from_name: Andreas

body:
Feedback I've got so far:

  1) "Many people (don't know any %) switch off Java (and Java script?),
since they are concerned that they open up a loophole for malware and
ad/spyware." From the discussion I had with one user I gather that they
feel the Java sandbox is "too open" (e.g. access to files on the users
computer) and it is unreasonable to expect someone to audit all that
code in the applet for any hidden attacks.
  2) "Some browsers do not come with Java applet support enabled or even
included." I have not found one instance of this, yet, but I'm sure this
is true. It is, however, not clear to me, what percentage of users would
fall into this category. My guess is in the single digits, really.

 Please add to the above list, if I missed something or you have not
chimed in, yet.

  Here is a short discussion of these points from my current point of view.
   1) It's a dangerous world out there, yes. One can never be too secure
when stepping out into the Internet. However, would you trust someone
like Wikimedia to send you non-evil applets, in case there is a
reasonable and enforced way how Java code becomes an applet served by
these servers? One needs to discuss whether such way can be practical,
sure. But if it exists, do you really insist that *still* it may not be
allowed?
  2) So, if a user wants to work on a lab (= interactive lesson) in
Wikiversity, do you really expect *no* additional software (plugin)
should be needed? That sounds like quite a limitation, does it not? If
this is true and we want to avoid those limits, then we should choose
the most widely available tool, that can do the job, fits the necessary
license requirements, and does not create an unreasonable burden to make
it work. Why would an applet not be one of the top choices?

  I think the only serious problem to address is the trust/audit issues
with applets. We need an open and trustworthy process for how applets
are made and delivered. That does not sound impossible to me...

  Andreas =:-)


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[WikiEN-l] editorial judgment and process (was Re: Defamation
 policy hypothetical)

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Who in this case are you asking to do the "determining genuine consensus"?
>>
>> Why should I accept their resoning over that of someone else? You see
>> the problem.
>
> I see the problem in *theory* but not in *practice*. In practice there
> are very few disputes over consensus. The people who close these
> discussions tend to be clueful and have been around a while. They're
> not just random people - they deserve some respect.
>
> When your friend says "hey I asked around and everyone wants to go
> bowling", do you say "what do you mean, 'everyone'? Did you get at
> least 75%?" No, you accept that they're not out to screw you over, and
> a good result will be achieved...
>

... except that sometimes, you need to put your foot down and say "There
is no way that we're going bowling; you guys /always/ suggest we go
bowling, and it's a dumb idea, because we always end up complaining how
boring and stupid it is. We're going ice skating" and everyone realises
"Oh yeah, you're right, how stupid of us" and you end up going ice
skating, which is a far better idea than going bowling.

I forget who said it (probably David Gerard), but it's incredibly true:
Wikipedia doesn't scale. "Consensus" works when you're confident that
everyone who's involved Has A Clue. When you've got a thousand wolves in
sheep's clothing, and you can't tell who is which (because there are so
bloody many of them! ever tried counting sheep?), that's when
"consensus" falls flat on its face.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Erik van den Muijzenberg

subject: [Foundation-l] Using someone's real name instead of his wikiname

body:
On 21-aug-2006, at 15:11, Walter van Kalken wrote:

> Nope, see the village pump, where I also requested it earlier on
> numerous occasions I have editted my real name out of commentary
> made by
> you.

So from 'constantly' we are back to 'numerous occasions', and my
guess is that the 'numerous'-number will be somewhere in the range
between 5 and zero. :-)

>> Waerth is bullying and insulting Dutch users for some years now,
>>
> Could you please come with proof of this?

Sometime ago I've compiled a list of Waerths unacceptable behaviour -
like yelling FUCK YOU or DROP DEAD etc. - during Febr 3 - March 21 on
the Dutch Wikipedia. See: http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Gebruiker:Muijz/Dossier-Waerth (In Dutch.)
After March 21 I stopped, because it caused me to much stress, but
his unacceptable behaviour went on and on and on.

>> At first I considered Waerth as a
>> friend though. In real life I even gave Walter van Kalken a tour in
>> Amsterdam when he was visiting Holland a few years ago and I got the
>> impression we both liked that very much.
>>
> I did yes, I never denied that. Why do you repeat this everytime we
> have
> a discussion? I never said I didn't like that tour.

I mentioned it to indicate that once we were friends. At that time
Waerth didn't complain about me editing Thailand-articles that were
once started by him.
Waerth started complaining after I had defended a Dutch user who was
attacked by Waerth. (Well, in fact, it is even more complicated, for
some days ago Waerth gave me a compliment for the edit of one of
'his' articles, but after that he started complaining and bluntly
reverting my edits again.)

>> Waerth even went
>> as far as to disclose on the Dutch wikipedia private information
>> about me some months ago.
>>
> You mean me congratulating you with your birthday

I meant Waerth disclosing private information - which led to a ban
for him.

> As like other users who have either withdrawn from nl.wikipedia
> completely (GerardM) due to problems with you as with Ellywa who left
> for a half year.

Not to forget user Waerth who yelled for the 26th time in succession
that he would leave Wikipedia forever.

> other people in Amsterdam including a Dutch writer who all came
> complaining on nl.wikipedia.

True, the Thai villages that Waerth writes articles about never
complain about him. :-)
The Dutch writer I don't recall. A politician complained because I
truthfully wrote how he made a real mess of the Dutch EFF and he
wanted that part to be removed. And an entrepreneur complained,
though at first he had given me a compliment and in fact jokingly had
called me his official biographer. ;-)

> Nobody really interfered because everyone on nl.wikipedia is
> bullied so much by you that no-one dares complaining.

On the contrary. Waerth himself is complaining a lot for instance.
And a lot of users simply agree with me and thus have no reason to
complain at all.
Plus I never yell 'drop dead', or 'fuck you' or whatever.

> I am also fed up with your constant stalking of me around the wiki I

I don't stalk. I don't even check who started a certain article; but
apparently Waerth does.

He has accused me on several occasions of editing 'his' articles just
to annoy him. Well, I don't. At the Dutch Wikipedia village pump I
have explained that I came across an article about a Thai airport
because it was mentioned at the village pump. After that I edited
some connected articles as well. It's the way I work, and nobody ever
complains about it, except Waerth. The reason being, I am afraid,
that he still doesn't understand one does NOT own the articles one
wrote.

> have been complaining about it for years. And it is a habit you
> have as
> someone else complained about it on a talkpage on the Dutch wiki.

Yes, the same politician again. He is flaming me for ten years now.
Earlier on he'd even gone to the police.
The Amsterdam police and I had a good laugh about it and the
politician finally withdrew his complaint.

> You never Mentioned Walter van Kalken, you said mr. van Kalken

Correct.

(If you had asked me to change it I would have complied.)

> could have been anyone of over a hundred male subjects in the world.
> again you have a quarrel with me. Waerth. You even asked me to
> change my
> username

Waerth contacted me under a sockpuppet name, and I asked him to keep
using the name so that we could split the problem from the name. At
that time I was heavily attacked by Waerth, and even reading his name
caused a lot of stress. (Apparently Waerth really doesn't understand
the effect his verbal abuse has on other users.)

> IIt doesn't matter it is Waerth who is discussing with you on the
> wiki,
> so you have to refer to that name.

  I wasn't discussing anything with Waerth. I was just replying to
user 'technische fred' when I mentioned Van Kalken/Waerth.

> But no problem Muijz as I have mentioned earlier I have already
> registered my own websites and after I have found someone to help me
> with the mediawiki installation I am gone. I have no time for people
> like you in my life.

Waerth as already told Dutch Wikipedia several times that he was not
going to contribute anything substantial as long as he couldn't have
things his way.
And on the other hand he has caused a lot of stress and problems for
a long time now. Waerth even made it to the major Dutch newspapers
when he violated our ban-policy and lifted the ban of banned users
and as a result had to step down as admin.

So maybe this solution is the best for both Wikipedia and him.
Finding help with the installing of mediawiki won't be a problem
here, I think.

Erik van den Muijzenberg aka Muijz


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> it's not as if *all* process is bad. It
> often really does serve a purpose. Maybe people need to think about
> the ramifications of not following any given process. If the
> ramifications are not bad, then the process could be scrapped, or
> downgraded to "howto" or something.

This is absolutely key.  Policy is normally right.  It has to be.
Otherwise it is bad policy.  If a policy *normally* gives the wrong
result, it is bad policy.  If it *sometimes* gives the bad result, it
is fallible policy.  And fallible, dear friends, is the best we're
going to get.

We must be very careful to avoid process/policy is evil.

--
Sam, who would be a policy wonk if all policy was perfect


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Would this or something like it make a decent press release?
>
> Please no. Plastering Wikipedia with more rules isn't going to help
> much. Instead trying to persuade whoever the top PR gurus are that
> having PR companies is a bad idea has a slightly greater chance of
> working.

This isn't more rules.  It's the current rules.

--
Sam


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/21/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> This isn't more rules.  It's the current rules.
>
> --
> Sam

Perhaps but that doesn't alter the basic point that outsiders are
unlikely to read them and they are likely to burry other important
stuff needed by insiders. We already have a serious case of when it
comes to guidelines. People respond by trying to add bells and wistles
to things they think are important but that just results in other
people doing the same.

--
geni


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 21/08/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I forget who said it (probably David Gerard), but it's incredibly true:
>> Wikipedia doesn't scale.
>
>
> Wasn't me, that I recall ...
>

Oh well :)

>
>> "Consensus" works when you're confident that
>> everyone who's involved Has A Clue. When you've got a thousand wolves in
>> sheep's clothing, and you can't tell who is which (because there are so
>> bloody many of them! ever tried counting sheep?), that's when
>> "consensus" falls flat on its face.
>
>
> It fails when you can no longer assume everyone isn't stupid.
>

That's kinda what I meant by using the term "sheep"; the "wolves" are
the malicious nutters thrown into the mix... :-/

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Java applets for Wikiversity

body:
"Rob Church" wrote:
> It was an example of one such use case. Sidestepping the bigger issue
> with a trivial implementation detail like this isn't helpful.
>
> Rob Church

Not so trivial. People underestimate JS power. Many of this applets could be
probably done in javascript. I have seen plenty of webs using java or flash
for a damned background-changing button link! Why should i use such de-facto
standard?? Why should i have it installed? I use a WEB browser, expecting
html. ''Happily'' some people are so kind of including the 'skip intro' link
_into_ the object (making it unusable if you see no object).
Now, i have no problem on using Java for issues where 'a program' is needed,
like webchats or maths simulations. This proposed use seems acceptable. What
i was saying is that quite of them could be done with javascript. We could
also use a mixed system. Js is also always easier to read as it has no
binary. Syntax should probably be [[image: ]] including the applet, with the
extension blocked on upload (some dangerus_types allowed to admins?).

At last, i don't really know if i'm being coherent, i probably 'jumped' too
much with the object-including issue, but .. badly webs are so frequent...
:-(    I'm interested anyway on seeing the proposed applets. They won't
probably be a lot, i guess... (unless we have a lot of hidden java
wikipedists).


from_name: Simetrical

subject:
[Wikitech-l] How bad is a category with 21,
	008 pages for the servers?

body:
On 8/21/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe if there were a "go to a random article in need of cleanup"
> feature then more people would do just that...

There is one.  You navigate to the category and pick the first one off
the list.  As it happens, the randomization algorithm has a strong
bias toward page names starting with Aaaaaaaaaa, but that's not
relevant to addressing the quality of the encyclopedia, is it?  I
doubt anyone's going to notice or care that our articles beginning
with A are higher-quality than those starting with M . . .


body:
Trust issues wouldn't be that tricky, I don't think, at least from our
point of view.  Admins could already do some fairly nasty stuff
privacy-wise via Javascript, right?  Trackers and so on.  Hell, they
could probably take over the computers of 10% of our viewers, who are
doubtless using some atrociously vulnerable version of IE from about
three years ago.  Anyone trustworthy enough to send the client
arbitrary Javascript is probably trustworthy enough to send the client
arbitrary Java.

On 8/21/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> Discuss, don't bitch about "zomg use JavaScript" instead; that's as
> bad as all the half-assed shouting about rewriting MediaWiki in
> brainfuck.

Hey, Javascript is Turing-complete and has full access to the
browser's I/O.  What *can't* you do with it?  :P


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/21/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/21/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> > I think we need to be very clear in a lot of different places that PR
> > firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very very
> > strongly.  The appearance of impropriety is so great that we should make
> > it very very strongly clear to these firms that we do not approve of
> > what they would like to do.
>
> I'm CCing Sheldon Rampton of PR Watch on this. Sheldon is a leading
> expert on the PR industry and also hosts a wiki, sourcewatch.org, that
> deals specifically with these organizations. Given his many years of
> experience, I think he can give us some good advice on which
> approaches will work and which ones won't.
>
> My take on it is that if we push PR industries to far to the outside,
> they will just do their work clandestinely. This will damage
> Wikipedia's reputation far more if it becomes known, especially when
> an article that has 200+ revisions was started and carefully groomed
> by a paid propagandist.
>
> I don't see a compelling reasons why we need to force PR people to
> start articles _outside_ Wikipedia and go through some "trusted
> Wikipedian". In fact, it seems to me that doing so is more likely to
> lead to untraceable transactions. We must not just care about
> appearances, we must also care about the facts. Having a clean track
> record is better than some muddy variant of Chinese whispers.
>
> I think a separate article creation process as described under WP:COI
> might work best:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflicts_of_interest
>
> The user space has historically allowed POV material. It would give us
> a good record of all PR groups operating within Wikipedia. Surely it
> is in our interest to have such a record?
>

Yes, that does sound like a decent idea. Instead of having, say, Gregory
post up an article on his web site then asking a trusted Wikipedian post it,
we could have Gregory working in his own userspace, for everyone to see, in
a place like [[User:MyWikiBiz/Norman Technologies]], then if he thinks it's
of sufficient quality, he can send a message to someone (or a bunch of
someones, maybe even a formal peer review) and have them edit it to
appropriate Wikipedia standards. I think that is more in line with how we
already handle articles that have been userfied.


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject:
[WikiEN-l] editorial judgment and process (was Re: Defamation
	policy hypothetical)

body:
On 21 Aug 2006 at 10:10, "Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> (Yes, I top posted. I didn't have any specific remarks to make wrt any
> particular section of the post).

Then did you have any reason to quote back the whole frackin' thing?

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


body:
On 21 Aug 2006 at 22:39, "Alphax (Wikipedia email)"
<alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > When your friend says "hey I asked around and everyone wants to go
> > bowling", do you say "what do you mean, 'everyone'? Did you get at
> > least 75%?" No, you accept that they're not out to screw you over, and
> > a good result will be achieved...
>
> ... except that sometimes, you need to put your foot down and say "There
> is no way that we're going bowling; you guys /always/ suggest we go
> bowling, and it's a dumb idea, because we always end up complaining how
> boring and stupid it is. We're going ice skating" and everyone realises
> "Oh yeah, you're right, how stupid of us" and you end up going ice
> skating, which is a far better idea than going bowling.

Relevantly, you should see the [[Abilene paradox]].
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox

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


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-22

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Blocking anon page creation was an experiment,
	wasn't it?

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> My support for the whole endeavour, for one.
> [snip]
>
> I hope you understand that getting the permission of each and every
> user before making a change is a solution which doesn't scale.

Who said anything about asking anyone's permission? I would have
supported the experiment if its design had simply been made clear from
the outset (unless it had been a stupid design, of course, in which case
I would have spontaneously voiced objections and suggestions to improve
it. No need to actually _ask_ me about it).

> For your reference, there have been people watching this for clearly
> negative impacts all along. Had there been substantial evidence that
> it was doing a significant amount of harm, it would have been aborted.

Back on 6/20/2006 there was this exchange on the mailing list in the
thread ""the experiment" - did it
work?":<http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-June/049320.html>

>Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> > Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>>> >> It worked, though.
>> >
>> > It is not clear to me that it did.  I would love for us to have some
>> > serious analysis of that.

Apparently even Jimbo was unaware that there was any analysis going on,
and he's the one who initiated the experiment in the first place. How is
anyone else supposed to know what's going on?

> Our retention of deleted metadata is just as robust as anything else...

No it isn't. from
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review>: "The archive
of deleted page revisions may be periodically cleared. Pages deleted
prior to the database crash on 8 June 2004 are not present in the
current archive because the archive tables were not backed up. This
means pages cannot be restored by a sysop. If there is great desire for
them it may be possible to retrieve them from the old database files.
Prior to this, the archive was cleared out on 3 December 2003."

Deleted versions can't be relied on, who knows when the deletion
database will be cleared again?

All I ask is a little transparency. There's no reason for any of this to
be kept secret.

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from_name: Luiz Augusto

subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org

body:
Are really in plans to create a beta.wikiversity.org for beta testing in
non-English and non-German languages? Up today
http://beta.wikiversity.org/returns a error message.

Tiny suggestion: create the beta-testing wiki in wikiversity.org, like
Wikisource and http://wikisource.org


subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org


from_name: Sheldon Rampton

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
Thanks, Erik, for giving me a heads-up that this discussion is
happening.

Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

>> I think we need to be very clear in a lot of different places that PR
>> firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very very
>> strongly.  The appearance of impropriety is so great that we
>> should make
>> it very very strongly clear to these firms that we do not approve of
>> what they would like to do.

And Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> replied:

> My take on it is that if we push PR industries to far to the outside,
> they will just do their work clandestinely. This will damage
> Wikipedia's reputation far more if it becomes known, especially when
> an article that has 200+ revisions was started and carefully groomed
> by a paid propagandist.

I'm not sure how this discussion originated, but I think Erik has a
point. It sounds like the proposed restriction on PR firms is a
special case of Wikipedia's general rule against editing articles
about oneself or one's own organization, in which PR firms are seen
as agents editing on behalf of their clients. The issue of "editing
articles about yourself" has always been tricky, in part because it
exposes a paradox in Wikipedia's editorial policy:

(1) Editing articles about oneself is strongly discouraged, if not
outright prohibited; yet

(2) Anonymous editing is allowed, which makes it difficult if not
impossible to enforce the policy against self-editing. (In fact, the
policy against self-editing creates an INCENTIVE to edit anonymously
as a means of evading the restriction.)

I realize that Wikipedia's existing policies have a lot of history
and inertia behind them, but I have long felt that the policy against
self-editing is problematic. I think it should be revised to the
following:

Editing an article about yourself or your client is permitted, under
certain conditions:
-- CREATING articles about yourself or your client is not allowed,
only editing of existing articles.
-- Self-editing is allowed if limited to adding or correcting
noncontroversial facts. For example, if the article about me gives an
incorrect date of birth, I should be allowed to correct it.
-- People should not self-edit when dealing with controversial or
disputed facts or interpretations. Any such disputes should be
addressed on the talk page and left to others to resolve, and can be
submitted to arbitration if they are not satisfactorily resolved.
-- People who wish to edit an article about themselves or their
client are strongly encouraged to do so transparently, by disclosing
that they are editing an article about themselves on the article's
talk page.

The problem with the current policy is that is is gradually expanding
into an umbrella that excludes whole classes of people from
participating in Wikipedia. Members of the U.S. Congress and their
staffs were banned (although they could easily circumvent the ban by
simply editing from their homes rather than their offices). Now we're
talking about restricting PR firms. It's easy to come up with other
classes of people who could also be restricted from editing on
similar grounds. What about lobbyists? Employees of think tanks?
Trade associations? Labor unions? Should Christian missionaries and
clergy be told not to edit articles about Christianity?

A restriction on editing "articles about yourself or your client" is
also a poor fit with the problem that the current policy is
attempting to solve, because some PR firms do work that is not about
their client but rather aimed at attacking their client's
COMPETITORS. One example that we wrote about recently involved a PR
firm which circulated a claim that Apple's video iPods were dangerous
to children because they could be used to download and view
pornography. The client in this case was Sony, which makes a rival
MP3 player. But how would you enforce a policy that says PR firms
working for Sony can't edit Wikipedia articles about Apple products?

Another recent example: the DCI Group, a PR firm whose clients
include Exxon, recently got caught anonymously circulating a video on
YouTube that mocked Al Gore's activism on global warming. Al Gore was
not their client, and the video didn't mention Exxon at all. But does
it make sense to have a policy that says employees of PR firms can't
edit articles about politicians?

Preventing this sort of thing from happening on Wikipedia would
require a policy that forbids people who work for PR firms not only
from editing articles about their clients, but also from editing
articles about any topics of potential interest to their clients. A
policy of this nature would be so vague that it would be a nightmare
to enforce -- especially since many PR firms do not disclose their
client lists.

On the other hand, a policy that requires PR firms to be transparent
about disclosing whenever they edit an article related to a client or
a client's interests, coupled with the restrictions that I outlined
above, would be reasonably enforceable. PR firms would be discouraged
from anonymous or POV editing by the strong possibility that they
would be identified and embarrassed for doing so.

--Sheldon Rampton


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
On August 17, Anthony wrote:

> I didn't originally respond to the comment by Lars because I
> think it is so far off the mark.  Jimmy Wales is not Bill Gates,
> Andrew Carnegie, or Alfred Nobel.  His company, Bomis, provided
> the start-up costs for Wikipedia, perhaps on the order of a
> million dollars, but Jimbo didn't leave Wikimedia with the money
> to sustain itself for any significant period of time.  It's the
> broad base of donors from all over the world that keep Wikimedia
> running financially,

I agree, and every analogy has its limits.  Still I think there is
an important resemblance if you care to look beyond the money.
The ideas that built the fortunes of Nobel, Carnegie, and Gates
are surprisingly simple.  Let's mix these chemicals and see if we
can make a safer explosive, let's see if we can produce steel in
the U.S. rather than importing it, let's see if we can market
microcomputer software in a box as if it were a product.  The
results were fortunes in both senses of the word: luck and money.
Jimbo's fortune (luck) is that he (and Larry Sanger) stumbled upon
the wiki concept when they were trying to build a free
encyclopedia.  Just like those other guys, this new fortune needs
a home so it can live on, and that home is the foundation.

I guess the money needed to run the Wikimedia Foundation is
similar to the money needed to pay the Nobel Foundation committees
for nominating the winners.  This is a lot less than the prize
money, which in turn is only a fraction of the annual interest
from the amount they have in the bank.  Wikipedia has no need (so
far) for that really big money.  And that's our real fortune!

> Wikimedia doesn't fit the stereotypical foundation nor the
> stereotypical membership association.  I'd like to see it move
> closer to a membership association.  I'm really not sure whether
> or not there's any chance the board is going to give up their
> seemingly absolute power and allow that to happen.

And as I tried say, I'm beginning to think that this would best be
done by organizing the community separate from the foundation.
Think of it as a national chapter that is global rather than
national.  Or maybe a union of all local chapters.  The German
chapter now has 250 members, the Italian 55, the Polish 44 [1].
Let's have one in every country or state.  Let them all form a
union.  Let that union have talks with the Wikimedia Foundation.
That should bring some bargaining power.  But sitting around
waiting for the foundation to organize individual community
members is leading nowhere.

No, I don't want to advocate mutany against the foundation.  I
think local chapters are a good thing, and more of them is better.
The degree to which they are able to speak for their members
(against the foundation?) remains to be seen.  Of course you risk
that the Texas chapter will refuse to cooperate with the
Massachusetts chapter.

[1] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters

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


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:
> Preventing this sort of thing from happening on Wikipedia would
> require a policy that forbids people who work for PR firms not only
> from editing articles about their clients, but also from editing
> articles about any topics of potential interest to their clients. A
> policy of this nature would be so vague that it would be a nightmare
> to enforce -- especially since many PR firms do not disclose their
> client lists.

I'd just as soon block the PR firms entirely. Maybe once they get some
semblance of a clue, but for now virtually every edit I've seen come
from a PR firm has been crap.

Kelly


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] Upload large files

body:
Yep, I'm pretty sure 20mb is the magic limit set by Brion et al.

Hey, it used to be 8mb :P and I think it might still be, on en.wp.

Brianna

On 21/08/06, will at avery.homelinux.org <will at avery.homelinux.org> wrote:
> Quoting Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de>:
>
> > I've found some nice classical ogg files online (CC-BY-SA-2.0). However,
> > some are larger than 20 MB. Uploading those leads me back to a blank
> > upload page, without comment or error. 20MB seems to be a magical limt
> > for PHP.
> >
> > Is there a way to bypass that limit? I'd hate to have to cut perfectly
> > good ogg files.
> >
> > Magnus
> >
> >
> In PHP the php.ini file has a  configurable limit called upload_max_filesize.
>
> It is possible this is configured to 20 Mb on the server.
>
> Will
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/21/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> The user space has historically allowed POV material. It would give us
> a good record of all PR groups operating within Wikipedia. Surely it
> is in our interest to have such a record?

We have enough problems with people trying to use userspace to
advertise their products and services...  A wikipedia userspace page
is one of the easiest ways you can show up high on google search
results, and as a result userpages are frequently misused by
non-contributors to create a publicly visible pulpit for themselves.

To a random google using reader, it is often not at all obvious that
they have hit a userpage or, even, what a userpage is verses Wikipedia
proper.  When the userpage *looks* like a Wikipedia article, there is
a substantial risk of confusion. A non-wikipedian can not be expected
to know that an wikipedia article with User: at the front is something
substantially different from a wikipedia article without it.

I am very worried that such usage will risk causing additional harm to
our readers and further damage to our reputation.

I, for one, am strongly opposed to any proposal which would further
support the abuse of our resources as an advertising medium.
Userpages exist to help users interact with each other inorder to
further the project. They do not exist to provide a platform for
advertisers to address the world.

That we already have users who believe that all third party edits to
userpages are vandalism to be instantly reverted only increases the
risk of this already risky proposal.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd just as soon block the PR firms entirely. Maybe once they get some
> semblance of a clue, but for now virtually every edit I've seen come
> from a PR firm has been crap.

Of course... That takes us back to the "then they well just operate in
secret" argument.

I guess my counter is: We already have PR firms operating in secret.
If we can't deal with secret POV pushing PR firms who can afford to
learn the processes schmmoze our editors, then we've already lost.
If we can deal with them acting in secret, then there is no reason for
us to pretend that you are welcome.

I should bring up that when people come back in secret to edit after
we have forbidden them from editing they are committing a crime.   Are
we honestly discussing how best to accommodate criminals here?

If we are not able to instill in the hearts and minds of the public
that vandalizing Wikipedia is no more savory than spray painting the
side of your local library, or using Wikipedia to advertise is no more
acceptable than sticking ads in the libraries books  then we will
continue to find ourselves the victims of the worst aspects of human
nature.

I believe our experience has shown that people today do behave
respectfully with Wikipedia. Average folks are no more likely to
vandalize wikipedia then they are likely to key a strangers car.  But
that respect starts with us respecting ourselves... few people would
feel too bad about peeing on a heap of garbage.

So we must always take a public stand to protect Wikipedias integrity
even when we know our measures are ineffective against a real bad-guy.
 Saying NO to the misuse of Wikipedia as a tool to distribute
advertising and other biased information is an important part of that
stand.

Like many things our rules in this regard should represent a constant
effort to work towards a goal.  Just as all the Wikipedias contain
copyright violations although we forbid them, all will contain some
advertising.   Our current inability to achieve perfection is no
excuse to discontinue fighting the good fight.


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Sheldon Rampton <sheldon at prwatch.org> wrote:

> I realize that Wikipedia's existing policies have a lot of history
> and inertia behind them, but I have long felt that the policy against
> self-editing is problematic. I think it should be revised to the
> following:
>
> Editing an article about yourself or your client is permitted, under
> certain conditions:
> -- CREATING articles about yourself or your client is not allowed,
> only editing of existing articles.
> -- Self-editing is allowed if limited to adding or correcting
> noncontroversial facts. For example, if the article about me gives an
> incorrect date of birth, I should be allowed to correct it.
> -- People should not self-edit when dealing with controversial or
> disputed facts or interpretations. Any such disputes should be
> addressed on the talk page and left to others to resolve, and can be
> submitted to arbitration if they are not satisfactorily resolved.
> -- People who wish to edit an article about themselves or their
> client are strongly encouraged to do so transparently, by disclosing
> that they are editing an article about themselves on the article's
> talk page.

This is already largely the case. The autobiography guidelines don't
forbid all editing related to one's self or related persons/activities
and in fact explicitly mention the kind of uncontroversial editing you
bring up as acceptable.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Autobiography>

> The problem with the current policy is that is is gradually expanding
> into an umbrella that excludes whole classes of people from
> participating in Wikipedia. Members of the U.S. Congress and their
> staffs were banned (although they could easily circumvent the ban by
> simply editing from their homes rather than their offices). Now we're
> talking about restricting PR firms. It's easy to come up with other
> classes of people who could also be restricted from editing on
> similar grounds. What about lobbyists? Employees of think tanks?
> Trade associations? Labor unions? Should Christian missionaries and
> clergy be told not to edit articles about Christianity?

I'd say it depends. Any editor who can write neutrally -- so that no
one can tell which point of view they hold, so that they don't seem to
be pushing any particular POV, so that they are receptive to criticism
and feedback -- I don't have a problem with. When they become obvious
or disruptive in their attempts to impose their views, and through
that it becomes clear they have a conflict of interest, that is a
problem; perhaps we should be quicker to restrict those with obvious
potential conflicts of any sort from editing where their editing has
been problematic.

> A restriction on editing "articles about yourself or your client" is
> also a poor fit with the problem that the current policy is
> attempting to solve, because some PR firms do work that is not about
> their client but rather aimed at attacking their client's
> COMPETITORS. One example that we wrote about recently involved a PR
> firm which circulated a claim that Apple's video iPods were dangerous
> to children because they could be used to download and view
> pornography. The client in this case was Sony, which makes a rival
> MP3 player. But how would you enforce a policy that says PR firms
> working for Sony can't edit Wikipedia articles about Apple products?

The same way we enforce policy saying that PR firms working for Sony
can't edit articles about Sony; the same way we enforce the general
policy stating that if your sole purpose is to push a certain point of
view that you will be disinvited from the project. (Which is to say --
unevenly, spottily, sometimes through long and painful processes, on a
case-by-case basis, but once it is spotted it is usually looked upon
disfavorably and the editors involved restricted or banned.)

> Another recent example: the DCI Group, a PR firm whose clients
> include Exxon, recently got caught anonymously circulating a video on
> YouTube that mocked Al Gore's activism on global warming. Al Gore was
> not their client, and the video didn't mention Exxon at all. But does
> it make sense to have a policy that says employees of PR firms can't
> edit articles about politicians?
>
> Preventing this sort of thing from happening on Wikipedia would
> require a policy that forbids people who work for PR firms not only
> from editing articles about their clients, but also from editing
> articles about any topics of potential interest to their clients. A
> policy of this nature would be so vague that it would be a nightmare
> to enforce -- especially since many PR firms do not disclose their
> client lists.
>
> On the other hand, a policy that requires PR firms to be transparent
> about disclosing whenever they edit an article related to a client or
> a client's interests, coupled with the restrictions that I outlined
> above, would be reasonably enforceable. PR firms would be discouraged
> from anonymous or POV editing by the strong possibility that they
> would be identified and embarrassed for doing so.

I would prefer that PR firms do not edit in mainspace at all, but
confine themselves to talk pages, where indeed they should identify
themselves if they are at all ethical, or risk embarrassment. The goal
of a PR firm is pretty basically not compatible with NPOV; while the
basic information they have to spread may be valuable, any
contributions made by them would need careful checking to minimize the
effect of outside entities trying to compromise our neutrality. In
talk space at least they are simply suggestions to be acted on as time
permits rather than something being presented to the reader as
encyclopedic material. No, we cannot identify all of them, but we
don't want to give the impression that this is something we want or
will allow if only someone will jump through enough hoops to do it.

We are already an incredibly attractive target for those who have a
view to push; they know about us and how to game us and aren't going
to disclose their biases if they think they can get away with not
doing so, policy or not. (Indeed, I've seen enough who try to deny
their association when called on it.) I worry about what will be
allowed to slip in if we do not explicitly take a stand against it.
That we have to rely on the judgment of our editors to determine when
our policies are being violated instead of having a nice clean line to
draw makes it difficult, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.

-Kat

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I guess my counter is: We already have PR firms operating in secret.
> > If we can't deal with secret POV pushing PR firms who can afford to
> > learn the processes schmmoze our editors, then we've already lost.
>
> That is unhelpful rhetoric. What does it mean to "have lost"?
> Wikipedia is not going to disappear tomorrow just because we have some
> PR in some articles. We can deal with secretive activities when we
> detect them; that is not a logical argument for not creating a
> framework where these organizations can achieve some of their aims
> (where they are legitimate and in line with our own) while not doing
> harm.

As you admit, we can deal with secretive activities, so obviously we
haven't lost...

Our existing mechanisms are fully functional. We don't need special
ones for PR firms any more than we need special cases for Congressmen,
TV personalities, Gibraltarians, Friends of Gays (okay, perhaps
them...) , or anyone else.  My argument, which you've accused of being
unhelpful, is simply that should our mechanisms for dealing with
clandestine POV pushers fail, any issues with identified biased users
will be trivial by comparison.

We have an existing framework where anyone can 'achieve their aims',
so long as they are aligned with the aims of the project. We call it
editing, and we're very open about who we allow to participate.

If someone is acting in our interests, they are indistinguishable from
any other good editor. We don't need to create a special framework for
people who come to Wikipedia with little interest outside of their own
benefit. We have one for them already: banning.

I'm sorry that I didn't make this more clear in my prior post.

> You can easily compare this to the struggle against sock puppets and
> trolls. Sure, we can "deal with" sock puppets and trolls when we
> detect them. That, again, is not an argument for not building policies
> and community structures where harmful behavior is neutralized in ways
> that do not lead to such disruption.

I'm confused; our policy on socks and trolls is that we do not
accommodate them when they make their interest known.

Wikipedia is not for trolls, just as Wikipedia is not for PR firms.
We should rightly tell both to go away.

Some trolls return in secret, but we can deal with them.

I have only proposed that we treat PR firms exactly the same way.

--
Greg


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/21/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> I think we need to be very clear in a lot of different places that PR
> firms editing Wikipedia is something that we frown upon very very
> strongly.  The appearance of impropriety is so great that we should make
> it very very strongly clear to these firms that we do not approve of
> what they would like to do.

I'm CCing Sheldon Rampton of PR Watch on this. Sheldon is a leading
expert on the PR industry and also hosts a wiki, sourcewatch.org, that
deals specifically with these organizations. Given his many years of
experience, I think he can give us some good advice on which
approaches will work and which ones won't.

My take on it is that if we push PR industries to far to the outside,
they will just do their work clandestinely. This will damage
Wikipedia's reputation far more if it becomes known, especially when
an article that has 200+ revisions was started and carefully groomed
by a paid propagandist.

I don't see a compelling reasons why we need to force PR people to
start articles _outside_ Wikipedia and go through some "trusted
Wikipedian". In fact, it seems to me that doing so is more likely to
lead to untraceable transactions. We must not just care about
appearances, we must also care about the facts. Having a clean track
record is better than some muddy variant of Chinese whispers.

I think a separate article creation process as described under WP:COI
might work best:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Conflicts_of_interest

The user space has historically allowed POV material. It would give us
a good record of all PR groups operating within Wikipedia. Surely it
is in our interest to have such a record?
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: habj

subject: [Foundation-l] Board election notice on the English Wikipedia

body:
2006/8/21, Oleg Alexandrov <aoleg at math.ucla.edu>:
>
> I beg your pardon, "Established users don't read the crap on watchlists
> anymore"?  Perhaps a few editors ignore their watchlist, but unless you
> don't
> want to be kept updated with changes to articles, or unless you are
> technically
> proficient enough to use an alternative to watchlists for tracking changes
> (few
> do that), the watchlist is still the way things are done.

IMHO "the way things are done" can not be defined. Users come in many
flavours. Take me as an example: I very seldom check my watchlist any more.
I did, but... things change over time. Moreover, I do not find the
sitenotice disturbing. Actually, it can be there for a couple of days
without me noticing it.

For those who are disturbed by the sitenotice: maybe there is a way of
making it show less, by editing one's css?

/habj


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> We have enough problems with people trying to use userspace to
> advertise their products and services...  A wikipedia userspace page
> is one of the easiest ways you can show up high on google search
> results, and as a result userpages are frequently misused by
> non-contributors to create a publicly visible pulpit for themselves.

Simple answer: add a clear disclaimer template at the top of WP:COI
articles, and delete them if they are rejected by the community. This
is much easier if there's a standard process (there's that evil word
again) to follow.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> Of course... That takes us back to the "then they well just operate in
> secret" argument.
>
> I guess my counter is: We already have PR firms operating in secret.
> If we can't deal with secret POV pushing PR firms who can afford to
> learn the processes schmmoze our editors, then we've already lost.

That is unhelpful rhetoric. What does it mean to "have lost"?
Wikipedia is not going to disappear tomorrow just because we have some
PR in some articles. We can deal with secretive activities when we
detect them; that is not a logical argument for not creating a
framework where these organizations can achieve some of their aims
(where they are legitimate and in line with our own) while not doing
harm.

You can easily compare this to the struggle against sock puppets and
trolls. Sure, we can "deal with" sock puppets and trolls when we
detect them. That, again, is not an argument for not building policies
and community structures where harmful behavior is neutralized in ways
that do not lead to such disruption.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] Derivatives of the official logos

body:
Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
> 2006/8/22, Tisza Gerg? <tgergo at inf.elte.hu>:
>
> All logos and names of the Wikimedia projects are property of
> Wikimedia Foundation. Therefore, at the moment,  at least formally you
> have to ask Wikimedia Foundation to use them outside Wikimedia
> projects, as there is no any clear official policy who and how can
> use it. It also apply to derivatives of logos. In fact, the only
> formal body which may give you permission to use logos or names is
> Wikimedia Board, although there is:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_committees#Trademarks_committee
>
> which I don't know if it exists or not at the moment, but anyway it is
> going to be a kind of advisory body for logos and names issues for
> Wikimedia Board
>
>
You raise a serious and valid question which is unsettled right now.
Numerous portals have crafted icons which they use to identify their
pages; these are derivative works of the Foundation's logo.  The
Foundation has not decided whether or not to (a) acquire these marks
directly (b) prevent the use of these marks (c) require licensing of
these marks.  Some of them are quite clever, others are awful, to be candid.

This is one of many issues which will be considered by the Board as part
of its strategic planning retreat in October.  For now, we will have to
stay in limbo.

-Brad


from_name: Alex Powell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Out of interest, how big is Wikipedia now? I mean the actual InnoDB
file on the master server, and all the images in the media folder -
not the ones that are released to the public.

Kind regards,

Alex

On 8/22/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> > Or maybe we could just outsource our
> > large file handling to them. It'd certainly save on hard drive costs,
> > wouldn't it?
>
> I think that would make sense, yes. Archive.org could get API access
> to push new metadata records to Commons, so that the files can be
> referenced using standard syntax, but external URLs are used whenever
> they are directly pointed to.
>
> Put it in the non-existent Wikimedia roadmap. ;-)
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Claudi Meneghin

subject: [Wikitech-l] counting articles in subcategories

body:
Hi,
  could you please be so kind to tell me if there is a way to count all articles within a category and all of its subcategories? I.e. something like:
  There are X articles in this category and all subcategories.
  Many thanks,
  Claudi

---------------------------------
 D?couvrez un nouveau moyen de poser toutes vos questions quelque soit le sujet ! Yahoo! Questions/R?ponses pour partager vos connaissances, vos opinions et vos exp?riences. Cliquez ici.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:

> > That is unhelpful rhetoric. What does it mean to "have lost"?
> > Wikipedia is not going to disappear tomorrow just because we have some
> > PR in some articles. We can deal with secretive activities when we
> > detect them; that is not a logical argument for not creating a
> > framework where these organizations can achieve some of their aims
> > (where they are legitimate and in line with our own) while not doing
> > harm.

> As you admit, we can deal with secretive activities, so obviously we
> haven't lost...

I said "when we detect them." When we don't, they do us harm.
Logically, more secretive activity means more harm. Furthermore, there
is always the risk of false positives and unfair accusations.

> We have an existing framework where anyone can 'achieve their aims',
> so long as they are aligned with the aims of the project.

That would suggest that we should try to incorporate neutral, factual
information that they provide.

> I'm confused; our policy on socks and trolls is that we do not
> accommodate them when they make their interest known.

A sock puppet is typically a returning user who has been punished by
the system and is trying to evade enforcement by creating a new
identity. Our processes (ArbCom etc.) are geared towards reducing the
number of cases where we have to use hard enforcement tactics that are
difficult to implement in an open environment, and instead encourage
the use of soft enforcement. Users are often willing to accept such
soft enforcement because it preserves their existing identity
and reputation. When too much hard enforcement is used in an open
wiki, it often breeds an atmosphere of suspicion, as sock puppetry is
difficult to detect and the rules become more difficult to implement.

We do not accommodate "sock puppets", but we accommodate users whose
behavior is slightly harmful (rather than being completely harmful,
such as vandals) by trying to integrate them into the community and
providing a safe framework of interaction (as well as a clear record
of their past activities). This reduces the risk of turning them
_into_ sock puppets, and thus, the risk of more harmful activity
within our community.

Analogously, the WP:COI process suggests encouraging PR organizations
whose behavior we consider _slightly_ harmful to work "within the
system" in a fair and responsible manner, rather than turning them
towards secrecy and disruption in ways which are _more_ harmful
because they, like sock puppetry, breed an atmosphere of suspicion and
are generally harder to trace and detect.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Tim Starling schrieb:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>> I've found some nice classical ogg files online (CC-BY-SA-2.0). However,
>> some are larger than 20 MB. Uploading those leads me back to a blank
>> upload page, without comment or error. 20MB seems to be a magical limt
>> for PHP.
>>
>> Is there a way to bypass that limit? I'd hate to have to cut perfectly
>> good ogg files.
>>
>
> PHP stores the entire contents of the POST request in memory, as it is
> receiving it. That's why we can't allow arbitrarily large uploads, the
> server would run out of memory. In any case, HTTP does not support resuming
> for uploads, so it's quite fragile.
>
> Ideally, we should use a protocol which is designed for uploading large
> files efficiently and robustly. FTP is one such protocol, that's what
> archive.org use for their video and audio uploads.
Or we could use a "mixed" solution:
* I upload my file to a publically accessible file (ftp or http, no
matter), if it's not already online
* I call "Special:Upload?source=web"
* The upload <input> is replaced with a simple text input row for the URL
* Instead of using the PHP upload mechanism, MediaWiki just copies the
file through ftp/http

Advantages:
* Simple changes to MediaWiki
* No need to set up ftp accounts etc.

Disadvantages:
* User needs a place to store files temporarily online (shouldn't be too
hard these days)
* People might copy stuff from anywhere on the web (they can do that
already, but only for small files ;-))
We might want to restrict this in some creative way; at least we could
dynamically set the size limit (20 MB for newbies, 1GB for admins;-)

I'd volunteer to implement the above; sounds like just a few lines of
code (with a simple hard limit, say, 100MB for everyone).
>
> So we could set up something like that. Or maybe we could just outsource our
> large file handling to them. It'd certainly save on hard drive costs,
> wouldn't it?
>
Rely on others to store our valueable, multi-GB open content pr0n^W
music files? Never! :-)

Magnus

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from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org

body:
On 8/22/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Luiz Augusto wrote:
> > Are really in plans to create a beta.wikiversity.org for beta testing in
> > non-English and non-German languages?
>
> It already exists, but the DNS isn't set up for it yet. This will be corrected
> shortly.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>

Thanks Brion (and thanks Luiz for bringing this up)

So, will this apply also to http://wikiversity.org - will this point
to beta or to en?

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> When too much hard enforcement is used in an open
> wiki, it often breeds an atmosphere of suspicion, as sock puppetry is
> difficult to detect and the rules become more difficult to implement.

I should also add that, once a user has decided to "become a sock
puppet", they will then also often feel no longer any obligation to
follow _any_ rules or processes of the community, except in the
interest of avoiding detection and punishment. A user who, in
Gregory's words, is branded a "criminal" does not have much respect
for policy.

On the other hand, if we allow someone like MyWikiBiz to submit
articles through an open process, it will be hard for them to cry foul
when a fluff piece is turned into a factual article incorporating
criticism.

The WP:COI page is perhaps a bit poorly structured. It is really a
process of article submission from interested parties. This is
something, I think, we should encourage, and ideally facilitate
through our own web services, community and policies, rather than
externalizing it in ways which are difficult to track.

Wikipedia has a tradition of soft responses to slightly harmful
behavior, which I believe to be the only appropriate strategy in a
technically open environment. If we required a real world ID and
background check on everyone ever editing Wikipedia, that might be
different.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
On 8/22/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Or maybe we could just outsource our
> large file handling to them. It'd certainly save on hard drive costs,
> wouldn't it?

I think that would make sense, yes. Archive.org could get API access
to push new metadata records to Commons, so that the files can be
referenced using standard syntax, but external URLs are used whenever
they are directly pointed to.

Put it in the non-existent Wikimedia roadmap. ;-)
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 22/08/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

> All I ask is a little transparency. There's no reason for any of this to
> be kept secret.

Seconded.

- d.


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

body:
On 8/22/06, habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> For those who are disturbed by the sitenotice: maybe there is a way of
> making it show less, by editing one's css?
>

#siteNotice {display: none}

will make it disappear

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

body:
On 8/21/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/08/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > I'd ask if anyone has any statistics on how often those tags are
> > affixed and removed, but...
>
> Wikipedians prefer to highlight and tag problems than to take 30
> seconds to fix them, it seems. I can understand that larger cases crop
> up, and warrant attention from more than one person, but stupid little
> unsourced stubs don't need to be tagged - either find a source on the
> web, or find reference that a source might exist within five minutes,
> or "prod" it, or whatever we do now.

I don't think it's so simple. I almost always have a Wiktionary open while
I'm working at the reception desk and it's so easy to hit random and tag
imperfect articles with a couple of fix-it categories that doesn's take your
brain away from your job like getting in and editing the article would.

Later when you don't have your mind split in two it's easy to go back
through stuff you found earlier than look and fix at the same time.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

> Do we still have AfD, or was it renamed again?
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


body:
On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm talking about the little stub that looks 50/50, or the single
>
> I hate those. I really do. They take a lot of time and usually aren't
> worth it. We should probably prod them. Probably no cause for speedy,
> and at least by prodding them we're raising a red flag to potential
> hoaxees.
>
> > spelling error that causes them to roll out the {{cleanup}} tag.
>
> That's just dumb. I occasionally use {{cleanup}} on pages that just
> don't look remotely like a Wikipedia article, or for pages where it's
> obvious someone started a merge operation and never finished, leaving
> redundant hunks of text all over the place. Anything minor...well...I
> wonder if anyone actually goes around carrying out these cleanup
> operations.

Maybe if there were a "go to a random article in need of cleanup"
feature then more people would do just that...

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org

body:
Luiz Augusto wrote:
> Are really in plans to create a beta.wikiversity.org for beta testing in
> non-English and non-German languages?

It already exists, but the DNS isn't set up for it yet. This will be corrected
shortly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org

body:
Luiz Augusto wrote:
> Are really in plans to create a beta.wikiversity.org for beta testing in
> non-English and non-German languages?

It already exists, but the DNS isn't set up for it yet. This will be corrected
shortly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org

body:
Luiz Augusto wrote:
> Are really in plans to create a beta.wikiversity.org for beta testing in
> non-English and non-German languages?

It already exists, but the DNS isn't set up for it yet. This will be corrected
shortly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org

body:
Luiz Augusto wrote:
> Are really in plans to create a beta.wikiversity.org for beta testing in
> non-English and non-German languages?

It already exists, but the DNS isn't set up for it yet. This will be corrected
shortly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Verifiability

body:
On 8/22/06, ????????? ??????? <alexander.sigachov at gmail.com> wrote:
> So, even fundamental policies (translations of them) such as
> Verifiability and NPOV should be approved. Right?
>
> But that will be if the policy will not receive approval?

NPOV is non-negotiable. It is one of the "pillars" of Wikipedia. Most
policies are just the verbose version of what is already present
thanks to the pillars. If a policy is not approved, you can always
refer to them.

FYI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Five_pillars

Mathias


from_name: Sebastian Moleski

subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org

body:
Cormac:

It is my understanding that www.wikiversity.org would look like
www.wikipedia.org: a portal to different wikiversity versions. The template
is now at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Www.wikiversity.org_template

sebmol

On 8/22/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Thanks Brion (and thanks Luiz for bringing this up)
>
> So, will this apply also to http://wikiversity.org - will this point
> to beta or to en?
>
> Cormac
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] beta.wikiversity.org


subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> For what it's worth, if you use MediaWiki with a Postgres database,
> dates *are* stored as true timestamp fields. The only big problem I
> found when converting them over was with the archive table, which still
> needs to at least emulate a char(14) due to the URLs generated within
> the code.

Er... no?

If it looks like it does, that's a bug in Special:Undelete and should be fixed.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] WikiEd eLearning Guidebook

body:
As some of you know, I am providing hosting and support for
wikieducator.org, an  eLearning wiki hosted by the Commonwealth of
Learning (col.org). A particular project started there may be of
interest to you:

http://wikieducator.org/WikiEdProfessional_eLearning_Guidebook

The Commonwealth Education Media Center for Asia (CEMCA) and the
Commonwealth of Learning (COL) recently published the 2nd revised
edition of E-Learning. A guidebook of Principles, Procedures and
Practices. This guidebook has been developed by Som Naidu of the
University of Melbourne, Australia in close consultation with Sanjaya
Mishra of Indira Gandhi National Open Univeristy.

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has released a digital wiki version
of this guide under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
License.

Help is needed to convert the PDF into the wiki format, and to create
SCORM eLearning packages from it. Aside from that, the guide may be
good reading material for Wikiversity and Wikibooks users. The PDF
version is here:

http://www.cemca.org/e-learning_guidebook.pdf
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Date fields in DB

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
>> For what it's worth, if you use MediaWiki with a Postgres database,
>> dates *are* stored as true timestamp fields. The only big problem I
>> found when converting them over was with the archive table, which still
>> needs to at least emulate a char(14) due to the URLs generated within
>> the code.
>
> Er... no?
>
> If it looks like it does, that's a bug in Special:Undelete and should be fixed.

Specifically, it should be using wfTimestamp( TS_MW, $blah ) rather than just
spitting out timestamp field values into URLs directly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Verifiability

body:
????????? ??????? wrote:
> So, even fundamental policies (translations of them) such as
> Verifiability and NPOV should be approved. Right?

No. They don't have to be approved, it's a core principle that all
articles in Wikipedia should be verifiable and neutral.

But there is no obligation to translate the english policy pages - every
wikipedia is free to formulate their own verifiability policy as long as
it successfully accomplishes its purpose.

When I created policy pages for the German Wikipedia I usually looked
around for inspiration in other language Wikipedia, adopted what seemed
good and wrote it in my own words.

Regarding approval: If a wikipedia doesn't already approve NPOV and
verifiability, then there's something seriously wrong with its
community. The individual wording of your policy pages, be it translated
or written by yourself, should of course meet the approval of the
community as well.

Now, the important point: Events like on
http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Wikiversity:Policies&oldid=9980
are the completely wrong way to establish policies. Discuss policies
widely in the community, change policies upon good suggestions, be open
about it. But a vote should only be held if other ways were tried.

Good policies will be unspokenly approved by the community following
them and ascertaining that they are obeyed, bad policies will just get
ignored.

greetings,
elian


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Verifiability

body:
On 8/22/06, ????????? ??????? <alexander.sigachov at gmail.com> wrote:
> But that will be if the policy will not receive approval?

Please tell us.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 03:03:22PM +1000, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> On 8/22/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/21/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Maybe if there were a "go to a random article in need of cleanup"
> > > feature then more people would do just that...
> >
> > There is one.  You navigate to the category and pick the first one off
> > the list.  As it happens, the randomization algorithm has a strong
> > bias toward page names starting with Aaaaaaaaaa, but that's not
> > relevant to addressing the quality of the encyclopedia, is it?  I
> > doubt anyone's going to notice or care that our articles beginning
> > with A are higher-quality than those starting with M . . .
>
> In fact maybe they already do this and nobody actually does notice
> or care (-:

Actually, it *is* useful for the 'randomization algorithm' to be a bit
more... random than that; it spreads the work around, and reduces the "40
people all trying to fix [[Afghanistan]]" problem.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Verifiability

body:
On 8/22/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Now, the important point: Events like on
> http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Wikiversity:Policies&oldid=9980
> are the completely wrong way to establish policies. Discuss policies
> widely in the community, change policies upon good suggestions, be open
> about it. But a vote should only be held if other ways were tried.

Does that mean you will accept voting when other ways have been tried?
Elian, if you stick to that line, we may yet become friends. ;-)
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


body:
On Tue, Aug 22, 2006 at 03:40:00PM +0200, Platonides wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth:
> > Because the problem is *not* "shouldn't some things which are now
> > written in Java be written in JS, etc, instead?", it's "There are
> > indisputably useful things which can *only* be written in Java for the
> > deployment environment being discussed", and he didn't solve that worth
> > a damn, alas.
>
> I wasn't trying to prove it. It should be addressed by Andreas, who
> wants them. I pointed the example didn't need Java at all, but Rob
> opined it was a trivial implementation (Andreas probably disagreed).
> I agree it doesn't probe, but i'm not pushing for java :-) They do
> exist, can some of them be needed on a wmf project? Don't know. Show
> me one to decide ;-) Or maybe it could be done in both but it's coded
> 200% faster in java, who knows...

I understand that you were not trying to prove Java was necessary --
indeed, that you *were* trying to prove that Java is rarely necessary
(or something close to that).

My point was merely that in the current context (figuring out how to
*provide* Java support), the only meta-argument that's useful on the
topic of "necessity" is "it's provably never necessary".  Since you
can't make that argument with a straight face -- clearly, there will be
some things that Java can do that JS can't -- then arguments on that
axis aren't useful to "how can we do it"... which was the question at
hand.

Therefore, such arguments merely clutter the discussion space.

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

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Александр Сигачёв

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Verifiability

body:
Is Wikipedia:Verifiability an official policy only on the English
Wikipedia, or on Wikipedias in all languages?

Does it need to be approved by local community?

--
Alexander Sigachov
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ajvol


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
G'day Sam,

> On 8/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>it's not as if *all* process is bad. It
>>often really does serve a purpose. Maybe people need to think about
>>the ramifications of not following any given process. If the
>>ramifications are not bad, then the process could be scrapped, or
>>downgraded to "howto" or something.
>
> This is absolutely key.  Policy is normally right.  It has to be.
> Otherwise it is bad policy.  If a policy *normally* gives the wrong
> result, it is bad policy.  If it *sometimes* gives the bad result, it
> is fallible policy.  And fallible, dear friends, is the best we're
> going to get.

Policy and process are sticks; the policy one is for hitting people
with.  NPA, CIVIL, AGF, etc. all exist because we sometimes need to hit
someone over the head when they refuse to conform to "don't be a dick".
  NOR, CITE are there because "don't make shit up" isn't obvious enough
and sometimes need to be accompanied by a whack to the noggin as well.
Similar, but less obvious whacking has occurred in support of "we're an
encyclopaedia" and "we're neutral".  Funnily enough (or perhaps not),
nobody's felt the need to create policies which help shore up "ignore
all rules".  Perhaps there's hope yet?  The point, regardless, is this:
policy is a stick for hitting people because they're too damn stupid to
do the Right Thing.  If you're already doing (or striving to do) the
Right Thing, then policy doesn't have to apply to you.

Process, meanwhile, is a crutch.  It's there to help editors through
complicated actions.  The AfD process, for example, theoretically
attempts to help editors get bad articles deleted while making sure they
don't delete stuff that ought not to be deleted (you might liken it to a
crutch for Gulliver, and if he didn't have it he'd fall and collapse a
row of Lilliputian houses).  Just as with policy we have editors who
don't need to be hit over the head, there are times when Wikipedians
don't *need* a crutch.

We must always be careful not to confuse these two ... er ... metaphors
(ahem).  Policy is not a crutch, and leaning on it when you don't have
to can lead to absurdity.  Process is not a stick to hit people with,
and giving someone a fair and unnecessary wallop behind the ears is not
likely to improve their humour (unless they're a member of CVU, but
that's another post entirely).

> We must be very careful to avoid process/policy is evil.

I don't think it hurts, frankly.  Policy is only as strong as the
reasons behind it.  The point of not following policy for its own sake
is that you end up doing what a good policy would dictate even if that
policy didn't exist ... and you ignore bad policies, whether they exist
or not.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process is evil

body:
On 8/22/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>  Funnily enough (or perhaps not),
> nobody's felt the need to create policies which help shore up "ignore
> all rules".  Perhaps there's hope yet?

Oh they tried. WP:SNOW is the obvious example.

--
geni


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/22/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> Maybe if there were a "go to a random article in need of cleanup"
> feature then more people would do just that...

Yeah, this has occurred to me. There are various places that you can
see a list of "tasks to do", but just in terms of the motivation
factor, it might be interesting to have a single link that takes you
to a random article in need of something. More of a "lucky dip"
factor....Ideally, we could prioritise those with more incoming
links...

Steve


from_name: Александр Сигачёв

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia:Verifiability

body:
So, even fundamental policies (translations of them) such as
Verifiability and NPOV should be approved. Right?

But that will be if the policy will not receive approval?

--
Alexander Sigachov
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Ajvol


subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Magnus Manske schrieb:
> I'd volunteer to implement the above; sounds like just a few lines of
> code (with a simple hard limit, say, 100MB for everyone).
>
OK, done :-)

Set $wgAllowCopyUploads to true to turn it on.
$wgMaxUploadSize (default : 100MB) limits the file size.

Magnus

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload large files

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> Magnus Manske schrieb:
>> I'd volunteer to implement the above; sounds like just a few lines of
>> code (with a simple hard limit, say, 100MB for everyone).
>>
> OK, done :-)
>
> Set $wgAllowCopyUploads to true to turn it on.
> $wgMaxUploadSize (default : 100MB) limits the file size.

There are very serious security problems with this, as discussed on IRC. (Please
try to be in #mediawiki when making commits for feedback.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> I said "when we detect them." When we don't, they do us harm.
> Logically, more secretive activity means more harm. Furthermore, there
> is always the risk of false positives and unfair accusations.

Lets look at the possibilities:

-In a world we where tell PR Firms not to edit:
* PR firm follows the rules, doesn't edit.
**Pool of editing people decreased
**Harm of biased insertions avoided
or
* PR firm ignores the rules, secretly inserts biased material.
**We detect it: Harm is mitigated.
**We fail to detect it: harm remains.

-In a world where we invite PR firms to edit after jumping through hoops:
*PR firm follows the rules, edits (with boiler plates and notices)
**Editing community size increased by the addition of editors driven
by monetary interests in certain POVs.
**Rightfully distrustful users overscrutnize every word, things we
would normally accept are rejected
**Worst of the bias removed, their ability to use Wikipedia for PR
mostly suppressed.
**Still some bias and POV leak through, but now through a blessed channel
**Patient and well funded PR firms are able to wikilawyer to game the
system, because we have no blanket prohibition.
* PR firm ignores the rules, secretly inserts biased material.
**Feel justified because we've permitted them to edit, but not allowed
them to actually accomplish their goal.
**We detect it: Harm is mitigated.
**We fail to detect it: harm remains.

To me it seems like a simple question: Is it in the project's interest
to invite a group of editors who for the purpose of enabling their
outside agenda?  If our agendas coincide, they can just edit as
individuals... it's only in the case that they differ that we must
consider here.

To me it seems obvious that any successful system of inviting edits by
PR people would ultimately permit them to only make the same edits
they could make as normal editors (and likely a bit less due to
community paranoia).  The PR firms that wish to insert bias will
quickly learn to do it in secret, so we've gained nothing... and we
lose the high-ground position of a blanket rejection policy.

> > We have an existing framework where anyone can 'achieve their aims',
> > so long as they are aligned with the aims of the project.
>
> That would suggest that we should try to incorporate neutral, factual
> information that they provide.

We accept neutral and factual edits from any person.

[snip]
> We do not accommodate "sock puppets", but we accommodate users whose
> behavior is slightly harmful (rather than being completely harmful,
> such as vandals) by trying to integrate them into the community and
> providing a safe framework of interaction (as well as a clear record
> of their past activities). This reduces the risk of turning them
> _into_ sock puppets, and thus, the risk of more harmful activity
> within our community.

Do we have any data to back up the position that use of hard
enforcement typically turns a slightly harmful user into willy on
wheels?    As far as I'm aware, this position is just speculation.  I
won't argue that being soft may allow a slightly harmful person to go
on contributing while remaining slightly harmful, but I'm not aware of
any solid evidence that being hard makes them into something worse,
and I'm aware of fairly little evidence of slightly harmful folks
becoming unharmful.

> Analogously, the WP:COI process suggests encouraging PR organizations
> whose behavior we consider _slightly_ harmful to work "within the
> system" in a fair and responsible manner, rather than turning them
> towards secrecy and disruption in ways which are _more_ harmful
> because they, like sock puppetry, breed an atmosphere of suspicion and
> are generally harder to trace and detect.
[merge]
> I should also add that, once a user has decided to "become a sock
> puppet", they will then also often feel no longer any obligation to
> follow _any_ rules or processes of the community, except in the
> interest of avoiding detection and punishment. A user who, in
> Gregory's words, is branded a "criminal" does not have much respect
>for policy.

Should we really expect the same behavior from bored 13 year old boys
in London, and judgement proof nationalist trying to do their part in
their nations wars via Wikipedia, as highly funded US corporations
with substantial liability and a reputation to protect?

PR firms can't effectively completely change their identity twice a
week... doing so would substantially obstruct their ability to obtain
and maintain customer relationships.

>On the other hand, if we allow someone like MyWikiBiz to submit
>articles through an open process, it will be hard for them to cry foul
>when a fluff piece is turned into a factual article incorporating
>criticism.

It's hard for them to cry foul when their business is outright
prohibited as well.

>Wikipedia has a tradition of soft responses to slightly harmful
>behavior, which I believe to be the only appropriate strategy in a
>technically open environment.

No one has proposed a depature from soft responses to editors.

In fact, I'm arguing that our handling of editors works well enough
that we don't have to create a special "permission to promote"
compromise in order to reduce the amount of secret editing that will
happen.

Our wiki's were an interesting target for spammers long before they
were an interesting target for press agencies.  We did not respond to
this activity by creating permission to spam and "This page has been
edited by an identified spammer".   We've addressed it with diligent
editors, a few technical measures, cooperation with others (like
google), and by showing respect for our project by having little
tolerance.   ... and I believe (and can substantiate with data) that
our efforts with basic SEO and spammers have been remarkably
effective.

I have seen no evidence why PR firms would be less responsive to a
similar handling. If anything they should be more willing to accept
that no means no.


from_name: Tisza Gergő

body:
Hi,

what is the policy about the derivatives of the official Wikimedia
project logos? Their license template, [[commons:Template:Copyright by
Wikimedia]] does not make much sense: it refers to [[Wikimedia:Wikimedia
visual identity guidelines]], which is about the Foundation logo, not
the project logos. [[m:Uses of logo derivatives]], which is not finished
yet, says "We can, theoretically, allow derivative works of the logos
for informal uses, but it is not yet clear who should approve every
derivative version." I suppose this is about off-project uses -
requiring approval beyond community consensus for every derivative used
in a Wikimedia project would be a horrible bureaucracy creep.

Can I assume, when creating license templates to logo derivatives in the
Hungarian Wikipedia (which is my reason for asking this), that the final
policy will be something sensible, like permission to create
derivatives, provided they are only used in the Wikimedia projects, and
their copyright is transferred to the Foundation?

Tgr


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sanitizer.php

body:
What kind of html are you trying to insert?
Those html can't appear *into the article*.
<!DOCTYPE must appear on the top of the page, before the html. It will be
provided by the skin, not the user.
'http-equiv' is parameter of <meta tag, which only appears into <head> As
the article is part of the body, shouldn't appear neither.


body:
On 22/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> that order. However, we haven't had any more Seigenthalers, and

What this means is that we haven't had anyone with ready wide media
access hate their bio. We've had lots of people who hate their bio.
I'd say that if anything's changed in that regard, it's a hardarsed
attitude to living bios. I'd REALLY like some more solid cause and
effect stuff before you attribute "no more Seigenthalers" to blocking
anon page creation.

- d.


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 8/22/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Actually, it *is* useful for the 'randomization algorithm' to be a bit
> more... random than that; it spreads the work around, and reduces the "40
> people all trying to fix [[Afghanistan]]" problem.

So pick a random member off the first page instead.  Or from the
second sometimes.  Or the tenth.  You don't need a built-in system to
do that, just pick one.  There are probably only going to be like ten
people who actually do this on a regular basis, even on enwiki,
however much encouragement is provided, and it's not like it usually
takes that long to do cleanup, so conflicts are unlikely even if you
just pick the first article off the first page.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More about PR firms

body:
On 8/22/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> Simple answer: add a clear disclaimer template at the top of WP:COI
> articles, and delete them if they are rejected by the community. This
> is much easier if there's a standard process (there's that evil word
> again) to follow.

That's the first suggestion that sounds plausible.

"This article has been edited by the company in question or an agent
acting on its behalf. It may not conform to the neutral point of view
policy or may omit important facts."

It would not be unreasonable to ask a PR company simply to disclose
the fact that they've edited the article by stamping it {{pr}} or
something (calling it "conflict of interest" is probably going to put
them off).

To be honest though, I don't see what the big deal. We have zillions
of articles with all kinds of problems all over the place. Since when
is the greatest of our problems a sympathetic article which just
doesn't mention the fact that Foofoocom Industries got sued in 1983
for poisoning its employees?

I suspect also that any damage to our reputation will be confined to
articles about companies. People will quickly learn to take our
articles about companies with a grain of salt - hell, I already do.
They're already one of our weakest areas.

Steve


from_name: Tomasz Ganicz

body:
2006/8/22, Tisza Gerg? <tgergo at inf.elte.hu>:
> Hi,
>
> what is the policy about the derivatives of the official Wikimedia
> project logos? Their license template, [[commons:Template:Copyright by
> Wikimedia]] does not make much sense: it refers to [[Wikimedia:Wikimedia
> visual identity guidelines]], which is about the Foundation logo, not
> the project logos. [[m:Uses of logo derivatives]], which is not finished
> yet, says "We can, theoretically, allow derivative works of the logos
> for informal uses, but it is not yet clear who should approve every
> derivative version." I suppose this is about off-project uses -
> requiring approval beyond community consensus for every derivative used
> in a Wikimedia project would be a horrible bureaucracy creep.
>
> Can I assume, when creating license templates to logo derivatives in the
> Hungarian Wikipedia (which is my reason for asking this), that the final
> policy will be something sensible, like permission to create
> derivatives, provided they are only used in the Wikimedia projects, and
> their copyright is transferred to the Foundation?
>

All logos and names of the Wikimedia projects are property of
Wikimedia Foundation. Therefore, at the moment,  at least formally you
have to ask Wikimedia Foundation to use them outside Wikimedia
projects, as there is no any clear official policy who and how can
use it. It also apply to derivatives of logos. In fact, the only
formal body which may give you permission to use logos or names is
Wikimedia Board, although there is:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_committees#Trademarks_committee

which I don't know if it exists or not at the moment, but anyway it is
going to be a kind of advisory body for logos and names issues for
Wikimedia Board

--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html


body:
On 8/22/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there *anything* about WP:RFA which we can either be proud of or
> want to apply elsewhere on Wikipedia?
>
> Steve

Yes it suceeds in keeping almost all the moaning localised.

--
geni


body:
On 22/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/21/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Doesn't seem to happen on WP:RFA so nothinbg something we need concern
> > ourselves with in this case

> Is there *anything* about WP:RFA which we can either be proud of or
> want to apply elsewhere on Wikipedia?

[[Horrible Example]]

- d.