<87hd40g5n6.fsf@mat.ucm.es>

body:
On 5/8/06, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
>
> Your tool is an experiment? Is intended to be included in media wiki?

Experiment is the right word for it.  I've identified a lot of uses for it,
and the talk pages on Wikipedia are an ideal typification of why it would be
valuable.  Like most online communication tools it's designed to facilitate
communication between individuals, but has no built in facilities for the
organization of thoughts, nor for the aggregation of the participant's ideas
into a single central consensus.

This is especially true for the wikipedia, where one discussion page is
being used to determine the consensus on a myriad of ideas presented in any
single entry.  I think it would be an excellent proving grounds for the
tool.


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
Raphael Wegmann <raphael at psi.co.at> wrote:

    Where would you expect to see the cartoon image?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands-Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy
    or
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jyllands-Posten-Muhammad-dr.png

    --
I don't think we're ever going to see the censorship policy the same way, so here's my suggestion regarding this question specifically.  I'm fine with it either way, whether displayed on it or linked to.  Assuming that neither side is going to be happy with just a link or with the comic on full display, consider suggesting a partial clip of the comic to be displayed that still links to the comic in full.  Try to agree on a clip that is not the most offensive part to you.~~~~Pro-Lick

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger with Voice. PC-to-Phone calls for ridiculously low rates.


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Platonides wrote:
>> An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:
>>
>> Running test Table security: embedded pipes
>> (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)...
>> FAILED!
>> Running test Magic Word: {{NUMBEROFFILES}}... FAILED!
> Isn't this magic word already working?

Apparently not, the test case returns empty text. This may be a bug in the test
runner.

> It gives me:
>

>
One

>
Two

Turn off tidy and try again, you'll notice it's much worse.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Craig Whitford

body:
 like AFD, it's one of the better things about Wikipedia.
Votes for deletion didn't sound good as a name anyway.

I wonder if Jason Gastrich is still creating more sockpuppets to vote-stack - and why
has no-one bothered to put his ban back to 1 year??

As for 'We need a policy against vote-stacking', well, what about new users who
register multiple usernames like in the Chantelle Houghton AfD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articles_for_deletion/Chantelle_Houghton

(you'll notice the closing admin referred to 'sockpuppets').

This is a good example of why we need such a policy.

Craig


subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
On 5/8/06, Raphael Wegmann <raphael at psi.co.at> wrote:
> charles matthews wrote:
> > Actually the only way not to offend anyone is  to avoid all controversial
> > topics.  It was decided, long ago, not to do that, and not to give the kind
> > of treatment you might find in government-approved history books.
>
> I disagree. It is possible to present controversial topics in
> a non-offensive way by presenting the differing point of views,
> balancing their weight and establishing a consensus among all
> interested parties. It happens all the time on Wikipedia.

Good luck.  Many Turks find it offensive simply to suggest that Turks
killed hundreds of thousands of Armenians, while Armenians find
mention of the Turkish view equally offensive.  The only way to offend
neither side is to ignore the subject entirely -- and then you'll get
accused of censorship.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] systemic bias

body:
"Raphael Wegmann" wrote
>
> Many editors think that numerical supermajority equals
> consensus (it doesn't). Consensus is strictly reached only
> when all concerned have accepted a position.

No, that is 'unanimity'.  Here on Wikipedia this has never been the
definition used of 'consensus'.  No one voice has a veto, when it comes to
understanding whether there is a consensus view.

Numerically consensus is something like 80% approval, but of course a purely
numerical criterion is not useful.

Charles


body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
> On 5/9/06, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> The only thing that isn't undoable as an admin is image deletion.  The
>> rest has become pretty much fixable.  Yes there are wheel warring
>> dangers and the like, but once you take an eventualist approach, it all
>> settles down a lot.
>
> Err, not quite.  There are a number of other things that are
> "undoable" -- in the sense that once an admin does them, they can't be
> directly reversed -- leaking deleted revisions chief among them.
> Whether this is a real problem is up for debate, of course; but it's
> worth pointing out that the question of admin trust is a bit more
> complicated than merely "will he go on an image deletion spree?"

I think that's a separate issue to the point I was making, but again, my
broader point still remains, that people shouldn't have any arbitrary
rules as to what constitutes trust.  They should check a nominees
history and block logs, and make a decision based on that and the
discussion that ensues.  If someone pops up and states that foo has
started edit wars left right and centre, that's more important than that
x has concentrated his edits in the template space.

Nothing is going to tell you whether an admin is going to leak edits
from a revision history, and to my mind that problem is solved my
removing such stuff as the board don't want leaked from the revision
history, something I believe stewards can do.  Sure, there'll be uproar
from the Wikipedia is not censored crowd, but I think there would be a
consensus that Wikipedia is subject to the laws of its physical location
trumps that.

I was never seeking to equate admin trust with the question of whether
someone will go on an image deletion spree, there are some people I
fancy should be admins who probably would do just that.  The issue
should be one of trust, something I don't see as being determined by any
arbitrary standards, but by judging the user's contributions.

Steve block

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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV majorities/minorities

body:
Cheney Shill wrote:

>Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>    I think the ambiguity is necessary -- 10 fringe sources do not
>    outweigh 2 sources from recognized authorities. But there's no easy
>
>I agree about the 10 fringe vs. 2 authorities.  But that has nothing to do with this scenario, in which the sources are of equal authority.  In fact, the very fact that you turned a non-ambiguous scenario into an ambiguous scenario is evidence that the process itself is far too ambiguous.  It's not just you; I have not gotten 1 straight answer on this.  Are we not supposed to be judging and reporting on the facts as they are, not as we think they should be?~~~~Pro-Lick
>
Reporting yes; judging no.

Ambiguity is a fact of life; learn to live with it!

Ec


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194757,00.html

" I also met the guy who invented Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, and video
game designer Rob Pardo, who couldn't believe he'd been invited.
James, Wales and Pardo were all on the 100 list."

And

"Meantime, I left the Time Warner center just as my pal Ann Coulter
was busy chastising Jimmy Wales about her Wikipedia entry, and finding
out from him how to change it. Listen, you Wikipedians, be nice to Ann
Coulter. I leave you with this thought: she's got great legs no matter
what her politics are, and you're lucky she has a sense of humor,
too."


from_name: FlaBot

body:
A List can be done via a toolserver program.

Flacus
--
[[:de:Benutzer:Flacus]][[:de:Benutzer:FlaBot]]
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~flacus/IWLC/


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] An "approved" project ??

body:
Actually there is an ethnologue code for "Russian Buryat" (as opposed
to Mongolian or Chinese Buryat). That would probably be appropriate
here.

Mark

On 09/05/06, Berto <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> > Why it is deficient?
>
> I guess the problem is that sometimes ethnologue codes may differ from
> reality. The further away languages get from the west, the lower is the
> probability of having people inform ethnologue of the problem, in order to
> correct the situation. Now maybe there really are a number of variations of
> the buryaty language, one of which has got govt recognition. The problem is
> that no ethnologue code was issued, following this event. I suspect that
> more than just one language may find itself in this situation, in the area
> of the Russian Federation. It would be nice to set up a systematic
> verification process and clear up the mess.
>
> Gerard, is there any standard procedure we should follow to report the
> problem to ethnologue?
>
> B?rto
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 5/9/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > On 5/4/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >>'''Hormonal Screamings'' is a rock band hailing from Houghton, Michigan.
> >>Next year they are going to take over the world.
> >>"
> >
> > So that's an example of an article which you feel *doesn't* assert
> > notability.  It still doesn't answer the question of what it means to
> > assert notability, and it isn't an example of an article which asserts
> > notability but doesn't establish it.
>
> No, it does assert notability -- it's just that the assertion is pretty
> weak.  Per [[WP:VAIN]], patently absurd assertions (such as "Joe Smith
> is the King of the United States") do not need to be considered.  The
> assertion given above, being an unsubstantiated claim about the future,
> might perhaps be considered such.

But the claim that they are a rock band hailing from Houghton,
Michigan is not about the future, and is not patently absurd.

> For example, an article that only said "John Doe is a chemist" would
> technically be speediable.

Only if you assume that being a chemist is not a claim to notability.

> > I still have no idea what it means to "assert notability" or what "an
> > article with no claim to notability" is.
>
> A typical article with no claim to notability might be something like:
>
> "Joe Smith (b. 1989) is a student at the Whateverville high school.  He
> plays football and listens to Red Hot Chili Peppers.  He's a really
> great guy."

I'd say that has plenty of claims to notability, but is patently absurd.

Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] SoC: MediaWiki Export

body:
On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 05:26:12PM +0100, Ben Francis wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > I've
> > badly wanted to see something like this for some time, and would be
> > glad (with 20 years system analyst experience :-) to kibitz on the
> > design, if you like.
>
> That's cool, thanks.
>
> > My personal target was mostly being able to extract a partial tree from
> > a running MW install, and dump it into a DocBook source file,
>
> When you say a "partial" tree, how would you define the boundaries of
> said tree?

Well, this is where you diverge from the translation part to the
extraction part, the part I don't think Magnus' tool deals with yet
(though I haven't looked deeply into it).

There are 2 issues that I can see, off hand:

	1) Limiting what you extract (and handling it properly, viz a
	viz, say, "actual pages" vs "glossary items", and suchlike)

	and

	2) Properly handling cross references

The first can probably be handled by category tagging and some
configuration files; the latter will likely require some indepth
knowledge of how DocBook handles such things, since you can't do
hyperlinks on many of DocBook's target formats (like, um, paper :-),
and you can't bind traditional cross-references until you have real
page numbers.

On the specific issue of trimming the tree, part of it is going to have
to be discipline on the part of the maintainers of the wiki not to
introduce loops -- it will likely be necessary to have a pre-pass
switch on the driver engine that extracts and displays the "table of
contents" in a raw unnumbered mode (in addition, of course, to one that
generates a formattable ToC) so you can see if it ever ends.

But ignoring everything except the content of the actual page (what you
get from &action=raw, which was going to be my approach) is probably
the starting point, of course.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 5/9/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> Then he ran for RfA.  He was opposed on many counts, including general
> immaturity, low-level creepiness, having an huge edits-per-article
> average (because of his obsession with Article X), and having a really
> annoying way of using talkpages (coloured text and a big .sig).  He
> attempted to argue that, since he was a "Wikipedian in good standing",
> because he had the minimum cited edit count at the time, we owed him
> adminship.  He even complained to Jimbo about it.
>
>
> As long as we persist in expecting admins to have the support of the
> community, there should be a way for us to have input on candidates who
> may meet all the requirements but who nevertheless should not be allowed
> to ever touch those extra buttons.

Every time I explain my idea, I do it badly :) When I say, "we check
that the candidate meets all the requirements", I don't imply that
those requirements are simply numerical. I would hope they would
include things like "little evidence of incivility", "no edit warring
in 2 months preceding nomination", "little evidence of treating
Wikipedia as MySpace" etc. I would hope for a healthy debate over what
we expect from an admin. Rather than a debate over every individual
candidate who runs, rehashing the same arguments again and again.

In exactly the same way, rather than fighting on every single AfD
whether all schools are notable, for instance, have the debate once
and for all (to be fair, I think the "centralized discussion" place
tries to do this?), then simply apply the rules.

Certain requirements will require intelligent human interpretation to
see whether a given article subject/admin candidate meets them. But
I'd much rather see "meets criteria 1,3,4 but I can't find a source to
see that the article meets criteria 2", rather than "nn, delete ~~~~".

Steve


body:
On 5/9/06, FlaBot <flabot at googlemail.com> wrote:
> A List can be done via a toolserver program.

And the subsequent update?

Perhaps there's something I'm missing about MediaWiki, but are queries
like "get me all redirects pointing to this page" really so expensive?
I mean, the "what links here" page does that. Obviously these
references are cached somewhere, so, it shouldn't be any more
expensive to display that list than to display the "what links here"
page, right? Or is the problem that redirects are not flagged that way
in the internal links table?

I'm speculating a lot :)

Steve


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 09/05/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I was thinking it might be nice - if someone, such as an SoC'er :)
> - had the time, to display all the redirects to a given page in an
> editable format. At its simplest, it could be a simple multi-line edit
> box with a redirect on each line. When you add new lines, they would
> be converted to new redirects. Deletion of redirects via this method
> would require consideration...

I've heard this before from Brian0918, and had some sample code at
some time. I didn't finish it for a couple of reasons, but I bet it's
still lurking about on one of these machines...

Rob Church


body:
On 09/05/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> As long as we persist in expecting admins to have the support of the
> community, there should be a way for us to have input on candidates who
> may meet all the requirements but who nevertheless should not be allowed
> to ever touch those extra buttons.

It's called, "we do an Ed Poor on RfA".

Rob Church


body:
How is it that Fox can get "Wikipedians" right, when even articles
*about* Wikipedia came up with "Wikitopians"?

Steve

On 5/9/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194757,00.html
>
> " I also met the guy who invented Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, and video
> game designer Rob Pardo, who couldn't believe he'd been invited.
> James, Wales and Pardo were all on the 100 list."
>
> And
>
> "Meantime, I left the Time Warner center just as my pal Ann Coulter
> was busy chastising Jimmy Wales about her Wikipedia entry, and finding
> out from him how to change it. Listen, you Wikipedians, be nice to Ann
> Coulter. I leave you with this thought: she's got great legs no matter
> what her politics are, and you're lucky she has a sense of humor,
> too."
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 5/9/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> How is it that Fox can get "Wikipedians" right, when even articles
> *about* Wikipedia came up with "Wikitopians"?

Because Fox is fair and balanced. One day it's Wikitopians, one day
it's Wikipedians.


from_name: Platonides

body:
> An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:
>
> Running test Table security: embedded pipes
> (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)...
> FAILED!
> Running test Magic Word: {{NUMBEROFFILES}}... FAILED!
Isn't this magic word already working?
Wiki code "We have {{NUMBEROFFILES}} files."
gives output "
We have 6.218 files.
"The test expects for
"{{NUMBEROFFILES}}" an output of"
1
"May this new line be wrong on the
test?> Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math
enabled... FAILED!> Running test Language converter: output gets cut off
unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!Why are those bugs marked as resolved if
we don't pass the bug test?
> Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
Test:

One

Two

expected result

One

Two

It gives me:

One

Two

even better than the test, isn't?

> Running test HTML ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
When i try it i see no difference from the testcase. :S

> Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Given:

One

Two

Expects:

One

Two

Output:

One

Two

I think it passes.

> Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Given:

One

Two:

Sub-one

Sub-two

Expects:

One

Two:

Sub-one

Sub-two

Output:

One

Two:

Sub-one

Sub-two

It's the same.

> Running test HTML nested ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Given:

One

Two:

Sub-one

Sub-two

Expects:

One

Two:

Sub-one

Sub-two

Output:

One

Two:

Sub-one

Sub-two

Again can't find the difference. Maybe due to the new line? at:
"

!! end"

> Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Fails.
>
> Passed 303 of 313 tests (96.81%) FAILED!

Tests done on wikipedia.

Platonides


subject: [Wikitech-l] title case mapping and Wiktionary links

body:
Steve Summit wrote:
[snip]
>    2. It might also be possible to implement the test and optional text
>       right there in 'noarticletext', using the new in-line conditional
>       expressions.  (But I'm not sure they're quite powerful enough.)

I'd say give this a shot, and if it doesn't look like it's going to work we
could probably add a special-case on the software as 1)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
On 5/9/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On May 6, 2006, at 7:24 AM, Guettarda wrote:
>
> > If you have unpublished photographs taken by a deceased relative
> > which you
> > wish to use on Wikipedia, how would you license them?  Assuming
> > that you
> > have survivor rights or permission from other heirs of the
> > photographer,
> > would it be possible to release them under the GFDL or cc by sa?
> > If they
> > were taken by, say, your grandfather, and there is nothing in his will
> > dealing with "other stuff", would you have to get permission from
> > all of his
> > surviving children, or their heirs (if the children are deceased)?
> > I'm
> > assuming here that the photographs are otherwise unpublished, and
> > were taken
> > recently enough/the person was alive recently enough that they
> > would still
> > be covered by copyright.
>
> My understanding is that if you're the heir, you inherit all
> property, including intellectual property, and can do with it as you
> see fit.

Yes, this is a question about inheritance law, not copyright law.
Whoever inherits the copyright owns that intellectual property. The
time during which the property exists is (in most jurisdictions)
affected by the date that the creator died, but the existence of the
property is otherwise unaffected. So the question really is, who
inherited the copyrights?

(IANAL, JALS)

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] NPOV majorities/minorities

body:
On 5/9/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Reporting yes; judging no.
>
> Ambiguity is a fact of life; learn to live with it!
>
> Ec

Maybe I will, then!

~maru

"If I don't survive, tell my wife: Hello." -Futurama


from_name: Ben Francis

subject: [Wikitech-l] SoC: MediaWiki Export

body:
Hi,

Since the MediaWiki Client API is no longer a Google Summer of Code
project, I've managed to find another proposal which I find really
interesting and submitted my application, MediaWiki Export.

Application here: http://ideas.hippygeek.co.uk/wiki/WikimediaSoCApplication
More details here: http://ideas.hippygeek.co.uk/wiki/MediaWikiExport

I'm interested in how much work has gone into this already because it
would be such a useful feature (both the exporting and the native
DocBook storage). Actually, once the API gets implemented there are
enormous possibilities for using MediaWiki as a document management tool
and calling the API from different internal systems.

An organisation could write documents using a desktop application but
use MediaWiki for the back end storage. They could then log in remotely,
access and edit the documents from anywhere via a web interface or other
application.

Imagine MediaWiki for help systems where the help appears inside a
desktop or web application but is stored and collaboratively edited
using a MediaWiki installation.

If the XHTML wiki web pages only have to be one representation of the
data, the possibilties are endless!

The PHP tool written by Magnus Manske
(http://magnusmanske.de/wiki2xml/w2x.php) looks good

Best Wishes

Ben

--
Ben "tola" Francis
http://hippygeek.co.uk


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 5/9/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> This does bring up the question, are "news" and PR broadcasters blocked
> from Wiki like congress?  Or can Coulter, Rush, and Oreilly edit their
> entries with the aid of their staff?

See WP:AUTO.  Editing your own article is strongly discouraged, as is
editing any topic which you are too close to.  If one of them edited their
own article they would probably get a warning from the other editors.  If
they edited their own articles they way the write/speak, it would get
reverted anyway, even if no one knew it was them.  But most celebrities have
too big egos to edit anonymously.