from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re:  Information flow

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> Anthere, thanks for you extensive reply on my previous mail.
> Jimbo, thanks for recognizing that my remarks are meant constructively.
>
> Anthere, I hope you did not think of me as one of the guys who threw 'oil on
> the fire'. If so, I would feel very sorry for that.
>
> I certainly did touch on a sensitive issue when tensions were already high.
> Erik Moellers resignation is the apotheosis of a longer time of difficult
> relations between him and the board. So his announcement will have done
> little to make your wikibreak bear fruit. And then, on top of that, I made
> some remarks about the role of the board, as if you did not have enough on
> your mind yet. Maybe I should have postponed my reaction and should not have
> jumped up immediately to try to put this event in a broader perspective.
>
> At the other hand: part of my point is exactly that it may be useful to make
> roles and rules more explicit in times when everyone is on a good footing
> with each other, since it is much more difficult to discuss these things
> when emotions are already running high, and conflicts have started. So with
> hindsight I illustrated my point inadvertently with my initial mail. Let me
> quote from my first mail to emphasize this even more: "So let us be inspired
> to clarify roles, responsibilities and procedures, at a time when we can do
> without in many occasions, in preparation for a time when we might need more
> clarity and transparency badly."
>
> Anthere, not all of my questions are addressed (to be clear about this, you
> did elaborate on how you see the role of the officers, but not the
> jurisdiction  of the board, perhaps you think this is self evident by its
> actions) but I will happily defer this discussion till a later time, and
> move half of this mail into my drafts folder.
>
> Oh one more thing: I'm one those guys that, as Chris described, does not
> often write a mail to tell I'm happy with how things are going.
> Maybe I should, but these lists get spammed with trivia already far too
> much, and I feel a mail about how I have nothing to say, apart from that
> things are going well, or how I also support a decision that is already
> approved by most writers, would be quite trivial indeed.
>
> So for the record, I'm in some cases reasonably happy with how things are
> going, and in many cases very.
> And still euphoric after Wikimania by the way.
> Enjoy your wikibreak. :-)
>
> Erik Zachte

Hi Erik,

It is quite impossible for me to be in full wikibreak, but I enjoy a
long week of wiki-activity reduction (attempt to reduce wikipediholism :-)).
I think it is bearing fruits indeed, as my blood pressure was acceptable
again 2 days ago (which might be a good reason for me being back to my
real life job today...).
No, I have never seen you as throwing oil on the fire. You raise good
points.

One point striked me in what you wrote above. "you did elaborate on how
you see the role of the officers, but not the jurisdiction  of the
board, perhaps you think this is self evident by its actions"

You are correct that I think it is self evident, while actually it is
possibly not. So, I'll try to elaborate a little bit about that (with
the usual warning, this is only my opinion).

When Angela and I were elected a year ago, the Foundation did NOT exist,
except for a legal paper. The Foundation was just a set of principles, a
bit of bureaucracy and a man, Jimbo. Nothing else. This was sufficient
for the beginning of the project and possibly till about 1 or 2 years
ago, it can not be any more today.
Jimbo's opinion of the board future and activity was that it would only
consist of a handful of meetings per year, where a bunch of decisions
would be made, and off it goes. He mentionned this is what most board
members on most foundations are doing in the USA. Not day to day
operations, but just settting up strategies, ensuring big principles are
respected, and letting others taking care of the daily work.
I guess this was not Angela and I opinion, and we both put a lot of time
in it. But a lot of time to do what ? And with which goals ? Well, it
quite simple : a system where a board would merely meet 4 times a year
to decide big directions could not work a year ago simply because the
Foundation only existed on a paper. A Foundation is not first a legal
structure, it is first human people working as a team.
So, while I fully agree that micro-management is NOT the role of the
board, practically, it HAD TO BE for a while, till things start(ed) to
clarify. The first role of the board was simply to build an embryo of
organization. If we had limited ourselves to set big principles and
directions, I am not sure we would even have an embryo now.

A year after this first election, a real organisation is only barely
beginning to appear. It is still very messy (more than you could dream
of), it is possibly not very transparent (but I don't think it is meant
to be non transparent), and it is veeeeery slow (ask to anyone waiting
for a reimbursement, but again, this is changing). It is quite obvious
to me that the embryo of an organization we have today would have been
different if other people had been elected on the board a year ago.

I think I proposed the official positions even before the elections a
year ago. To my opinion, it was the first step.
Aside from Mav role (finances), which was quite urgent, I think the
first few months were mostly used for the board members to get to know
one another better, to check what mattered for each of us, to test the
limits of our mutual patience and understanding, and to meet
people/editors and evaluate "who" could work with "who" and on "which"
topic. Whether it will be easy for you to accept or not, this was also
one of the goal of the developer poll last summer, and I think it really
helped me to get to know some people much better, and to figure out who
was controversial and who was not, who was a leader and who was not, who
was strong headed and who was more easy going.

If one want to build a solid organisation, the different members
composing it must be quite diverse (all officers being native english
speaking is a very bad idea, all officers being men is quite possibly a
bad idea, all officers being less than 20 may not be very wise...). We
need people from various origin, various professional background,
various personalities. Best is that all of them are at least on polite
terms. Best to mix emotional ones with less emotional ones etc...
Generally, we mostly rely on friendship relations, not cold and
unpersonal ones.
In an system such as ours, it is maybe not so good to have too strong
egos. We need leaders, but not a leadership based on authoritarian
behavior. I do not think leading in organising so-called democratic
votes every week is a good idea either. We rather need coordinators or
facilitators. For officers, we need people who are not too
controversial, are generally appreciated, but who also have a rather
strong personnality, however it is nice as well that they are surrounded
by very bold people pushing issues sometimes a little bit heavily.

Once it begins to be clear which departments are needed, and who could
fit where, things can progress. But until this is set up,
micromanagement is necessary to a certain point. And if officers are not
trusted, micromanagement will also occur by fear of the board losing
control :-) Now that several departements have been better defined, some
with officers, some without..., I strongly believe micromanagement will
decrease. It already did. But I still believe it will be the role of the
board to look for people who can bring much to the organisation. Finding
these people might be part of our "jurisdiction" as you say.

Incidently, I think the next two "departments", which might have an
officer, or not, are
* "publishing" (paper versions; dvds; wikireaders) - with a strong link
with the legal departement due to issues of copyright, trademarks and
logo use. This will probably need an officer. If anyone feels like
working on a "role description", please do. I however do not see clearly
yet who might hold it.
* "public relations" - I do not think I need to explain why I feel we
need to work on this ;-) This will probably not have an officer, or not
until a good while.

The second "jurisdiction" of the board might be the "role description",
clarification of responsabilities and procedures.
Quite funily, some of you asked for roles to be much much more strictly
defined, while others rather said we should leave much room for the
officers to move.

I am not convinced that we should be very strictly defining all that
yet, rather let it grow a little bit organically. Example : Maveric is
taking care of finances and fundraising at the same time. But should
these two be together ? Or two separate positions ? Or under the
responsability of another officer ? After all, it could also depends of
a public relations commitee, or of the grant commitee.
I think that for a while, it is urgent... to do nothing and just see
what happens, and trust that things will naturally become obvious.
It may also be that the role change with the person holding it. I'll
give another example. Delphine is now our chapter coordinator. I think
that role holds two different parts; one being of communication, the
other being more on financial matters. It is my belief Delphine will be
much more precious (and happier) on financial matters. I think that
under her leadership on the matter, the chapter coordinator will be much
more oriented on financial matters. Possibly another person would do
differently though.

In case you then say "what the hell, let us define their role quite
strictly and it is their job to try to do their best in that role", I'll
answer that all officers are volunteers. If they get bored or lost in
the role strictly defined, they will do a bad job and will drop. As much
as we can, I think we should let them flower, just as wikipedia allow
people to. And if they are really outside of the rails, it is then the
(third) "jurisdiction" of the board to make suggestions to improve (if
no one else hinted the problem at them already).
And little by little, as we grow and improve, and as the needs become
pressing, we can more clearly define the roles.

One of the thing I hope we work on is communication. Communication
feedback from officers to the board and to the community, should be
sometimes more frequent (such as on technical matters), but mostly more
organised. Offering communication is not sending immediately a mail when
something is boiling, but rather trying to makes regular summaries about
what is currently ongoing, who they need help from, when, what is
blocking them from going further.
For example, grant report from the grant coordinator once a month :
* I have approach this group as well as that group. No answer yet from
either.
* for the grant G, we are currently writting the full grant request
([[link]], which should be send before dd/mm/yyyy. We would need
information from the  legal departement (paper XX) as well as banking
information from Jimbo (paper Y).
* for the grant Y, it has been submitted and we are waiting for result
by that day.
* We got Grant S !!!! We start working with the press departement. A
press release in under work at [[link]]. Please comment.

In the future, here is what I would love to see :-)))
Such reports from each departement will allow the board to organise
itself better and decide things more quickly and efficiently.

(let's say this will happen in a year from now).

I know that some people feel lost when they are not quite firmly told
what to do and not do. This model is frequently used in the internet
business and not everyone is confortable with it. But it is my belief we
are no more under fordism. And my belief that those most happy in the
wiki model are precisely people who like a certain independance. This
said, less defined roles also mean more risk to walk on each other toes.
I know I sometimes walk on other people toes, I regret this and try to
make efforts myself. The solution is not really to walk on more toes to
ensure the other toes disappear, but rather to look where the toes are
and be careful to walk on them less. If someone walks too much on the
wrong toes and does not realise that, then... he should be removed from
the path. This is the fourth "jurisdiction" of the board. The one big
difference with being an employer... is that there is the weight of a
community behind.

Finally, another "jurisdiction" of the board is simply to ensure that
some important principles are respected.
I'll cite two cases : the french wikinews is out of our projects
principles, and strongly borderline very frequently. This is due to the
presence of a very small number of editors, who have never been involved
in wikipedia, so lack some "habits". So I have it on careful watch. This
is micromanagement, but this allow me to stay an editor as well :-)

Another example : I think we (the Foundation) are currently on the verge
of closing ourselves too much, and I do not like this. We recently set
up a private wiki and as long as the management of access groups is not
developped (by Brion), access will be restricted to board, officers and
chapters board members only. I think this is very very unfortunate,
because 1) there are plenty of good trusted people who are not in this
group and 2) we are reducing the number of people who could help, though
we need them.

There are some other "roles" of the board. But I guess I wrote enough.
Mostly, we need not to rush. Imho.


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Re:  Information flow


list: wikien-l

from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] An admin misused his privilages to block me...

body:
On 8/22/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've seen a lot of vandalism coming from schools and universities, but
> I've yet to see vandalism from the uni I attend.

Possible conclusions

Students from your university are exceptionally well behaved.
Your university is very small.
No one from your university bothers to do research on the web and so
has never come across wikipedia. (except you)
Everyone from your university (except you of course) is too stupid to
work out that "edit this page" means they can edit a page.
Your university is not connected to the Internet.

Takes yer pick ;-)

Theresa


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
>
>
>>There was a discussion in August 2004 about implementing a bounty system
>>for MediaWiki development. Anthere ran a survey in july 2004 among
>>developers and published results on meta on August 25th 2004:
>>
>>  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_payment_poll/results
>
>
> A bounty system assumes someone (unpaid? community vote? donator
> decides?) can define the tasks and assign the bounties. One
> question in Anthere's poll was "Which tasks, if any, really ought
> to be done, but currently are not?".  That method of design can
> only result in a bazaar.  To build a cathedral you need an
> architect with somewhat dictatorial powers, and the authority and
> salary for an architect is the least likely outcome of a bounty
> system.  For example, what if there is a $2000 bounty for adding
> complex graphics and another $2000 bounty for improving
> performance?  These bounties are in conflict.  Who is to decide?
> Eric Raymond thinks bazaars are better than cathedrals because of
> this lack of authority, but not everyone agrees with Eric Raymond.
> For example, Linus Torvalds' architectural control over the Linux
> kernel is a good example of dictatorial powers at their best.

Uh, no. I think you are mistaking.
In the case of my poll, it was quite simple who would make the final
decision of which tasks really ought to be done. The one paying. In this
case the Foundation. Which would make that decision depending on
feedback from the community AND the developers.
So, it makes sense to ask the developers what they think, because they
are the first ones to be able to tell us "yeah, the community wants
that, but it is horribly difficult to do" or "yeah, but it is so boring
no one will do it even for money" or "yeah, great stuff, very important".

This said. *I* did not make a proposal for a bounty system. I was
frankly neutral on this solution, if not having doubts on its
workability. Erik proposed the bounty system (though it had another
better name which I forgot).
I made that poll for several reasons, one of which was per respect of Erik.

> Wikipedia has been extremely successful despite (not because) the
> lack of a technical architect, especially in the last two years.
> Some people ask how the Swedish Wikipedia can be the 5th biggest
> with a language spoken by only 9 million people.  One strong
> reason is that the Swedish wiki community enjoyed sub-second
> response times at susning.nu in 2002 and 2003, while Wikipedia's
> utter sluggishness during software phase II and III scared away
> thousands of volunteers.  After susning.nu closed, this community
> has moved over to the Swedish Wikipedia.  Just imagine if
> Wikipedia had performed like that in every language.  And once
> again, I do this only to promote Swedish language among Germans:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2003-July/017624.html
>
> While I appreciate Anthere's outreach, the board should not ask
> the developers which features need to be implemented.  The board
> should promote growth of free contents (e.g. more encyclopedia
> articles, more dictionary definitions, more photos, etc.) and
> investigate why some sectors are growing slower than others.  If
> there are technical bottlenecks, such as slow response times or
> lacking features, the developers should be informed and asked (and
> perhaps paid) to help the situation.  The goal is never technical
> features, but the quicker generation of more contents. This is
> just like any commercial company where the board monitors
> customers and sales, except that the Wikimedia Foundation is not a
> profit-optimizing organization but a free-content-optimizing one.
>
> So don't ask why the Swedish Wikipedia is growing so fast, ask why
> all the others grow so slowly.  We can do better than this.

The board monitors customers, which are both editors and developers,
because developers are also customers :-)

Hmmm, on another note. Some "developments" were paid by other
organizations, without these developments being necessarily widely
requested by the community. But this is liberty. Why would we prevent
another organization to pay for the development of certain features ????

What is your opinion on that ?


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
I've seen a lot of vandalism coming from schools and universities, but
I've yet to see vandalism from the uni I attend.

--Mgm


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
Rob stated for the record:

> The advantage to banning him now is that it prevents
> subtle skewing of articles or skewing of articles on
> obscure topics, both which may go unnoticed and
> uncorrected.  It also saves a lot of stress and sweat
> for those editors who have to deal with him until he
> inevitably gets banned for something.  Neither of
> these will be that detrimental to the project as a
> whole in the long run, but they are not negligible
> effects.

Yeah, there's no need to wait for him to do anything wrong.  He should
be banned because he might do something wrong at some indefinite point
in the future.  After all, we don't choose who can work on this project
based on anything trivial like their behaviors, we choose them based on
what we think they believe.

And just to put a juicy sweet cherry on top of this sundae of summary
justice, our precognition is infallible, so we're sure that he will
"inevitably get banned for something."

With all that righteousness on our side, who could possibly want to
waste time on archaic betises like formal charges, due process, the
right to confront one's accuser, and similar nonsense?

After all, giving the accused his "day in court" would distinguish us
from various disgusting people, like, oh, say, the Nazis.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this
  sean at epoptic.com | country are decent, hard-working Americans. It's
                   | the other lousy 2% that get all the publicity.
                   | But then, we elected them. --Lily Tomlin


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Christopher Beland

subject: [Wikitech-l] Persistent intermittent edit failures

body:
Over the past few days, editors of the English Wikipedia have been
experiencing intermittent edit failures, including "connection
refused", and "502" errors, which sometimes mean the edit went through, and sometimes don't.  For instance, a few minutes ago, I got:

500 Can't connect to en.wikipedia.org:80 (connect: Connection refused)

(My bot was attempting to edit [[Deep_Submergence_Vehicle]].)

And a few minutes later:

502 Bad Gateway

Sorry- we have a problem...

The wikimedia web server didn't return any response to your request

To get information on what's going on you can visit #wikipedia.
 An
"offsite" status page is hosted on  OpenFacts.

Generated Tue, 23 Aug 2005 01:06:08 GMT by srv5.wikimedia.org
(squid/2.5.STABLE9.wp20050410.S9plus[icpfix,nortt,htcpclr])

(My bot was attempting to edit [[Delta_Tau_Delta]].)

Similar symptoms have been reported by others on IRC and OpenFacts for
the past few days.  Given how long these problems have gone on, we
seem to have either a shortage of hardware, or a shortage of
developers to investigate these problems.  The current situation is
certainly making it quite annoying for *me* to edit, and I'm sure
there are others who are being discouraged from making contributions
entirely.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spell checking in MediaWiki

body:
Pablo Saratxaga wrote:
> There are dictionnaries for aspell for 76 different languages, and of
> course more can be added; look at:
> http://aspell.sourceforge.net/man-html/Supported.html

But not all Aspell dictionaries are free.  This is an area where
Wiktionary and the Wikimedia Foundation could make a difference.
For example, download the English dictionaries in
ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/dict/en/aspell6-en-6.0-0.tar.bz2
and read the enclosed text file named "Copyright".

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Ben E.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rewards and punishments

body:
I think it's time for a large Wikipedia:WikiProject Kindness Campaign
membership drive push. And not only do we need more members, but we need
everyone practicing the numerous WikiVirtues. Barnstars can work wonders...

[[User:Bratsche|Ben]]

On 8/22/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#General_user_conduct
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RfA
>
> I just noticed that the RfC on other users exceeds the RfA by aprox 3
> times. That sucks. I really think we need to spend more time
> complimenting each other, and less time conflicting.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


from_name: homey2005 at sympatico.ca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
I don't think we should make a formal distinction between launching personal attacks on wikipedians
and speaking about destroying wikipedia on wikipedia talk pages and doing so offsite. We have acted
in the past in the case of VfDs when proponents or opponents go onto offsite message boards to
recruit people to vote one way or another. If we were to be formalistic and say that nothing that
happens off of wikipedia should impact on our decisions we will make it much more difficult to
maintain the encyclopedia.

Yes, Amalekite has said on Stormfront that their intent is to promote a Nazi POV in his editing but until
he explicitly says so on a wikipedia talk page we have to wait before we act? Should we wait weeks for
a pattern to develop when we have evidence offsite of what Amalekite is trying to do? Why should we
restrict our survey of the evidence in this way?

> We could ban him then. Is there any particular hurry?
> Why don't we
> wait until he does something wrong and then ban him?

This isn't just one lone wacko. It's an attempt to organize a large scale attack on wikipedia. We can
wait for weeks or months until each and every one of these neo-Nazis has established a pattern of
behaviour, but by then we'll have dozens, or even more than a hundred, cases to deal with. If you read
what Amalekite is saying on Stormfront it is clear he is instructing neo-Nazis in how to "play the game"
in order to draw things out as long as possible and do as much damage as possible. There's no need
for us to work according to his needs and play the game he wants us to play.

Amalekite has made his intentions explictly clear. We'd be fools to pretend we don't know what we
know and not act on it just because he stated his intentions on Stormfront instead of on a wikipedia
Talk page.

Homey


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
Amelekite is also an administartor at the Vanguard News Network where he's posted this screed on
wikipedia:

http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=22047&highlight=wikipedia


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
Nazipedia is now online:

http://pseudodoxia.flawlesslogic.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Homey


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] adding a header and footer to the screen

body:
On 22/08/05, Coombes, Andrew <andrew.coombes at hants.gov.uk> wrote:
> I am using MediaWiki for part of a corporate intranet.  I am only allowed to do this if I include the standard header and footer to each screen giving people access to the rest of the intranet. I'm also not allowed to use frames.
>
> Is there a simple way of adding html code to the top and bottom of each screen without too much PHP coding?

The simplest place to edit is skins/MonoBook.php (or one of the other
files there, corresponding to a skin you like the "look" of most).
Although it may look complicated, you ought to be able to edit pretty
much without any knowledge of PHP, since everything not between <?php
and ?> is just treated as normal HTML.

Remember to test your changes using an edit screen or Special: page,
to make sure you're not just seeing a cached version.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Ryan Norton

subject: [WikiEN-l] A cry to save the Asperger's Syndrome page

body:
>
> I'm the one who brought the Autism article to its Featured Article
> status and used this article as a reference more or less on how to do
> it

I should mention that I had quite a bit of help from the community,
especially with rewriting the intro, so I don't want to leave them out
of that :).

> Thanks,
RN


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
On 8/22/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>Omnipresent?  Is that a euphemism for fat? :-O
>
> Jay.

Yes. I'm too am a little omnipresent at the moment. My girlfriend
tries to push hermithood on me reguraly, and it doesn't help very
much. :S

--gkhan


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikigame

body:
On 22/08/05, Jody Fulford <jodywysteria at yahoo.com> wrote:
>    I thought of the game while exploring the "random
> article" feature. I consecutively generate two random
> articles and attempt to navigate from one to the other
> using the links in the articles.

Hi,
I'm sorry to have to say that you're not the first person to come up
with this idea, although you're the first I've seen suggesting using
"wikigames" of this sort as a source of revenue. [And I always say
that seeing someone else have the same idea as you just goes to show
it was indeed a good idea...]

One place this is sometimes played is in the Wikipedia IRC chatroom
[1], and somebody even wrote a "six degrees of wikipedia" tool [2] to
automatically find the shortest route between two pages. (That name is
a further play on the common name "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" [3])

One of the interesting things is that not only is it educational, it
tends to improve the content as well, since pages will tend to be
copyeditted on the way past. And if players are allowed to add links
*if those links are appropriate additions to the article*, it can make
the wiki easier to navigate for other users too.

As for creating a revenue stream from such games, I think "six
degrees" may be a little too automatable to become truly competitive
[us AI boffins have spoilt the fun], but in general, "wikigames" of
this sort are an interesting concept. There are more obvious ones, of
course, like trivia quizzes and the like, but "treasure hunt" type
ones that rely on the way Wikipedia works could be good.

And people do seem to like getting *something* for their money, even
if it's just a moment of excitement, and actually means that *less*
money gets through to the causes they're supporting. Look at the
popularity of the UK National Lottery, for instance, which gives some
money to jackpot winners and some to "good causes - the government's
even planning on using scratchcards as one of the ways of raising
funds for the 2012 London Olympics...

==Refs==
[1] see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC
[2] http://kohl.wikimedia.org/~kate/cgi-bin/six_degrees
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikigame


body:
On 8/22/05, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've seen a lot of vandalism coming from schools and universities, but
> > I've yet to see vandalism from the uni I attend.
>
> Possible conclusions
>
> Students from your university are exceptionally well behaved.
> Your university is very small.
> No one from your university bothers to do research on the web and so
> has never come across wikipedia. (except you)
> Everyone from your university (except you of course) is too stupid to
> work out that "edit this page" means they can edit a page.
> Your university is not connected to the Internet.
>
> Takes yer pick ;-)
>
> Theresa

If we take Mgm as a statistically valid control group, I'd say the first one :P

--gkhan


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Anthere wrote:

> In the case of my poll, it was quite simple who would make the
> final decision of which tasks really ought to be done. The one
> paying. In this case the Foundation. Which would make that
> decision depending on feedback from the community AND the
> developers.
> [...]
> Hmmm, on another note. Some "developments" were paid by other
> organizations, without these developments being necessarily
> widely requested by the community. But this is liberty. Why
> would we prevent another organization to pay for the development
> of certain features ????

Nothing should stop, say, IBM from downloading the MediaWiki
source and pay their own programmers to add functionality to it.
If IBM wants to distribute this new software, GPL forces them to
publish their source code as well.  The version manager for
MediaWiki might want to include such changes in the next release,
otherwise it becomes IBM's own fork of the software.  Both ways
are fine.  This software development could occur within or outside
the Wikimedia Foundation.  Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP are
developed outside, and the Foundation only choses which version to
use and which features to enable.  The MediaWiki software is only
slightly different in that the development "belongs" to the
Foundation. It doesn't really matter if this development is driven
by bounties or not.

What does matter is how the Foundation selects which products and
features to use on the Foundation's own servers. This is really
not a development issue, but one of operations. This is where the
5-15 seconds response times of 2002-2003 were a real failure, that
caused real damage to the project, as editors were leaving, or at
least unable to convince their friends to join the project.  New
features were taken into use as soon as they were developed, and
nobody seemed to monitor the performance.  Every enthusiastic
developer could introduce new bottlenecks.

If Wikipedia had had a board in 2002-2003, it could have appointed
an "editor satisfaction officer" or a "productivity officer", with
responsibility to question the editor community what slowed them
down, and how productivity could be improved.  I believe many
editors would have put the blame on the slow response times.

The Foundation's server operations people should require that
every new software feature can be monitored and enabled or
disabled on its own.  This is an architectural issue.  Good
software performance can save large investments in hardware. And
even more, smart software can improve editor productivity.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Pablo Saratxaga wrote:
>
>
>>There are dictionnaries for aspell for 76 different languages, and of
>>course more can be added; look at:
>>http://aspell.sourceforge.net/man-html/Supported.html
>>
>>
>
>But not all Aspell dictionaries are free.  This is an area where
>Wiktionary and the Wikimedia Foundation could make a difference.
>For example, download the English dictionaries in
>ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/dict/en/aspell6-en-6.0-0.tar.bz2
>and read the enclosed text file named "Copyright".
>
>
>
>
Well Lars, we are not so far away from making a different point in that.
It is one of the usages we have in mind with Ultimate Wiktionary. Since
there we will have words in all languages and have these words in a
relational database it is easy to "extract an actual spellchecker" every
now and then. Being Ultimate Wiktionary data under GFDL also the spell
checker is under GFDL. We are also thinking about a feedback mechanism
that allows for updates and corrections. This means that for example who
uses our spell checker in OmegaT or OOo or wherever gives us back the
additional and/or corrected data and this can than be integrated. Also
every manual edit on UW will contribute to increase the validity of
spell checkers. We will for sure have over 200 languages and many
millions of words (of course in these several languages). Therefore we
will have also "start-up-spellcheckers" (in languages where there are no
other spellcheckers) where people can work on online and offline and
working on them (for example in any African language offline, where
people have no stable internet connection) they also automatically
contribute to UW.

Really this would need much more "digging deeper" - but I presume that
even with these few lines you can imagine what it would mean to have
spellcheckers in over 200 languages in gfdl.

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] <includeonly> and <noinclude>

body:
I wrote a feature at Wikimania and forgot to announce it outside that
audience. It's live now on Wikimedia websites. The feature is the
ability to control template inclusion by the use of <noinclude> and
<includeonly> tags.

Anything between <noinclude> and </noinclude> will be processed and
displayed only when the page is being viewed directly, not included.
Possible applications are:

* Categorising templates
* Interlanguage links to similar templates in other languages
* Explanatory text about how to use the template

The converse is <includeonly>. Text between <includeonly> and
</includeonly> will be processed and displayed only when the page is
being included. The obvious application is:

* Adding all pages containing a given template to a category

Note that the usual update problems apply -- if you change the
categories inside a template, the categories of the referring pages
won't be updated until those pages are edited.

Beware of bugs: this hasn't been tested in a real wiki environment yet.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Zachary Harden

body:
Ok, so I voted to have the FA status removed from the article.Also, if you
payed attention, I said "Coming as a neutral party, I looked at the website
in question. IMHO, I do not think we should have a link to there. Also, in
fairness, we could start trimming other links to various forums and other
websites. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 21:28, 22 August 2005 (UTC)"  Tren himself
responded to my statement as "more 2 -sided. Despite ZScout370 not giving
reasons for his view above, I credit the balance in what he is trying to do
by removing (qhile I was writing this!) the entire block of community sites
and forcing a rethink on them and their balance." I did remove the links to
all of the froums since we do not have to have every single stinking forum
about Asperger's (which, I have anyways), and how every person who has it is
coping with it. I, also, have removed a link to a school that is
"developing," since I saw it as a promo. I also said "Note, my suggestion
for removal of the links is due to the page, to me, sounding like a forum.
And, there are countless of those dealing with this community. While if
there are sites who oppose the community in a way that is scientific, we
should have a link. But, overall, there could be a bunch of links that could
be removed. I suggest, as a community, figure out what should stay and
should go. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 21:44, 22 August 2005 (UTC)"

As for the vote I performed, I stand by it and I will not change it. If the
article is still going to be full of edit wars and have that POV tag at the
top of the page, it does not deserve FA status and should be removed until
the problems are solved.

Regards,

Zachary Harden (Zscout370)

>From: Ryan Norton <wxprojects at comcast.net>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] A cry to save the Asperger's Syndrome page
>Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:02:04 -0700
>
>Hi,
>
>This was an otherwise great article that as of late (the past 3 days)  has
>seen excessive edit warring and POV entries injected into it. Now  it has
>been (predictably) set up for removal as a featured article.
>
>All of this is due to a single user, Tern, who continually injects this
>passage
>
>"These things illustrate how AS appears to correlate with child
>authorship, hence a number of aspie communities have a concerned  awareness
>of the terrible injustice an aspie child can suffer when the
>[http://www.phad-fife.org.uk/recognition.html chance to achieve child
>authorship] is unfairly wrecked by high-handed [[school]] pressures."
>
>and links to a very controversial site which nearly everyone else
>describes as a "hate site", which other editors are editing anonymously  to
>avoid being listed on.
>
>The link above in question is merely the rantings of a 14-year-old  person
>with Asperger's Syndrome who could not get a scifi book  published (and
>some other editors also claim that Tern is the person  referenced there)-
>so initially users (before I came in the debate)  just reverted the passage
>and noted on the talk page that it needed to  be reworded to be less POV
>and needed a better reference.  However, as  evidenced by the history page
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/
>index.php?title=Asperger%27s_syndrome&curid=37556&action=history
>Tern continued to revert back to his version many, many times against  MANY
>other editors who reached their 3 revert limit VERY quickly  (reverts often
>happen within 10 minutes!). So, out of desperation the  other users
>attempted to reword the passage in order to be less pov and  accurate,
>including myself - however, this was not enough and Tern  continued to
>revert back to his version.
>
>Some of his edit summaries have been very hurtful and involve personal
>attacks, such as
>"sysops look how this rv of haters' vandalism gives new consensual  edits
>to both items"
>"the last attack made here, the public can see is blatant personally
>malicious bullying against wikpedia's rules and illegal in intending to
>suppress prevention of child cruelty"
>"creatively revert the llast absurdity, cos it's obviously just an
>irresponsible personal insult and not verified"
>
>Tern has also accused other editors of "hurting children" on the talk
>page.
>
>Tern has violated 3RR at least 3 times, and depending on how you want  to
>do the math many more times
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/
>3RR#User:Tern
>
>I'm just a participant in the war and have reached my 3RR limit twice
>already, and I've filed the 3RR against Tern.  I WANT to work with the
>user, but the user needs to calm down and discuss with more sense about
>what he wants to do with the page, not just revert other good faith
>editors. I've tried notifying two admins without response on the issue
>also - and one admin - Zscout370 - simply voted to remove the article  from
>FA status and not get in the debate with the user.
>
>I'm the one who brought the Autism article to its Featured Article  status
>and used this article as a reference more or less on how to do  it, so its
>really a pity to see this happen - I'd hate to see it lose  its status
>because of a war with one user.
>
>Thanks,
>RN
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
Regardless, until it is resolved, my vote will not change.

Regards,

Zachary Harden


body:
I just got involved. I was being asked to block the user before in IRC, but
as you can tell, he always edits by using IP's, so the likely hood of the
block working is zero to none, closer to none.

Regards,

Zachary Harden

>From: Ryan Norton <wxprojects at comcast.net>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] A cry to save the Asperger's Syndrome page
>Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 18:19:20 -0700
>
>>Ok, so I voted to have the FA status removed from the article.Also, if you
>>payed attention,
>
>And I did realize this Z and I thank you for your contributions, but I have
>to ask - why is this user not banned for 24 hours?  Is it because he claims
>"injustice" etc. so admins fear getting involved?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: ASINs and ISBNs

body:
On 8/23/05, ABCD <en.abcd at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/05, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/22/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 22/08/05, Theo Clarke <wiki at tignosis.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > >Can't we replace such links with links to web.archive.org then?
> > > >
> > > > Adding a link to web.archive.org is appropriate and desirable but
> > > > replacement destroys the link to the original source, which will be
> > > > needed if/when web.archive.org dies.
> > >
> > > Doesn't a web.archive.org link contain within it the URL of the original source?
> >
> > If the site is dead, and there is no archive of it on the internet
> > archive (or anywhere else presumably), why would you want the link
> > anyway?
> >
> > --gkhan
>
> You might want it in case the site comes back up (as has been known to happen).
>
> -- ABCD

I think it is fair to say that the internet archive will outlast 99.9%
of the rest of the internet, making this discussion academic :P
However, you're point is taken.

--gkhan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
He was blocked for being a Nazi?

I've looked at his edits (briefly) and can't see anything that he's
actually done wrong.

Theresa

On 8/23/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/block
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Amalekite&action=history
>
> This user, and a great number of IP's, were blocked without a cause
> relating to blocking policy. I think that was a crass thing to do.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
On 8/23/05, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I've decided to unblock this user as I see nothing in his edit history that
> merits an immediate ban.
>
> I'm quite shocked that people would take this approach.

Matt unblocked [[User:Amalekite]] and I reblocked him, then we
exchanged posts as follows in case others are interested:

Hi Matt, I've reblocked the above. I don't normally reblock when
another admin unblocks (in fact, I don't think I've ever done it), but
this case is exceptional. Amalekite is [[Alex Linder]], the
owner-operator of [[Vanguard News Network]]. He has posted a list of
Wikipedians he believes are Jews on the [[Stormfront]] website, as
well as details of how to edit using open proxies and sockpuppets.
It's clear he was trying to cause major disruption, which is why
[[User:Homeontherange]] blocked him. The issue has been discussed on
the mailing list. [[User:SlimVirgin]] 07:22, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Hi SlimVirgin, I don't like getting into conflict, particularly with
things like block wars and protect wars, so I'm unhappy about this.
But in this case I think that this is simply unjust; we should block
people indefinitely based on their actions, not based on what they say
on other websites, and not because they're neo-Nazis. If it is, as you
assert, clear that he's trying to disrupt Wikipedia, then it will
surely quickly become apparent, and we can block him then, right? But
otherwise, I think it must be innocent until proven guilty.
[[User:Matt Crypto]] 07:32, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

I take your point, Matt, but I feel you ought to have discussed this
with the blocking admin, rather than undoing the block. I would also
argue that for a Wikipedian to draw up a list of other editors by
their perceived ethnicity, and to post that list on a racist website,
is highly provocative, and I don't see how it can be detached from his
actions on Wikipedia. He wasn't blocked for being a member of
[[Vanguard News Network]] or [[Stormfront]], but for his actions in
encouraging anti-Semites and racists to target Jewish editors, and for
encouraging them to violate policy by creating sockpuppets and using
open proxies. I don't see why we should have to wait until the
disruption begins before blocking him. He tried to cause massive
disruption: that he (appears to have) failed was simply down to the
others' lack of response. [[User:SlimVirgin]] 07:41, August 23, 2005
(UTC)


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rewards and punishments

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment#General_user_conduct

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

I just noticed that the RfC on other users exceeds the RfA by aprox 3
times. That sucks. I really think we need to spend more time
complimenting each other, and less time conflicting.

Jack (Sam Spade)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> In order to analyze what makes some projects more successful than
> others, we need statistics to know which projects are successful.
> Why hasn't Wikistats been updated since May?

Because Erik Zachte, the third party who makes them, hasn't updated his
scripts since May?

 > And will we ever see
> web traffic statistics again?

These have been online for a month or so.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> In order to analyze what makes some projects more successful than
> others, we need statistics to know which projects are successful.
> Why hasn't Wikistats been updated since May?

Because Erik Zachte, the third party who makes them, hasn't updated his
scripts since May?

 > And will we ever see
> web traffic statistics again?

These have been online for a month or so.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> In order to analyze what makes some projects more successful than
> others, we need statistics to know which projects are successful.
> Why hasn't Wikistats been updated since May?

Because Erik Zachte, the third party who makes them, hasn't updated his
scripts since May?

 > And will we ever see
> web traffic statistics again?

These have been online for a month or so.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> In order to analyze what makes some projects more successful than
> others, we need statistics to know which projects are successful.
> Why hasn't Wikistats been updated since May?

Because Erik Zachte, the third party who makes them, hasn't updated his
scripts since May?

 > And will we ever see
> web traffic statistics again?

These have been online for a month or so.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
On 8/23/05, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> He was blocked for being a Nazi?
>
> I've looked at his edits (briefly) and can't see anything that he's
> actually done wrong.
>
> Theresa
>

Oh here we go. This is his stormfront post
http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=225536

"A cabal of Jews and their liberal-gentile "useful idiots" are trying
to take over Wikipedia"
"The gang of kikes at Wikipedia managed to knock the site Jew
Watch off the top of the Google search results page last year"
"Don't let these vampire rodents pull
one more media outlet from out of our hands."

If he said that on Wikipedia I'd definately block him for it. As it is
he said it off Wikipedia. I'm not comfotable about blocking someone
under those circumstances.

Theresa


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Log/block

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Amalekite&action=history

This user, and a great number of IP's, were blocked without a cause
relating to blocking policy. I think that was a crass thing to do.

Jack (Sam Spade)


from_name: Nikola Smolenski

references:
<dbf395c050818183064450f3b@mail.gmail.com>
	<501f5b5d0508191446742b709c@mail.gmail.com>
	<op.svtmv2fhaavobm@smtp.apper.de>

body:
On Saturday 20 August 2005 20:25, Christian Thiele wrote:
> But I have to add, that - in my opinion - aspell isn't a good spell
> checking engine and the dictionaries are very incomplete.

What would you suggest to use instead?


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
On 8/23/05, Rob <gamaliel8 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  He's a Nazi and all he wants
> to do is fight the Jews. Perhaps his edits look fine
> now, but there's always the chance he is engaging in
> or will engage in a less obvious form of racist
> vandalism by subtly skewing articles.

We could ban him then. Is there any particular hurry? Why don't we
wait until he does something wrong and then ban him?

(Note that I'm playing devils advocate here. I'm not concerned enough
to go and unblock him)

Theresa


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Change of Interwiki name for Moldovan language

body:
Hi.

I think we shouldn't turn this into a debate about the
legitimacy of the Moldovan Wikipedia and the
perceptions of Romanian contributors on the Wikimedia
network.

What is important is that a proposal was approved,
fairly, by the majority of Moldovan Wikipedia users
which explicitly states, among other things, that the
interwiki descriptor should be changed. This change is
basically from "Moldovan" to "Moldovan (Cyrillic)".

Hence, I see no reason how that ties into Moldovan not
being a language or something like that. The reason
behind the change was to affirm the fact that the
Moldovan Wikipedia only really contains content in
Cyrillic script, and that Cyrillic script is neither
the only, nor the majority script in use.
Unfortunately, this mailing list doesn't support
Unicode it seems, so the characters couldn't be
displayed.

See
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere
to see how the change should be. I will file a report
at bugzilla about this - it seems this is the most
efficient way to change interwiki descriptors.

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
Two reasons were given, both related to comments he made outside the wiki.

*20:34, 22 August 2005 SlimVirgin (added that the account is blocked
indefinitely, because Amalekite is posting elsewhere that this is his
homepage)

*00:21, 20 August 2005 Homeontherange blocked "User:Amalekite" with an
expiry time of indefinite (neo-nazi Troll soliciting other trolls off
of Stormfront)

Anyways, this sort of stuff makes me sad, and IMO encourages these
sorts of people in their beliefs.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 8/23/05, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> He was blocked for being a Nazi?
>
> I've looked at his edits (briefly) and can't see anything that he's
> actually done wrong.
>
> Theresa


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
I don't think the issue here is the legitimacy of the Moldovan
Wikipedia, but rather the integrity of the vote.

Secretlondon's point was that she thought it was very possible that
the Moldovan Wikipedia had been "invaded" by Romanian Wikipedians.

And, that is largely true.

9 people voted on Ronline's proposal and subsequent additions by others.

In my opinion, only 3 out of those 9 can be considered legitimate
members of the Moldovan Wikipedia community -- myself, Ronline, and
Dmitriid. The reason for this is that these three people have made
extensive contributions, including writing new content, fixing old
content, etc.

The rest, have either 1) edited only on talkpages or 2) edited on
talkpages only except for two or three edits to the main namespace,
where they just fixed a number or made a link, because we were
considering requiring a certain number of edits for being able to
vote.

That 9 is only including the people who met the pre-established
criteria for voting. There were actually 12 people who voted.

Out of those 12 people, only 3 of them had made any significant
contributions to the Moldovan Wikipedia. The rest were bullies from
the Romanian Wikipedia.

HOWEVER, let me emphasise again that I don't think final result of the
vote would've been different, had only these 3 people been allowed to
vote. Perhaps the margin by which certain proposals passed would've
been different, but I don't believe the final result would've been.

Having said that, there has since been the addition of a new, very
active user on the Moldovan Wikipedia, Gabix. I think that if only him
and these 3 other people were allowed to vote, the results might be
tipped the other direction -- if I thought there was a chance, I'd
vote against the parenthetical "chirilica" for reasons upon which I've
already expounded.

Cheers
Mark

On 23/08/05, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi.
>
> I think we shouldn't turn this into a debate about the
> legitimacy of the Moldovan Wikipedia and the
> perceptions of Romanian contributors on the Wikimedia
> network.
>
> What is important is that a proposal was approved,
> fairly, by the majority of Moldovan Wikipedia users
> which explicitly states, among other things, that the
> interwiki descriptor should be changed. This change is
> basically from "Moldovan" to "Moldovan (Cyrillic)".
>
> Hence, I see no reason how that ties into Moldovan not
> being a language or something like that. The reason
> behind the change was to affirm the fact that the
> Moldovan Wikipedia only really contains content in
> Cyrillic script, and that Cyrillic script is neither
> the only, nor the majority script in use.
> Unfortunately, this mailing list doesn't support
> Unicode it seems, so the characters couldn't be
> displayed.
>
> See
> http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ronline/Propunere
> to see how the change should be. I will file a report
> at bugzilla about this - it seems this is the most
> efficient way to change interwiki descriptors.
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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POSSIT MATERIARI
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
On 8/23/05, Rob <gamaliel8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The advantage to banning him now is that it prevents
> subtle skewing of articles or skewing of articles on
> obscure topics, both which may go unnoticed and
> uncorrected.

Hardly. We are all watching him. If he's blocked what's to stop him
not logging in and editing or creating a whole host of socks and then
editing?

> It also saves a lot of stress and sweat
> for those editors who have to deal with him until he
> inevitably gets banned for something.

Partially agree. But if he doesn't actually do anything wrong then why
is it stressfull to deal with him?

>  Neither of
> these will be that detrimental to the project as a
> whole in the long run, but they are not negligible
> effects.

What really concerns me is this sort of thing

"I have no interest whatsoever in getting involved in Eustace Mullins.
Mullins is a repulsive, demented antisemite. The article on him is not
balanced and nothing like NPOV, but I'm not going into bat for him."

This is Grace Note talking on Amalekite's talk page. Having nonNPOV
articles is very much to the detriment of Wikipedia. Having some
neonazis to bat for neonazi related articles is probably the only way
of achieving NPOV on those articles, as regular wikipedians may well
(Like Grace Note) be reluctant to.

Theresa
> Gamaliel
>
>
> Theresa Knott theresaknott at gmail.com
> Tue Aug 23 01:57:07 UTC 2005
>
> We could ban him then. Is there any particular hurry?
> Why don't we
> wait until he does something wrong and then ban him?
>
> (Note that I'm playing devils advocate here. I'm not
> concerned enough
> to go and unblock him)
>
> Theresa
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
On 8/23/05, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> It is a list of those belonging to a "Zionist cabal". That's not a
> statement of ethnicity.

There are several threads, and if you read them all, you'll see that
when Amalekite says Zionists, he means Jews. In fact, the Stormfront
moderator eventually asks why he doesn't say what he means, though
he's more straightforward elsewhere when he talks about  "[t]he gang
of kikes at Wikipedia."
http://www.vnnforum.com/showthread.php?t=22047&highlight=wikipedia
>
> In a charitable interpretation he tried to recruit new editors who would
> agree with his POV on a particular issue within compliance of Wikipedia
> rules.

He was advocating the use of sockpuppets and open proxies, and
admitted using the latter himself.

Sarah


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] The WikiProject War

body:
Er - WikiProjects are supposed to be used to generate agree-upon standards to
use in the presentation of a tightly related set of articles. This, however,
looks like an advocacy group. I am not sure I'm comfortable with that.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
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http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
Node, the Ronline proposal was basically a proposal to
*save* the Moldovan Wikipedia with a few compromises.
I don't know why you're saying that the result
"could've tipped the other way". The other way was the
shutting down of the Moldovan Wikipedia. The Ronline
proposal basically enabled the Moldovan Wikipedia to
go forward, which is why it was voted by all the three
users you claim are legitimate (me, you and Dmitriid).
Had Gabix been given the right to vote, I am nearly
certain he would have voted for the Ronline proposal
(instead of the shutting down option).

I have observed your arguments with many people on the
Moldovan language and Romanian language articles on
Wikipedia (and mostly I have chosen not to involve
myself) but I think that you need to understand that
in a case like this, compromise is necessary. The
"chirilica" inclusion *is* necessary and is a
reasonable compromise. The only way to have voted
against that inclusion was to have voted against the
Ronline proposal, in which case the Moldovan Wikipedia
would have been shut down. You had the chance to make
an amendment even, and yet you didn't. Dmitriid made
one (about Wikipedia in romana instead of Wikipedia
Romania, I think) and his was voted in.

However, as I said on the Moldovan Wikipedia, anyone
has the chance to propose a new proposal or call a
vote on the existing proposal or model. So, if you're
unhappy about the chirilica inclusion, then propose an
amendment and put it up for voting. Until that, the
Ronline proposal must be fully implemented, because it
was voted in, and one of the inclusions must be the
chirilica interwiki.

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Fundraising meeting September 17

body:
wmf at timshell.com wrote:
> I have scheduled an open meeting for September 17 to discuss lessons
> learned in the current drive that can help us improve the next drive.
>
> Everyone is welcome to attend.  If we arrive at any good ideas, these will
> be conveyed to the Board and officers, who are meeting on September 18.
>
> The meeting will be at 18:00 UTC in the #wikimedia-meeting channel on IRC.
>
> Add your comments and suggestions to the meeting page, which can be found
> here:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_meeting%2C_September_2005
>
> Tim Shell

Hi

Please Tim, do consider posting on meta the log of this meeting so that
all those not able to attend can get informed of issue discussed.
Several editors asked for those and this meeting should not contain
anything confidential.

I probably will not be there myself as the time is not compatible with
family life.

Talking about meeting, I recommand assisting to the open meeting on
august 27th, 20 utc : http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_agenda

Amongst the issues discussed, the creation of an incubator wiki, was
suggested. The idea would be to host projects or languages not yet
approved formally (but sufficiently interesting and viable to be allowed
on the incubator). It could concern projects such as wikiversity, or
some of the test wp (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp) which are
currently spoiling the recent changes on meta.

ant


from_name: Dori

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
On 8/23/05, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
> > In 2003 the problem was lack of hardware.
>
> You were able to solve the problem by adding hardware. Whether
> that is a victory or a failure is a matter of opinion.

I don't think you realise Wikimedia's popularity.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=2y&size=large&compare_sites=wikipedia.org&y=t&url=susning.nu

I'm pretty sure that Wikipedia has more features than that site in
addition to receiving a couple of magnitudes more traffic.

>
> > We disabled every non-essential feature: just about every query
> > page, search, even watchlists at times.
>
> Yes, blindly hacking away, disabling useful functions at random,
> instead of analyzing where the bottlenecks were.  It was very
> embarrasing to watch.  The growth numbers in 2002-2003 for
> susning.nu (which still runs on a single server) show what
> software optimization can do, should you have chosen that path.

I can't speak for the devs, but I know full well that they were doing
profiling and still are. I think you should be more respective until
you know what actually goes on.


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] link counts and templates

body:
In a dump of the German Wikipedia from July 14th, Jakob Voss found
that the {{Personendaten}} template was used in 47785 articles.

When I went to the template page on August 22nd and clicked "what
links here", I found 42147 links,
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorlage:Personendaten

I don't believe that the template was removed from 5638 pages in
the six weeks that have passed since the dump.  So what could
explain the difference in these numbers?  Is the link table out of
sync?  Could/should this be fixed?  How does it work?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Wikitech-l] Mediawiki software localisation -- Pootle

body:
Hi all,

I received an e-mail from Dwayne Bailey, coordinator of
translate.org.za (free software localisation group for South African
languages), in which he showed interest in the idea of assisting with
MediaWiki localisation in South African languages.

He also suggested using Pootle, about which you can find more at
http://translate.sourceforge.net/ .

There have been a couple of mails on this list I believe about
encouraging localisation somewhat independently of projects, so that
for example a Ladino interface translation could be completed without
the existance of a Ladino Wikipedia or other Wikimedia project. Of
course, this is already possible, but it's unlikely to happen. Within
that framework, it could become a prelaunch condition for requests for
new language versions of Wikimedia projects, and would also allow for
more collaborative translation rather than the current system where
most system messages are translated by one or two sysops in the
MediaWiki namespace, while regular users look on without the ability
to make corrections.

While the current preferred method of localisation appears to be to
use the MediaWiki namespace, this doesn't work well with the
recently-introduced ability to choose ones' own interface language in
preferences: if I choose on en.wiki to view the interface in, say,
Navajo, or Amharic, or Bengali, nothing shows up because most or all
of the translations for these languages were made in the MediaWiki
namespace.

While this may not seem like a major concern, I think that there are
more than a few editors on the major language versions who speak that
language as their second language and might prefer to view the user
interface in their native language. This may still not seem like a
major concern because, after all, don't all of the "major languages"
of the world have full translations of language.php? Unfortunately,
this is not the case, and is limited almost completely to the
languages of Europe, with few exceptions. Languages such as Bengali,
Amharic, Telugu, Fulfulde, Armenian, are all major world languages
with millions of speakers (Bengali, for example, is the national
language of Bangladesh, and a regional language of India, two of the
most populous nations on Earth, for both of which English is a
relatively common second language), each of them has a
widely-translated interface in the MediaWiki namespace, but none of
them has a LanguageXX.php file, or if they do, it has few or no system
messages.

Mark

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dwayne Bailey <______ at ______.___>
Date: 23-Aug-2005 03:06
Subject: Re: Mediawiki software localisation
To: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>

...

This is a great idea, I will investigate how we can translate this.  Do
you think you guys would be interested in using Pootle
(http://pootle.wordforge.org) so that other languages can easily
translate?

...


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
--- Rob <gamaliel8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> It's either block him now or block him later.  He's
> not interested in NPOV or building an encyclopedia or
> anything else we value.  He's a Nazi and all he wants
> to do is fight the Jews. Perhaps his edits look fine
> now, but there's always the chance he is engaging in
> or will engage in a less obvious form of racist
> vandalism by subtly skewing articles.  Whatever it is,
> it will happen and it will escalate.  On SF they are
> quite openly talking about ways to infiltrate
> Wikipedia so they can skew the content the way they
> want it skewed.  That should be enough to ban them on
> sight here.

We should ban people based on what they do on Wikipedia, not for what they do
elsewhere, and *certainly* not for what they think.

I've decided to unblock this user as I see nothing in his edit history that
merits an immediate ban.

I'm quite shocked that people would take this approach.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> In 2003 the problem was lack of hardware.

You were able to solve the problem by adding hardware. Whether
that is a victory or a failure is a matter of opinion.

> We disabled every non-essential feature: just about every query
> page, search, even watchlists at times.

Yes, blindly hacking away, disabling useful functions at random,
instead of analyzing where the bottlenecks were.  It was very
embarrasing to watch.  The growth numbers in 2002-2003 for
susning.nu (which still runs on a single server) show what
software optimization can do, should you have chosen that path.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


body:
Apparently, you did not read my message.

The main complaint was about how the decisions were not made by real
contributors, but mostly by "invaders" who came only to argue and
vote, and left immediately after the vote concluded.

Now, I think that you certainly have the right to contribute to a
decision-making process, having contributed significantly to mo.wiki;
however this is not the case for most of the participants in the vote,
whose only contributions were to talkpages (or, in the case of a
couple, with two or three cosmetic changes to content pages to attempt
to make themselves look like legitimate contributors).

Even if the vote had said to close down mo.wiki, I do not think that
would ever have happened because:

There are real people who use the Cyrillic script for their language,
and it is currently the only script allowed in education in the
breakaway Pridniestrian Moldovan Republic (aka Transdniestr), for all
official languages -- Moldovan, Ukrainian, and Russian.

The main reasonings for closing mo.wiki were 100% illogical:

1) Because Cyrillic is ugly;
2) Because Cyrillic is a Stalinist tool for the seperation of the
Moldovan peoples from "their Romanian brethren";
3) Because Cyrillic is a relic of the past, and all people still using
it must be ignorant or Stalinist, and thus should be ignored entirely
because such people do not deserve a Wikipedia;
4) Because the Moldovan Wikipedia is a terrorist pithole (Anittas said
that, it made me laugh, compared to the other reasons which made me
disappointed in the most basic logic and reason which I previously
thought to be universal traits of human beings);
5) The official script in Moldova since 1989 is the Roman alphabet,
and no other nation recognises Transdniestr, so we should completely
ignore the people using the script because it's not official;
6) Because it is offensive to the people of Moldova (this reason is
especially illogical because all of the people who said it were
Romanians);
7) Because using Cyrillic to write limba noastra is a perversion or
some other thing basically equivalent with linguistic nationalistic
blasphemy;

and numerous other reasons which would be laughed at by any sane
disinterested party.

There is some disagreement as to whether or not Moldovan is an
independent language, however there is no disagreement that Cyrillic
is still used to write it by some people and is taught in the schools
of Transdniestr (Schools teaching the Roman alphabet were declared to
be operating illegally as public schools and shut down, so only
Cyrillic-teaching schools remain).

The Moldovan Wikipedia now has well over 100 articles, so if a new
vote were called, and the invaders tipped the scale and voted for its
deletion or closure in some other manner, there would simply be
nothing to consider and the matter would be closed with the status quo
respected.

Mark

On 23/08/05, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Node, the Ronline proposal was basically a proposal to
> *save* the Moldovan Wikipedia with a few compromises.
> I don't know why you're saying that the result
> "could've tipped the other way". The other way was the
> shutting down of the Moldovan Wikipedia. The Ronline
> proposal basically enabled the Moldovan Wikipedia to
> go forward, which is why it was voted by all the three
> users you claim are legitimate (me, you and Dmitriid).
> Had Gabix been given the right to vote, I am nearly
> certain he would have voted for the Ronline proposal
> (instead of the shutting down option).
>
> I have observed your arguments with many people on the
> Moldovan language and Romanian language articles on
> Wikipedia (and mostly I have chosen not to involve
> myself) but I think that you need to understand that
> in a case like this, compromise is necessary. The
> "chirilica" inclusion *is* necessary and is a
> reasonable compromise. The only way to have voted
> against that inclusion was to have voted against the
> Ronline proposal, in which case the Moldovan Wikipedia
> would have been shut down. You had the chance to make
> an amendment even, and yet you didn't. Dmitriid made
> one (about Wikipedia in romana instead of Wikipedia
> Romania, I think) and his was voted in.
>
> However, as I said on the Moldovan Wikipedia, anyone
> has the chance to propose a new proposal or call a
> vote on the existing proposal or model. So, if you're
> unhappy about the chirilica inclusion, then propose an
> amendment and put it up for voting. Until that, the
> Ronline proposal must be fully implemented, because it
> was voted in, and one of the inclusions must be the
> chirilica interwiki.
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________
> Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
> http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
--- Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/23/05, Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com> wrote:
> > He was blocked for being a Nazi?
> >
> > I've looked at his edits (briefly) and can't see anything that he's
> > actually done wrong.
> >
> > Theresa
>
> Oh here we go. This is his stormfront post
> http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=225536
>
> "A cabal of Jews and their liberal-gentile "useful idiots" are trying
> to take over Wikipedia"
> "The gang of kikes at Wikipedia managed to knock the site Jew
> Watch off the top of the Google search results page last year"
> "Don't let these vampire rodents pull
> one more media outlet from out of our hands."

In the same post, he also says,

"However, if you're going to join in on editing the Mullins article (which I
hope you do), follow the rules of the place - no insults or personal
attacks, no Jew-bashing (though they so richly deserve it), try to
keep a Neutral Point-of-View (NPOV), and stay cool, no matter how hard
they push your buttons."

-- Matt
[[User:Matt Crypto]]

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Is there something in particular you'd like to see added to our
> process?

There is nothing more to wish for in response time, server uptime,
and features.  It worries me a little that so much money needs to
be spent on hardware, which I think could be done with less.
However, the board should focus on a higher level, asking what
makes contributors more or less productive, or what makes people
join or leave the project.

In order to analyze what makes some projects more successful than
others, we need statistics to know which projects are successful.
Why hasn't Wikistats been updated since May?  And will we ever see
web traffic statistics again?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
I think this is grounds for blocking. It's in the same spirit as
personal attacks that put users in danger.

-Snowspinner

On Aug 23, 2005, at 4:04 AM, <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
<slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

>
>  He has posted a list of
> Wikipedians he believes are Jews on the [[Stormfront]] website, as


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
>From: Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com>
>
>Anyways, this sort of stuff makes me sad, and IMO encourages these
>sorts of people in their beliefs.

It's rather absurd to think that being blocked from Wikipedia is what
encourages them in their beliefs.  They come to Wikipedia as full-blown
haters, and there's little to suggest that their inserting their POV into
Wikipedia will change that.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
>From: Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com>
>
>We could ban him then. Is there any particular hurry? Why don't we
>wait until he does something wrong and then ban him?
>
>(Note that I'm playing devils advocate here. I'm not concerned enough
>to go and unblock him)

His edits consisted of POV and personal attacks.  Why wait for him to do
even more damage?

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
>From: Theresa Knott <theresaknott at gmail.com>
>
>What really concerns me is this sort of thing
>
>"I have no interest whatsoever in getting involved in Eustace Mullins.
>Mullins is a repulsive, demented antisemite. The article on him is not
>balanced and nothing like NPOV, but I'm not going into bat for him."
>
>This is Grace Note talking on Amalekite's talk page. Having nonNPOV
>articles is very much to the detriment of Wikipedia. Having some
>neonazis to bat for neonazi related articles is probably the only way
>of achieving NPOV on those articles, as regular wikipedians may well
>(Like Grace Note) be reluctant to.

I wouldn't particularly worry in this case, as Grace Note is not a good
judge of NPOV.

Jay.


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
> I take your point, Matt, but I feel you ought to have discussed this
> with the blocking admin, rather than undoing the block. I would also
> argue that for a Wikipedian to draw up a list of other editors by
> their perceived ethnicity, and to post that list on a racist website,
> is highly provocative, and I don't see how it can be detached from his
> actions on Wikipedia.

It is a list of those belonging to a "Zionist cabal". That's not a
statement of ethnicity. I personally find it more amusing than offensive
but I understand that people can legitimately feel differently. Perhaps
this action is worthy of a ban but I would have preferred a more formal
procedure preceding it.

> He wasn't blocked for being a member of
> [[Vanguard News Network]] or [[Stormfront]], but for his actions in
> encouraging anti-Semites and racists to target Jewish editors, and for
> encouraging them to violate policy by creating sockpuppets and using
> open proxies.

As far as I can see it was another poster who made that suggestion.
User:Amalekite replied with this:

"Signing up for a Wikipedia account and editing articles under that
account instead of editing anonymously will greatly reduce your chances of
being banned. It's much harder for them to claim you're a "vandal" if
you've been making valid contributions to Wikipedia regularly, and kicking
off a registered user is a much bigger deal and requires more
justification on their part than banning an anonymous user. Signing up for
an account there is easy "

> I don't see why we should have to wait until the
> disruption begins before blocking him. He tried to cause massive
> disruption: that he (appears to have) failed was simply down to the
> others' lack of response.

In a charitable interpretation he tried to recruit new editors who would
agree with his POV on a particular issue within compliance of Wikipedia
rules. I've tried that too - with much the same luck...

In my personal opinion, and assuming I have the facts right, the user in
question should be unblocked again.

Regards,
Haukur


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
>From: Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is>
>
>It is a list of those belonging to a "Zionist cabal". That's not a
>statement of ethnicity.

"Zionist cabal" in the sense of Zionist cabal described in the [[Protocols
of the Elders of Zion]].  The suggestion that people here are being labelled
"Zionist" based on their political beliefs, rather than ethnicity, is, in my
view, hardly credible, particularly given his other posts refering to
"Jews", "kikes", "pro-Jewish bias", etc.

Jay.


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Hello,

> You were able to solve the problem by adding hardware. Whether
> that is a victory or a failure is a matter of opinion.

See, a community knows about new hardware more, because
they pay for it. They do not pay developers and therefore do not
know what software optimizations were introduced. And we did
solve many problems by introducing software optimizations.
So far, operation of Wikimedia cluster is a pure victory.

> Yes, blindly hacking away, disabling useful functions at random,
> instead of analyzing where the bottlenecks were.  It was very
> embarrasing to watch.  The growth numbers in 2002-2003 for
> susning.nu (which still runs on a single server) show what
> software optimization can do, should you have chosen that path.

What we have now is content produced by massive
collaboration with a small export of it via our caches
to the open world.

Sir, we have profiling information. We know where our bottlenecks are.
We deal with those bottlenecks. I know how to do software optimization
for websites, though. Remove as much magic as possible, use very simplistic
methods, ...We could serve whole website as HTML files from single
Pentium4 box at gigabit speeds. We could drop accessibility and use
lots of AJAX for all content loading and interaction. We could use MediaWiki
as application server instead of script. There are still lots of challenges ahead.
There are ways to do things better.

If you have any specific ideas on how to 'optimize' all that - feel free.
Join into #mediawiki or #wikimedia-tech channels, discuss about profiler
output with developers, brainstorm on how things can be done better.

I also have cases in my portfolio of 'growth numbers', but none of
them reached the scale of Wikipedia, neither in load, neither in variety
of users, neither in size of content. And we did have bigger fulltime
development/operations teams, budgets as well.

Cheers,
Domas


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
On 8/23/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I wouldn't particularly worry in this case, as Grace Note is not a good
> judge of NPOV.
>
> Jay.

I would like to mention that I think this is the kind of mild personal
attack that arbitrators should take greater care to avoid.
Arbitrators should hold themselves to the highest standards in pursuit
of the ideals of Wikipedia, and when a comment like this is made, they
should apologize.

You've recently taken on greater responsibility and greater visibility
in the project; you should take greater care to temper your words,
taking special care to avoid those that boldly proclaim judgement of
others, especially when unsolicited.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
> There are several threads, and if you read them all, you'll see that
> when Amalekite says Zionists, he means Jews.

I'm no doubt hopelessly naive and at any rate unfamiliar with the
semantics of the Stormfront message boards but even if he did mean Jews I
still don't think that Stormfront post of his merits an immediate ban.

> He was advocating the use of sockpuppets and open proxies, and
> admitted using the latter himself.

I'm sure you're right and I missed something. Could you point out the post
where he advocates use of sockpuppets (as opposed to advocating the use of
usernames)?

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: homey2005 at sympatico.ca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
Amalekite's thread on stormfront is titled "jews trying to take over wikipedia". I think that's quite clear as to the drawing of "ethinic lines".

Homey

>
> From: "JAY JG" <jayjg at hotmail.com>
> Date: 2005/08/23 Tue AM 10:48:21 EST
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia
>
> >From: Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is>
> >
> >It is a list of those belonging to a "Zionist cabal". That's not a
> >statement of ethnicity.
>
> "Zionist cabal" in the sense of Zionist cabal described in the [[Protocols
> of the Elders of Zion]].  The suggestion that people here are being labelled
> "Zionist" based on their political beliefs, rather than ethnicity, is, in my
> view, hardly credible, particularly given his other posts refering to
> "Jews", "kikes", "pro-Jewish bias", etc.
>
> Jay.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
>
> From: Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com>
>
> There is nothing special about nazi's that allows you to block them on
> sight. In order for that to occur, some substantial policies would
> need to be changed. As is, someone who is a murderer IRL is allowed to
> edit, much less some member of an unpopular forum.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-February/019013.html
[WikiEN-l] Neo-nazis to attack wikipedia
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales jwales at wikia.com
Mon Feb 7 01:45:54 UTC 2005

JAY JG wrote:
>  I can see that once they figure out how to game the 3RR, permanent
> changes to article content is next.

We'll just change the rules.  I'll just start blocking Nazis at whim
if I have to.  I'll initiate legal action if appropriate.

If they want to play games with us, fine.  This is Calvinball -- we
make up the rules, so we win.  Easy.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] wikistats (was Information flow)

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> So I waited for that. The new dumps came about mid July when I had started
> to prepare for two Wikimania presentations.
> A week after Wikimania I started to work on updating the scripts.

Great! Looking forward to them.

> By the way, many people would like to see for more frequent dumps.
> I also still do not know why dumps are not produced more often, but trust
> there will be a good reason, probably performance.
> There is no fixed schedule at all, one waits, people start asking for a new
> dump, often get no answer, and finally it arrives, more or less once a month
> these days.

The dump script is partially broken right now and needs to be fixed up
to work properly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> So I waited for that. The new dumps came about mid July when I had started
> to prepare for two Wikimania presentations.
> A week after Wikimania I started to work on updating the scripts.

Great! Looking forward to them.

> By the way, many people would like to see for more frequent dumps.
> I also still do not know why dumps are not produced more often, but trust
> there will be a good reason, probably performance.
> There is no fixed schedule at all, one waits, people start asking for a new
> dump, often get no answer, and finally it arrives, more or less once a month
> these days.

The dump script is partially broken right now and needs to be fixed up
to work properly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> So I waited for that. The new dumps came about mid July when I had started
> to prepare for two Wikimania presentations.
> A week after Wikimania I started to work on updating the scripts.

Great! Looking forward to them.

> By the way, many people would like to see for more frequent dumps.
> I also still do not know why dumps are not produced more often, but trust
> there will be a good reason, probably performance.
> There is no fixed schedule at all, one waits, people start asking for a new
> dump, often get no answer, and finally it arrives, more or less once a month
> these days.

The dump script is partially broken right now and needs to be fixed up
to work properly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> So I waited for that. The new dumps came about mid July when I had started
> to prepare for two Wikimania presentations.
> A week after Wikimania I started to work on updating the scripts.

Great! Looking forward to them.

> By the way, many people would like to see for more frequent dumps.
> I also still do not know why dumps are not produced more often, but trust
> there will be a good reason, probably performance.
> There is no fixed schedule at all, one waits, people start asking for a new
> dump, often get no answer, and finally it arrives, more or less once a month
> these days.

The dump script is partially broken right now and needs to be fixed up
to work properly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rewards and punishments

body:
> I just noticed that the RfC on other users exceeds the RfA by aprox 3
> times. That sucks. I really think we need to spend more time
> complimenting each other, and less time conflicting.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)

RFA does not exist to reward good editing. At the present time we have
no formal system for recogniseing good editors although we have a
number of informal systems.

--
geni


from_name: Jake Waskett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rewards and punishments

body:
On Tuesday 23 August 2005 11:40, geni wrote:
> > I just noticed that the RfC on other users exceeds the RfA by aprox 3
> > times. That sucks. I really think we need to spend more time
> > complimenting each other, and less time conflicting.
> >
> > Jack (Sam Spade)
>
> RFA does not exist to reward good editing. At the present time we have
> no formal system for recogniseing good editors although we have a
> number of informal systems.

It's a nice idea, though clearly not for the ArbCom.

[[Wikipedia:Nominations for WikiMedals]], anyone?

Jake


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

>These are some direct quotes from this guy:
>
>[...]
>
>Does it really matter to you that said these things outside wikipedia?
>
Yes. While Saudi Arabia may be fine with stopping advocates of
women's rights at the border, on the theory that they are certain
to commit heinous crimes against the social order, I think WP should
set a less medieval standard.

Pragmatically, if you pre-ban editors with open biases or goals,
they will just make new logins and make the same edits quietly;
just as women's advocates do now in Saudi, come to think of it. :-)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
>From: Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com>
>
>I would like to mention that I think this is the kind of mild personal
>attack that arbitrators should take greater care to avoid.
>Arbitrators should hold themselves to the highest standards in pursuit
>of the ideals of Wikipedia, and when a comment like this is made, they
>should apologize.

You're right; I apologize for making the comment, which was made in haste.
What I intended to say was that the fact that one editor *claims* that a
page violates NPOV does not actually mean that it *does* violate NPOV.

Jay.


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
Your argument would be compelling were we talking
about something like first ammendment free speech
rights in the democratic US.  But he is not entitled
to a "day in court" because wikipedia is not a
democracy, it is not a social experiment, it is not a
soapbox, a public forum, a commons, a message board,
etc., etc. It is an encyclopedia where such a hateful
and absurd dogma as Nazi-ism has no place.

For the record, yes, I am in support of oppressing
Nazis with every legal means at our disposal, and
perhaps some illegal ones if we get really bored.  I
do not find this incompatible with the support for the
free speech rights of Nazis in general, and they can
speech all they want on their own message board and
their Nazipedia, when and if they ever get it working.

And somehow, I manage to sleep at night just fine.

Gamaliel

Sean Barrett sean at epoptic.org:

With all that righteousness on our side, who could
possibly want to
waste time on archaic betises like formal charges, due
process, the
right to confront one's accuser, and similar nonsense?

After all, giving the accused his "day in court" would
distinguish us
from various disgusting people, like, oh, say, the Nazis.

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


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> What does matter is how the Foundation selects which products and
> features to use on the Foundation's own servers. This is really
> not a development issue, but one of operations. This is where the
> 5-15 seconds response times of 2002-2003 were a real failure, that
> caused real damage to the project, as editors were leaving, or at
> least unable to convince their friends to join the project.  New
> features were taken into use as soon as they were developed, and
> nobody seemed to monitor the performance.  Every enthusiastic
> developer could introduce new bottlenecks.
>
> If Wikipedia had had a board in 2002-2003, it could have appointed
> an "editor satisfaction officer" or a "productivity officer", with
> responsibility to question the editor community what slowed them
> down, and how productivity could be improved.  I believe many
> editors would have put the blame on the slow response times.

In 2003 the problem was lack of hardware. We disabled every
non-essential feature: just about every query page, search, even
watchlists at times. A number of innovative performance features were
developed, which kept our backs off the wall. We would have been better
off at that time with a financing officer than a productivity officer.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Information flow