subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Preformatted blank articles? (was
	Experiment on new pages and GFDL)

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin David,

On Friday 09 December 2005 21:58, David Gerard wrote:
> Tels wrote:
[snipabit]
> Yep!
>
> > The most FAQ was "How do I start a new article?" followed by "And why
> > is this so complicated?", closely followed by "How do I add a
> > headline again?"
>
> That's specifically why I put how to make a section in that in the
> example ;-)
>
> I did a radio interview on Wikipedia yesterday. I actually tried to
> lure casual editors to feel free to edit.
>
> It'd be nice if anon contributors could start articles again. If
> regulars don't like getting a template, perhaps it could be on just for
> anon editors.

I think anon users rights have nothing to do with this issue of whether
the edit box should be pre-filled or not, and whether it should be easier
to create new articles :)

(IMHO anon edits should be disallowed entirely, but this is just my
private opinion which doesn't carry much weight and/or might be
wrong/impractical/impolite etc :)

> > Especially in-frequent contributors tend to forget these things very
> > quick and since the computer should help the humans and not vice
> > versa, I finally patched my local Mediawiki installation to fix this
> > issue. Everyone's been happy since :)
>
> Please submit the patch! (Is there a bug for this yet?)

Actually, I just added one new link to the toolbox on the left, which goes
to a HTML page with a form entry on a webserver, which bounces the user
back to the wiki. I am sure it is possible to create a specialpage
(Specialpages:NewArticle?) that does the same, but the external form was
easier for me.

The disadvantage of my solution is that you need to be already logged in
for the form to work, otherwise you get the "please login first" message,
and since clicking "log me in" on that page loses the "where you came
from" (which is a bug), the user will then be on the main page.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Fri Dec  9 23:46:06 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 'Wie Ludger L?genboldt, Sprecher der Interessengemeinschaft F?rderer der
 Prostitution International (I.F.P.I.) jetzt bekannt gab, entstehen der
 Zuh?lterbrache j?hrlich Milliardenverluste durch kostenfreien Sex.
 "Bestimmt h?tten unsere M?dels im Jahr 2003 alleine in Deutschland 2000
 Millionen Quickies mehr verkaufen k?nnen, wenn die Leute nicht immer
 mehr privat rumv?geln w?rden. Der uns entstandene Schaden bel?uft sich
 auf mindestens 100000000000 Euro." Schuld sei nach Angaben L?genboldts
 das Internet: "Flirtportale und Singlewebsites mit Kontaktb?rsen machen
 unser Gesch?ft kaputt.  Amateure rauben uns unserer
 Gesch?ftsgrundlagen." Zehntausende von Arbeitspl?tzen in Deutschland
 seien gef?hrdet, die ?berdies gerade geringer qualifizieren jungen
 Frauen ein Einkommen sicherten. Die I.F.P.I. fordert den Gesetzgeber
 auf, diesem Treiben umgehend Schranken zu setzen.' MI-Boykotteur at
 2004-05-07 at http://tinyurl.com/35qjo

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list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tels

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Preformatted blank articles? (was Experiment on
	new pages and GFDL)


list: wikien-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Does WP have legal advice?

body:
On 12/9/05, Tom Cadden <thomcadden at yahoo.ie> wrote:
> Has Wikipedia ever got professional legal advice?
> A lot of the legal analysis I hear on WP seems to
> be amateur interpretation of statutes, or comments
> by people who say they are lawyers but who,
> because of their anonymous status, may not be,
> or who may be undergraduate legal students.

Wikimedia does have legal advice. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Legal_department for a list of lawyers
who are volunteering to help us. All are subscribers to a closed
mailing list where foundation legal issues can be discussed, and to
which anyone is free to post. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Juriwiki_mailing_list for details.

Angela.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Does WP have legal advice?

body:
Tom Cadden wrote:

>Has Wikipedia ever got professional legal advice? A lot of the legal analysis I hear on WP seems to be amateur interpretation of statutes, or comments by people who say they are lawyers but who, because of their anonymous status, may not be, or who may be undergraduate legal students.
>
I'll never understan how people who willing to challenge received wisdom
still manage to fall on their knees before lawuers.

>I know it would be costly, but I think recent cases, plus issues over images other issues, are IMHO crying out of absolutely professional legal advice. It may well already have received it, but much of the commentary on WP doesn't show evidence of it. We need to be 100% certain of the legality of our actions in all cases. We cannot risk finding that, quite innocently, that we are breaking one or more laws and face the threat of large fines or even an injunction closing us down.
>
There is no such thing as 100% certainty!  When it comes to court
judgement they only serve to prove that 50% of lawyers are wrong.

>Far smaller publications than WP have lawyers check things all the time. If we don't already have full legal advice available it is VITAL that we get it. It would be irresponsible to run an entity like WP and not have it.
>
We are dealing with a conflicting patchword of international laws.
Judgements have also been in conflict.  We'll get a lot further ahead
with a common sense approach to law.  This requires a balance between
overly agressive and pusilanimous interpretations.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Does WP have legal advice?

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 09/12/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>The problem as I see it is that the Wikimedia Foundation might not
>>want to appear to be passing out legal advice to our contributors ...
>>
>>
>Indeed. The WMF takes legal advice when it feels the need to take
>advice, as I understand it; when an active legal issue arises where
>we're doing something particularly wrong, Things Get Done With
>Emphasis, Underlined, In Parentheses And Quotated.
>
>(or something like that)
>
>Recall, for example, the missing-articles-in-Britannica list deletions...
>
>
Yes, I recall it, and if I recall correctly legal opinion was divided.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Experiment on new pages and GFDL

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
>
>>It's less about authorship and more about accountablility.
>>We need those names so we know who to hold responsible if the info is wrong.
>>
>>
>Yep, knowing who to ask. The thing that *really* gets Wikipedia editors
>upset about things like the Siegenthaler article is not the possibility
>of a libel case - it's that the article was *wrong*. THAT gets people
>into action.
>
>
Absolutely, and yet so many people get themselves all in tangles over
the legal aspects.

Ec


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why Turn of AFD?

body:
> > I don't think it's necessary to keep "nominations" from
> > hiding in obscurity.  Again, if it's important, someone will notice it
> > and reverse it.  If it isn't, then it doesn't matter anyway.  This is
> > especially true because we already point out that an article has been
> > deleted when someone actually tries to read that article.
> Speedy deletion nominations aren't permanently logged in a central
> place, only in the edit history. They disappear from the directory as
> soon as the tag is removed. Have you got any idea how often speedy
> tags are removed? Just because I don't notice them being removed,
> doesn't mean it's not important.
>
Ah, I see what you mean now, you're talking about speedy deletion
nominations.  Can't these be put on [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletions]] for
a central location?  I don't really see what this has to do with AfD,
anyway.

I'm saying that listing articles on a central page rather than tagging
and categorizing them avoid people from removing tags which shouldn't
be removed.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's simply impossible to not use deletion. Some subjects will always
> be contentious and need discussion instead of a speedy criterion to
> cover them.
>
> Mgm

Maybe you could give a few examples of such subjects, preferably from
AfD?  I can't think of anything that's verifiable and a noun and
shouldn't at least be kept as a redirect.

Pottercast/PotterCast (and podcasts in general)
Forums and Blogs
Bands (C-Moon - German, is it vanity or not?)
Schools (examples shouldn't be needed for this one), although I have
to admit discussion is pretty much growing on this. I'm sure this will
eventually lead to notability guidelines.

All these could be covered by some number statistic and notability
guidelines, but a quick test to easily determine its deletion
worthiness is much harder. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find one,
though.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Preformatted blank articles? (was Experiment
	on	new pages and GFDL)

body:
Tels:

> Actually, I just added one new link to the toolbox on the left, which goes
> to a HTML page with a form entry on a webserver, which bounces the user
> back to the wiki. I am sure it is possible to create a specialpage
> (Specialpages:NewArticle?) that does the same, but the external form was
> easier for me.
>

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Inputbox

This has been active on the Wikimedia wikis for quite a while. I
originally created it for Wikinews, but it's used in many different
places now. It supports preloading text.

Erik


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off article creation AND deletion.

body:
Keith Old wrote:
> On 12/10/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:

>>How about this for an experiment: turn off article creation _and_
>>deletion for a while? Freeze the table of contents (not that we have
>>one)...
>>So that all anyone could possibly do is to edit existing articles?
>>It would force everyone to pay attention to the articles that exist
>>already, and with 857,833 of them you'd think people could find
>>something worth their attention.
>>With deletion being impossible, AfD would become unnecessary... as
>>would DRV. So, that should make one faction happy. On the other hand,
>>there would be no opportunity to add subtrivial topics. (Or trivial
>>topics, or significant topics). That should make another faction happy.

> On the other hand, you could make both groups unhappy as there are plenty of
> topics that we don't have articles that are worthy of articles.

Allow article creation in people's userspace. Then at the end of the
month the articles might not suck.

- d.


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Alternatively, we shouldn't shut down a system that works reasonably well
and performs an important task without having something that works better.

On 12/10/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 12/8/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What would happen to those articles which do exist which require longer
> > consideration before we make a decision whether to delete, keep,
> redirect or
> > merge?
> >
> They'd probably grow a talk page.
>
> > We need to give serious thoughts to how processes intermerge before we
> look
> > at making such a significant change to our processes.
> >
> It's just an experiment.  Instead of arguing about what might happen,
> let's just try it for a while and see what happens.
>
> > Regards
> >
> >
> > *Keith Old*
> >
> > User:Capitalistroadster
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Han Dao

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Red link clicks: more statistics on page creation
	policy

body:
Awesome! Experments can sometime produce unexpected result.

On 12/9/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> We were discussing on wikitech-l a month ago why we see so many hits to
> the
> edit page which don't result in a save attempt. My theory was that the
> majority of edit requests were due to readers clicking red links, not
> understanding what a red link indicates.
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-November/032239.html
>
> A comparison of edit page requests and their success rate before and after
> the recent page creation policy change yields some interesting
> differences.
> The following figures are based on profiling data gathered on November 8
> and
> December 8. They are both gathered over about 24 hours, and so do not take
> weekly fluctuation into account.
>
> Before the policy change, 97.1% of edit page requests passed the
> authentication checks. After the change, only 65.5% did. This means that
> the
> "page creation limited" error page is getting roughly 3.5 hits per second.
>
> So it's hardly surprising that we've seen a jump in account creations,
> because we're now advertising account creation on one of the most heavily
> visited pages on Wikipedia, the "page creation limited" error page. We're
> tapping into that constant stream of confused readers clicking red links.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Replacing AfD means instead of a decision being located in a central spot
where it is open and accountable, you will have decisions being made by one
or two people. You will then end up with hellacious disputes at Undeletion
and accusations of Admins acting in bad faith.

While there may be grounds for expanding the Criteria for Speedy deletion,
there are always going to be cases where more careful consideration is
required.

Regards

Keith Old

User:Capitalistroadster

On 12/10/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

On 12/9/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/9/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Is this another one of those things we're asserting by blanket
> > > default without evidence?
> > >
> > > -Phil
> >
> > Never is going too far but it should very much be an option of last
> > resort. There are a number of reasons why it is a bad idea:
> >
> > 1.Shortage of admin manpower. Remeber those stats that came out last
> > month? We have maybe 200 admins reasonably active in an admin capacity
> >
> If everyone wants something deleted, an admin is going to delete it
> anyway.  Not putting the article through AfD first *reduces* the
> manpower required by everyone, and doesn't affect the manpower
> required by admins.
>
> > 2. Adminship is meant to be no big deal. I would prefer it if people
> > stoped trying to make it so
> >
> Adding a new criterion for speedy deletion doesn't make adminship a big
> deal.
>
> > 3.The constantly riseing standards at WP:RFA are not going to be
> > helped by increaseing admin responcibilities/powers.
> >
> Again, I don't understand this.  The new criteria for deletion should
> still be cut and dry.
>
> > 4.It appears that we may be getting more wheel wars. Increaseing the
> > number of subjective descissions will not help that.
> > --
> > geni
>
> Yes, you've confused what I've said.  I think we should add more
> *objective* criteria to the speedy deletion candidates, not
> *subjective* ones.  Turning off AfD for a while would cause that to
> happen.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/10/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/9/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > The problem is that a great deal of policing depends on people using
> > their watchlists and/or Recent Changes. Deletion and undeletion show up
> > on neither.
>
> Deletion is evident in CDVF.

It's easy enough to make a watchlist for articles your interested in,
and to spot their deletion.  Simply create a list containing links to
those articles (like the list at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tony_Sidaway/Watch, which was
created for a different purpose).  Whenever you look at the list, the
redlinks are the articles that have been deleted.

Having said that, I don't like this idea of turning deletion into a
content matter.  We would in effect be condoning and encouraging edit
warfare by making page-blanking an acceptable edit. For some people,
it would be an irresistible invitation to vandalism, for others, a way
of suppressing inconvenient statements.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Dec 9, 2005, at 2:16 PM, geni wrote:
> >
> > Tell you what lets go to the other extream and let admins deleted what
> > ever they like for a week. Would make RC patrol much less of a
> > problem.
>
> If the turn-off-AFD idea is a disaster, we can try this next.
>

I suggested something like this in August under the name of Free fire deletion.

The idea is that if an administrator thinks an article should be
deleted, he goes ahead and does it.

If it's contested, it's undeleted and taken to AfD.  I think this
would seriously reduce the traffic in AfD because administrators in
general do exercise reasonable judgement.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/10/05, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is
> >not actually speediable?  Here's a thought - make it speediable!
> >
> >Anthony
> >
> >
> Are you kidding? A year ago, the paranoid community rejected two
> different measures for something *in between* speedy deletion and AFD
> (both involved admin discretion but not full reliance on it). What makes
> you think anything will have changed this year?

I *don't* think anything will have changed.  I said was talking about
what we *should* do, not what's going to happen.  If everyone agrees
something should be deleted, we should delete it, period.  Running it
through some AFD process first is not smart.

That said, if we turned off AFD, I think the number of speediable
categories would quickly grow.

Plus, in my opinion, Jimbo has set us into a new era of
experimentation on Wikipedia.  We no longer need consensus before we
can at least try something out.  Don't you think the paranoid
community would have rejected a proposal to disallow users that
weren't logged in from creating new articles?  I certainly do, in fact
if you want consensus I don't even think the community would accept
such a proposal now (maybe it'd get a majority, I really don't know).

> If people won't trust
> admins to semi-speedy something, why would they trust them to speedy
> something?

I don't understand that question at all.  Why should the votes of a
few non-admins and a few admins override the consensus of all admins?
If all admins insist on keeping something deleted, then there's
nothing that can be done about it.

> If anything, considering how we've grown, I wouldn't be
> surprised if people would vote down proposals like Preliminary Deletion
> even harder. People are scared of the potential for admin abuse. And
> frankly, I don't blame them.

As long as the ability to delete remains possible, the potential for
admin abuse is very small.  What is the potential abuse here?  GNAA
gets deleted?  I actually doubt it would.

You know what, forget the AFD experiment.  Let's give admins free
reign over deletion for one week.  Surely they won't vandalise
Wikipedia to the point where we can't fix things after the week is up.
 After one week, we look at what got deleted, and we see if there was
any admin abuse, and if so how severe it was.

AFD is still there, but it's there for actual disputes.  Preferably
it's there mainly for discussion about the underlying issues of what
should and shouldn't be deleted, and doesn't get bogged down in
minutiae of every single article (in some especially heated cases
maybe there will be a vote over a single article, but not hundreds a
day).  AFD doesn't get it right perfectly 100% of the time.  There's
no reason admins need to either.  As long as there aren't gross
violations of the standards which we reach *through consensus*, it
really doesn't matter.

We'll probably wind up with somewhat more deletions this way, and
really I see that as a bad thing.  But as AFD has pretty much
completely abandoned the notion of consensus anyway, it's probably
inevitable.

> Scandals like the bitter edit war over
> licence vs license in a Mediawiki template have proven that, sadly, our
> admins can and do get into trouble. Even the best of us, like Everyking,
> get too heated and involved in articles we edit that we cause pointless
> edit/revert wars.
>
This is actually more a problem with the enormous reluctance to take
adminship away from people.  In my opinion (and this is really a
completely separate topic), the bar to adminship needs to be lowered,
and the bar to deadminship needs to be lowered as well.  The real
question is how can this be achieved.  I don't think it can be
achieved through voting, at least not voting among a large group of
people, because adminship and deadminship should not be based on
popularity, and large groups of people invariably factor popularity
into a vote (because there is essentially no *accountability* in
voting).

> An objective measure of an article's "deletability" would be one nobody
> could disagree with.

If you want perfection...  Of course, if you just want "better than
AFD", it'd only need to be a measure that more than 2/3 of people
would agree with.

> For instance, you can't disagree that, say,
> fuddlemark got >90% support on his recent RfA, because that's an
> objective measure of support. (At least, you can't disagree without
> appearing insane.) However, many articles on AfD that get deleted by
> unanimous support have their "deletability" measured by subjective
> methods. To some people, schools are notable. To others, they are not.
> How do you resolve this?

Well, I'd resolve it through compromise.  Keep the articles somewhere
outside the encyclopedia, somewhere which isn't controlled by a
for-profit corporation and somewhere that respects the GFDL.  That
leaves two possibilities, really.  We put it in a sister project, or,
if the board won't let us start the sister project, we start a new
organization and put it there.  Now that we've moved the information,
we change the links to that article from red links into light blue
links, that is, external links to the other source.

Sure, not *everyone* will be happy with this, but I think most people
would find it acceptable.  And sure, we wouldn't wind up with exactly
the same breakdown as we'd get through AFD.  But that second point I
really think is irrelevant.  AFD is not perfect.  Even those that
really like AFD only feel that it gets things approximately right.  If
a few borderline cases get decided differently from AFD, it's not the
end of the world, especially not if the information is still preserved
somewhere else, and maintained under the GFDL so that we can retrieve
it back, most likely in better condition, if we change our minds.

> How do you objectively measure a school's
> "deletability"?

Personally I don't feel that any schools are deletable.  I think
enough people agree with me that one couldn't legitimately say that
there is *consensus* to delete an article on any school.  That some
get deleted through AFD is simply an unpatched flaw in the deletion
system.  In any case, we've strayed off the original topic.  This
particular subthread got started when someone claimed that there were
articles which *everyone* felt should be deleted but wouldn't be
because we couldn't come up with an objective measure.  Articles on
schools don't fall under this category.

> Is "deletability" even an objective value in itself?
> Truth be told, it's a miracle our CSD have grown so big, because even
> they aren't objective. After all, how many of them received unanimous
> support? Clearly some people disagreed with them, and probably with good
> reason. This would inherently make them subjective.
>
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])

True, though CSD deletes quite a few articles which not everyone feels
should be deleted.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Pottercast/PotterCast (and podcasts in general)
Hmm, I couldn't find the article (guess it's been deleted), but I did
find a mention of it in the New York Post.  I don't think this article
should have been deleted, and in fact I think it's kind of obvious
that it should have at least been kept as a redirect.  Turning it into
a redirect wouldn't have required AFD or a speedy deletion criterion.

> Forums and Blogs
I assume you don't mean [[Forums and Blogs]], so I'm really not sure
where you're coming from.  But I also think maybe we miscommunicated
over what I was disputing.  You suggested that there were articles
which "everyone agrees should be deleted" but which there could be no
speedy deletion criteria to cover.  Your first example was of
something which I think pretty much everyone would agree should be a
redirect.  This one, well, it doesn't seem to be an article at all.

> Bands (C-Moon - German, is it vanity or not?)
User:Zordrac certainly doesn't seem to think so.  But I'd say the
article meets a speedy deletion criterion I'd like to see established
- it contains no references to verify the information in it.

> Schools (examples shouldn't be needed for this one), although I have
> to admit discussion is pretty much growing on this. I'm sure this will
> eventually lead to notability guidelines.
>
Yeah, you don't have my support to delete any schools, and I think a
lot of people would agree with me.  I think what will happen
eventually here is that schools will not be eligible for deletion due
to notability.

> All these could be covered by some number statistic and notability
> guidelines, but a quick test to easily determine its deletion
> worthiness is much harder. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find one,
> though.

Well, the only one which I agree should be deleted fails a quick and
easy test - it contains no external references.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> > G'day Keith,
> >
> > > Alternatively, we shouldn't shut down a system that works reasonably
> > > well and performs an important task without having something that
> > > works better.
> >
> > Ay, there's the rub.  I get the feeling those arguing for shutting down
> > AfD don't feel that it *does* perform an important task.  Rather, they'd
> > prefer not to have deletions at all (other than CSDs, which already
> > apparently go too far ...).
> >
> > Mark Gallagher
> > "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> > - Danger Mouse
>
> I think Mark has an excellent point here. Some of the people
> supporting AFD being turned off seem to think that. Others just want
> to get rid of any poisonous feelings.
>
For my part, I just want to get rid of the enormous waste of time.

> I think deletion policy should provide to deleting or shutting off AFD itself.
> Don't delete an article if it is a vandal target yet a valid article
> topic. If it can be improved, do so and don't delete it. We'd be
> deleting stuff like "George W. Bush" and "GNAA" on a regular basis for
> the wrong reasons.
>
> If something is wrong with AFD, then those exact problems need to be
> found and addressed. Shutting off AFD is a cop out.

I kind of think we should take the exact opposite approach.  Shut off
AFD, and then we'll find out what was right with it.  Then those exact
solutions can be found and addressed.

Anthony


body:
On 12/9/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> How about this for an experiment: turn off article creation _and_
> deletion for a while? Freeze the table of contents (not that we have
> one)...
>
> So that all anyone could possibly do is to edit existing articles?
>
> It would force everyone to pay attention to the articles that exist
> already, and with 857,833 of them you'd think people could find
> something worth their attention.
>
> With deletion being impossible, AfD would become unnecessary... as
> would DRV. So, that should make one faction happy. On the other hand,
> there would be no opportunity to add subtrivial topics. (Or trivial
> topics, or significant topics). That should make another faction happy.

I wouldn't call it an experiment, because it's obvious that it's not a
long term solution.

I don't think it'd be horrible, if it were kept to no more than one
week a month.  Even then, you can't turn off deletion completely.
Copyright infringements still have to be deleted.  Patent nonsense
probably should be deleted too (though one could argue for just
editing).  Test pages, pure vandalism, history merging, and
non-controversial page move deletion should be kept on too.  Not quite
all the speedy criteria, but the truly obvious ones, at least.

I dunno, might be interesting to try.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why Turn of AFD?

body:
On 12/9/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I don't think it's necessary to keep "nominations" from
> > > hiding in obscurity.  Again, if it's important, someone will notice it
> > > and reverse it.  If it isn't, then it doesn't matter anyway.  This is
> > > especially true because we already point out that an article has been
> > > deleted when someone actually tries to read that article.
> > Speedy deletion nominations aren't permanently logged in a central
> > place, only in the edit history. They disappear from the directory as
> > soon as the tag is removed. Have you got any idea how often speedy
> > tags are removed? Just because I don't notice them being removed,
> > doesn't mean it's not important.
> >
> Ah, I see what you mean now, you're talking about speedy deletion
> nominations.  Can't these be put on [[Wikipedia:Speedy deletions]] for
> a central location?  I don't really see what this has to do with AfD,
> anyway.
>
> I'm saying that listing articles on a central page rather than tagging
> and categorizing them avoid people from removing tags which shouldn't
> be removed.

And I don't see what that has to do with AFD.  When we turn off AFD,
we turn off tagging articles under AFD too.

Anthony


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Seigenthaler-Rufmörder offenbar gefunden / Seigenthaler's libeler already identified (according to Daniel Brandt)

body:
Daniel Brandt, Gr?nder von wikipedia-watch.org (nach google-watch.org
und yahoo-watch.org) schreibt im Wikipedia Review (nein, nicht unser
review :) ) , dass Seigenthaler auf einer Weihnachtsfeier
bekanntgegeben habe, da? ihm ein schriftliches Gest?ndnis der Person
vorliege, die den Rufmord in [[en:John Seigenthaler Sr.]] begangen
habe:

"Seigenthaler has a signed confession. Read all about it in the
newspaper in about 24 to 48 hours. I cannot say more out of deference
to reporters who have been working on this. Most of Nashville's elite
already knows about it because Seigenthaler's Christmas party was
tonight."

http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1133920035

In other news: Bei Brockhaus in Leipzig gab es einen Zwischenfall.Eine
Redakteurin liegt schwer verletzt im Krankenhaus, ist aber offenbar
nicht mehr in Lebensgefahr. Klaus Holoch ?u?ert sich mit den Worten,
man stehe dort unter Schock.
http://www.lvz-online.de/lvz-heute/13167.html

Der Name des mutma?lichen T?ters wird von der Volkszeitung abgek?rzt.
Das ist aber etwas schwach, wenn brockhaus auf seiner eigenen Seite
eine Liste mit Redakteuren bereith?lt.


from_name: Brian Haws

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Proposal: Article Improvement Weeks! (was Turn off
	article creation AND deletion.)

body:
Effects I expect at the end of the week:

  * Some article polishing.
  * More people practiced in article polishing.
  * A flood of new articles out of userspace. Hopefully better ones.
People will also treat this as "work on those new articles you were
thinking about" week. That's fine too.
  * A consequent flood of AFDs, but hopefully not as much because the
articles will have been worked on for a week!

Thoughts?

- d.

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
I think with the exceptions here and elsewhere I think it's worth trying  out for a week to see what happens. We're falling farther and farther  behind with cleanup and it's not impossible that doing this 4-5 times a  year might make a real difference. It might also make cleanup type work more of a core value among editors...


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Adrenalin

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Why MO.wikipedia. - Moldovan,
	are written in cyrillic ?

body:
Any action/summary from wikipedia administrators ?

I say it again, the only Moldovans who write Moldovian language using
cyrillic are the Transnistrian ones, but they are FORCED by russian
MILITARY FORCES! (read more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria)
They don't choose that, the RUSSIA CHOOSE FOR THEM! (or have you heard
of any referendum?).
"Roughly 11,200 children out of 79,000 Transdniestrian schoolchildren
are educated in the Moldovan language using Cyrillic script."
"In the summer of 2004, the Transnistrian authorities forcibly closed
six schools that taught the language using the Latin script." !!!
THEY DON"T HAVE ANY RULES!

And the majority of Moldovans use latin script, that's around
2,578,322(that's the Moldovans from Moldova) and only 177,204 from
Transnistria ARE OFFICIALLY FORCED to use cyrillic !
That's 2,578,322/177,204=~14, we are the majority.

Please write our name language using latin script on the main page.
And move the current mo. to mo-cyr and on all mo. page put two links
to Romania wiki and to cyr wiki. (on mo. should not remain any
cyrillic word!).
Or i feel like wikipedia are under russian military forces influence too...


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Well, we have at least one important supporter

body:
On 12/9/05, Geoffrey Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> I know he's Canadian, & for some reason I think he lives in Vancouver.
> If that's right, then I suspect he must be on speaking terms with Ray.
>
> http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051209
>
> Geoff

FWIW, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.D._Frazer

He lives in Richmond, B.C., apparently

Cormac


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
If we do this, I know what I'm doing just BEFORE that week ... making
stubs for all the new articles I want to create, so that I can then
improve them ;)

-Matt


from_name: Alexander Menk

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tiny Frappr Extension

body:
Hello!

i've done a tiny extension for integrating maps from www.frappr.com into
mediawikis.

Hope anyone find's it usefull ...

I've you find bugs / have improvments ... just fix / make them ;)

Have fun!

Mit freundlichen Gr??en / Best regards

Alexander Menk
- self soft -

--
visit www.self-soft.de

== BEGIN Frappr.php ==

<?php

/**
* Extension for Mapping Service www.frappr.com
* general DOCs:
* http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Write_your_own_MediaWiki_extension
*
* Installation:
* 1)  copy this as Frappr.php to extensions
* 2)  add   include("extensions/Frappr.php");  to the end of your
LocalSettings.php
*
* Usage:
* <frappr>param1|param2|param3...</frappr>
* where param1 ... n are the parameters in the order used in the java
script below :)
*
* done by Alexander Menk, self soft, Germany. visit www.self-soft.de for
contact information
* released on 10.12.2005 as public domain - no warranty
**/

$wgExtensionFunctions[] = "wfFrapprLink";

function wfFrapprLink() {
     global $wgParser;
     # register the extension with the WikiText parser
     $wgParser->setHook( "frappr", "renderFrappr" );
}

# The callback function for converting the input text to HTML output
function renderFrappr( $input, $argv = "") {
     $arguments = explode("|",$input);
     $clean = array();

     # clean up parameters (for security reasons)
     foreach($arguments as $val)
         $clean[] = (float)$val;

$output = "<script>
var frappr_mapheight = ".$clean[0].";
var frappr_mapwidth = ".$clean[1].";
var frappr_maplat = ".$clean[2].";
var frappr_maplon = ".$clean[3].";
var frappr_mapzoom = ".$clean[4].";
var frappr_host = \"http://www.frappr.com/\";var gid =
".$clean[5].";</script>
<script src=\"http://www.frappr.com/ajax/mapwidget.js\"></script>";

     return $output;
}
?>

=== END Frappr.php ===


from_name: FxParlant

subject: [Wikitech-l] upgrade error messages

body:
Hello,

just for information. Upgrading might fail for duplicate content on some
fields who become a primary key.

Unfortunately, the 1.5 install isn't as verbose as 1.4 install:

***1.5 error message***
Making img_name the primary key... Query "ALTER TABLE image ADD PRIMARY
KEY img_name (img_name)" failed with error code "".

***1.4 error message***
Making img_name the primary key... Query "ALTER TABLE image ADD PRIMARY
KEY img_name (img_name)" failed with error code "Duplicate entry
'README' for key 1".

I suggest for users who have a duplicate content making a crash of 1.5
install, to revert their database and try the install with a 1.4. Then,
correct the database by suppressing one of the duplicate content, and
redo the 1.5 install.

I hope this is already in bugzilla (if not, maybe someone used to
expressing the bug could make it) and the install process in 1.6 are as
verbose as in 1.4.

Fran?ois


from_name: stevertigo

body:
Brilliant. Really, really fucking brilliant!
I love it when people express radical and free ideas
which wont ever be tried unless by undemocratic
decree.

The only problem with it is that AFD people are are
there precisely because they are neither good article
progenitors nor good article editors. That's why we
call them "Deletionists" --because that's just what
they do. I attach no value judgement to the name of
"Deletionist" other than any pre-concieved social
prejudice that values creation over destruction.

Ergo, Creativity needs a mirror in Destruction
--taking away such a major function will mean that
those who have over time been driven to AFD (whatever
meaning one may give to "driven") will take their
skills of destruction to articles -- destructive
reverts, rollbacks, cutting etc.

All of which can be good--dont get me wrong--and
certainly putting doing these in balance is the best
kind of approach. But as they say in Go, a masterful
player will see the difference between a good move and
a bad one as like 'the difference between a feather
and a cinder block.' Not known for their
feather-sensitive sublety --Deletionists need
somewhere to go to do what it is they do.

Stevertigo

--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Keith Old wrote:
> > On 12/10/05, Daniel P. B. Smith
> <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>
> >>How about this for an experiment: turn off article
> creation _and_
> >>deletion for a while? Freeze the table of contents
> (not that we have
> >>one)...
> >>So that all anyone could possibly do is to edit
> existing articles?
> >>It would force everyone to pay attention to the
> articles that exist
> >>already, and with 857,833 of them you'd think
> people could find
> >>something worth their attention.
> >>With deletion being impossible, AfD would become
> unnecessary... as
> >>would DRV. So, that should make one faction happy.
> On the other hand,
> >>there would be no opportunity to add subtrivial
> topics. (Or trivial
> >>topics, or significant topics). That should make
> another faction happy.
>
> > On the other hand, you could make both groups
> unhappy as there are plenty of
> > topics that we don't have articles that are worthy
> of articles.
>
>
> Allow article creation in people's userspace. Then
> at the end of the
> month the articles might not suck.
>
> - d.

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


body:
On 12/10/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> That's an abuse of AFD per the increasingly decorative policy. It's
> explicitly not for editorial work.

One of my long-standing beefs with the deletion process is that people
use it as cleanup, and when you call them on it, they say "But doing
it this way gets results under the threat of deletion, while if you
list something on cleanup, nothing ever gets done."

And then people turn round and say that if anything's ever deleted
through AFD, the topic is never again allowed to exist, even if the
reason for deletion was that it was a crap article that needed
cleanup.

> ([[WT:AUM]] is currently trying to form a local consensus that supersedes computer
>science with voting, so it must be a good idea.)

More accurately, they can see the positive effects of getting creative
with templates, while the negative effects are invisible on the small
scale and thus easy to ignore.

The discussion we should be having is one of "Should we extend
template syntax in order to allow more clever things to be done in a
sensible, maintainable way that won't impact system performance?"
Ugly template hacks to do logic and programs are not really the way to
go there.

-Matt


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Preformatted blank articles? (was Experimenton	new pages and GFDL)

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Saturday 10 December 2005 02:01, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Tels:
> > Actually, I just added one new link to the toolbox on the left, which
> > goes to a HTML page with a form entry on a webserver, which bounces
> > the user back to the wiki. I am sure it is possible to create a
> > specialpage (Specialpages:NewArticle?) that does the same, but the
> > external form was easier for me.
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Inputbox
>
> This has been active on the Wikimedia wikis for quite a while. I
> originally created it for Wikinews, but it's used in many different
> places now. It supports preloading text.

Wow, saves me the work of creating it :) Thanx a lot,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Sat Dec 10 12:10:43 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Man, I'm hot." - "Thirsty?" - "No, I mean good looking."

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from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Red link clicks: more statistics on page creation policy

body:
We were discussing on wikitech-l a month ago why we see so many hits to the
edit page which don't result in a save attempt. My theory was that the
majority of edit requests were due to readers clicking red links, not
understanding what a red link indicates.

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-November/032239.html

A comparison of edit page requests and their success rate before and after
the recent page creation policy change yields some interesting differences.
The following figures are based on profiling data gathered on November 8 and
December 8. They are both gathered over about 24 hours, and so do not take
weekly fluctuation into account.

Before the policy change, 97.1% of edit page requests passed the
authentication checks. After the change, only 65.5% did. This means that the
"page creation limited" error page is getting roughly 3.5 hits per second.

So it's hardly surprising that we've seen a jump in account creations,
because we're now advertising account creation on one of the most heavily
visited pages on Wikipedia, the "page creation limited" error page. We're
tapping into that constant stream of confused readers clicking red links.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
That would focus people's attention on improving the existing stuff
which often isn't happening. I wouldn't really oppose one week of pure
improvement every month to encourage people to improve the existing
rather than create more stuff that needs to be fixed.

If the stream of crap is stopped in its tracks, I have no problem with
putting deletion on hold as well.

Mgm


body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> Democracy is one of those things Wikipedia isn't,
> and voting remains
> stupid as well as evil. Anything that's ever been
> prematurely forced
> through to a poll was probably a bad idea. If it
wasn't a bad idea,
> decree was probably the right way to do it.

"WINA
D" - true, and for good reason. But such 'good reason'
should (and [by decree] always will) be open to
comment. To negate consensus (~democracy) is to negate
Openness, and to denounce a mere comment == standing
up for the [[Nupedia|Closed Model]].

"Voting is evil." Though Im just a dumb American, I
understand perfectly well how familiarly
quasi-aristocratic institutionalism might rub some
people the right way.

"Voting is stupid." Granting the benefit of the doubt,
you must not be referring to voting as an idealised
practice or concept, but to the crude wiki application
of "voting." There's a special page setup for that. I
think it should be used much more often. Though I will
grant you that fine tuning such a beast requires
starting with some decisive baseline.

Any other overly generalistic denouncements of open
(as opposed to closed) consensus?

- s.
there is a crack in everything.

__________________________________________________
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Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
> Having said that, I don't like this idea of turning deletion into a
> content matter.  We would in effect be condoning and encouraging edit
> warfare by making page-blanking an acceptable edit. For some people,
> it would be an irresistible invitation to vandalism, for others, a way
> of suppressing inconvenient statements.

Or delete articles against concensus. If anyone can delete and
undelete, the deletion log will be clogged up with school articles and
forums. Sure, they can be undeleted again, but AFD is supposed to make
a somewhat final decision that can only be overturned by logic and
arguments, not a single editor's mood.


body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> > Anything that's ever been
> > prematurely forced
> > through to a poll was probably a bad idea. If it
> wasn't a bad idea,
> > decree was probably the right way to do it.

I like the logic here: 'Lets remedy what we claim to
be the problems with "prematurely forcing stuff
through polls" by forcing stuff through by decree,
assuming (with good faith) that such decrees will
always come at the right time, and hence be better
than consensus.'

Yech.

- s.

Jefferson distinguished in his later years between
what he called "aristocrats" and "democrats." The
aristocrats are

 "those who fear and distrust the people,
 and wish to draw all powers from them into
 the hands of the higher classes."

The democrats, in contrast,

 "identify with the people, have confidence
 in them, cherish and consider them as the
 honest and safe depository of the public
 interest, if not always the most wise."

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
> another, (Mo0's), somebody voted oppose because "your talk page seems to
> be vandalised a lot" and "we should be erring on the side of caution,
> and voting Oppose unless we are absolutely sure". Adminship is
> John Lee
> ([[User:Johnleemk]])

Surely you can ignore votes with this kind of reason? If anything
being vandalized shows you do a good job and keeping vandals at bay
which is always a good thing.

Opposition should be based on the user's own action not that of others.
(Perhaps that last line could become policy to get rid of some bad
reasonings to oppose adminships?)

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Keith,
>
> > Alternatively, we shouldn't shut down a system that works reasonably
> > well and performs an important task without having something that
> > works better.
>
> Ay, there's the rub.  I get the feeling those arguing for shutting down
> AfD don't feel that it *does* perform an important task.  Rather, they'd
> prefer not to have deletions at all (other than CSDs, which already
> apparently go too far ...).
>
> Mark Gallagher
> "What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
> - Danger Mouse

I think Mark has an excellent point here. Some of the people
supporting AFD being turned off seem to think that. Others just want
to get rid of any poisonous feelings.

I think deletion policy should provide to deleting or shutting off AFD itself.
Don't delete an article if it is a vandal target yet a valid article
topic. If it can be improved, do so and don't delete it. We'd be
deleting stuff like "George W. Bush" and "GNAA" on a regular basis for
the wrong reasons.

If something is wrong with AFD, then those exact problems need to be
found and addressed. Shutting off AFD is a cop out.


body:
- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> Democracy is one of those things Wikipedia isn't,
and voting remains stupid as well as evil.

> Go refute [[m:Polls are evil]], then come back here
and fight the power.

I will take up your challenge.

But first, do please clear up this confusing confusion
in your interchanging use of "polls" and "voting." The
English language is regarded as a powerful tool for
communication because it allows for some
differentiation between terms that mean... well...
different things.

Stevertigo

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
On 12/10/05, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Phil,
>
> > Turn off AfD. See what happens. if it's a disaster, we turn it back  on
> > and say "Well, shit, that was interesting." If it's not a  disaster...
> > we say "Well, neat, that was interesting." Really,  there's only about
> > three letters difference in the reactions.
>
> And if we can't agree on the results?  If a vocal minority --- including
> your good self --- cries "yippee, my article on minor fanfic characters
> can't be deleted!  Neat!", do we consider the experiment a success?
>

I would consider it a success if those who wanted to delete articles
on minor fanfic characters recognised, firstly, that such articles
really aren't a problem for Wikipedia and second, that there are
alternatives to deletion that would be acceptable to all.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Proposal: Article Improvement Weeks! (was Turn off
 article creation AND deletion.)

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> That would focus people's attention on improving the existing stuff
> which often isn't happening. I wouldn't really oppose one week of pure
> improvement every month to encourage people to improve the existing
> rather than create more stuff that needs to be fixed.
> If the stream of crap is stopped in its tracks, I have no problem with
> putting deletion on hold as well.

OK. I suggest that some time soon (early January, say) we hold an
Article Improvement Week.

  * No new articles to be created.
  * AFD is closed for business - no deletions, no nominations.
(Copyright violations, gross libel etc. can be zapped as usual.)
  * You can still work on new stuff in your userspace, but please don't
move it to article space. (How or if to enforce this to be determined.)

A week should be long enough to get some effect and short enough not to
frustrate people and make them go elsewhere because they want to write
stuff (hence the userspace getout).

Effects I expect at the end of the week:

  * Some article polishing.
  * More people practiced in article polishing.
  * A flood of new articles out of userspace. Hopefully better ones.
People will also treat this as "work on those new articles you were
thinking about" week. That's fine too.
  * A consequent flood of AFDs, but hopefully not as much because the
articles will have been worked on for a week!

Thoughts?

- d.


from_name: Heinz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wie gleichzeitig mehrere Wikis betreiben

body:
Arena Andrea schrieb:
> Hallo,
>
> Unser Projekt soll ein Wiki, dass in den Sprachen Deutsch,  Italienisch,
> Franz?sich und English erh?ltlich werden. Dazu kommt ein  Wiki, dass nur
> f?r  Administratoren da ist, sprich kein bearbeiten  f?r den user.

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

>
> Bis jetzt habe ich nur die Mediawiki Software auf einer Deutschen und
> dieser gesch?tzes Wiki installieren k?nnen.
> Ich habe zwei Ordner mit Mediawiki und zwei Datenbanken erstellt.
>
> Der Skin sollte bei allen Sprachen gleich aussehen.
>
> Wie ist es systematisch am besten, die weiteren wikis zu installieren?
>

Mein Problem ist ?hnlich gelagert. Nur dass bei mir sich nur die Sprache
des Men?s ?ndern soll.
Bei angemeldeten benutzern ist es m?glich, die Sprache des Men?s bei den
Benutzeteinstellungen auszuw?hlen. Problematisch wird es bei nicht
eingeloggten Benutzern, wo dies nicht m?glich ist und bei selbst
angepassten Men?s

IMHO ist die einfachste L?sung des Problems die Installation mehrerer
MediaWikis, wo jede Sprache ihre eigene DB hat.

>
> M?chte nochmals mein Ziel erkl?ren:
>
> Der User sieht auf der Hauptseite links im Menu die verschiedenen
> Sprachen, wenn er z.b. auf Italienisch klickt, erscheint der Artikel
> auf Italienisch(inklusiv der Navigation). Und das mit allen Sprachen.
>
> Wie ist das im Hintergrund am besten zu installlieren? Die Skins,
> Extensions und ganz wichtig die Bilder sollten f?r alle verf?gbar  sein
> (keine doppelten dateien). Wie mache ich dann dass mit der  Bilder
> Datenbank?

Hier sollte man sich die Datei LocalSettings.php im
Installationsverzeichnis anschauen. Dort werden entsprechende Pfade gesetzt.

>
>
> Vielen Dank im voraus
>
> andy


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Account creation spike on enwiki after anonymous
	page creation got disabled

body:
Dori wrote:
> On 12/9/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:

>>I made a plot[1] of account creations on the English Wikipedia based
>>on Newuserlog data, there has been quite a spike since anonymous page
>>creation got disabled, although the numbers are a bit inaccurate since
>>it has also been in the press lately.

I'll also point out we just broke the Alexa top 30. Today #30, yesterday
#30, Thursday #29. HOLY CRAP!

>>[1]: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Account_creations_on_the_English_Wikipedia.png

> Time to start selling low UID accounts on eBay. Just in time for the
> fundraising too.

Hah. Make the user numbers visible!

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Some more unscientific findings

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

> We've all heard claims that our math & computer material is very good,
> but because many of the people who contributed in those areas have either
> moved on to other parts of the project or left Wikipedia -- due to
> Wikipedia-related reasons (e.g., burn-out) or non-Wikipedia reasons --
> most of that quality work is not easily found.

I dunno. In the course of my actual job (Unix sysadmin contractor), I
use Wikipedia as my favoured reference when I get an obscure acronym or
term I'm not absolutely clear on. It's *usable in a practical sense*. Of
course, this is more on the technologies and products end; I can't speak
to the computer science end.

- d.


body:
On 12/10/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>
> Allow article creation in people's userspace. Then at the end of the
> month the articles might not suck.

By George, I think he's got it!


from_name: Carbonite

body:
I'm starting to like where this proposal is going. I have some suggestions
that I'd like to throw out for feedback:

- AfD would be turned off for the first two weeks of the month (1st -14th).
During this time no nominations or "votes" are allowed. Any article not
nominated by the last day of the previous month would have to wait until the
15th. Existing AfDs would continued to be closed. Speedy deletion criteria
would still be in effect.

- The second week of the month (8th-14th), all mainspace article creation
would be turned off. This could be enforced through software by only
allowing article creation by admins (and this would be strongly
discouraged). Talk pages and pages in other namespaces could be created by
all registered users.

- Starting on the 15th, Wikipedia would return to operating as usual (for
the rest of the month).

I believe that the result of these changes would be to create a cycle in
which more articles were developed into "real" articles rather than
remaining substandard. It also cuts AfD's status to part-time. There
probably would be a flood of nomination on the 15th of each month, but by
this point every article would have had at least one full week to improve
and likely closer to two weeks.

Again, this is just a rough proposal, but I believe it could be developed
into a very workable policy.

Carbonite


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:

> Ay, there's the rub.  I get the feeling those arguing for shutting down
> AfD don't feel that it *does* perform an important task.  Rather, they'd
> prefer not to have deletions at all (other than CSDs, which already
> apparently go too far ...).
> If you've noted an element of sarcasm or, at the very least,
> tongue-in-cheekery from David, Anthony, etc. then this may provide a
> plausible explanation as to why.

Oh no, not at all. Most of what hits AFD is complete shit, and should be
killed as quickly, messily and painfully as is feasible. A deletion
mechanism is something that we have a need for; my objection is to the
atmosphere of the AFD we have and the fostering of bad faith, and that
getting any policy change on deletions is like stalemated trench warfare.

- d.


from_name: Keith Old

body:
On the other hand, you could make both groups unhappy as there are plenty of
topics that we don't have articles that are worthy of articles.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster

On 12/10/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>
> How about this for an experiment: turn off article creation _and_
> deletion for a while? Freeze the table of contents (not that we have
> one)...
>
> So that all anyone could possibly do is to edit existing articles?
>
> It would force everyone to pay attention to the articles that exist
> already, and with 857,833 of them you'd think people could find
> something worth their attention.
>
> With deletion being impossible, AfD would become unnecessary... as
> would DRV. So, that should make one faction happy. On the other hand,
> there would be no opportunity to add subtrivial topics. (Or trivial
> topics, or significant topics). That should make another faction happy.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> I think Mark has an excellent point here. Some of the people
> supporting AFD being turned off seem to think that. Others just want
> to get rid of any poisonous feelings.
> I think deletion policy should provide to deleting or shutting off AFD itself.
> Don't delete an article if it is a vandal target yet a valid article
> topic. If it can be improved, do so and don't delete it. We'd be
> deleting stuff like "George W. Bush" and "GNAA" on a regular basis for
> the wrong reasons.
> If something is wrong with AFD, then those exact problems need to be
> found and addressed. Shutting off AFD is a cop out.

I don't think so. I think it's bad enough that just dynamiting the
damned thing can't be worse than it is now. We do need a deletion
mechanism, but we don't need it more than we need not to have a
festering pit of bad faith.

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Preformatted blank articles? (was Experiment on new
	pages and GFDL)

body:
Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:  On 09/12/05, David Gerard  wrote:

> While this would just be wikitext, and any experienced Wikipedia regular
> could of course format an article how they liked, new editors would be
> presented clearly with what we expect from a new article.
>
> With this in place, I think we could even allow anons to create articles
> again on en:. They certainly wouldn't just put "so what do you want me
> to type?"

Another benefit: stick in [[Category:New articles]] as prefilled text
at the bottom. We end up with a cleanup category, where articles will
go until someone hacks them about a bit and (eg) categorises them. A
nice corrolary to Newpages, in that you can see an experienced editor
*hasn't* been at the page yet...

It's worth a shot.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Writing  from the peanut gallery, I think this is a great idea, it plants the  seed in new editors heads that those components are an intergral part  of a well formatted article. Where does it go from here?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

>>If something is wrong with AFD, then those exact problems need to be
>>found and addressed. Shutting off AFD is a cop out.

> I kind of think we should take the exact opposite approach.  Shut off
> AFD, and then we'll find out what was right with it.  Then those exact
> solutions can be found and addressed.

Seconded!

- d.


from_name: Field Nothing

body:
>Stop talking nonsense about my country. ;)

Well, Russia supports Transnistria, think of how people from Moldova
perceive it.

>Wikipedia is a neutral place,

Yeah, right, that sounds painfully funny with all the revert, edit,
etc..wars. Maybe you meant "in a perfect world, wikipedia would be a neutral
place", but when one individual has control of an entire mo.wikipedia, this
is not neutrality, this is abuse. Again, he can have his own wiki language
but under a different name, and let him control it, edit it in any possible
way he likes. I will repeat once again, at this point wikipedia is used as a
mean to disinform the general public, then go figure why people question its
quality for a good reason. Node_ue is the living proof of how one individual
can hurt an image of wikipedia, and since most of the admins on WP don't
even care about Moldova, they just pretend the issue doesn't exist makes
things even worse.

I know what I said might sound offending to some that contributed a lot of
interesting information, without getting involved in a war with trolls, and
I'm sorry, I'm sure you do your best to make WP a better place, but try to
understand the situation as well.

Since I consider that wikipedia-l has been flooded already with this issue,
I will not post here anymore with the hope that there will be a reaction
from the Administrators of Wikipedia.

Bye bye

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] (was Turn off	article creation AND deletion.)

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Carbonite wrote:
>
>
>>I'm starting to like where this proposal is going. I have some suggestions
>>that I'd like to throw out for feedback:
>>- AfD would be turned off for the first two weeks of the month (1st -14th).
>>- The second week of the month (8th-14th), all mainspace article creation
>>would be turned off.
>>- Starting on the 15th, Wikipedia would return to operating as usual (for
>>the rest of the month).
>>I believe that the result of these changes would be to create a cycle in
>>which more articles were developed into "real" articles rather than
>>remaining substandard. It also cuts AfD's status to part-time. There
>>probably would be a flood of nomination on the 15th of each month, but by
>>this point every article would have had at least one full week to improve
>>and likely closer to two weeks.
>>
>>
>I like it. People insist on using AFD as an editorial tool ... let's go
>with that and really treat it as one.
>
>Add to above: all AFDs to run fourteen days, not five.
>
>
I don't know if it will work, but at least it's an attempt at a
constructive solution.  Any antidote to the poisonous atmosphere is
worth considering.  I would also couple it with an easier Undeletion
process.  As long as deletion is a bitter process closure is
understandably a welcome result for the deletionists.  With a more
relaxed process a deletion won't be seen as so much of a campaign, and a
general consesnsus for deletion should be more easily achieved.  This
means that there will be a reduced desire for undeletion.  Some articles
will still fall through the cracks for various reasons, and we should be
more willing to accept these as ordinarty mistakes that anybody can make.

Ec


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Logo switching

body:
Hi,

            I need to switch the logo on the Wiktionary, but I'm not sure on
how to do that.  There's a file called Wiki.png, and it's protected.  But
what do I do after that?

Thanks,

James


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia is "gold dust" (Guardian article and
	leader)

body:
On 10 Dec 2005 at 18:53, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 12/9/05, Arwel Parry <arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > >reader-ckTX/lAc7te9FHfhHBbuYA at public.gmane.org"
> >
> > Hmph! That's an interesting feature of the mailing list software.
> > The actual email address is reader (at) guardian.co.uk
>
> You mean someone actually wrote some asinine bit of code to turn email
> addresses into nonsense?  Ridiculous.

When you read the list archives online, the e-mail addresses are
intentionally screwed-up, but when you subscribe to it and read it in
a normal mail program they're undamaged.

> Every cloud has a silver lining.  Thanks to this affair we seem to
> have acquired our first leader articles in national press, and (I'm
> rather proud of this) a definite article.  Now we're The Wikipedia.

Interestingly, the comic book character Batman started out as The
Batman when he first appeared in 1939, but with fame he apparently
lost his definite article.

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


body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 12/10/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
>
>>That's an abuse of AFD per the increasingly decorative policy. It's
>>explicitly not for editorial work.
>>
>>
>One of my long-standing beefs with the deletion process is that people
>use it as cleanup, and when you call them on it, they say "But doing
>it this way gets results under the threat of deletion, while if you
>list something on cleanup, nothing ever gets done."
>
I can understand this argument.  When a kid doesn't get his proper and
needed attention he feels compelled to cry louder.  The challenge has to
do with convincing people that washing the dishes right after a meal
avoids having a difficult stack at the end of a week.  If we do end up
with a big stack of dirty dishes they still need to be washed rather
than thrown out.  The Karate Kid's first lessons were very important.

>And then people turn round and say that if anything's ever deleted
>through AFD, the topic is never again allowed to exist, even if the
>reason for deletion was that it was a crap article that needed
>cleanup.
>
This is why I support making undeletion easier.

>The discussion we should be having is one of "Should we extend
>template syntax in order to allow more clever things to be done in a
>sensible, maintainable way that won't impact system performance?"
>Ugly template hacks to do logic and programs are not really the way to
>go there.
>
I am clearly a minimalist when it comes to templates.  These, including
the shortcuts, are just another form of jargon.  The more of them there
are, the easier they are to forget, and the less friendly they are to
the newcomer.

Ec


from_name: geni

body:
On 12/10/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Thoughts?
>
>
> - d.

Article creation seems to be running at about ~2% of total edits. So I
don't expect a massive change in the amount of article polishing.
Since a pretty high percentage of AFD is due to articles created on
the day I doubt there will be much of a blip.

If a major event happens there may be problems.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Turn off AfD

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>>Having said that, I don't like this idea of turning deletion into a
>>content matter.  We would in effect be condoning and encouraging edit
>>warfare by making page-blanking an acceptable edit. For some people,
>>it would be an irresistible invitation to vandalism, for others, a way
>>of suppressing inconvenient statements.
>>
>>
>Or delete articles against concensus. If anyone can delete and
>undelete, the deletion log will be clogged up with school articles and
>forums. Sure, they can be undeleted again, but AFD is supposed to make
>a somewhat final decision that can only be overturned by logic and
>arguments, not a single editor's mood.
>
It's this notion of a "somewhat final decision" that's the problem.  Two
editors, at least one of whom must be a sysop for technical reasns,
should be all that's needed for undeletion.

Ec


body:
geni wrote:
> On 12/10/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

>>Thoughts?

> Article creation seems to be running at about ~2% of total edits. So I
> don't expect a massive change in the amount of article polishing.
> Since a pretty high percentage of AFD is due to articles created on
> the day I doubt there will be much of a blip.

Mmm. I think declaring it "Article Improvement Week" will help in itself.

(And since being told "you can't create articles" will immediately make
people want to create articles, there's the userspace getout. Win!)

> If a major event happens there may be problems.

There is that. "Articles may only be created by the Temporary New
Articles Dictator, for a world-class major event."

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
John Lee wrote:

> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>> How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is
>> not actually speediable?  Here's a thought - make it speediable!
>
> Are you kidding? A year ago, the paranoid community rejected two
> different measures for something *in between* speedy deletion and AFD
> (both involved admin discretion but not full reliance on it). What
> makes you think anything will have changed this year? If people won't
> trust admins to semi-speedy something, why would they trust them to
> speedy something? If anything, considering how we've grown, I wouldn't
> be surprised if people would vote down proposals like Preliminary
> Deletion even harder. People are scared of the potential for admin
> abuse. And frankly, I don't blame them. Scandals like the bitter edit
> war over licence vs license in a Mediawiki template have proven that,
> sadly, our admins can and do get into trouble. Even the best of us,
> like Everyking, get too heated and involved in articles we edit that
> we cause pointless edit/revert wars.

This is a key part of the problem.  Most speedy deletion candidates are
undoubtedly good candidates, but many admins have not built up their
trust with the community.  One can spot-check an admin's candidates, and
if his claims are consistently valid he will build trust.  He will make
mistakes, but how he reacts when those mistakes are brought to his
attention will have a direct impact on how much he is trusted.  A
willingness to give his critic the benefit of the doubt will go a long
way toward building trust.  Being seen as a hardline defender of
deletions will negatively affect trust, even if what you do is more
moderate than what you say.  If a vocal supporter of more deletions also
takes an active role in expanding speedy deletion he will leave the
impression that he is trying to "pull a fast one".  Being a trust
builder is a far more important skill for a sysop than knowing  and
enforcing the rules.

Ec


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hooking

body:
On 09/12/05, Aron Rubin <arubin at atl.lmco.com> wrote:
> Why are there so few hooks in MediaWiki? Is this part of an effort to be
> lean or have you not gotten around to it?

The latter, I believe - hooks of any sort were only implemented
relatively recently, and the ones available are just ones that seemed
useful at the time. If there's a particular event you want to define a
hook for, perhaps file a request for it at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org, attaching a patch  if possible.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: M. Creidieki Crouch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Separate namespace for Deletions and other achives?

body:
Could we make a separate namespace for all of the AfD archives?  Right
now, [[Special:Randompage/Wikipedia]] only gives me AfD pages, and
doing a search in the Wikipedia namespace is near impossible.  We
could call it "Deletion" and only put the AfD stuff in it, or we could
call it "Archives" and put some other stuff in it (FAC, RFA).  But I
really think that putting the infinite cruft into a separate namespace
would make some of these technical features easier to use.

-- Creidieki


subject: [Wikitech-l] Hooking

body:
On 09/12/05, Peter Danenberg <pcd at wikitex.org> wrote:
>      Imbalanced forward pack, I'm afraid; locks and flankers
> are in order, but the front row needs some work.
>
>      In good sadness, though, did you  have  something  like
> Apache's bucket brigades in mind?

?!

Was something lost in translation here ["in good sadness" = "in all
seriousness"?], is there an awful lot of jargon I'm unaware of
["flankers"? "bucket brigades"?], or is this whole message genuine
gibberish?

Or, as I'm beginning to suspect the more I think about it, a mixture
of the three (if I'm right about "in all seriousness", there was
intended to be some degree of humour or frivolity in the first
sentence...)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
On 10/12/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051209
>
> ??????? Cute cartoon, but I never heard of the guy before.

User Friendly is a very popular webcomic among geeks, with a generally
"open source" [pick your favourite not-quite-synonym] leaning. For
instance, Illiad (the author) takes any opportunity going to
satirically attack companies like SCO, Microsoft, and SonyBMG (over
their recent DRM troubles).

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Ryan W. (Merovingian)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Separate namespace for Deletions and other achives?

body:
I like that idea a lot, but I would suggest that those pages moved to such a namespace stay protected, in the same way that the MediaWiki: namespace is.  If the pages are only archives, there's no reason in having to patrol them for vandalism.

--Ryan

> From: "M. Creidieki Crouch" <creidieki at gmail.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Separate namespace for Deletions and other
> 	achives?
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>
> Could we make a separate namespace for all of the AfD archives?  Right
> now, [[Special:Randompage/Wikipedia]] only gives me AfD pages, and
> doing a search in the Wikipedia namespace is near impossible.  We
> could call it "Deletion" and only put the AfD stuff in it, or we could
> call it "Archives" and put some other stuff in it (FAC, RFA).  But I
> really think that putting the infinite cruft into a separate namespace
> would make some of these technical features easier to use.
>
> -- Creidieki

--
___________________________________________________
Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
John Lee wrote:

> The Cunctator wrote:
>
>> Back in the day when the "admin" class was created the claim by people
>> like Jimbo is that in the long run nearly everyone would have admin
>> powers; that it would be no special thing. I was skeptical for obvious
>> reasons. But I'm still willing to believe that's what we're heading
>> towards.
>
> Really? I never knew this. But honestly, I don't see why I anybody
> could be that optimistic about this. RfA is getting ridiculous. On one
> RfA (NSLE's), we had an oppose vote because, among other things, the
> user started thanking people for voting support before the RfA
> finished. On another, (Mo0's), somebody voted oppose because "your
> talk page seems to be vandalised a lot" and "we should be erring on
> the side of caution, and voting Oppose unless we are absolutely sure".
> Adminship is supposedly not a big deal, but it is. This is even more
> clear when you look at Requests for Bureaucratship, where many people
> vote oppose because "we don't need more bureaucrats". I know this is
> off-topic, but I really think we should be looking into the RfA
> process as well as AfD, because RfA appears to be becoming the new VfD
> (yes, VfD). Last time, it was the "in" thing to bash VfD. Now, it's
> the "in" thing to bash RfA, as anyone who spends some time on our IRC
> channels should notice. This is worrying.

Never underestimate the overwhelming power of stupidity.  In more
dangerous circumstances some of these people woud be candidates for
Darwin Awards. :-)

I'm perhaps one of the longest standing non-admins on Wikipedia.  I
turned down the nomination on a couple of occasions.  I have no
intention to apply in the forseeable future, but I think that the
inquisitorial process would be a deterent.

Ec


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Losing the definite article

body:
> Interestingly, the comic book character Batman started out as The
> Batman when he first appeared in 1939, but with fame he apparently
> lost his definite article.

 From about 1867 to 1869, all the stories in the New York Times about
a university in Ithaca called it "the Cornell University," with "the"
uncapitalized and "Cornell" and "University" capitalized. During 1869
a transition occurred; one story is headlined "Cornell University--A
Large Class Entered--Selection of Additional Professors," but the
story text opens "The entrance examination of the Cornell University
has been in progress here for the last three days..." From 1870 on,
it's just "Cornell University."

Isn't that interesting?


from_name: V. Ivanov

body:
Stop talking nonsense about my country. ;) Wikipedia is a neutral
place, it's not a place for nationalist extremists like you.

Sl.

2005/12/10, Adrenalin <adrenalinup at gmail.com>:
> I say it again, the only Moldovans who write Moldovian language using
> cyrillic are the Transnistrian ones, but they are FORCED by russian
> MILITARY FORCES! (read more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria)
> They don't choose that, the RUSSIA CHOOSE FOR THEM! (or have you heard
> of any referendum?).
...
> Or i feel like wikipedia are under russian military forces influence too...

--
Esperu cxiam!


body:
On 12/10/05, Ryan W. (Merovingian) <bigwiki at earthling.net> wrote:
> I like that idea a lot, but I would suggest that those pages moved to such a namespace stay protected, in the same way that the MediaWiki: namespace is.  If the pages are only archives, there's no reason in having to patrol them for vandalism.

That sounded really good at first thought, but if the entire namespace
is protected, nonadmins wouldn't be able to archive pages.

Admittedly, that would mean that people would run for admin saying, "I
want to archive ---", and would probably end up slightly relaxing the
standards for admins.  I don't know whether that would be good or bad.

We might be able to get around this problem with some sort of an
"archive this page" bot or tool, or some other hack.

But if we don't protect the namespace, I don't think that the
vandalism potential is changed at all from our current position.

-- Creidieki


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Does WP have legal advice?

body:
A good lawyer can lay out convincing arguments for both sides of any
proposition.

Fred

On Dec 10, 2005, at 1:09 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Andrew Gray wrote:
>
>
>> On 09/12/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> The problem as I see it is that the Wikimedia Foundation might not
>>> want to appear to be passing out legal advice to our
>>> contributors ...
>>>
>>>
>> Indeed. The WMF takes legal advice when it feels the need to take
>> advice, as I understand it; when an active legal issue arises where
>> we're doing something particularly wrong, Things Get Done With
>> Emphasis, Underlined, In Parentheses And Quotated.
>>
>> (or something like that)
>>
>> Recall, for example, the missing-articles-in-Britannica list
>> deletions...
>>
>>
> Yes, I recall it, and if I recall correctly legal opinion was divided.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>How do you deal with crap everyone agrees should be deleted, but is
>not actually speediable?  Here's a thought - make it speediable!
>
>Anthony
>
>
Are you kidding? A year ago, the paranoid community rejected two
different measures for something *in between* speedy deletion and AFD
(both involved admin discretion but not full reliance on it). What makes
you think anything will have changed this year? If people won't trust
admins to semi-speedy something, why would they trust them to speedy
something? If anything, considering how we've grown, I wouldn't be
surprised if people would vote down proposals like Preliminary Deletion
even harder. People are scared of the potential for admin abuse. And
frankly, I don't blame them. Scandals like the bitter edit war over
licence vs license in a Mediawiki template have proven that, sadly, our
admins can and do get into trouble. Even the best of us, like Everyking,
get too heated and involved in articles we edit that we cause pointless
edit/revert wars.

An objective measure of an article's "deletability" would be one nobody
could disagree with. For instance, you can't disagree that, say,
fuddlemark got >90% support on his recent RfA, because that's an
objective measure of support. (At least, you can't disagree without
appearing insane.) However, many articles on AfD that get deleted by
unanimous support have their "deletability" measured by subjective
methods. To some people, schools are notable. To others, they are not.
How do you resolve this? How do you objectively measure a school's
"deletability"? Is "deletability" even an objective value in itself?
Truth be told, it's a miracle our CSD have grown so big, because even
they aren't objective. After all, how many of them received unanimous
support? Clearly some people disagreed with them, and probably with good
reason. This would inherently make them subjective.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

><snip>
>Question: Of those estimated 42,000 good articles, can you give some
>sort of break down in subject. If we have a systemetic bias, it's
>reasonable to assume it also portrudes to the featured articles we
>have.
>
>Mgm
>
>
Sorry for the anality, but it's "systemic" bias. ;) And I think I'm
probably the one to blame for all our featured music articles. We have a
huge systemic bias in favour of the Beatles. :) Don't worry, I'm working
on correcting this. Hopefully [[Article 153 of the Constitution of
Malaysia]] will be up to featured standard soon. That'll help cover the
systemic bias in favour of Western politics.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Delirium

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>>Article creation seems to be running at about ~2% of total edits. So I
>>don't expect a massive change in the amount of article polishing.
>>Since a pretty high percentage of AFD is due to articles created on
>>the day I doubt there will be much of a blip.
>>
>>
>
>
>Mmm. I think declaring it "Article Improvement Week" will help in itself.
>
>(And since being told "you can't create articles" will immediately make
>people want to create articles, there's the userspace getout. Win!)
>
>
Why can't you declare an "article improvement week" without prohibiting
people from creating new articles?  Volunteer work on Wikipedia is not a
"bag of labor" that can be reallocated at will, and I doubt few people
who would not willingly participate in an article improvement week would
be convinced to do so unwillingly because of a software change that
prohibits them from creating new articles they would prefer to work on
instead---they would more likely simply leave for a week.  I know I
would probably leave for the week on principle.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Turn off AfD

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

> <snip>
>
>Back in the day when the "admin" class was created the claim by people
>like Jimbo is that in the long run nearly everyone would have admin
>powers; that it would be no special thing. I was skeptical for obvious
>reasons. But I'm still willing to believe that's what we're heading
>towards.
>
>
Really? I never knew this. But honestly, I don't see why I anybody could
be that optimistic about this. RfA is getting ridiculous. On one RfA
(NSLE's), we had an oppose vote because, among other things, the user
started thanking people for voting support before the RfA finished. On
another, (Mo0's), somebody voted oppose because "your talk page seems to
be vandalised a lot" and "we should be erring on the side of caution,
and voting Oppose unless we are absolutely sure". Adminship is
supposedly not a big deal, but it is. This is even more clear when you
look at Requests for Bureaucratship, where many people vote oppose
because "we don't need more bureaucrats". I know this is off-topic, but
I really think we should be looking into the RfA process as well as AfD,
because RfA appears to be becoming the new VfD (yes, VfD). Last time, it
was the "in" thing to bash VfD. Now, it's the "in" thing to bash RfA, as
anyone who spends some time on our IRC channels should notice. This is
worrying.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Hooking

body:
On 12/9/05, Aron Rubin <arubin at atl.lmco.com> wrote:
> Why are there so few hooks in MediaWiki? Is this part of an effort to be
> lean or have you not gotten around to it?

Not gotten around to it, they're created mostly on a as we need them
basis, if you need more request them, preferrably with patches.


body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

>On 12/9/05, Geoffrey Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
>
>
>>I know he's Canadian, & for some reason I think he lives in Vancouver.
>>If that's right, then I suspect he must be on speaking terms with Ray.
>>
>>http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20051209
>>
>>Geoff
>>
>>
>FWIW, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.D._Frazer
>
>He lives in Richmond, B.C., apparently
>
>
Very interesting!  I live in Richmond as well.

According to http://www.iconsf.org/archive/icon23/frazer_jd.htm his full
name is John Douglas Robertshaw-Frazer.  His latest book,  "Money For
Content and Your Clicks For Free" was just published last month

Robertshaw is not a very common name.  The only one that I found in the
telephone listings for Richmond is Stan Robertshaw who ran for Richmond
City Council in 2002, and finished dead last.  He campaigned as "The
Bagman", attending all his campaign appearances with a paper bag over
his head.  It's conceivable that this our guy's father, but I'll need to
check that out before I can say so for sure.

Ec


from_name: Tony Sidaway

references:
<p06230913bfbdf66eaa30@192.168.116.8>
	<op.s1g8gaddr18sbe@mainframe.mshome.net>
	<op.s1g8gaddr18sbe-xscV+lpWsrXe8AuGaXSDWeTW4wlIGRCZ@public.gmane.org>
	<fb7fdd9c0512081235m63c6cefbp84f969032fea4dcd@mail.gmail.com>
	<fb7fdd9c0512081235m63c6cefbp84f969032fea4dcd-JsoAwUIsXosN+BqQ9rBEUg@public.gmane.org>
	<cdk3vsJmDLmDFwVL@cartref.demon.co.uk>
	<3jVdwUAg2XmDFwya@cartref.demon.co.uk>

body:
On 12/9/05, Arwel Parry <arwel at cartref.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >reader-ckTX/lAc7te9FHfhHBbuYA at public.gmane.org"
>
> Hmph! That's an interesting feature of the mailing list software. The
> actual email address is reader (at) guardian.co.uk
>

You mean someone actually wrote some asinine bit of code to turn email
addresses into nonsense?  Ridiculous.

Every cloud has a silver lining.  Thanks to this affair we seem to
have acquired our first leader articles in national press, and (I'm
rather proud of this) a definite article.  Now we're The Wikipedia.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
Keith Old wrote:

> However, there is no reason to turn off AfD. Indeed, often the reason that
> articles are in AfD is that the topic is notable but the article is crap for
> various reasons including:

That's an abuse of AFD per the increasingly decorative policy. It's
explicitly not for editorial work. But that's okay, they can form a
"local consensus" against policy. ([[WT:AUM]] is currently trying to
form a local consensus that supersedes computer science with voting, so
it must be a good idea.)

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] RfC: Split page title into components

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Just a relatively small hypothetical change I'd like to solicit feedback
> on: Currently the page title (the part of the page rendered in <h1>) is
> simply a single string, sometimes concatenated from multiple components.

Titles are passed around as objects internally; they consist of multiple
components, chiefly an enumerated namespace identifier and a string main part.
They may also contain an interwiki prefix and/or a fragment identifier.

If you see raw strings still being passed around for titles internally, that's
old code that should be fixed up.

Or, if you specifically mean what goes into the <h1>...</h1>, that's set by
whatever fun function is running the output for this view (eg, Article::view,
Article::edit, the special page, etc.).

> I'd like to split it into an associative array, e.g.
>
>     array(
>           'action'=>'Editing',
>           'namespace'=>'Talk',
>           'mainpart'=>'French revolution',
>       'section'=>true
>     )
>
> Except for 'mainpart', all keys would be optional. The main reason I'd
> like to do this is so we can style namespaces separately from the title
> (and perhaps even associate them with icons). But I think it would come
> in handy for skinning in general.

Well, in what way would this help?

There's already separate styling per namespace with a class identifier. Do you
want something different from this? Examples?

> Any objections to this change, or did I overlook any gotchas?

What are the many ways you'd use it?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Hooking

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> On 09/12/05, Aron Rubin <arubin at atl.lmco.com> wrote:
>
>>Why are there so few hooks in MediaWiki? Is this part of an effort to be
>>lean or have you not gotten around to it?
>
>
> The latter, I believe - hooks of any sort were only implemented
> relatively recently, and the ones available are just ones that seemed
> useful at the time. If there's a particular event you want to define a
> hook for, perhaps file a request for it at
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org, attaching a patch  if possible.

And also come talk with the dev on irc://irc.freenode.net/mediawiki

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Blackcap

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improve AFD - require rationales (2-step process)

body:
On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> A lot of the poisonous feelings on AFD seems to come from sheep voting
> and people voting without providing rationales. Perhaps we should
> improve the debate-percentage and require people to provide
> rationales.

One of the things that's often bothered me is people voting, not without
reasons, but with illogical/irrelevant reasons and knowing that they're
still being counted as a "delete" or "keep" vote (e.g. the notorious RFA
vote which said, "I oppose because I don't like X who supported"). That
one's more frustrating to me that anything else: the voter's immunity to
reason. "My vote's just as good as yours and I refuse to change it,
regardless to any decent information you may put forth."

Blackcap

On 12/10/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A lot of the poisonous feelings on AFD seems to come from sheep voting
> and people voting without providing rationales. Perhaps we should
> improve the debate-percentage and require people to provide
> rationales.
>
> I suggest a two step process:
> 1) The first 24 or 48 hours people submit rationales for or against
> deletion.
> 2) After that people can vote on which of these they support.
> Similar to a finding of the facts.
>
> This would make it easier to discount votes based on outdated or
> incorrect reasons. "Article is too short" (after it was expanded), or
> "unreferenced" (when acutally the link was temporarily down).
>
> It would also make it easier to see at a glance whether it was deleted
> for being non-notable, for missing references or for being in a
> irredeemable state.
>
> Mock Up Example:
>
> ===[[FakeBand]]===
> ====DELETE====
> * Band yields only 12 Google hits; all on geocities, lycos and myspace
> apart from official site which indicates they're not famous or having
> an effect on the music industry. - [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example2]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example3]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example4]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example5]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example6]]
>
> * Band has no All Music Guide entry. (WP:MUSIC)  -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example2]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example3]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example4]]
> * Band has no albums on Amazon. (WP:MUSIC) -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example2]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example3]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example4]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example5]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example6]]
> * The listed albums are self-produced as admitted by creator. --
> [[User:Example2]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example1]]
> **Support -- [[User:Example2]]
>
> ====KEEP====
> * Band DOES have 3 albums. They're listed on the official site. We
> just couldn't get them in the stores yet. (www.fakeband.com). --
> [[User:ArticleCreator]]
> **Support -- [[User:ArticleCreator]]
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Next experiment: switch off AFD for a month. (was
	Guardian in defense of Wikipedia)

body:
On 12/9/05, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> Further to MGM's point, as we get more popular, more attention will be paid
> to us and we cannot afford to carry thousands of bad articles if we can
> avoid it.
>

We already do; after the speedies have done their pass, AfD only
scratches the surface of crappy material, and human judgement being so
variable, a lot of potentially good material also has to run the
gauntlet. The only way to avoid the appearance of unencyclopedic
articles on Wikipedia and their persistence on Wikipedia is to disable
article creation.  Or we can admit the obvious: that Wikipedia is a
work in progress.

But your point about Google suggests a strategy for patrolling.  There
are lists of popular Google searches.  Pop the top 100 of those into a
database, renewed daily, and scan google results for Wikipedia pages.
Dump the output as Wikipedia links in Wikipedia space somewhere as a
hit list, and anyone who feels like checking them can do so and take
any appropriate action.  Feed back acceptable articles (not
necessarily good, as they may need cleanup)  into the database so that
these can be pruned from the hit list to avoid duplication of work.