subject: [WikiEN-l] WelcomeCommitteeBot?

body:
If the newbies try to reply on their own talk page, we should include a
"please click here to reply" link to avoid that.

On 2/18/07, xaosflux <xaosflux at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> These usually get rejected over at [[WP:RFBOT]].  The last one rejected I
> can find is [[Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Welcomebot]], with the
> reasonable basis that it was being proposed by an operator that was indef
> blocked.
>
> Some of the issues that come up with this perenial proposal are:
> *Dealing with dynamic IP addresses when welcoming anons and
> *Being "personal", the idea below about putting  a random (rotating)
> contact
> on the message may address that, but without leaving specific instuctinos
> the new user may try to reply to "you the welcomer" by editing their own
> talk, and noone will be watching it.
>
> [[en:user:xaosflux]]
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Parker Peters" <parkerpeters1002 at gmail.com>
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Sent: Saturday, February 17, 2007 3:01 AM
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] WelcomeCommitteeBot?
>
>
> > Has been suggested numerous times.
> >
> > Is a wonderful idea.
> >
> > Will probably be rejected yet again, for no reasonable basis.
> >
> > Parker
> >
> > On 2/16/07, A <jokestress at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> Seeing the wide variety of welcome templates used and some recent
> >> interactions with new IP editors have me thinking about this as an
> >> option.
> >>
> >> The basics:
> >>
> >> 1. Would post a welcome message the first time an IP address or
> >> registered
> >> account is used to edit.
> >> 2. Would explain key policies.
> >> 3. Would encourage the IP editors to register a username.
> >> 4. Would indicate a place where any questions could be directed.
> >>
> >> This automated message would have a few benefits:
> >>
> >> 1. It would reach people immediately after they make their first edit.
> >> 2. It might help some editors avoid common issues with first edits:
> >> original
> >> research, copyright issues, POV, verifiability.
> >> 3. It might cut down on some of the other misunderstandings novice
> >> editors
> >> have.
> >>
> >> Interested editors could sign on when they are available to take
> >> questions
> >> from novices, or the new editors could be sent to a page where they
> could
> >> ask any questions and get a fairly quick response.
> >>
> >> If it seems it might be more personal, maybe the bot could randomly
> >> assign
> >> an experienced editor to each welcome message, someone signed up on the
> >> welcoming committee.
> >>
> >> It seems that this might cut down on much of the back and forth
> >> experienced
> >> editors have with new editors, and it might encourage more people to
> >> register. Sometimes editors get welcomed immediately, and other times
> it
> >> takes months.
> >>
> >> Thoughts?
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> WikiEN-l mailing list
> >> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> >> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >>
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: K P

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On 2/18/07, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Feb 18, 2007, at 3:39 PM, Marc Riddell wrote:
>
> >> or is it an elitist workspace for an elitist group of
> >> people who live in cyberspace?
>
> A common complaint by these that have much to say but show little
> interest in contributing of their valuable free time to keep
> Wikipedia ticking.
>
> Administrators perform an admirable job and a thankless one, by the
> look if it.
>
> -- Jossi

Maybe so, but I do contribute some of my valuable free time to keeping
Wikipedia ticking, on top of a an ungodly huge family, full time job, and a
career as an artist, so your general comment does not apply to me
specifically.  So what's the point when it doesn't answer me or the
comment?  To disparage those who cannot devote huge amounts of time solely
to Wikipedia?

Wikipedia cannot be what it is intended to be if designed only for those
with plenty of free time to devote to keeping Wikipedia ticking, because
that's not anyone, that's just a little bit of the anyone who could possibly
be editing Wikipedia.

KP


from_name: David Ashby

subject: [WikiEN-l] class-action suit??

body:
On 2/18/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> This just in from [[Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#Class Action?]]:
>
>         I was recently contacted by some law firm from Miami,
>         Florida about some class-action lawsuit they were
>         assembling that involved a bunch of former and current
>         Wikipedia editors that are suing the Wikimedia Foundation
>         for compensation for all the time they spent improving
>         the site without pay.
>         [[User:Snowboarder77]] 03:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
>
> I rather suspect it's bogus on a couple of different levels,
> but I thought I'd mention it here.

And I'm planning on suing my local church for compensation for all the
work I've done over the last few years without getting paid, even
though I was volunteering at the time. What rubbish!

-David


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] One new and one old tool

body:
On 18/02/07, Florian Straub <flominator at gmx.net> wrote:
> It would be useful if a few things were changed:
> > * possibility to input image url instead of image ID. (shouldn't be
> > that hard...)
>
> It could be difficult, since there are various kinds of image urls at
> flickr, but I'll see what I can do.

well, it doesn't have to be perfect. The two obvious cases (the image
page, where comments and tags are, and the 'photo zoom' version which
has different sizes) should be relatively easy. for anything else, it
can always throw an error which explains how to find the image ID.

> > * include the {{flickrreview}} template in the pastable output (I
> > thought it used to?)
>
> For admins it already does :)

for everyone else, it should just put {{flickrreview}} though :P

> > * make translatable, since if other langs update their special:Upload
> > forms, they will want to link to a version in their language
>
>  What exactly should be translateable?

Subtitle ('the easy way to upload pics from Flickr'), field name
('ID:'), submit button text ('Get Flickr-Info'), link names ('Open
upload form', 'Download original size'), preview button text
('preview'), any error messages. You know, basically any piece of text
aside from the paste-able content.
I would also make the URL of the 'open upload form' link
translate-able. For EN it can be
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?uselang=fromflickr&title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=$1

If other languages implement these forms, they will be like
uselang=DEfromflickr
etc.

I would also create a page just for feedback and comments on the tool,
rather than only linking to your userpage. (And make it on commons or
meta, please. :P) And on the page you can give info about how people
can provide translations.
Probably Magnus or Duesentrieb can give more advice at this stage,
about making tools i18nable.

cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rx Dosage Instructions in Wikipedia

body:
On 2/18/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
> Brian Salter-Duke wrote:
> > We have to also think about the fact that "prescription drugs" and "call
> > your doctor" are First World things. In West Africa for example, what we
> > call prescription drugs are often frequently available in the market.
> > Their misuse is one of the factors that leads to drug resistent
> bacteria.
> > Maybe reliable information about doses may be usefull here. I'm not
> > sure.
> >
>
> And not just in West Africa. When I lived in Chicago, the immigrant-run
> corner store near my house had a variety of black-market prescription
> drugs. At first I was horrified, but when I did the math on exactly how
> many hours your average illegal immigrant had to work to pay for one
> doctor's visit, it made a lot more sense.
>
>
> William

There are plenty of on-line places whose purpose is to give dosages.
Usefulness?  I use that one every once in a while and get firmly scolded,
Wikipedia is not a recipe book, for cakes or drugs, and dosage is a lot more
complex than just knowing the amount.  In my industry, we say, "the dose
makes the poison."  Should Wikipedia risk that?

KP


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>
	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca> <45D8A51A.1030201@telus.net>
	<esght2da91fl8as59s6pcl76is4f8k865t@4ax.com>

body:
On 18/02/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> Plus, I am advocating replacing it with a verifiable and objective
> list, which they can still play with, just not adding their favourite
> basketball star.  They might have to do some research.  Something they
> could - you know - learn from.

[[List of people famous for being tall]] - there's your pygmies and
ballerinas, out go your average basketballer.

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Platonides

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] One week later and I am still blocked,
 nobody is doing a fucking thing

body:
Andre Engels wrote:
> * people who use proxies usually do this to avoid being blocked. It is never
> necessary to use open proxies to edit Wikipedia
> * people who standard work from an open proxy, know how to disable it

...unless they're transparent proxys set by their ISP. Which comes to
only blocking *open* proxys; not any proxy, suspicious of being open.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>
	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca> <45D8A51A.1030201@telus.net>
	<esght2da91fl8as59s6pcl76is4f8k865t@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140702181357s55adcd4mf4afd5c6178dbade@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 18/02/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18/02/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> > Plus, I am advocating replacing it with a verifiable and objective
> > list, which they can still play with, just not adding their favourite
> > basketball star.  They might have to do some research.  Something they
> > could - you know - learn from.

> [[List of people famous for being tall]] - there's your pygmies and
> ballerinas, out go your average basketballer.

For comparison, [[List of longest novels]] has interesting history,
discussion and caveats. In Search Of Lost Time is pretty much the
"conventional winner" as the longest novel anyone actually reads as a
novel, but is not first on the list at all.

- d.


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/18/07, Keitei <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 18, 2007, at 15:06, George Chriss wrote:
> > Having a vandal change specific dosage amounts is a scary prospect,
> > as some people may actually trust our information at face value.
>
> These are prescription drugs? If so, I'm sure said people will trust
> their doctors and the labels on their drugs and the inserts which
> come with the drugs far more than an online encyclopedia. Perhaps
> they will call their doctor and say, "I read that the usual dosage
> was much higher/lower, what gives?" And their doctor will tell them
> the information was wrong. Even if they trusted the information,
> that's no reason to act on it.
>
> --keitei

My general experience based on how people react to information about
"alt med" on the net suggest that there are a fair number of people
who will not trust their doctors or even consult them.
--
geni


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Distributed content hosting

body:
Anthony wrote:
> I'd like to run a live mirror of Wikipedia without any advertising.
> I'd put the live pages into the robots.txt file so search engines
> would only be allowed to access my local cache, and thus wouldn't
> cause any extra traffic for Wikimedia.  So can I have permission to do
> this?
>
> Anthony

As far as you don't hit the wikipedia servers when crawling to populate
your cache. Get the dumps from http://download.wikimedia.org/

Remember to state that the content is under GFDL and to credit the authors.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves inpt.wikipedia.org

body:
On 2/18/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Do you mind providing links to the discussions that took place? That can
> help us understand the arguments a bit more, even though I do not think
> this
> is controversial.
>
> Titoxd.

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vota%C3%A7%C3%B5es/Restri%C3%A7%C3%B5es_%C3%A0_movimenta%C3%A7%C3%A3o_de_p%C3%A1ginas

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Discuss%C3%A3o:Vota%C3%A7%C3%B5es/Restri%C3%A7%C3%B5es_%C3%A0_movimenta%C3%A7%C3%A3o_de_p%C3%A1ginas


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
A live mirror is not based on using dumps. A life mirror wants an update by
either crawling real time or by using the RSS feed to keep the system up to
date.
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 2/18/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Anthony wrote:
> > I'd like to run a live mirror of Wikipedia without any advertising.
> > I'd put the live pages into the robots.txt file so search engines
> > would only be allowed to access my local cache, and thus wouldn't
> > cause any extra traffic for Wikimedia.  So can I have permission to do
> > this?
> >
> > Anthony
>
> As far as you don't hit the wikipedia servers when crawling to populate
> your cache. Get the dumps from http://download.wikimedia.org/
>
> Remember to state that the content is under GFDL and to credit the
> authors.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Timwi wrote:
>> Why would a node that is close by be dead ??
>
> Because people tend to turn off their own computers whenever they want
> to. And because computers sometimes crash, or Internet connections go down.

The redirection could be done within a frame. If mirror answers the page
in less than x seconds, the page will load and a frame-breaker will
destroy it. If not, the second frame can switch to the next server.
Worst case for the server: it is busy answering petitions which, by the
time it has the answer, the client is asking to another server. :/


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout (deputy admins)

body:
On 18/02/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's definitely not our job to fix injured sensibilities. I strongly
> suggest you both play nicer.

As you're the second person to use the phrase "you both" when replying
to me, I should point out that... oh, forget it.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 21:57:11 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>[[List of people famous for being tall]] - there's your pygmies and
>ballerinas, out go your average basketballer.

Yes, exactly.  Actually I think we should have a list of people
notable for their height, but I don't know how you'd exclude all dwarf
actors, since their notability is founded on dwarfism, which implies
stature.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>
	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca> <45D8A51A.1030201@telus.net>
	<esght2da91fl8as59s6pcl76is4f8k865t@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140702181357s55adcd4mf4afd5c6178dbade@mail.gmail.com>
	<d2mht250ug2pimtpj77n0vf8vqolmtfqlj@4ax.com>

body:
On 18/02/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> Yes, exactly.  Actually I think we should have a list of people
> notable for their height, but I don't know how you'd exclude all dwarf
> actors, since their notability is founded on dwarfism, which implies
> stature.

Have a "see separate list" link. If there isn't a good list of dwarf
actors, there should be one.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>
	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca>
	<or7ht2l2icej8vvroklvl3p480cvb7qiql@4ax.com>
	<45D8BA99.8010405@shaw.ca>
	<vpght2htdh75b1780ohdjr54eg2cldecgn@4ax.com>
	<45D8DD31.5040101@shaw.ca>

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:11:45 -0700, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>> Right, so it's only geographically, temporally and ethnically biased,
>> which makes it - er, still crap :-)
>
>It doesn't include or exclude based on geography, time period, or
>ethnicity, so it's actually _un_biased on those criteria. The exclusion
>based on whether one plays basketball is a bit of an odd exception to
>that, I admit, but could be handled with that subarticle split I
>suggested earlier.

Yes, it is.  Check out the stats on average height by country.  There
is a 10" difference between the lowest and the highest

>In any event, I still don't see the problem with selective lists in
>general as long as the criteria for selection is objectively described.
>This is a list of people who are taller than a specific height, a clear
>criteria on which to judge inclusion or exclusion. Whether the subject
>is "crap" or not is a separate issue.

But the "objective" value of tall is subjective, and largely based on
the number of hits it gets, looking at the history.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>
	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca> <45D8A51A.1030201@telus.net>
	<esght2da91fl8as59s6pcl76is4f8k865t@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140702181357s55adcd4mf4afd5c6178dbade@mail.gmail.com>
	<d2mht250ug2pimtpj77n0vf8vqolmtfqlj@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140702181500x7f991404o20faf19f321c2450@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 23:00:43 +0000, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
wrote:

>Have a "see separate list" link. If there isn't a good list of dwarf
>actors, there should be one.

Good batting, Thinkman.  Or something.

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


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>
	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca> <45D8A51A.1030201@telus.net>
	<esght2da91fl8as59s6pcl76is4f8k865t@4ax.com>
	<45D8E016.5050804@shaw.ca>

body:
On 2/18/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> > Plus, I am advocating replacing it with a verifiable and objective
> > list, which they can still play with, just not adding their favourite
> > basketball star.  They might have to do some research.  Something they
> > could - you know - learn from.
>
> I think I've found the article you were complaining about
> (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tall_men>?) and it's got 150
> references already, very few of the entries don't have one. It's also
> divided into sections by both the centimeter and the inch, so my earlier
> suggestion about making it so that individual readers could decide for
> themselves what "tall" meant was already implemented.
>
> Other than the basketball exception I'm really not sure what else can be
> done with this, it looks fine to me.

The problem is the lack of objective criteria.  The references I clicked on
verify the height of the people, not the fact that they are notable for
being tall.  In addition, many of them don't look like reliable sources -
there's no obvious way to tell what the basis for the claim on the websites
may be.  This is the essence of original research - using available
information (height of the people) to create new information (notable for
being tall) based on a paediatric definition of "tall stature" (2.5-3 sd
above mean), with an extra 6 cm added for good measure.

How is that "fine"?


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Stephen Bain wrote:

>On 2/19/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>I wouldn't
>>bake a cake using a recipe from Wikipedia without checking against
>>outside sources first...
>>
>>
>Ingredients:
>
>* 2 cups self-raising flour
>* 1 cup sugar
>* 2 eggs
>* 2 tbsp nitroglycerine
>
>Method:
>
>Mix dry ingredients well. Beat egg and fold into dry mix. Throw
>nitroglycerin at the mix as hard as you can.
>
Two tablespoons seems like high dosage for angina medicine.  I also
don't think that throwing the pills will have the desired medical effect.

Ec


body:
Brian Salter-Duke wrote:

>On Sun, Feb 18, 2007 at 10:04:42PM +0000, geni wrote:
>
>
>> My general experience based on how people react to information about
>>
>>"alt med" on the net suggest that there are a fair number of people
>>who will not trust their doctors or even consult them.
>>
>>
>We have to also think about the fact that "prescription drugs" and "call
>your doctor" are First World things. In West Africa for example, what we
>call prescription drugs are often frequently available in the market.
>Their misuse is one of the factors that leads to drug resistent bacteria.
>Maybe reliable information about doses may be usefull here. I'm not
>sure.
>
There's that, but some doctors are in the habit of providing antibiotics
on request to any patient.  There is also very heavy veterinary use of
antibiotics to keep farm animals from getting sick.  That too is bound
help build up drug resistance.

Ec


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] class-action suit??

body:
This just in from [[Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#Class Action?]]:

	I was recently contacted by some law firm from Miami,
	Florida about some class-action lawsuit they were
	assembling that involved a bunch of former and current
	Wikipedia editors that are suing the Wikimedia Foundation
	for compensation for all the time they spent improving
	the site without pay.
	[[User:Snowboarder77]] 03:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I rather suspect it's bogus on a couple of different levels,
but I thought I'd mention it here.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Jossi Fresco wrote:

>On Feb 18, 2007, at 3:39 PM, Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>
>>>or is it an elitist workspace for an elitist group of
>>>people who live in cyberspace?
>>>
>>>
>A common complaint by these that have much to say but show little
>interest in contributing of their valuable free time to keep
>Wikipedia ticking.
>
>Administrators perform an admirable job and a thankless one, by the
>look if it.
>
Just because someone isn't going out of his way to make himself visible
in the way that some admins do does not mean that he is doing nothing to
keep Wikipedia ticking.  Your attitude is very broadly disrespectful of
a wide range of contributors.

Have you forgoten that this thread started with complaints about admin
burnout.  The general solution that was suggested was to loosen up the
extreme restrictions on becoming a sysop.  But those content with the
present state of things argue loudly against it.  You can't have it both
ways.  Stop complaining about being overworked, or do something about
the problem.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

references:
<1d9gt25b5nnuc5g0b5ckkns5cmq7ps6qbn@4ax.com>
	<20070218161006.GA486@alva.mail.gmail.com>
	<nr2ht2tcn47l5rd2l0sahlttn6mn4up0ia@4ax.com>
	<45D89AF2.7070006@shaw.ca>
	<or7ht2l2icej8vvroklvl3p480cvb7qiql@4ax.com>
	<45D8BA99.8010405@shaw.ca>
	<vpght2htdh75b1780ohdjr54eg2cldecgn@4ax.com>
	<45D8DD31.5040101@shaw.ca>
	<mgnht29ipn8okq4cj629c6umlo5q56nt0a@4ax.com>
	<45D8E354.5060601@shaw.ca>

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:37:56 -0700, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>> Yes, it is.  Check out the stats on average height by country.  There
>> is a 10" difference between the lowest and the highest

>The list is about tall men. Excluding short men from it hardly seems
>like bias. It's like complaining that a list of the world's tallest
>trees doesn't have any representatives from Saudi Arabia on it; it's not
>bias because Saudia Arabia simply doesn't have any really tall trees in
>it (I'm assuming for purposes of argument, anyway).

No, you miss the point.  A notably tall Arabian tree would be much
shorter than a notably tall Dutch tree, but still notably tall for an
Arabian tree.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
On Sun, 18 Feb 2007 16:24:06 -0700, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>I think I've found the article you were complaining about
>(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tall_men>?) and it's got 150
>references already, very few of the entries don't have one. It's also
>divided into sections by both the centimeter and the inch, so my earlier
>suggestion about making it so that individual readers could decide for
>themselves what "tall" meant was already implemented.

The references are for the heights.  There are no references for what
constitutes tall, which is the fundamental criterion.  This is like
[[List of things that Colbert likes]] w ith citations to Colbert
saying he likes them.

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


from_name: effe iets anders

subject:
[Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves
	inpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou

body:
In my opinion, but of course i can not speak in any way for the foundation,
this is not an issue that is up to the foundation. The local community knows
best what they need, and I guess that if they find a developer that wants to
implement this, they can just ask him (her) to do it. I see no need to
discuss it all over here :-) It would perhaps be something different if you
prohibit editing for unregistered users etc maybe :-)

Lodewijk

2007/2/18, Titoxd op Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia op gmail.com>:
>
> No, it only requires some alterations of the site configuration file.
> Nothing major, actually. The main issue here is if it is acceptable to the
> Foundation.
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Casey Brown
> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 2:58 PM
> To: 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves
> inpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>
> Hi Daniel, one question:  Was this conclusion reached from a "straw poll"
> or
> discussion?  Otherwise, it seems good, but it would probably involve a
> site-wide semi-protection against moves and upping the "new account
> cut-off"
> to 45-days.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces op lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Nix
> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 4:25 PM
> To: foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves in
> pt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> In a recent poll on pt.wikipedia it was decided to restrict move
> pages to users with at least a 45-day-old registered account, the same
> minimum period to grant right to vote (but without the request of 100
> valid
> editions).
>
> I made a request on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9024 and
> it was suggested to consult the Foundation because the decision seems to
> be
> very restrictive.
>
> Well, the community decision was:
>
> First question (pro or con):
> *52 pro restriction
> *11 contro restriction
>
> Second (time restriction):
> *15 votes - 5 days
> *8 votes - 15 days
> *38 votes - 45 days
>
> So, I'd like to know what you think about it and what could be done after
> this decision.
>
> Thank you,
> Dantadd
> http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio_Discuss%C3%A3o:Dantadd
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Fale com seus amigos  de gra?a com o novo Yahoo! Messenger
> http://br.messenger.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l op lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
In my opinion, but of course i can not speak in any way for the foundation,
this is not an issue that is up to the foundation. The local community knows
best what they need, and I guess that if they find a developer that wants to
implement this, they can just ask him (her) to do it. I see no need to
discuss it all over here :-) It would perhaps be something different if you
prohibit editing for unregistered users etc maybe :-)

Lodewijk

2007/2/18, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com>:
>
> No, it only requires some alterations of the site configuration file.
> Nothing major, actually. The main issue here is if it is acceptable to the
> Foundation.
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Casey Brown
> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 2:58 PM
> To: 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List'
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves
> inpt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>
> Hi Daniel, one question:  Was this conclusion reached from a "straw poll"
> or
> discussion?  Otherwise, it seems good, but it would probably involve a
> site-wide semi-protection against moves and upping the "new account
> cut-off"
> to 45-days.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Nix
> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2007 4:25 PM
> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] Restriction on page moves in
> pt.wikipedia.orgThankyou
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> In a recent poll on pt.wikipedia it was decided to restrict move
> pages to users with at least a 45-day-old registered account, the same
> minimum period to grant right to vote (but without the request of 100
> valid
> editions).
>
> I made a request on http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9024 and
> it was suggested to consult the Foundation because the decision seems to
> be
> very restrictive.
>
> Well, the community decision was:
>
> First question (pro or con):
> *52 pro restriction
> *11 contro restriction
>
> Second (time restriction):
> *15 votes - 5 days
> *8 votes - 15 days
> *38 votes - 45 days
>
> So, I'd like to know what you think about it and what could be done after
> this decision.
>
> Thank you,
> Dantadd
> http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usu%C3%A1rio_Discuss%C3%A3o:Dantadd
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Fale com seus amigos  de gra?a com o novo Yahoo! Messenger
> http://br.messenger.yahoo.com/
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-19

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19986).

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

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

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


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 19/02/07, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm kind of assuming that at some point there will be YouTube-style videos
> embedded in many pages - e.g. for [[Hummingbird]], there might be a video
> which when you click play, will show you a hummingbird flying, and then
> again slowed down to show the mechanics of its hovering flight; And for
> [[Windsor Castle]] you might get a virtual tour of the highlights of the
> castle; for [[Vladimir Putin]] you might get a subtitled excerpt of a
> speech he's made; and so forth.

Shame the work on the plugins that would have made this a reality
sooner has been temporarily suspended.

Rob Church


from_name: Jim Wilson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Instant Messenger / Email integration with
	MediaWiki

body:
There was some dialog recently regarding the latter, email option - with
various proposals and quite a few detractors.  I haven't heard anyone
request IM integration.

I don't like either of the two proposed options.  The following is my
personal feeling regarding these requests (and does not necessarily reflect
that of the community or anyone else).

There are two basic forms of internet communication: Send-Receive and
Publish-Subscribe.  Instant Messaging, Chat Rooms and Email belong to the
former, while Wikis, Forums and Blogs belong to the latter.

Conversion between these two models is possible, and sometimes makes sense.
For example, a subscriber to a wiki or blog might be sent an email when a
change has occurred.  Using a Send-Receive mechanism as an implementation of
a subscriber tends to work out pretty well.

Going the other way, that is, using a Send-Receive mechanism to implement
the Publish in Publish-Subscribe, makes less sense. There are different
barriers to using IM vs Email as Wiki publication methods, which I outline
below:

1) Instant Messaging is a communication method which occurs between two (or
more) entities in more-or-less real time with no particular categorical or
topical imperatives.  There is an expectation that the conversation which
occurs over IM is intended only for the participating audience, and not for
general publication.  Tying directly to a wiki page (talk or otherwise)
violates this expectation, except in the case where all parties are
knowingly using the integrated wiki chat.  But if everyone's already using
the wiki, why not just edit the talk page?

2) Email, like IM, carries an expectation of confidentiality with the
recipients - though to a lesser degree since forwarding is common practice.
Email carries another debilitating feature - that the author of any
particular message is trivial to forge.  Thus integrating an email
conversation into a wiki page raises questions of content legitimacy.

Finally, in both the IM and Email cases, race-conditions become a serious
issue.  How do you determine which publishing entity (IM, Email client, or
wiki user) got there first?  Using a standard interface (the wiki)
alleviates this problem.

That said, there are ways to automatically publish the contents of Email
conversations as static web-pages.  For example, all messages posted to this
list ultimately winds up on Gossamer Threads:

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/wiki/wikitech/

Using a mailing-list-to-webpage facility may help with the Email option,
though admittedly this is not what you've asked for.

-- Jim R. Wilson (jimbojw)

On 2/19/07, Dr. Robert P. Biuk-Aghai <robertb at umac.mo> wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I have two common requests from users of MediaWiki at my site:
>
> 1. Being able to communicate via instant messenger *through the site*,
> where the chat gets recorded in the related article's Talk page.
>
> 2. Being able to edit articles by email, where the entire article gets
> emailed back and forth, and emailed changes to the article get saved as
> new versions.
>
> I can imagine a technical solution for (1) being an integration of an
> instant messenger server with MediaWiki which would save the IM
> conversation to the relevant Talk page; and for (2) a mailing list
> integrated with MediaWiki that would extract and clean up the article
> from the mail (removing any indents) and save it as a new version.
>
> My question: has anyone implemented anything like this before?
>
> Robert.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Andre Engels

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] One week later and I am still
	blocked, nobody is doing a fucking thing

body:
2007/2/18, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com>:

> > Well, I just got an explanation for that:
> > 1. Official foundation policy is that open proxies are blocked
>
> * Why for logged in users?

Because there was only one way of blocking when the policy was created.

2. Any change from that should work and have no negative consequences
> > 3. This change does not work because people in countries with these IP
> > still
> > cannot work on WikipediaNL
> > 4. This change has the negative side effect that people can create a
> > sockpuppet and use an open IP to edit from their sock puppet, which
> makes
> > sock puppets less easy to detect.
>
> * where is 'Assume good faith' ?

I don't think we have a rule 'assume good faith' on nl:. Apart from that, I
cannot answer questions about the opinions of people I don't agree with...

Do I agree with this? No. But I'm not a sysop, so my voice don't count. And
> > if I were a sysop, probably anything I do would be considered wheel
> > warring,
> > with me voluntarily giving up sysop powers being the most likely
> outcome.
>
>
> * Always thought that  sysops are for helping Wikimedians not only banning
> :(

I guess that relationships are too much damaged on nl: to make that a valid
option. There's quite a few people who feel it's "us vs. them", with them
being the sysops. Or at least are of the opinion that the sysops have too
much power.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] One week later and I am still blocked,
	nobody is doing a fucking thing


body:
2007/2/18, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com>:
>
> > Users will be somewhat unhappy if all of Wikipedia goes down and never
> > comes back. Users will be *much more* unhappy if Wikipedia continues to
> > operate but is extremely slow, unreliable, and often down.
>
> "Somewhat unhappy"? Come on dude. I mean, seriously.
>

Yeah, just somewhat unhappy. It's a problem, but also a chance. The great
thing about having this project copyleft as it is, is that if Wikipedia
would go down, anyone can take the content and start it again. And I'm quite
convinced that if it were now announced that Wikimedia might have to close
down in three months, before those three months were over there would be
quite a number of people and groups doing exactly that. And where we now
have one big Wikipedia, we would then have a multitude of small ones. Which
has both advantages and disadvantages.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Commons-l] King of the FlickrLickrs

body:
I'd like to officially announce Andre Engels as the reigning KING OF
THE FLICKRLICKRS. Andre was one of the first FlickrLickr reviewers,
and has reviewed a total of 30,000 CC-BY-licensed Flickr images so
far.

http://epov.org/cgi-bin/flickrlickr.pl?stats=1

Thanks to Andre for his continuing dedication. Though, KenWalker is
catching up quickly with 24,000 reviewed pictures. ;-) There are
currently 65 registered reviewers.

For those who do not know, FlickrLickr is a collaborative review
process for picking freely licensed pictures on Flickr that should be
uploaded to Commons:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr

You see 50 random photos per page, edit their descriptions, and tick
the ones you want to upload. The vast majority of photos on Flickr is
of no relevance to us, or of unacceptable quality. So far, more than
150,000 pictures have been reviewed, and about 8,000 of these have
been uploaded to Commons.

New pics are being uploaded to Flickr at a much faster rate than we
can review them -- there are more than 5 million pictures under
acceptable licenses on Flickr. So we always need more volunteers. Just
e-mail me off-list if you want an account (include your Commons
username).

You can review some of the favorites chosen by FlickrLickr users here:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:FlickrLickr/Highlights
(That page could use some reorganization - feel free to be bold. :-)

Some FlickrLickr pictures have become featured, and we do our best to
ensure that useful pictures get included in Wikimedia articles.
Volunteer today, and one day you might be the next .. KING OF THE
FLICKRLICKRS. ;-)
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

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

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


from_name: Domas Mituzas

references:
<490dd6310702170003v746b92dev511618f5aab9d6c5@mail.gmail.com>	<er7ed4$168$1@sea.gmane.org>	<490dd6310702172237h71ed661dscf67547f978c3eba@mail.gmail.com>	<er9rhn$ro$1@sea.gmane.org>	<45D8759E.2020309@gmail.com>	<er9tcs$aon$1@sea.gmane.org>	<45D87DCD.1000304@gmail.com>
	<era922$6pe$1@sea.gmane.org> <erafst$sqo$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> The redirection could be done within a frame. If mirror answers the
> page
> in less than x seconds, the page will load and a frame-breaker will
> destroy it. If not, the second frame can switch to the next server.

HTTP?

--
Domas Mituzas -- http://dammit.lt/ -- [[user:midom]]


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject:
[Foundation-l] List of True Internet proxy IP addresses (was
 Re: One week later and I am still blocked, time for another tantrum)

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>geni wrote:
>
>
>>On 2/18/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Waerth chooses to be rude and disruptive to the extend that he literally
>>>wishes that all Dutch mods are to drop dead. I am glad that I will
>>>survive this ordeal by not being a Dutch Wikipedia moderator... Given
>>>that Waerth is his own worst enemy and given that he states that he is
>>>leaving, I wish he does. He may be back if he wants to, but I wish for
>>>the nl.wikipedia community that when he does come back, it will be with
>>>a modified attitude.
>>>Thanks,
>>>    GerardM
>>>
>>>
>>I know this. However the Thailand IPs should not be hard blocked and
>>we don't appear to have a list of them anywhere.
>>
>>
>
>These are the ones I have found:
>
>61.91.190.242
>61.91.190.246
>61.91.190.248
>61.91.190.249
>61.91.190.250
>61.91.190.251
>61.91.191.2
>61.91.191.4
>61.91.191.6
>61.91.191.8
>61.91.191.9
>61.91.191.10
>61.91.191.11
>203.144.143.2
>203.144.143.3
>203.144.143.4
>203.144.143.5
>203.144.143.6
>203.144.143.7
>203.144.143.8
>203.144.143.9
>203.144.143.10
>203.144.143.11
>203.144.144.163
>203.144.160.250
>203.144.160.251
>
>
>

Thank you very much Tim Starling for helping me and in particular all
those other people out there who now get a "you are blocked screen" and
do not come back because of that. Thank you from me and my apologies if
I caused you a bit of a disturbance.

Whether people believe me or not it is not much me I am pissed about,
actually not just the IP addresses but all the IP addresses in many
countries that get blocked because their providers force them through
open or exit proxies. I have heard it is a problem in Indonesia as well.
Instead of just blocking we should try to find out which other
countries/providers do this so we can help users (Qatar springs to mind)

Waerth/Walter

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Steve wrote:
> While I certainly can't respect his delivery, I can definitely
> understand his angst in feeling unimportant, especially given his
> consistent contribution to the project.
>
> Can nobody help him? Even if it takes seeing past his disgusting presentation.

See my posts to foundation-l.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Hoi,
The notion of the sysops having too much power, is always seen from the
outside. From the inside you will notice that the more power you seem to
have the more careful you have to be when you wield it. One great strategy
with people who complain is to make them part of the "establishment", this
allows them to do "better". This is when the people still on the outside
start to say that "power corrupts ...". The Dutch Wikipedia has on occasion
added large groups of people to the rank of admin to prove that there is no
such thing as a cabal. With hind sight is it obvious that this does not
work.

With the removal of the possibility of the use of proxies, it becomes more
difficult to do nefarious deeds like sock puppetry. This is in and of itself
a good thing. It will hopefully calm down our community.

Where you say assume good faith, you definitely will find in the Dutch
community that people assume that with no indications to the contrary the
other party means well. There are however people who in word and deed
demonstrate that there are indications that they do not mean well. When
abuse has to be accepted because someone is "angry" and when this right of
being angry is reserved to them then this is to much to ask from me and from
many others.

Where Andre says that his opinion is irrelevant because he is no sysop, I do
disagree strongly. I know that many people will, and do listen when he makes
his point. I know that I do.. then again I am no nl.wikipedia sysop either.
I do know that I have my contacts in the Dutch community and I may make a
point and this occasionally does have its consequences.

There are many admins in the nl.wikipedia and as a group they are very
diverse. You can not assume that they all play the same role, you cannot
assume that one can be exchanged for another. There are people who are doing
loads of technical stuff, there are those who do more community stuff. They
all play their personal role. They are also all volunteers. When someone
wants to force his way by any means, you will find that people just turn
off. At such a moment, the relations are disturbed. For these relations to
improve they do need to heal and, this is a process that requires time.

In the past Waerth has threatened to do things that were incompatible with
the role that he played in the WMF. As a consequence he is no longer a
steward nor is he a sysop. This time he explicitly informed us that all his
edits are copyright violations in the assumption that we will believe him
and delete all he has ever done. This deletion of his work is something he
informed the Dutch community that he wanted before. So yes, the relations
are very much disturbed. Waerth made his bed, he can lie in it. It is his
choice to be abusive. It is his choice to move away from the Dutch wiki
community.

It is a shame, because when you know him, when you talk to him one to one,
he is not a bad person.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 2/19/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2007/2/18, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com>:
>
> > > Well, I just got an explanation for that:
> > > 1. Official foundation policy is that open proxies are blocked
> >
> > * Why for logged in users?
>
>
> Because there was only one way of blocking when the policy was created.
>
> 2. Any change from that should work and have no negative consequences
> > > 3. This change does not work because people in countries with these IP
> > > still
> > > cannot work on WikipediaNL
> > > 4. This change has the negative side effect that people can create a
> > > sockpuppet and use an open IP to edit from their sock puppet, which
> > makes
> > > sock puppets less easy to detect.
> >
> > * where is 'Assume good faith' ?
>
>
> I don't think we have a rule 'assume good faith' on nl:. Apart from that,
> I
> cannot answer questions about the opinions of people I don't agree with...
>
> Do I agree with this? No. But I'm not a sysop, so my voice don't count.
> And
> > > if I were a sysop, probably anything I do would be considered wheel
> > > warring,
> > > with me voluntarily giving up sysop powers being the most likely
> > outcome.
> >
> >
> > * Always thought that  sysops are for helping Wikimedians not only
> banning
> > :(
>
>
> I guess that relationships are too much damaged on nl: to make that a
> valid
> option. There's quite a few people who feel it's "us vs. them", with them
> being the sysops. Or at least are of the opinion that the sysops have too
> much power.
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] One week later and I am still
	blocked, nobody is doing a fucking thing


from_name: Ronald Beelaard

subject:
[Foundation-l]  One week later and I am still blocked,
	nobody is doing a fucking thing

body:
>From: Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] One week later and I am still blocked,
>	nobody is doing a fucking thing
>To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
>Message-ID: <eraa1e$9ht$1 at sea.gmane.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>
>Cascaded open proxies? Do you mean to say that you are blocking these
>secure ISP proxies because there is an open proxy behind them, on a
>customer computer?

Tim,

I think my scanning method is a bit more sophisticated than just noticing or
omitting a VIA or FORWARDED FOR header.

My scanner requests a page from a server (my own) via the suspect proxy.
Provisions are taken that the program recognises that page. The page returns
the complete header info. Following cases can happen:

* The header being returned includes the ip of the proxy (in REMOTE_HOST or
REMOTE_ADDR) and my own (in HTTP_VIA or HTTP_X_FOWARDED_FOR): transparent
proxy - only reactive blocking after vandalism
* The header includes the ip of the proxy: elite (or anonymous) proxy - same
as above
* The header includes a totally different ip (in REMOTE_HOST or
REMOTE_ADDR): high anonymous proxy.

The latter case means that the proxy, as chosen by the program, is followed
by at least one other proxy, being the one that shows up in the header (a
cascade more or less similar to TOR). What is between, I don't know.

The exit node ip is added to a seperate table of exit nodes. The program
retries building up a connection via the same (entrant) proxy to find wether
there are other exit nodes used by the same. That loop ends when
new==previous and the program continues with the next (actually many
instances run in parallel).

In this way some 1000 exit proxies have been found till now. These are fed
by over 5000 entrant open proxies (and whatever might be in between). The
champion is serving even >800 different entrant proxies, some 250 serve 2 or
more. The other way around: one entrant ip is feeding 32 exit servers (a
kind of mini-TOR) and 600 entrant IP's are feeding 2 or more exit servers
(status of yesterday, continuously growing).

The exit nodes, which might also be a normal open proxy, are today's issue.
Because of the impossibility to trace the originating ip and the possibly
changing exit nodes, these are pro-actively blocked.

After reading the XXF article, an improvement I could think of is testing
the VIA/FORWARDED of the exit server as well (which I don't care of at the
moment). And subsequently checking whether the entrant node (and/or VIA)
fits in a similar ip range as the exit node, or more loosely the same
country. Depending on the result the blocking of exit node would be hard or
soft, regardless wether it is a trusted proxy.

Just had a look to the table (in human readible format, ip's are stored as
longs) and sampled some records. Some combinations are within the same
submask, others are more weird (e.g. an US exit fed by ip's from US, CA, FR,
GB, SE, AE).

I'll send you info on trusted proxies which appear to have an open proxy
behind them, according my list.

Rgds Ronald


body:
2007/2/19, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:

> The notion of the sysops having too much power, is always seen from the
> outside. From the inside you will notice that the more power you seem to
> have the more careful you have to be when you wield it.

I've been on the inside, and I indeed found I had to be very careful. Very
careful to not do something to upset other sysops, that is. If I had not
interfered with the actions of other sysops, I would not have been in
problems.

One great strategy
> with people who complain is to make them part of the "establishment", this
> allows them to do "better". This is when the people still on the outside
> start to say that "power corrupts ...". The Dutch Wikipedia has on
> occasion
> added large groups of people to the rank of admin to prove that there is
> no
> such thing as a cabal. With hind sight is it obvious that this does not
> work.

By adding more people to sysophood, the only effect is that you draw more
and more of the fighting behind the closed doors of sysophood, which
actually makes it easier, not more difficult, to ignore the voices of
non-sysops on the matter. Also, you increase the likelihood of having rogue
admins, and lessen the chances of them losing their sysophood.

With the removal of the possibility of the use of proxies, it becomes more
> difficult to do nefarious deeds like sock puppetry. This is in and of
> itself
> a good thing. It will hopefully calm down our community.

Unlikely if one of the things that the community is getting wild about is
the blind blocking of proxies. "Just let me do what I want, and everything
will be fine" is not the way to alleviate the worries of people who think
you have too much power.

Where you say assume good faith, you definitely will find in the Dutch
> community that people assume that with no indications to the contrary the
> other party means well. There are however people who in word and deed
> demonstrate that there are indications that they do not mean well. When
> abuse has to be accepted because someone is "angry" and when this right of
> being angry is reserved to them then this is to much to ask from me and
> from
> many others.

Apparently using an anonymous proxy is demonstrating that there are
indications that you do not mean well? We're not just talking about assuming
good faith in Waerth here. We're talking about the good faith we assume of
the random new user coming to Wikipedia. Apparently when that user comes
through an anonymous proxy all good faith we might have, has already been
lost.

Where Andre says that his opinion is irrelevant because he is no sysop, I do
> disagree strongly. I know that many people will, and do listen when he
> makes
> his point. I know that I do.. then again I am no nl.wikipedia sysop
> either.
> I do know that I have my contacts in the Dutch community and I may make a
> point and this occasionally does have its consequences.

How? RonaldB does his blocks, and even if I do convince people, he'll just
go on with the support of that part of the population I did not convince.
It's either convincing him, or having no effect at all.

In the past Waerth has threatened to do things that were incompatible with
> the role that he played in the WMF. As a consequence he is no longer a
> steward nor is he a sysop. This time he explicitly informed us that all
> his
> edits are copyright violations in the assumption that we will believe him
> and delete all he has ever done. This deletion of his work is something he
> informed the Dutch community that he wanted before. So yes, the relations
> are very much disturbed. Waerth made his bed, he can lie in it. It is his
> choice to be abusive. It is his choice to move away from the Dutch wiki
> community.

There's more people involved here than just Waerth. He's just one of a
series of people who feel wronged. Just look at the arbitration committee
that is now being formed. There are people who are voting against all sysops
in that election, because otherwise there would be too much concentration of
power. If they did not think that being a sysop would entail having power,
they would not vote so. I personally do agree with them that sysops are
having quite a bit of power, though they should not have, although I don't
agree that it should have any bearings on their capacity to serve in the
committee. So I guess it's my choice to move away from the Dutch community
too?

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
>
> On Feb 18, 2007, at 3:39 PM, Marc Riddell wrote:
>
>>> or is it an elitist workspace for an elitist group of
>>> people who live in cyberspace?

Jossi,

Please check the entire post; I did not write this.

Marc Riddell

>
on 2/18/07 11:39 PM, Jossi Fresco at jossifresco at mac.com wrote:

> A common complaint by these that have much to say but show little
> interest in contributing of their valuable free time to keep
> Wikipedia ticking.
>
> Administrators perform an admirable job and a thankless one, by the
> look if it.
>
> -- Jossi
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

body:
> From: "Stephen Bain" <stephen.bain at gmail.com>
>
> On 2/19/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>>
>> I wouldn't
>> bake a cake using a recipe from Wikipedia without checking against
>> outside sources first...
>
> Ingredients:
>
> * 2 cups self-raising flour
> * 1 cup sugar
> * 2 eggs
> * 2 tbsp nitroglycerine
>
> Method:
>
> Mix dry ingredients well. Beat egg and fold into dry mix. Throw
> nitroglycerin at the mix as hard as you can.

Don't be silly. The _really characteristic_ Wikipedia recipe would be:

> Ingredients:
>
> * 2 cups self-raising flour
> * 1 cup sugar
> * 2 eggs
> * 2 tbsp POOP!
>
> Method:
>
> Mix dry ingredients well. Beat egg and fold into dry mix. Stir in
> the POOP!


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
> My thoughts: it is possible to have NPOV-lists with POV-sounding titles:
> as example, List of major opera composers is a featured list. The
> methodology there is a good model: compile ten external, reputable lists
> of Major Opera Composers and those who appear on the majority of those
> lists appear on the Wikipedia list. That seems to work quite well, and
> it reflects existing scholarship in this area accurately.
>
> So, it might be worth seeing whether something similar could work with
> this List of Tall Men. Is this at al possible?
>
> Alternatively, something to think about might be a list of World Record
> Holders for height, or something similar. But the current arbitrary
> definition of x.y metres is not really acceptable. Arbitrary definitions
> are original research.

Just curious...would [[List of people taller than eight feet]] be OR?

-Rich


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 19/02/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Just curious...would [[List of people taller than eight feet]] be OR?
>
>
> Not with good refs IMO. Might include arguably famous near-misses.
> [[Longest novel]] takes some judgement calls, and there are books that
> were advertised as "longest novel since ..." that are nothing like a
> longest-novel contender. But editorial judgement in the cause of
> usefulness is not OR except for an extreme black-and-white thinker.
>
>
> - d.

I agree. So does the real conflict come in having a subjective article
name (using "tall") for an article that is using an objective criteria?

-Rich


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] class-action suit??

body:
On 19/02/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

>         I was recently contacted by some law firm from Miami,
>         Florida about some class-action lawsuit they were
>         assembling that involved a bunch of former and current
>         Wikipedia editors that are suing the Wikimedia Foundation
>         for compensation for all the time they spent improving
>         the site without pay.
>         [[User:Snowboarder77]] 03:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
> I rather suspect it's bogus on a couple of different levels,
> but I thought I'd mention it here.

User:Spintasser having a spot of fun. Blocked 24 hours as a form of applause.

- d.


body:
> Can you elaborate on this? Presumably at the server end there are IM,
> email and web interfaces to the wiki database. How is the question of
> an IM and an email "update" command arriving simultaneously any
> different from that of two web POST commands arriving simultaneously?

In retrospect, my phrasing may have made it seem like a bigger issue then
there really is, but here is my understanding of the problem:

When a POST submission arrives, it's tagged with information regarding when
the originating form was generated.  I'm not sure where all this information
is stored.  It may be session or hidden form vars - I can't be sure without
digging.  In any case, the server then checks to make sure that the article
hasn't changed since the time the form was created and alerts the user if
this is the case with as "Page has been changed" message.

In the case of IM or Email, there is no "originating form" - so resolving
which submission came from which previous version becomes an implementation
detail.  In the case of Email, I suppose you could put in the email a
hashcode of some kind to establish a "session" of sorts - then remember to
which article and which revision that hashcode corresponds.  (I'm just
thinking aloud here - I'm sure others here have more info on how this could
be done).

Because of the very asynchronous behavior of SMTP/POP/IMAP, chances of this
kind of collision are much more likely then with the wiki's web interface.
The resolution is to send more emails explaining the condition and providing
a resend request - or direct the colliders to the web interface.

Anyway, that's just my understanding of the problem - I reserve the right to
be wrong on all points :)

> Incidentally, is there by any chance a read-only email fetch mechanism
> for Wikipedia?

I don't know, but there used to be Email-a-Webpage services whereby you
could Email a URL as the subject line to some entity and get a response
which was the requested page.  I'm having trouble locating one now though
... Googling for "webpage by email" doesn't produce anything useful :(

On 2/19/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 2/19/07, Jim Wilson <wilson.jim.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Finally, in both the IM and Email cases, race-conditions become a
> serious
> > issue.  How do you determine which publishing entity (IM, Email client,
> or
> > wiki user) got there first?  Using a standard interface (the wiki)
> > alleviates this problem.
>
> Can you elaborate on this? Presumably at the server end there are IM,
> email and web interfaces to the wiki database. How is the question of
> an IM and an email "update" command arriving simultaneously any
> different from that of two web POST commands arriving simultaneously?
>
> I would love it if there was an email-to-wikipedia interface, mainly
> because my mobile phone gives me unlimited email for free (whereas web
> browsing is ridicously expensive - go figure). There do appear to be a
> lot of fairly significant hurdles though: authentication, parsing
> email (stripping out signatures, demangling character conversions,
> avoiding accidental changing of whitespace etc), and of course the
> potential for significant lag between receive and update - is merging
> really a safe option when the article may have been downloaded 6 hours
> earlier?
>
> Incidentally, is there by any chance a read-only email fetch mechanism
> for Wikipedia?
>
> Steve
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Jossi Fresco

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On Feb 18, 2007, at 11:43 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Just because someone isn't going out of his way to make himself
> visible
> in the way that some admins do does not mean that he is doing
> nothing to
> keep Wikipedia ticking.  Your attitude is very broadly
> disrespectful of
> a wide range of contributors.
>
> Have you forgoten that this thread started with complaints about admin
> burnout.  The general solution that was suggested was to loosen up the
> extreme restrictions on becoming a sysop.  But those content with the
> present state of things argue loudly against it.  You can't have it
> both
> ways.  Stop complaining about being overworked, or do something about
> the problem.

How can my comment be disrespectful?   And why you interpret my
comment as "complaining"?

The present state of things, is that any editors can have as much
involvement in Wikipedia affairs as any admin could. What is the
difference between an editor that has contributed 20,000 edits in two
years and that is not an admin, and one with the same level of
involvement that is one?  Absolutely *nothing*

Of course, there are perception such as yours. But these are
perceptions, and not facts. These forced distinctions between admins
and editors is a fallacy. Admins are also editors, and editors can do
as much as an admin besides deleting an article and closing  AfDs.

Rather than exacerbating the width of the perceived chasm between
"admin" and "non-admin", we ought to be building bridges.

-- Jossi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On Feb 18, 2007, at 11:43 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> The general solution that was suggested was to loosen up the
> extreme restrictions on becoming a sysop.

That is not a solution, Ray. That is the act of opening the
proverbial can of worms. Think of the consequences.

-- Jossi


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] One week later and I am
 still	blocked, nobody is doing a fucking thing

body:
Andre Engels schreef:
> 2007/2/19, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
>
>> The notion of the sysops having too much power, is always seen from the
>> outside. From the inside you will notice that the more power you seem to
>> have the more careful you have to be when you wield it.
>>
>
>
> I've been on the inside, and I indeed found I had to be very careful. Very
> careful to not do something to upset other sysops, that is. If I had not
> interfered with the actions of other sysops, I would not have been in
> problems.
>
Interfering with other sysops did not get you in problems to the extend
that you had to give up being a sysop. It was your choice to give up
your sysopship. Were you to stand again for sysop, chances are that you
would be voted in again. I would vote in favour. Being careful not to
upset other people IS the name of the game.
> One great strategy
>
>> with people who complain is to make them part of the "establishment", this
>> allows them to do "better". This is when the people still on the outside
>> start to say that "power corrupts ...". The Dutch Wikipedia has on
>> occasion
>> added large groups of people to the rank of admin to prove that there is
>> no
>> such thing as a cabal. With hind sight is it obvious that this does not
>> work.
>>
>
>
> By adding more people to sysophood, the only effect is that you draw more
> and more of the fighting behind the closed doors of sysophood, which
> actually makes it easier, not more difficult, to ignore the voices of
> non-sysops on the matter. Also, you increase the likelihood of having rogue
> admins, and lessen the chances of them losing their sysophood.
>
Rogue admins can be de-sysoped. They can even be banned. This is what
happened to Waerth.
> With the removal of the possibility of the use of proxies, it becomes more
>
>> difficult to do nefarious deeds like sock puppetry. This is in and of
>> itself
>> a good thing. It will hopefully calm down our community.
>>
>
>
> Unlikely if one of the things that the community is getting wild about is
> the blind blocking of proxies. "Just let me do what I want, and everything
> will be fine" is not the way to alleviate the worries of people who think
> you have too much power.
>
How come that you assume that proxies are blocked blindly; have you
spoken about this with Ronald ? Read what he wrote on the mailing list,
it is reasoned and it sounds that he is willing to arguments to refine
his ways. He presented on this subject on multiple occasions, last
Saturday in Nijmegen at the "Moderator workshop". He is approachable.
> Where you say assume good faith, you definitely will find in the Dutch
>
>> community that people assume that with no indications to the contrary the
>> other party means well. There are however people who in word and deed
>> demonstrate that there are indications that they do not mean well. When
>> abuse has to be accepted because someone is "angry" and when this right of
>> being angry is reserved to them then this is to much to ask from me and
>> from
>> many others.
>>
>
>
> Apparently using an anonymous proxy is demonstrating that there are
> indications that you do not mean well? We're not just talking about assuming
> good faith in Waerth here. We're talking about the good faith we assume of
> the random new user coming to Wikipedia. Apparently when that user comes
> through an anonymous proxy all good faith we might have, has already been
> lost.
>
Using proxies is certainly a red flag raised. It does however not
automatically mean that bad faith is certain. It is however reasonable
depending on the type of proxy to have a different strategy to deal with
this. It is a right to edit anonymously however this right is not absolute.
> Where Andre says that his opinion is irrelevant because he is no sysop, I do
>
>> disagree strongly. I know that many people will, and do listen when he
>> makes
>> his point. I know that I do.. then again I am no nl.wikipedia sysop
>> either.
>> I do know that I have my contacts in the Dutch community and I may make a
>> point and this occasionally does have its consequences.
>>
>
>
> How? RonaldB does his blocks, and even if I do convince people, he'll just
> go on with the support of that part of the population I did not convince.
> It's either convincing him, or having no effect at all.
>
Like me, you do convince people. However, like me you do not convince
people all the time. When a particular policy that you do not like is
supported by a substantial group of the community, you really have to
convince and you may fail at that. That is how the cookie crumbles.
>
> In the past Waerth has threatened to do things that were incompatible with
>
>> the role that he played in the WMF. As a consequence he is no longer a
>> steward nor is he a sysop. This time he explicitly informed us that all
>> his
>> edits are copyright violations in the assumption that we will believe him
>> and delete all he has ever done. This deletion of his work is something he
>> informed the Dutch community that he wanted before. So yes, the relations
>> are very much disturbed. Waerth made his bed, he can lie in it. It is his
>> choice to be abusive. It is his choice to move away from the Dutch wiki
>> community.
>>
>
>
> There's more people involved here than just Waerth. He's just one of a
> series of people who feel wronged. Just look at the arbitration committee
> that is now being formed. There are people who are voting against all sysops
> in that election, because otherwise there would be too much concentration of
> power. If they did not think that being a sysop would entail having power,
> they would not vote so. I personally do agree with them that sysops are
> having quite a bit of power, though they should not have, although I don't
> agree that it should have any bearings on their capacity to serve in the
> committee. So I guess it's my choice to move away from the Dutch community
> too?
When Waerth feels wronged, when anyone feels wronged, it does not mean
that he/she has a right to become obnoxious, abusive. It does not give
him/her a right to threaten people or threaten the system. When there
are people who vote against sysops on principle, they may but they are
in my opinion stupid. People have a right to be stupid, they have a
right to be wrong. They should not be surprised when they are then
ignored because this behaviour is explicit "assume bad faith".

Yes, it is your choice to do whatever. I value you as a person, I hope
you will do the right thing. That is why I take ample time to reply.

Thanks,
     GerardM


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] class-action suit??

body:
On 2/19/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> This just in from [[Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous#Class Action?]]:
>
>         I was recently contacted by some law firm from Miami,
>         Florida about some class-action lawsuit they were
>         assembling that involved a bunch of former and current
>         Wikipedia editors that are suing the Wikimedia Foundation
>         for compensation for all the time they spent improving
>         the site without pay.
>         [[User:Snowboarder77]] 03:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
>
> I rather suspect it's bogus on a couple of different levels,
> but I thought I'd mention it here.

While it does sound like BS it isn't unthinkable that someone,
somewhere is trying to get clients for a class-action suit against
wikipedia for something. It sounded like Snowborader77 was pretty
confused, maybe he misunderstood the lawyer.

It's probably nothing, but it isn't unthinkable that it is something.
Just sayin'

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On Feb 19, 2007, at 8:09 AM, Rich Holton wrote:

> What consequences, Jossi? If "editors can do
> as much as an admin besides deleting an article and closing  AfDs",
> then
> what possible consequences would there be in having many more admins?
I am not against having more admins. We have an RfA process, that
although not perfect, it has served us quite well so far. Is there
room for improving that process? Sure.

>
> The reality is that there are significant differences (far more
> than you
> suggested) between admins and non-admins. Deleting, viewing, and
> restoring articles, blocking and unblocking users, protecting and
> unprotecting articles...those pop to mind quickly.
Sure, but those tasks are performed under quite strict guidelines and
our performance evaluated by other editors. That is what we have WP:ANI
>
> But even in that reality, the vague imperative to "think of the
> consequences" is not helpful. If you believe there would be
> significant
> consequences, please tell us about them.

That's is easy, Rich. Adminship carries some necessary and basic
responsibilities based on a deep understanding of how Wikipedia
works. Without such understanding, the consequences of having these
extra privileges in the hands of many will be utter chaos. Don't you
think so?

Those editors that want to carry the burden of the additional
responsibilities of adminship, are welcome to self-nominate, or wait
until a fellow editor nominates them.

-- Jossi


from_name: Pedro Sanchez

subject:
[Commons-l] Fwd: Commons request for input: policy on automatic
	image replacement

body:
On 2/19/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> I sent this to foundation-l. Input from Commons folks obviously welcome...
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>
> Date: 20-Feb-2007 01:35
> Subject: Commons request for input: policy on automatic image replacement
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Hello,
>
> (If your project doesn't have a CommonsTicker... GET ONE...
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Duesentrieb/CommonsTicker
> and if nobody maintains it... well don't complain you were never informed :P )
>
> CommonsDelinker is a Wikimedia-wide bot designed to remove image
> redlinks from pages after an image has been deleted at Commons.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:CommonsDelinker
>
> At the moment it is in the "testing" stage of image "relinking" --
> replacing one image with another. I want to get some input from
> communities about under what circumstances it would be acceptable for
> Commons to use the bot for "relinking".
>
> There are several reasons why replacing images might be desired:
>
> 1. Avoid conflicts with local image of the same name (bug 889, 2717)
> [although usually this would be done at the local wiki rather than
> Commons, but if the Commons image is poorly named, it can be
> appropriate]
> 2. Rename images: as redirects don't work, the only option to upload
> under the new name (bug 709, 4470)
> 3. Consolidate use of duplicate images at just one of them
> 4. Replace an image with a distinct, "improved" version
>
> I guess (hope) 1 and 2 are not controversial. So I want to talk a bit
> about 3 and 4.
>
> Regarding 3: some people feel that there is no need to consolidate
> duplicate images together. While it is true that there is no argument
> to do this for "disk space reasons", consider it like a 'fork' of the
> image. We don't allow forks of articles. One reason, for sure, has to
> do with NPOV, but another reason is just about efficiency and the
> natural human tendency to sort, collate, collect and organise. It
> makes sense to have all the info about one thing in one place, whether
> that is a topic (article) or an image.
>
> Now regarding 4. This is the first point where the image being
> replaced is not a true duplicate to the original. The most contentious
> point has been where images are converted from raster (GIF, JPG, PNG)
> to vector (SVG) format.
> I don't want to hash out the details of a PNG vs SVG debate here. Some
> PNGs are superior to SVGs, some SVGs are superior to PNGs. I want to
> establish: what process should take place before a bot replacement
> like this is acceptable?
>
> Because it's a bot, I want Commons to have really clear guidelines
> about when it is OK to use it, to avoid disrupting local projects.
>
> Currently, such images are tagged with {{superseded}} and listed at
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Deletion_requests/Superseded
> . This page is quite backlogged (nearly 5 months, over 5000 items in
> [[category:superseded]]) and almost no-one works on it (since our
> copyvios are also backlogged, and they are more urgent, this is OK,
> IMO).
>
> Note: we have {{superseded}}, which usually means the old one will be
> nominated for deletion, and we also have {{vector version available}},
> which merely advertises the existence of a vector file and does not
> imply the old one should be deleted.
>
> So basically my question is, assuming someone putting a {{superseded}}
> tag on an image appears on your local CommonsTicker, how long is it
> acceptable to wait before we replace such images? A week, a fortnight,
> a month?
> What should consensus look like in such discussions? Since we don't
> have to delete things for copyright reasons, is *one* person objecting
> enough to keep the image? What if that person is the uploader? What
> reasons should ensure an image gets kept?
>
> Here are some main ones I know of:
> * Art. IMO no art "near-duplicates" should be deleted unless they are
> TRUE duplicates (eg by hash). Colour differences are too subjective to
> rule which one is the most accurate, so best idea is to keep them all
> and let local projects decide which to use.
> * Small size PNGs used as icons - may be hand-optimised for rendering
> in IE, which SVGs will still suffer from (as they thumbnail to PNG but
> without special treatment).
> * Errors in SVG rendering (there are many in bugzilla)
> * PNGs as source files - should be kept for historical record (luckily
> we can undelete now, this is not such a big deal, but still something
> to keep in mind)
>
> So, please take this as an opportunity to describe the most open and
> accessible way Commons can work with your project, and how you would
> like to see it operate to best benefit your project in this regard.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

so.. suppose I delete a png sicne there's a superior svg (manually
checked) the bot currently delinsk the png from local projects
is there a way to tell the bot to relink with the svg?
otherwise projects will lose the png unaware that there's a svg replacing it


body:
On 2/19/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20/02/07, Pedro Sanchez <pdsanchez at gmail.com> wrote:
> > so.. suppose I delete a png sicne there's a superior svg (manually
> > checked) the bot currently delinsk the png from local projects
> > is there a way to tell the bot to relink with the svg?
> > otherwise projects will lose the png unaware that there's a svg replacing it
>
> At the moment that's what will happen. But we can work with
> Orgullomoore, the bot owner, to fix this up. For example, if you put
> 'no-orgullobot' in the deletion reason, it won't delink. So when we
> delete such PNGs, we could just put 'no-orgullobot', and then manually
> give it a replacement instruction. Or we could invent something new
> like 'orgullobot-replace:newimage.jpg' . I don't think that will be a
> big problem.
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

If the filenames are almost the same (diagram.png) -> (diagram.svg) a
keyword like "png2svg" on the deletion summary would make the bot just
change the extension on the page. Kyle, what do you think?


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 2/18/07, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> > Have you been paying attention lately; our costs and our traffic are
> > growing exponentially.
>
> Not forever.
>
Of course not.  But will they stop growing due to lack of funding, or
due to the fact that the goals have been met and everyone in the world
has access to the sum of all knowledge?

What percentage of the world is served by Wikipedia today?  What
percentage of all knowledge is in the encyclopedia?  Multiply by the
reciprocals, and how much would the yearly costs be?

I see from Alexa the reach is 5% of Internet users.  16.6% of the
world is on the Internet.  I'm going to guess Wikipedia covers 1% of
what it should.  That's a major lowball estimate, though.

So 1/.05/.166/.01=12,048.  Will Wikimedia ever be able to raise $12
billion a year?  If not, then cutting costs is mandatory in order to
reach the goals.  My guess is no.  $12 billion a year is way too much
money to be passing through a non-governmental organization like
Wikimedia.

And from your own comments we're talking about a problem that's going
to be very difficult to solve.  I'm not saying that everyone who is
doing anything related to Wikimedia needs to drop everything else and
work on this.  But some people need to be considering it.  In other
words, I think we do "benefit from the flamefests on this list every
few months", though obviously not literally from those parts of the
discussion which are simply flames.

Anthony


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Incremental article IDs

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

Ilya "Voyager" Schurov wrote:
> I'd like to use MediaWiki as a storage for some kind of items, which
> doesn't have "natural" titles (just like bugs in Bugzilla). So I'd like
> to allow user to create new article without specifying the title and I
> want the system to generate the unique title by itself. [snip]

The way I'd do this is for one namespace, disable all new page
creations. Then create a new special page that acts as a new page
interface sans the title requirement. When it gets submitted, the
database assigns it a title (using a counter table to determine which ID
to use) and creates a new page normally. It sounds doable, although it
will probably require some hackery in EditPage.php.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFF2bI0qTO+fYacSNoRAjl6AJ9lru8uej3OwwnUhmTcYYzuY883QQCeOwpL
I1/JP3maOXeVHM/pwD6gRY0=
=89n5
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
On Feb 19, 2007, at 9:19 AM, Rich Holton wrote:

> Jossi, you say that you are not against having many more admins,
> but you
> are against relaxing the criteria for becoming an admin. Do you
> have any
> useful suggestions for expanding the ranks?
Endeavor to make at least 5 nominations this month. If we all did
that ....

>
> Relaxing the criteria should have benefits beyond increasing the
> number
> of admins. It should help to eliminate the perception that being an
> admin is a "big thing". Yes, many non-admins overrate the prestige of
> becoming an admin--and many admins do as well.
Adminship *is* a big thing, as it pertains to the level of
responsibility given to us.  The "prestige" thing, in my experience,
is not so much an issue for us as admins, but mostly to newbies that
tend to give you some kind of credence because your are an admin. Any
Wikipedian *knows* that adminship is both a privilege and a burden.
Are there some admins that walk with a swagger because they are
admins? Sure. But that is the exception and not the rule.

>
> I don't think it does anyone any good to minimize the real differences
> that exist. As an admin, I can view any deleted article any time I
> want
> with no permission, implicit or explicit, and no community review.
> This
> is a big deal to some non-admins, and there are presumed legal reasons
> for keeping this distinction. Just telling people to self-nominate for
> the current, restrictive RfA is not a viable solution to people who
> may
> have good reason to view those deleted articles. This is just one
> example.
That is a small point... If an article was deleted by community
consensus, it should be kept deleted. What interest should an admin
  have to view a deleted article, beyond addressing a Deletion Review?

>
> If you haven't been following this list recently, I urge you to
> view the
> archives and review this thread and the thread on admin burn-out. I
> think it will help you to understand some of the issues that lie
> behind
> some of the recent posts.

I have read that thread. And I concur with the view that we need more
admins, but without making the requirements less onerous; that admins
need more supporting and less bitching against them (as to encourage
more editors to become admins); and that as we interact with editors
and spot those that put the project first, we ask them for their
agreement to nominate them for adminship.

-- Jossi


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 2/19/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Sure, a list of tall men is crufty.  We have lots of cruft on Wikipedia, so
>>that element is just par for the course.  However, the statement that "Tall
>>is defined by agreement of editors, not by any externally verifiable
>>definition" obviously violates WP:V, which is policy, and WP:NOR.  We can't
>>have a list that lacks criteria for inclusion which are not independent of
>>Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>Let's step back for a second and pretend we weren't Wikipedia. Imagine
>we're a traditional encyclopaedia produced by a traditional, stuffy
>publishing house. What criteria would they use? My guess is it would
>be one guy picking anyone who seemed worth mentioning, on the basis
>that they'd left some mark on history. World record holders,
>politicians, actors, freaks would be on the list - but only a passing
>mention of basket ball players.
>
I would look at what we are doing as including a combination of the
traditional encyclopedia and almanac.  A big problem for traditional
encyclopedias is keeping current.  In the wake of the "Nature" study EB
complained that they were judged on the basis of some material that was
found in their yearbooks, which they do not regard as equally
authoritative to their main volumes.  By the time most basketball
players or politicians are listed in a traditional encyclopedia  they
are already retired or dead.  Almanacs help to bridge the gap.  Most are
published annually, contain many lists, but do not include a great deal
of explanatory prose.  They will repeat much of what was there in the
preceding year, corrected for events that have taken place in the interim.

Ec


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Christiano Moreschi wrote:
> No, of course not. That's perfectly fine, at least in my opinion. Nothing
> wrong with a list of those above 8 feet.
>
> What IS original research is to pick a completely arbitrary definition of
> "tall" as being above x.y metres, and then to go on and use that.

I don't really see a fundamental difference between these two cases,
however. In one case the arbitrary height cutoff is given in the list's
title, in the other case it's given in the first line of the list's
description. The same level of "original research" is present in both
cases (a level I consider to be "not all that much" since height is a
commonly mentioned biographical statistic for people who are unusually
tall, I assume none of the heights of existing list entries had to be
figured out from indirect evidence).

The only situation this seems significant in is if there were some need
for disambiguation, in which case [[List of tall men]] could be turned into:

*[[List of men over 8 feet tall]]
*[[List of men between 7 and 8 feet tall]]
*[[List of tallest male basketball players]]
*[[List of tallest men in medieval England]]
{{disambig}}

Or whatever else the specific articles happen to be titled.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requirements for Adminship

body:
Jossi Fresco wrote:
> On Feb 18, 2007, at 11:43 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> The general solution that was suggested was to loosen up the
>> extreme restrictions on becoming a sysop.
>
> That is not a solution, Ray. That is the act of opening the
> proverbial can of worms. Think of the consequences.
>
> -- Jossi
>

What consequences, Jossi? If "editors can do
as much as an admin besides deleting an article and closing  AfDs", then
what possible consequences would there be in having many more admins?

The reality is that there are significant differences (far more than you
suggested) between admins and non-admins. Deleting, viewing, and
restoring articles, blocking and unblocking users, protecting and
unprotecting articles...those pop to mind quickly.

But even in that reality, the vague imperative to "think of the
consequences" is not helpful. If you believe there would be significant
consequences, please tell us about them.

-Rich Holton
User:Rholton
(an admin)


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] [Logo] One True Wiktionary logo

body:
Aphaia wrote:

>Hello,
>[[m:Logo]] claims logo should be consistent. I agree.
>This document shows us the "scrabble" type logo as Wiktionary logo; at
>least it was a result of straw poll. I am not sure if the Wiktionary
>active editors love it. Perhaps not.
>On the Wikimedia Foundation website, on "Our projects" table and
>[[Wikimedia:Our projects]], both pages show visitors the old one (dic
>entry type) logo as project logo.
>
Has anyone bothered to check whether the Scrabble people have any IP
issues with using that logo?

Ec


from_name: Jim Wilson

subject: [Wikitech-l]  Trick Parser to render full links?

body:
Is there a way to trick the Parser into rendering fully qualified URLs
_other than_ setting "action=render" at the URL level?

The last time I wanted this feature was circa MW 1.5.1 - and I know at that
time you had to hijack global $action to get any results.  I'm hoping this
is no longer the case?

I'm developing an extension that needs to run on 1.6.x, 1.8.x, 1.9.x and
1.10 - Thanks in advance for any help.

-- Jim R. Wilson (jimbojw)


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 19/02/07, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> This answer is exactly correct.
> This is not up to the Foundation.
>
> First, having a software displaying different behavior depending on the
> language/project is a bad idea. It makes things very complex and users
> travelling from one language to another are likely to find this disturbing.
>
> So, any change in that respect must be reflected in all languages (I
> presume the cutoff at 15 or 45 could be negociable depending on
> communities, but the concept of having a cutoff should be global).

enwp has a general four day waiting period for page moves - do any
others use this?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Frustrated

body:
Christiano Moreschi wrote:

> So, it might be worth seeing whether something similar could work with
> this List of Tall Men. Is this at al possible?
>
> Alternatively, something to think about might be a list of World
> Record Holders for height, or something similar. But the current
> arbitrary definition of x.y metres is not really acceptable. Arbitrary
> definitions are original research.

Definitions aren't research at all, and all definitions are arbitrary.
Let's avoid expanding the idea of original research beyond what it was
intended to do.

Ec