from_name: Samuel Klein

body:
Here is an old, related email:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/spcommittee-l/2006-April/000069.html

SJ

On 9/5/06, Florence Devouard <anthere at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> During the last spc meeting, there was a suggestion to hold a meeting to
> strategize how to best incorporate multimedia in wmf projects. This
> committee would include reps from sp comm and the tech comm, as well as
> any person interested working along those lines.
>
> More information may be found here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia. It is a rather old page, but
> seems to fit what some of the interested people had in mind. Poeple
> involved in the discussion where in particular NullC (Greg) and Xirzon
> (Eloquence).
>
> I suggest we use the talk page of that meta page to set up a meeting
> date, time and hopefully agenda.
>
> Cheers
>
> ant
> _______________________________________________
> Spcommittee-l mailing list
> Spcommittee-l at mail.wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/spcommittee-l
>


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] [Spcommittee-l] Multimedia: planning a meeting


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: SJ

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Essays on the future of the projects

body:
The election season is a great excuse for people to be writing essays
about the projects.  This isn't limited to those running in the
elections (though I wish more of the candidates would write actively
about their thoughts and ideas).

Aaron Swartz has started a series of such essays.  The latest one
suggests something I have long suspected, that the huge body of new
and anonymous contributors, who often make the first serious stab at
an article or provide a needed injection of expertise, are as
important to the 'pedias development (if not more so) than the core of
dedicated editors.

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads
http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia

Is anyone else writing long essays these days?  Where are they kept,
and how categorized?

++SJ


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia vs. Ebay on Alexa

body:
Only to some extent...  figuring out metadata about saved versions
with synchronized editing is more fun.  And it's easier to track who
authored which characters with that kind of richer interface.   SJ

On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> But doesn't that defeat the purpose, to some extent?
>
> On 9/5/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> > would still trigger an edit conflict if an "old style user" is editing the page at the same time
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
++SJ


list: wikien-l

from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in fact
	dangerous to Wikipedia

body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Which is precisely what I mean by using it as an example. I still get
> contacted by people upset that "Wikipedia called me a vanity writer,
> what can I do short of taking legal action?" and trying to explain
> that it's a jargon term ... one which the AFD regulars were kindly
> asked not to fucking use for this precise reason. Nuke from orbit,
> rebuild from scratch.
>
> Policy: We delete some stuff.
> Process: something Kafka would have found implausible.

Well, yes -- because, unlike policy (which, at least in theory, gets
some wide review from a variety of editors), process tends to drift
towards what the regular participants find most convenient.  The AFD
regulars qute naturally resist any change to AFD that might make it
less usable for the regulars; and, at the same time, the people who
*become* AFD regulars are, for the most part, those attracted to the
way the process functions.  It's a self-reinforcing system.

--
Kirill Lokshin


body:
On 9/5/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:

> Hehe... I started to think as a company's manager: may we give to our
> users some more services so we can make our growth better? ;)

Sure.  Better community-development tools (basic optional profiling),
better skin options (more than one functional skin with support),
better interface options (list of last-visited pages, top-of-watchlist
available as part of the sidebar), better editing options (click on a
paragraph for simple wysiwyg editing without a new page-load)....
"email this page/image to a friend" options for trusted users...
better dump options for those wanting to do their own thing with
subsets of WP content (say, running an xml parser on dumps and
providing the resultset)

--
++SJ


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category intersection

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> See http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5244 and the various
> things duped to it.  I'm pretty sure performance would be a major
> issue here; for instance, finding the first 200 pages in a category is
> limited to iterating over 200 members of the category, and likewise
> for all other operations currently supported by categories (as well as
> unions), but finding the first 200 pages in the intersection of two
> categories has no upper bound on the number of iterations required:
> you have to go through every page in each category in the event that
> they have fewer than 200 shared pages and neither is a subset of the
> other.
>
> Has anyone written code that can handle this efficiently?  Is such
> code even possible?

I (and I'm sure many others) have been following this topic on and off
for a long time.  It seems pretty clear that the majority of the
community (as represented by people who have voiced an opinion about
it) want this functionality (albeit with a few strong dissenters) but
the remaining issues are 1) how to implement it and 2) can it be
implemented efficiently.

After reading Brion and others' comments, it sounds to me like the
developer community seems to be allowing for the possibility that it
can be implemented efficiently.  I myself have written a version using
SQL on the existing schema, but this was rejected as too inefficient.
I think the next possible steps are for the development community to
come up with different acceptable implementations, and then toss them
back to the wikipedia community (the main "customer" for this
functionality).

For the purposes of evaluating possible solutions, I think one key
question recently brought up here has been under-discussed:  how often
will this be used?  If this will be used very frequently, then the
solution will have to be more streamlined and efficient than than if
it's going to get less usage.  There have been objections about using
various SQL methods (including mine) on the existing structure - but I
think these discussions must happen in the context of usage, and we
should determine if a SQL based solution is possible (specifically
MySQL - we really need a MySQL expert to comment on the performance
issues with the join/if exists/group by and count solutions, as we are
throwing around a lot of conjecture about its inner workings), or if
something else (like Brion's Lucene suggestion) will be necessary.

Regards,
Aerik


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
I am going to Alexa whenever Wikimedia servers have a problems :)

It seems that my prediction (I am sure that I am not the only one)
that Wikipedia will be inside of top 10 sites at the end of this year
-- will be correct :)

Also, if everything is going well (i.e., fundraising, servers etc.) I
think that at the end of 2007 Wikipedia will be at the fourth place
(after top three: Yahoo, Google, MSN) and at the end of 2008 Wikipedia
will reach the first place.

Hehe... I started to think as a company's manager: may we give to our
users some more services so we can make our growth better? ;)

On 9/5/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> > Ebay is at 11th place and Wikipedia is at 16th place, but, Wikipedia
> > has better daily reach per million from March/June 2006:
> >
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?compare_sites=ebay.com&range=max&size=large&y=r&url=wikipedia.org
> >
> > Interesting thing is that Wikipedia is backed to exponential growth on Alexa.
>
> Indeed. That whole Seigenthaler incident and then the Nature article really saturated several
> months worth of growth in a short time. Now we are trending up again. That's good. But that also
> means we may need a fundraiser before long.
>
> -- mav
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Aaron Swartz has started a series of such essays.  The latest one
> > suggests something I have long suspected, that the huge body of new
> > and anonymous contributors, who often make the first serious stab at
> > an article or provide a needed injection of expertise, are as
> > important to the 'pedias development (if not more so) than the core of
> > dedicated editors.
> > http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads
> > http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
>
>
> Greg Maxwell is sceptical of the numbers (since Aaron doesn't give
> methodology); since Greg is very good at running interesting numbers
> on the database, I've suggested to each that they contact the other.

It's been a long-standing debate without numbers; hopefully we can
throw data into the mix now.  I know Greg and Aaron were

>> Is anyone else writing long essays these days?  Where are they kept,
>> and how categorized?
>
> Probably and nowhere I can think of, but they should!

Indeed.  It's a shame that some of the good long essays in recent
memory are written off-wiki, in places where they can't be improved
over time (even if it is a public mailing list).  This is an
interesting twist on wikification:
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Who_Writes_Wikipedia%3F

I hope the text itself goes up there soon.  Likewise, for anyone who
has posted a great rant to mailing lists lately.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Essays
is surprisingly sparse.

SJ


from_name: Liz Kim

subject: [Wikitech-l] purge deletions

body:
Is there a way to completely delete wiki pages, images, ect by somehow
turning on a purge deletions option by date, selection, etc..?
Thank you


from_name: Gerrit Holl

body:
On 05/09/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> I am going to Alexa whenever Wikimedia servers have a problems :)
>
> It seems that my prediction (I am sure that I am not the only one)
> that Wikipedia will be inside of top 10 sites at the end of this year
> -- will be correct :)
>
> Also, if everything is going well (i.e., fundraising, servers etc.) I
> think that at the end of 2007 Wikipedia will be at the fourth place
> (after top three: Yahoo, Google, MSN) and at the end of 2008 Wikipedia
> will reach the first place.
>
> Hehe... I started to think as a company's manager: may we give to our
> users some more services so we can make our growth better? ;)

<infamous_prediction>
Wikipedia will never be in the top 5 most popular sites on the internet
</>

Gerrit.


list: commons-l

from_name: Daniel Arnold

subject: [Commons-l] Content reuse howto

body:
Am Sonntag, 03. September 2006 05:07 schrieb Alphax (Wikipedia email):
> Inundated with enquires about how to reuse our content, David Gerad has
> started
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia
>
> after a short discussion on foundation-l and has asked,
>
> > Could all concerned please dive upon it and fill in the gaps?

Please also see the existing:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:First_steps/Reuse
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Liceinsing
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Project_scope

In order to avoid that it duplicates existing structures.

This text

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reusing_content_outside_Wikimedia

text should be strictly centered around media files (will be long enough in
the end). The generic infos for all projects fit much better into Meta.

Arnomane


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Survey of Open Content Projects in Non-Western
	Countries

body:
Yes, an excellent survey.  It's good to see Alaa on the list of
rsearchers.  --SJ

On 9/4/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> FYI - lots of good links for projects and initiatives to partner with.
>
>
> Survey of Open Content Projects in Non-Western Countries
> -----------------------------------------------------------
> http://oc.openflows.org
>
> Vienna, 04.9.2006. Openflows.org releases today a survey of open content
> projects in five non-western regions: Arab countries, Sub-Saharan Africa,
> India, Brazil and South East and Eastern Europe. The aim of the study is
> to assess the potential of the open content production process for areas
> and fields which are under served by the commercial players. While we
> cannot claim completeness, we believe that the range of projects allows
> insight into the complex ways in which these projects interact with their
> particular contexts and the vast differences this creates.
>
> Main Findings
>
> Open content projects are extremely sensitive to local conditions. For
> their constituencies (producers and users of the project) the practical
> value of the material tends to be far more important than abstract layer of
> licensing. Hence, very few projects view themselves as 'open content', in
> contrast to 'open source' software projects, where the sense of community
> across projects is much stronger.
>
> Open content projects rely on at least a kernel of a civil society,
> comprised of dedicated individuals, NGOs, educational institutions and
> initiatives, and others who value open cooperation (i.e. where
> contributions are encouraged from people who are not formerly known). If
> that does not exist, be it that social tensions are too strong, or that
> economic situation is too harsh, open content projects cannot flourish.
>
> For the majority to larger projects, some form of institutional support
> for basic intrastructure is necessary, because of the long-term nature of
> the projects. In Brazil, for example, this is provided by public
> institutions (educational and governmental), in collaboration with NGOs and
> other independent actors. Thus a number large, structured open content
> projects are developing strongly, particularly in the field of music and
> education. Where such institutional support is missing, for example in
> India, such projects have a hard time reaching critical mass.
>
> The situation is different for smaller open content projects, such a
> blogging. These can run on globally available commercial infrastructures
> (Web2.0 companies) and are hence in all areas growing strongly. Their
> social and political impact, though, depends highly on local conditions.
> Political blogs in Egypt, for example, are subject to entirely different
> dynamics than those in India.
>
> Outlook
>
> Apart from well-known project based in highly-developed countries
> (Wikipedia, MIT's Open Course Ware, Web2.0 companies) the field of open
> content is still nascent. Without support, the uphill battle to reach
> critical mass (when the project becomes self-sustainable) will be very
> steep for most larger open content projects.
>
> The growth of a globally available infrastructure for collaboration,
> provided by Web2.0 companies, on the other hand, might help to unlock some
> of the creative potential currently held-back by the lack of stable,
> scalable platforms.
>
> As of mid 2006, the snapshot provided by this survey, it's too
> early to say where and in which form this will happen. And without a
> general strengthening of civil society in these regions, it might well
> remain stunted for a longer time than necessary.
>
> Principal researcher and contact:
> Felix Stalder
>
> Essential research partners:
> Branka Curcic, Novi Sad, Serbia and Montenegro; Alaa Abd El Fattah,
> Cairo, Egypt; Tori Holmes and Tati Wells, Rio de Janerio, Brasil; Kerryn
> McKay and Heather Ford, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Lawrence Liang,
> Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, India
>
> Support:
> The research was made possible by a generous grant from the Open Society
> Institute's Information Program (Very Franz)
> http://www.soros.org/initiatives/information
> login or register to post comments
>
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
++SJ


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia 20060817 XML dump support for
 MediaWiki 1.7.1

body:
Filip Maljkovic wrote:

>This is not the right list for this type of message. I am not a
>moderator, but I would like to kindly ask you to refrain from posting
>such things in the future, as this is not remotely a foundation issue.
>
>Thank you,
>Filip
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
Whether the Foundations XML dumps work with MediaWiki are a legitimate
foundation issue. I am a lawfully organized business enterprise who
supports the Foundation and its goals and provides MediaWiki apliances.
The foundation should know when MediaWiki has been intentionally broken
not to function with the standard XML dumps.

Jeff


subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia 20060817 XML dump support
 for	MediaWiki 1.7.1

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 05/09/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>I experienced problems importing the 20060817 enwiki dumps using
>>MediaWiki 1.7.1 with the machine translation project, so I put together
>>
>>
>
>
>You want to ask wikitech-l about this (Wikimedia-related technical discussions).
>
>
Hi david,

I wasn't asking a question, just letting folks know that the MACHINE
TRANSLATTION project
had fixed a version of MediaWiki with the XML dumps that wasnot broken.

David, thanks for the professional and courteous reply.

Jeff

>
>- d.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
The essay was slashdotted; if the numbers are to be challenged, now
would be a good time.
  http://slashdot.org/articles/06/09/05/1210241.shtml

On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I hope the text itself goes up there soon.  Likewise, for anyone who
> > has posted a great rant to mailing lists lately.
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Essays
> > is surprisingly sparse.
>
> There's a lot of them on en:. [[Wikipedia:Process is Important]] is a
> notable one.

Thanks. Yes, around 250; that's a good example.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_essays

I hope we can use the context of a serious discussion of WP's future
to draw these discussions together into more than just a series of
philosophical chats.

One useful thing about the elections is that it gets a few dozen
people to think about and articulate their thoughts and fears about
the projects, and encourages them to think three and ten years down
the line -- something we as a community don't do often enough.

++SJ


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Essays on the future of the projects

body:
David Gerard notes that on wikien there are many such essays; and I
believe there are also quite a number on de:wp.  Are there any efforts
to gathering/organizing these essays, similar to efforts to organize
policy?

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_essays
(250+ entries)

SJ

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
Date: Sep 5, 2006 9:27 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Essays on the future of the projects
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org

On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Aaron Swartz has started a series of such essays.  The latest one
> > suggests something I have long suspected, that the huge body of new
> > and anonymous contributors, who often make the first serious stab at
> > an article or provide a needed injection of expertise, are as
> > important to the 'pedias development (if not more so) than the core of
> > dedicated editors.
> > http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads
> > http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia
>
>
> Greg Maxwell is sceptical of the numbers (since Aaron doesn't give
> methodology); since Greg is very good at running interesting numbers
> on the database, I've suggested to each that they contact the other.

It's been a long-standing debate without numbers; hopefully we can
throw data into the mix now.  I know Greg and Aaron were

>> Is anyone else writing long essays these days?  Where are they kept,
>> and how categorized?
>
> Probably and nowhere I can think of, but they should!

Indeed.  It's a shame that some of the good long essays in recent
memory are written off-wiki, in places where they can't be improved
over time (even if it is a public mailing list).  This is an
interesting twist on wikification:
  http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Who_Writes_Wikipedia%3F

I hope the text itself goes up there soon.  Likewise, for anyone who
has posted a great rant to mailing lists lately.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Essays
is surprisingly sparse.

SJ

--
++SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Can a wikimedia-b list be setup

body:
Dear Foundation,

Can we setup a wkimedia-b list (that's b for "business related") that is
**NOT** moderated by community members but by Foundation employees
for business entities to use to post business ralated matters. To be
honest, while I understand the community spilling over and attempting
to control the content of foundation-l, there are legitimte business
intreactions with your group that can and do go on and a list for
that would be more condusive and less disruptive of business related
activities.

Jeff

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


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Foundation-l] Edits by project and country of origin

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>> What I find especially interesting is not the native Asutralian languages,
>> which have a handful of speakers only, but the fact that in India, over 99
>> percent of people prefer to edit in English than in their native languages. It
>> would be interesting to see the results once native languages are included in
>> the sample.
>>
> I agree.  The Indian situation is far more significant than the
> Australian one.  It is understandable that there would be very little
> participation from speakers of Australian Aboriginal languages because
> each has such a tiny speaker base.  It is less understandable that
> Indian languages with a million or more speakers have had so little
> development.
>
> When a person from India looking at Australian edits in other languages
> than English presumes that we are talking about other European languages
> this suggests that the influence of the Raj is still alive and well, and
> that the educated people of India have bought into the idea that their
> own native languages are somehow inferior.
>

I would suggest that it's due to the caste system; the educated rich see
the native languages as being used by the lower castes and don't want
anything to do with them?

--
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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body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>> What I find especially interesting is not the native Asutralian languages,
>> which have a handful of speakers only, but the fact that in India, over 99
>> percent of people prefer to edit in English than in their native languages. It
>> would be interesting to see the results once native languages are included in
>> the sample.
>>
> I agree.  The Indian situation is far more significant than the
> Australian one.  It is understandable that there would be very little
> participation from speakers of Australian Aboriginal languages because
> each has such a tiny speaker base.  It is less understandable that
> Indian languages with a million or more speakers have had so little
> development.
>
> When a person from India looking at Australian edits in other languages
> than English presumes that we are talking about other European languages
> this suggests that the influence of the Raj is still alive and well, and
> that the educated people of India have bought into the idea that their
> own native languages are somehow inferior.
>

I would suggest that it's due to the caste system; the educated rich see
the native languages as being used by the lower castes and don't want
anything to do with them?

--
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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body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>> What I find especially interesting is not the native Asutralian languages,
>> which have a handful of speakers only, but the fact that in India, over 99
>> percent of people prefer to edit in English than in their native languages. It
>> would be interesting to see the results once native languages are included in
>> the sample.
>>
> I agree.  The Indian situation is far more significant than the
> Australian one.  It is understandable that there would be very little
> participation from speakers of Australian Aboriginal languages because
> each has such a tiny speaker base.  It is less understandable that
> Indian languages with a million or more speakers have had so little
> development.
>
> When a person from India looking at Australian edits in other languages
> than English presumes that we are talking about other European languages
> this suggests that the influence of the Raj is still alive and well, and
> that the educated people of India have bought into the idea that their
> own native languages are somehow inferior.
>

I would suggest that it's due to the caste system; the educated rich see
the native languages as being used by the lower castes and don't want
anything to do with them?

--
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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body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>> What I find especially interesting is not the native Asutralian languages,
>> which have a handful of speakers only, but the fact that in India, over 99
>> percent of people prefer to edit in English than in their native languages. It
>> would be interesting to see the results once native languages are included in
>> the sample.
>>
> I agree.  The Indian situation is far more significant than the
> Australian one.  It is understandable that there would be very little
> participation from speakers of Australian Aboriginal languages because
> each has such a tiny speaker base.  It is less understandable that
> Indian languages with a million or more speakers have had so little
> development.
>
> When a person from India looking at Australian edits in other languages
> than English presumes that we are talking about other European languages
> this suggests that the influence of the Raj is still alive and well, and
> that the educated people of India have bought into the idea that their
> own native languages are somehow inferior.
>

I would suggest that it's due to the caste system; the educated rich see
the native languages as being used by the lower castes and don't want
anything to do with them?

--
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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from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> Your in famous prediction, eh? I predict that, by the end of the year,
> the number of edit conflicts will be growing exponentially.

There's a solution to edit conflicts: real-time collaborative editing.
http://synchroedit.com/
http://darcs.0x539.de/trac/obby/cgi-bin/trac.cgi

--
Peace & Love,
Erik


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in
 fact	dangerous to Wikipedia

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need
>>to be more newbie-friendly.
>>
>>This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes
>>and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
>>
>>Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard
>>Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own
>>software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give
>>it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be
>>waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to
>>decalcify Wikipedia policy?
>>
>>
>You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious
>amount of policy.
>If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have
>degenerated into flame wars with no way out. Newbies do face a steeper
>learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the
>project rather than the newbies we should care about. -
>
Spoken like a true religious zealot!  It's characteristic of straw man
arguments to take a situation where there is a clear policy need, and
extrapolate that to apply to all sorts of unrelated matters.

Saying that living person bios must be verifiable is a simple and
straightforward statement of policy.  How does one get from there to "a
serious amount of policy"?

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fighting over (R) and (tm) symbols

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 31/08/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The trademark (tm) should
>> have appeared without parenthesis and in superscript and all caps.
>
>
> Or as the HTML entity ™ .
>

... and similarly for ® .

--
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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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
>
>> Ebay is at 11th place and Wikipedia is at 16th place, but, Wikipedia
>> has better daily reach per million from March/June 2006:
>>
>>
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?compare_sites=ebay.com&range=max&size=large&y=r&url=wikipedia.org
>
>> Interesting thing is that Wikipedia is backed to exponential growth on Alexa.
>>
>
> Indeed. That whole Seigenthaler incident and then the Nature article really saturated several
> months worth of growth in a short time. Now we are trending up again. That's good. But that also
> means we may need a fundraiser before long.
>
> -- mav
Hoi,
Every year there has been growth at the beginning of the school year..
The summer is over for many kids..
Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> writely.com has good real time collaborative editing too.

Actually it's pretty bad - I tried it for Wikinews together with
Messedrocker. Too slow. SynchroEdit seemed more mature last time I
tried.

> However, the client side needs are simply too much for Wikipedia

You would never require it, of course. However, if two users are
editing the same page, and both have client side collaboration
capability, there's no need not to switch into real-time mode. Saving
the page would still trigger an edit conflict if an "old style user"
is editing the page at the same time.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Francis Tyers wrote:
>
>
>> In fact, this brings up an interesting point, having <book> and
>> <article> for specifics (they tend to be long), and then having
>> <ref> for miscellaneous stuff.
>>
>
> When anybody says we "have to" introduce completely new markup or
> we "have to" wait for Wikidata to be implemented, then I know it's
> just an excuse for doing nothing.
>
Hoi,
Based on what ? WiktionaryZ is developing nicely, it is based on
Wikidata. Versioning is expected to make it's first apearance (Erik
willing) this week. This hardly qualifies as nothing happening. As to
Wikiauthors, there has been some deep thinking about what it needs to do
by people who met IRL and the chances of something happening in this
space is better than 89%.
> Suppose you define a way to identify a pre-defined reference, .....
For me there is little reason to suppose anything... Wikidata rocks.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names

body:
Guettarda wrote:

>Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
>NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
>Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
>NPOV policy asks.
>
That's a disingenuous presentation of the problem.  Can you show a
single instance where your assertion that Jesus is Messiah/God is
required, and that is not a part of someone's argument against BC/AD?
The use of BC/AD merely requires that there may have been an historical
Jesus who was born at or near a time that is reasonably consistent with
the dating system.  The idiotic assertion that Jesus was God is irrelevant.

Ec


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Edits by project and country of origin

body:
On 9/5/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> maru dubshinki wrote:
>
> >On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>maru dubshinki wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>On 9/4/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>It depends on what you mean by a simple language. English is second
> >>>>only to Chinese in its simplicity.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>Oh, c'mon. That old prejudice? Is English really more complex than
> >>>Japanese, or Sumerian and Akkadian and Sanskrit? I greatly doubt it.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Huh? I think you misread what I said.
> >>
> >>
> >Apparently. Chinese is far from simple, so the only logical way I
> >could read it was as sarcasm and understatement. What did you mean?
> >
> By virtue of their historic development and grammar English and Chinese
> are linguistically among the simplest languages. Why would you say that
> Chinese is not simple?
>
> Ec

Because of articles I've read like these:
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/skozerow/langdiff.htm
http://pinyin.info/readings/texts/moser.html
http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Ewbaxter/howhard.html

~maru


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Central bibliography

body:
Hoi,
WikiData is already in the MediaWiki SVN. http://wiktionaryz.org is
life, over 50.000 records have already been added by it's community.

Wikipedia-l is about all things wikipedia. There are loads of people who
do not subscribe to it because it is not the only game in town.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Akash Mehta wrote:
> I agree that WikiData is a good idea, but what will it take for the
> developers to implement this? Are wikitech-l subscribers subscribed to
> wikipedia-l as well?
>
> On 9/5/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>>
>>> Francis Tyers wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> In fact, this brings up an interesting point, having <book> and
>>>> <article> for specifics (they tend to be long), and then having
>>>> <ref> for miscellaneous stuff.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> When anybody says we "have to" introduce completely new markup or
>>> we "have to" wait for Wikidata to be implemented, then I know it's
>>> just an excuse for doing nothing.
>>>
>>>
>> Hoi,
>> Based on what ? WiktionaryZ is developing nicely, it is based on
>> Wikidata. Versioning is expected to make it's first apearance (Erik
>> willing) this week. This hardly qualifies as nothing happening. As to
>> Wikiauthors, there has been some deep thinking about what it needs to do
>> by people who met IRL and the chances of something happening in this
>> space is better than 89%.
>>
>>> Suppose you define a way to identify a pre-defined reference, .....
>>>
>> For me there is little reason to suppose anything... Wikidata rocks.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>     GerardM


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Counterexperiment (was: Anons banned from creating
	articles)

body:
> Surely the 3 or 4 more clicks it takes to create a crap
> article now aren't stopping that many anons.

I think this is the right question. If it turns out anon page creation (APC)
does, in fact, produce a lot more crap, then I would like to propose a
counterexperiment: just add ONE extra click to the APC process, and see what
difference it makes.

At the risk of repeating myself, sounding like a broken record, and repeating
myself, I don't see this is as a two-way choice between APC on or off, since
account creation is unrestricted anyway. I see this as a matter of how many
clicks are involved in the APC process, how obvious they are.

Currently, it is: click on red link, click on "log in or create account" (and
NOT "submit the content", which is a trap), click on "create account", fill in
the form and press "create account", navigate back to where you were, click on
red link again, and there's your edit box.

On the other hand, for logged-in users, clicking on a red link goes right to the
edit box. This was also the case for logged-out users before English Wikipedia
disabled the feature (and remains the case on other Wikipedias).

Clicking on a blue link, on the other hand, only allows reading the article; to
edit, the user has to explicitly click on "edit this page".

That is, to get to the edit box for an existing page, a casual reader has to at
least intend to edit. Not so for a non-existing page, a casual reader could just
stumble into it (when anon pgae creation was on).

So I wonder what would happen if, after turning anon page creation on for a
while, we then change it so the red link leads to the no-article page (like
this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrapositive_Enthymemetics_in_Lower_Canada)

If it turns out that having anon page creation on, but with that extra click,
produces less crap that having anon page creaton on with no extra clicks (by
whatever metrics), we might then want to think a bit more about how to design
the editing/creation interface for logged-out users.

Regards,
Daniel Mehkeri


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 05/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need
> > to be more newbie-friendly.
> > This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes
> > and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.

> You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious
> amount of policy.

No, which is why process is important.

> If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have
> degenerated into flame wars with no way out.

It's a good thing AFD has never done that. Oh, wait.

> Newbies do face a steeper
> learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the
> project rather than the newbies we should care about. -

The point of this is some indication that if we don't explicitly care
about the newbies then it will in fact be damaging to the project.
Please read the thread.

- d.


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>True, we should care for newbies, but we should have the good of the project
>at number one. I can't find a single policy that we don't need (can you?).
>Policies we don't need probably won't get promoted to policy to begin with.
>
:-D   This statement was obviously meant as a joke

>AFD is only as toxic as you make it. We should all start by quiting 2-letter
>nominations (NN) using lone jargon words (cruft, non-notable, etc) and start
>explaining or reasoning based on references, google searches and specific
>reasons that can be argued. If newbies come across reasonably argued
>discussions in AFD the process would work a lot better.
>
Why should we expect newbies to have a doctorate in wiki-lawyering?
Reasonable arguments should not depend on the ability to cite policy cruft.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anons banned from creating articles

body:
On 05/09/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:24:07 -0400, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org>
> wrote:

> >Yeah, he said it doesn't seem to be working, and it's not open.  So
> >when is this policy change going to be reverted?

> Right after we can sign up another thousand admins to deal with the
> flood-tide of crap articles that anons create?

Please reread the thread so far - you're asserting one of the facts we
explicitly don't have numbers on.

- d.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Ongoing hybrid development (was Re: Want to
	collaborate on writing a feature?)

body:
On 05/09/06, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> * JOrbisPlayer. Greg Maxwell is the client-side developer, he has created a
> demo on the toolserver at http://tinyurl.com/fsbu7 . We are in the
> specification development stage.

Oh, nice one!

- d.


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

body:
Luiz Augusto wrote:

>Sorry Jeffrey V. Merkey but all of your messages related to machine
>translations in a project >OUTSIDE< of Wikimedia Foudation is reported as
>Spam by me, using "Report Spam" button on Gmail system.
>
>
As said, A business related list is needed. This posting is a good
example why...

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 05/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>As to the second argument - did anyone ever provide any evidence to back up
>>>the assertion that BCE/CE in academe was a US thing, with non-US academics
>>>using BC/AD?
>>>
>>>
>>I ran seachers on the journal databases I had acess to. BCE didn't
>>really feature US or otherwise.
>>
>>
>Hah. So those claiming it was the standard practice in US academia
>should in fact be required to produce their evidence?
>
Of course one deeds to remember that there are societies, such as the
one outraged by Janet Jackson's breast, where political correctness is
more important than personal freedom. :-)

Ec


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] [Spcommittee-l] Multimedia: planning a meeting

body:
And again : a newer thread, prior to the discussion at the recent spc
meetings, with gmaxwell's input:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/spcommittee-l/2006-August/000108.html

Rich media is increasingly part of how people communicate and create
new knowledge.  If we find a time to meet, perhaps we can give the OMC
and related groups a reason to perk up...

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Multimedia#Meetings

SJ

On 9/5/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's also the recently created Open Media Coalition:
> http://openmediacoalition.org/index.php/Main_Page
> (open/media)
>
> But it seems to be inactive at this time. I've tried to give them a
> kick in the butt on their mailing list .. ;-)
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Spcommittee-l mailing list
> Spcommittee-l at mail.wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/spcommittee-l
>


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> The point of this is some indication that if we don't explicitly care
> about the newbies then it will in fact be damaging to the project.
> Please read the thread.

I agree with this postulate (and I hope that most here either already knew
or felt this to be true), but your interpretation that increasing process is
hostile to newbies is a different assertion than the initial point.

There are lots of things which are more likely to bite newbies than process
stuff which most of them never have to see or interact with, in my opinion.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating Articles Extension

body:
> An alternative could be to have a sliding window, whereby only votes in the last month or so counts - that way votes based on old
> revisions age out of the system. Trouble is if a page is infrequently edited then votes should last longer (since what was voted
> upon a while ago will probably still be similar to the current revision), and if a page is infrequently voted upon then votes should
> last longer too (because otherwise your sample size will so small that just the last few votes will be able to totally skew the
> ratings).

Those are good points. It would be neat to use diffs to calculate how
much an article has changed between edits, so if you voted 3 on a stub
that was entirely rewritten (nothing in the original version was
contained in the current version) your vote would have a weight of 0%,
and if I voted 4 on a version that was only 50% different than the
current version, my vote would have a weight of 50%. This would be
hard to do on a per request basis, but would be easy to do on a daily
basis and store the results in an intermediate table.

> > Awesome, thanks.
>
> By the way, I might have just missed it, but if I haven't you might also want to include something somewhere about which license or
> licenses you're releasing your extension under ;-)
>

I hadn't thought that far ahead! What license are Wikipedia extensions
usually released with? GPL?


body:
> True, we should care for newbies, but we should have the good of the project
> at number one. I can't find a single policy that we don't need (can you?).
> Policies we don't need probably won't get promoted to policy to begin with.
>

Even if you can't point to a policy page and say "we'd be better off if that
whole page were deleted", it seems to me that after promotion to policy level,
the process of annotating and expanding that policy happens slowly, under much
less scrutiny, and at a much lower threshold of acceptance.

I have in mind WP:U. The general idea -- no offensive usernames -- may be good,
but read all of the fine print that has accumulated over time. Do not think this
is idle policy cruft that nobody acts upon. Newbies now get instantly and
permanently blocked for what in my opinion are really stupid, arbitrary offences.

Perhaps WP:U is an extreme case, but I suspect something like this happens on
many policy pages, and never mind guidelines.

Dan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Rating Articles Extension

references:
<d45df5100608301414t2f42841ck4ac06f7295c91096@mail.gmail.com>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKCEKGIMAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<d45df5100608310836s1b2a4293nbf4f0af267f3e8d9@mail.gmail.com>
	<ed9e22$a0q$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> A vote system must be able to deal with all kind of trickies. People
> overvoting, voting ech day, trying to improve their 'wikipedia pagerank', or
> shut down others'...
> Maybe you could set a ip-hash so vote only affects if it's different than
> last vote (or last 5 votes...). Then it could be remplaced by the semisum of
> both votes of those hash matching ips. Maybe even with a special sensibility
> for repeated queries from the same ISP (dynamic ips
> connecting-voting-disconnecting).
>
> About the vote forgiveness on change take into account that most wight
> changes are those of blanking/reverting so some blank-revert processes could
> reset the counter although content haven't changed.

I think this could be a feature that might be hard to speculate on
what exactly what will happen if it's applied on a large scale, so it
might take some sample data before determining which choice is best.
And of course, the results will vary between wikis, so it'd probably
be best to have included in the extension a few parameters for which
it can be used (e.g. max votes per user, # of days back into the past
to consider votes, discard votes over 5, use a scale of 1-x, etc)...

> P.S. http://wiki16.wikidiy.com/Special:ListRatings -> Fatal error: Call to a
> member function on a non-object in
> /var/www/html/wiki16/extensions/RateArticle.php on line 187

Fixed. Thanks.


from_name: Florence Devouard

subject: [Foundation-l] Multimedia: planning a meeting

body:
Hello,

During the last spc meeting, there was a suggestion to hold a meeting to
strategize how to best incorporate multimedia in wmf projects. This
committee would include reps from sp comm and the tech comm, as well as
any person interested working along those lines.

More information may be found here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Multimedia. It is a rather old page, but
seems to fit what some of the interested people had in mind. Poeple
involved in the discussion where in particular NullC (Greg) and Xirzon
(Eloquence).

I suggest we use the talk page of that meta page to set up a meeting
date, time and hopefully agenda.

Cheers

ant


body:
On 9/5/06, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
>
> > True, we should care for newbies, but we should have the good of the
> project
> > at number one. I can't find a single policy that we don't need (can
> you?).
> > Policies we don't need probably won't get promoted to policy to begin
> with.
> >
>
> Even if you can't point to a policy page and say "we'd be better off if
> that
> whole page were deleted", it seems to me that after promotion to policy
> level,
> the process of annotating and expanding that policy happens slowly, under
> much
> less scrutiny, and at a much lower threshold of acceptance.
>
> I have in mind WP:U. The general idea -- no offensive usernames -- may be
> good,
> but read all of the fine print that has accumulated over time. Do not
> think this
> is idle policy cruft that nobody acts upon. Newbies now get instantly and
> permanently blocked for what in my opinion are really stupid, arbitrary
> offences.
>
> Perhaps WP:U is an extreme case, but I suspect something like this happens
> on
> many policy pages, and never mind guidelines.
>
> Dan
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Ah, a great example of something where both policy and its practical
implimentation are biting newbies.

At unblock-en-l we are getting a slow but steady stream of unblock requests
(a few a week) of people who were username blocked.  In most cases they
don't understand why, because there wasn't nearly enough information left on
their talk page at block time and there was no polite discussion prior to
the block informing them of the policy and asking them to chose another name
and use the name-shift functions to switch to it.

As a general rule, I think that unblock-en-l is getting an interesting view
into newbie interactions with Wikipedia.  One thing that concerns me is that
it's hard to tell what fraction of people who should contact unblock-en-l
actually do, as opposed to just walking away from the project.  That could
be a very high ratio and as far as I know we have no way to tell what it is.

If we exclude the well-known, work-in-progress AOL block problem, we see a
slow steady stream of problem editors complaining about their latest block,
innocent people caught in autoblocks on shared IP space, people who didn't
think 3RR applied to them or didn't understand 3RR, and other minor issues.

The problem users are not particularly a problem worth otherwise addressing.

People caught in autoblocks on shared IP space seems to be high enough
volume to be a potential real problem.

People who don't understand 3RR seems to be a possible big deal.  It also
comes up a few times a week.  We may have a communications issue telling new
users about it...

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in
	fact	dangerous to Wikipedia

body:
>
> I had an article rejected from GA on two grounds, its statistics
> weren't referenced, which is fine, I will have to look into that. And
> two, it didn't have a picture!!! Of all things you think they would be
> lenient on a picture. Not to sound overly harsh on the policy stuff
> but thats going a bit too far.
>

Reminds me of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Fermi_paradox&diff=22857362&oldid=22240050

(Wasn't me)


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in fact
	dangerous to Wikipedia

body:
On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 04/09/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "Who Writes Wikipedia?" (
> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia )
>
> > "This fact does have enormous
> > policy implications. If Wikipedia is written by occasional
> > contributors, then growing it requires making it easier and more
> > rewarding to contribute occasionally. Instead of trying to squeeze
> > more work out of those who spend their life on Wikipedia, we need to
> > broaden the base of those who contribute just a little bit.
> > Unfortunately, precisely because such people are only occasional
> > contributors, their opinions aren't heard by the current Wikipedia
> > process. They don't get involved in policy debates, they don't go to
> > meetups, and they don't hang out with Jimbo Wales. And so things that
> > might help them get pushed on the backburner, assuming they're even
> > proposed."
>
>
> This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need
> to be more newbie-friendly.
>
> This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes
> and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
>
> Look at Debian, bogged down in process, to the point where Richard
> Stallman failed to make it in as a Debian maintainer for his own
> software because of excessive process. Look how it took Ubuntu to give
> it a much-needed rocket up the arse. Without Ubuntu, we'd still be
> waiting on Etch. Will it take someone doing a successful fork to
> decalcify Wikipedia policy?
>
> Greg - you might want to ask Aaron for what he ran, in case you can
> run better numbers across the whole database more easily.

You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious
amount of policy.
If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have
degenerated into flame wars with no way out. Newbies do face a steeper
learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the
project rather than the newbies we should care about. -

Mgm


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

body:
Michael Bimmler wrote:

>On 9/5/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Luiz Augusto wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Sorry Jeffrey V. Merkey but all of your messages related to machine
>>>translations in a project >OUTSIDE< of Wikimedia Foudation is reported as
>>>Spam by me, using "Report Spam" button on Gmail system.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>As said, A business related list is needed. This posting is a good
>>example why...
>>
>>
>>
>If you have a high-priority and/or important business question, which
>you want to be answered by nobody but Foundation officials, why don't
>you just write an email to the Foundation? There is board at wikimedia
>dot org and bpatrick at wikimedia dot org (Brad Patrick, general
>counsel & Interim Executive Director WMF) for your convenience.
>
I do this all the time with Brad and those emails dont make it to this list.

>I
>don't think that you can prohibit community members from expressing
>themselves when using a mailing list. There is private email for
>business purposes.
>
>

I am not trying to prohibit anyone from expressing themselves, in fact,
it's the other way
around, I am often the target of folks oppressing my expressions for
purely political reasons.
I have no problem using the foundation list for progress on African
languages and other programs, but a business
oriented list would be a better solution. The problem with the community
moderator concept
here is there may be other businesses spring up and when a non-employee
threatens to moderate
or does moderate someone on such a list, there are some issues
potentially created for the foundation.
Issues I would rather not deal with.

Jeff

>Michael
>
>

>
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


body:
On 9/5/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I also bet that if you ranked editors by surviving words in the
> encyclopedia (not project or talk) you might be quite surprised to see
> who ranks high.  People get noticed on Wikipedia for participating in
> project-space, for one reason or another, not for their article
> contribs.

Not so, I primarily know Violetriga for his/her odd-ball yet encyclopedic
article creations.
People with multiple FA's to their name are recognized for it. No doubt will
I know most people for their project edits, but people who spend a lot of
time creating good articles are very much noticed.

> But it is also may not be the best approach for the future, if we are
> really
> > switching to a "quality over quantity" mentality.
>
> Are we?

Yes, it's one of the things Jimmy mentioned at the latest Wikimania.

Mgm


body:
Oh yes, please stop that eternal useless bickering!
I have never seen the use of adding another E to BC and give it another name
when in fact you count with the same year numbering. But if we can have
a technical solution so we can have both I'd go for it.

Mgm

On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> The vexed question may be solved by technical means!
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Neil Harris <neil at tonal.clara.co.uk>
> Date: 05-Sep-2006 08:41
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] BC vs BCE era names
> To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
>
>
> Bill Clark wrote:
> > I've added the ability to specify a preference (or no preference) for
> > era names in dates (BC vs. BCE).  I've also fixed a couple bugs in the
> > regular expressions that match for dates, that were preventing the
> > parser from recognizing (and converting) dates that ended in BCE or
> > which were written in ISO format and fell between -999-01-01 and
> > 999-12-31 (i.e. had a one-, two-, or three-digit year).
> >
> > I'm not an actual committer so I'm submitting this as a diff -ru to
> > the mailing list.  I'm sure that's the wrong procedure and I'll be
> > scolded for it, but hey I'll learn.
> >
> > I've tested this and it works on my local version (checked out of svn
> > a few hours ago) but I imagine it should be tested more.
> >
> > -Bill Clark
> >
> >
> That's a great idea. It might also be useful to make the code also
> switch 'AD' and 'CE', for dates such as, for example, 4 AD / 4 CE.
>
> -- Neil
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

body:
Aphaia wrote:

>Arbeiter in der ganzen Welt,
>nope,
>
>Hello Wikipedians,
>please remember one old our axiom right now.
>
>  DONT FEED A TROLL
>
>and be wise enough ignore taunts of Mr. Jeff V. Merkey. He will find
>his own community, somewhere else, and it will be not our business at
>all in my precognition.
>
>Cheers,
>
>
>
Hello Aphaia,

I am not taunting anyone, and I am sorry you feel this way, and I
apologize if an impression was created
this is the case.

Have a great day. I have some more units to ship today.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
I do think that our username policy is handled very badly at times.
People are blocked for offensiveness when the offensiveness is rather
arguable; people are blocked for impersonation if they happen to pick
a name that's close to an existing user; people are blocked for
impersonating a well-known person when they're actually using their
own real names.  Very rarely is it explained properly; very rarely is
the person given an opportunity to change their ID or to challenge the
decision.

It seems that we constantly assume 'Vandal!' in this case.

-Matt


from_name: Death Phoenix

body:
(sorry for once again diving into this debate)

And I'm one of those non-Christians who feels that BC/AD is more
appropriate. We use BC/AD in normal conversation. This is one of those
things where, if the typical Wikipedia reader were to see "BCE", he would
wonder "what the hell is BCE?". I certainly wondered that the first several
times I saw it. I see it as a sad sign of political correctness that is
creeping into our content, but I'm in the minority (and yes, I'm also aware
of the fact that Jesus was likely actually born between 4 and 6 BC).

BC/AD has been in use for centuries. Why wipe out history in the space of a
year or two? I don't even know who, when, or how BC/BCE came to replace
BC/AD, and it's certainly not in widespread use.

On 9/5/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm one of the Christians who feels that BCE is more appropriate (though I
> still use BC/AD in common conversation). My reason, however, is that if
> one
> looks at the historical context of Jesus' life (things like the reign of
> Herod), you'd find that he was actually born approx. 4-6 BCE, which if we
> use BC/AD convention means that Jesus was born a few years "Before
> Christ."
> So, I support BCE more from a standpoint of language precision. By using
> (B)CE for the date convention, it removes tying the dating system to a
> specific event, such that any evidence which might effect the actual
> timing
> of events does not invalidate the system.
>
> Carl
>
> On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Yes, but at the same time we must respect that everyone has varied
> > > religious beliefs, and I wouldn't be surprised if around about half of
> > > users supported BC, while the other half did not.
> >
> >
> > While this is true, the division was not solely along religious lines -
> > many
> > people who identified themselves Christian, myself included, feel in the
> > half that supported BCE/CE on the basis of NPOV.  The problem with
> > accepting
> > a POV in dating systems is that we would have to support ALL dating
> > systems.  Only supporting BC/AD and BCE/CE is to codify systemic bias.
> > However, adding other dating systems isn't easy, because lunar calendars
> > (for example) don't match precisely with solar ones.  So if we allowed a
> > user to pick a preferences of say, the Islamic calendar or the old
> Russian
> > calendar, many year-only dates would become ambiguous.
> >
> > However, you have a
> > > point, NPOV means BCE.
> >
> >
> > BC means "Before Christ", and that (obviously) refers to Jesus of
> > Nazareth.
> > So if you say "before Christ" in reference to him, you are asserting
> that
> > Jesus is the Messiah (Christ is the Greek version of the
> > word).  Similarly,
> > if you say "in the Lord's year" and the reference is unequivocally to
> > Jesus,
> > then you are asserting that Jesus is Lord (which, in this context, has
> > come
> > to mean God)
> >
> >
> > Then again, must we assert that Jesus is the
> > > Messiah/God? We must merely assert that he is christ and that the
> > > calendar is based around his birth (which it certainly appears to be,
> > > if he existed when he supposedly did).
> >
> >
> > As above, Christ means Messiah, so you can't separate the two.  On the
> > other
> > hand, BCE (before the common era) and CE (common era) meet the
> requirement
> > of NPOV by describing the current state of affairs in which the dating
> > system is based around the birth of Jesus, without actually asserting
> that
> > he is the Messiah or God.
> >
> >
> > On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD
> > > violates
> > > > NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is
> > the
> > > > Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does
> > what
> > > the
> > > > NPOV policy asks.
> > > >
> > > > On 9/5/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > Go figure :) I suppose thats all you can put in an article like
> MoS
> > > > > anyway. I personally think any policy article that doesn't change
> > > > > regularly (i.e. no voting pages, no listings and relistings)
> > shouldn't
> > > > > go over 10kb for readability's sake. Anything more is just too
> much
> > > > > content for one page. And there's the added advantage that mailing
> > > > > list users don't need to abbreviate policy :)
> > > > >
> > > > > On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > > "whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
> > > > > > > that must be the most concise decision ever :)
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > I am simplifying greatly ;-)
> > > > > >
> > > > > >
> > > > > > - d.
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > > > >
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Michael Billington

body:
>
> 90% of australians edit on the enwiki only :(
>
When you look into it that's not so bad, 93.2% of US edits are to enwiki,
and 96.9% of GB edits as well, so we're actually going pretty well for
internationalisation.


subject: [WikiEN-l] My irrelevant hatnote disambiguation policy

body:
On 9/5/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, it just looks silly. :-)

Perhaps we need a "Warning! Wikipedia contains trivia!" pastel box.

-Matt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia vs. Ebay on Alexa

body:
On 9/5/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> But that also
> means we may need a fundraiser before long.
>
> -- mav
>
Is that a bad thing?


subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia 20060817 XML dump support for
	MediaWiki 1.7.1

body:
On 05/09/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:

> I experienced problems importing the 20060817 enwiki dumps using
> MediaWiki 1.7.1 with the machine translation project, so I put together

You want to ask wikitech-l about this (Wikimedia-related technical discussions).

- d.


body:
On 05/09/06, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:

> Perhaps I'm just pessimistic, but I'm sure there will be "bickering" over
> the default setting of any UI option we come up with. After all, the default
> will determine what those who are not logged-in or who have not modified
> their preferences will see.

As with the present date format settings, I assume the "default" will
be "do nothing."

- d.


body:
On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> > Right after we can sign up another thousand admins to deal with the
> > flood-tide of crap articles that anons create?

> Personally I feel that any user we can trust, has a fair bit of
> experience and a few thousand edits should be a sysop anyway, but
> thats just my opinion.

Well, that's *supposed* to be the criterion ...

- d.


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikipedia 20060817 XML dump support for
 MediaWiki 1.7.1

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> I experienced problems importing the 20060817 enwiki dumps using
> MediaWiki 1.7.1 with the machine translation project, so I put together
> a bzip2 package with MediaWiki 1.7.1 with all the extensions and PHP
> fixes necessary to use the Wikipedia  enwiki dumps which also includes
> all the support extensions for Native Cherokee and other Machine
> translation projects.  The updated bzip2 package may be useful to others
> since the released MediaWiki 1.7.1 does not run with the XML dumps
> currently published by the Wikimedia Foundation without all these fixes
> and extensions included and configured.
>
> ftp://www.wikigadugi.org/wiki/MediaWiki/mediawiki-1.7.1.WG-20060904.tar.gz.bz2
>
> Jeff
This is not the right list for this type of message. I am not a
moderator, but I would like to kindly ask you to refrain from posting
such things in the future, as this is not remotely a foundation issue.

Thank you,
Filip


body:
On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> Shouldn't the default be neutral (i.e. 'BC(E)' / 'BC|BCE' etc.)
> anyway? There's not much of a choice there. Then again, if users have
> a problem with the mere use of a 'BC' instead of 'BCE' when BC has
> been widely accepted for so long, then so be it.

It eventually came down to a US vs UK argument, which is why the MOS
says "whatever it is now, leave it kthx." The Arbitration Committee
has had to penalise people for edit-warring on the subject.

(Wikipedia! No stakes too insanely small for a battle to the death!)

- d.


body:
On 05/09/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:

> "whatever it is now, leave it kthx."
> that must be the most concise decision ever :)

I am simplifying greatly ;-)

- d.


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's a great idea. It might also be useful to make the code also
> switch 'AD' and 'CE', for dates such as, for example, 4 AD / 4 CE.
>

No VE

--
geni


body:
On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
> NPOV policy asks.
>

Falls appart when you considder the islamic calender and the like
cuases simular problems for CE.

--
geni


body:
On 05/09/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:

> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what the
> NPOV policy asks.

That's not an "issue", it's an "assertion". Plus the common assertion
that BCE is standard in academia, when that doesn't apply outside the
US.

- d.


from_name: Luiz Augusto

references:
<44FD30F5.2050208@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<fbad4e140609050443h71304002qfbb37c9de6ba08e0@mail.gmail.com>
	<44FD99A1.60603@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
Sorry Jeffrey V. Merkey but all of your messages related to machine
translations in a project >OUTSIDE< of Wikimedia Foudation is reported as
Spam by me, using "Report Spam" button on Gmail system.

Have a nyce day.

[[:m:User:555]]

On 9/5/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:
>
> >On 05/09/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> >>I experienced problems importing the 20060817 enwiki dumps using
> >>MediaWiki 1.7.1 with the machine translation project, so I put together
> >>
> >>
> >
> >
> >You want to ask wikitech-l about this (Wikimedia-related technical
> discussions).
> >
> >
> Hi david,
>
> I wasn't asking a question, just letting folks know that the MACHINE
> TRANSLATTION project
> had fixed a version of MediaWiki with the XML dumps that wasnot broken.
>
> David, thanks for the professional and courteous reply.
>
> Jeff
>
> >
> >- d.
>


body:
On 05/09/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:

> While this is true, the division was not solely along religious lines - many
> people who identified themselves Christian, myself included, feel in the
> half that supported BCE/CE on the basis of NPOV.  The problem with accepting

Except that it was verging on neologism when applied to topics outside the US.

- d.


body:
On 05/09/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:

> As to the second argument - did anyone ever provide any evidence to back up
> the assertion that BCE/CE in academe was a US thing, with non-US academics
> using BC/AD?

Er, I could dump piles of UK academic papers on you and you could fail
to find much usage of BCE in them. You're demanding positive proof of
an absence here.

- d.


body:
On 05/09/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:

> major ISSUES in the debate were, on one side, that BC/AD violated NPOV and
> on the other a mixture of "well so does BCE/CE" or "common usage trumps
> NPOV".  And, as a result, an exception was voted to NPOV.

And this shows the major WTF assertion. "Before Christ is a violation
of NPOV, because it speaks in terms of Christ, whereas Before
Christian Era ... hold on, I'll come in again."

- d.


body:
On 05/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> True, we should care for newbies, but we should have the good of the project
> at number one. I can't find a single policy that we don't need (can you?).
> Policies we don't need probably won't get promoted to policy to begin with.

Policy probably. I'm taking about process in general too. There's
plenty of process that should be culled regularly, per the wisdom of
[[m:instruction creep]].

> AFD is only as toxic as you make it. We should all start by quiting 2-letter
> nominations (NN) using lone jargon words (cruft, non-notable, etc) and start
> explaining or reasoning based on references, google searches and specific
> reasons that can be argued. If newbies come across reasonably argued
> discussions in AFD the process would work a lot better.

Which is precisely what I mean by using it as an example. I still get
contacted by people upset that "Wikipedia called me a vanity writer,
what can I do short of taking legal action?" and trying to explain
that it's a jargon term ... one which the AFD regulars were kindly
asked not to fucking use for this precise reason. Nuke from orbit,
rebuild from scratch.

Policy: We delete some stuff.
Process: something Kafka would have found implausible.

- d.


body:
On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> As to the second argument - did anyone ever provide any evidence to back up
> the assertion that BCE/CE in academe was a US thing, with non-US academics
> using BC/AD?

I ran seachers on the journal databases I had acess to. BCE didn't
really feature US or otherwise.

--
geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Essays on the future of the projects

body:
On 05/09/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Aaron Swartz has started a series of such essays.  The latest one
> suggests something I have long suspected, that the huge body of new
> and anonymous contributors, who often make the first serious stab at
> an article or provide a needed injection of expertise, are as
> important to the 'pedias development (if not more so) than the core of
> dedicated editors.
> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/wikiroads
> http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia

Greg Maxwell is sceptical of the numbers (since Aaron doesn't give
methodology); since Greg is very good at running interesting numbers
on the database, I've suggested to each that they contact the other.

> Is anyone else writing long essays these days?  Where are they kept,
> and how categorized?

Probably and nowhere I can think of, but they should!

- d.


body:
On 05/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:

> > As to the second argument - did anyone ever provide any evidence to back up
> > the assertion that BCE/CE in academe was a US thing, with non-US academics
> > using BC/AD?

> I ran seachers on the journal databases I had acess to. BCE didn't
> really feature US or otherwise.

Hah. So those claiming it was the standard practice in US academia
should in fact be required to produce their evidence?

- d.


body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Policy probably. I'm taking about process in general too. There's
> plenty of process that should be culled regularly, per the wisdom of
> [[m:instruction creep]].
>

Do you want to tell the people trying to outlaw the CVU through
guidelines and process this?

>
> Which is precisely what I mean by using it as an example. I still get
> contacted by people upset that "Wikipedia called me a vanity writer,
> what can I do short of taking legal action?" and trying to explain
> that it's a jargon term ... one which the AFD regulars were kindly
> asked not to fucking use for this precise reason. Nuke from orbit,
> rebuild from scratch.
>

What happened to blanking all AFDs?
--
geni


body:
On 05/09/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:

> I hope the text itself goes up there soon.  Likewise, for anyone who
> has posted a great rant to mailing lists lately.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Essays
> is surprisingly sparse.

There's a lot of them on en:. [[Wikipedia:Process is Important]] is a
notable one.

- d.


body:
On 9/5/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> True, we should care for newbies, but we should have the good of the project
> at number one. I can't find a single policy that we don't need (can you?).

Wikipedia:Editing policy doesn't appear to be doing much and is
probably better delt with through help pages

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (categories) needs to be shorted and
merged into Wikipedia:Naming conventions

Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary needs to be de-expanded and
pushed back into Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not

Wikipedia:Category deletion policy needs to be merged into our other
deletion policies

Wikipedia:Libel could prbably be merged into various other policy pages

--
geni


body:
On 05/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Policy probably. I'm taking about process in general too. There's
> > plenty of process that should be culled regularly, per the wisdom of
> > [[m:instruction creep]].

> Do you want to tell the people trying to outlaw the CVU through
> guidelines and process this?

And to think I almost answered the second part of the question without
noting that "outlaw the CVU" is a straw man characterisation itself,
and gets more meaningless as a statement the closer you look at it.

> What happened to blanking all AFDs?

Good bloody question. Presumably it was voted out with a HUNDRED
PERCENT CONSENSUS of three against and no for.

- d.


body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hah. So those claiming it was the standard practice in US academia
> should in fact be required to produce their evidence?
>

The solution we have at the moment appears to work. I see no need to
reopen the issue.

--
geni


body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> And to think I almost answered the second part of the question without
> noting that "outlaw the CVU" is a straw man characterisation itself,
> and gets more meaningless as a statement the closer you look at it.
>

Not remotely. We have two policies writen by people who appear to be
in favor of the destuction of the CVU

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RBI
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism_is_not_a_game

Both were writen after the attempt to speedy the CVU had failed. The
only difference between these pages and [[WP:DENY]] is they also
attempt to outlaw the CVU directly ([[WP:DENY]] has some effect on
some of it's aactivies but nothing of significance).

>
> > What happened to blanking all AFDs?
>
>
> Good bloody question. Presumably it was voted out with a HUNDRED
> PERCENT CONSENSUS of three against and no for.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
geni


body:
On 05/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Hah. So those claiming it was the standard practice in US academia
> > should in fact be required to produce their evidence?

> The solution we have at the moment appears to work. I see no need to
> reopen the issue.

I mean in the event of a reopening. "We must standardise on BCE
instead of AD or you're riding with HITLER!!!!" "Set it in your
preferences kthx."

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>I'm somewhat puzzled at the response to this thread. I appreciate Mr
>Merkey has greatly annoyed many people in the past, but I know he's
>putting in effort to work better with others now; and I'm not saying
>Assume Good Faith In The Face Of All Reason (there are many people
>whose names I never want to see in my Wikipedia email ever again) -
>but that first mail read to *me* like a Wikimedia bug report (problems
>reading data dumps), which only needs redirection to wikitech.
>
>So, um, could everyone please just take a deep breath? And if there's
>a problem with the current dumps, I'm sure the devs would rather know
>than not know, and politely directing people to the right list is a
>better response even if it was sent by Lir or Wik or Plautus Satire or
>something.
>
>(And I know I'm way guilty of blowing my top inappropriately on the
>lists of late and do apologise again and will calm down and settle
>into middle-aged suburban existence soon, I swear.)
>
>
>- d.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
David,

I appreciate your professional anbd courteous response.

I will post bug reports to the other list in the future (if they are bug
reports). I raised this issue in the chat room several weeks ago and I just
waited and waited and never saw any action taken or fixes to the problem
and I had to make the php fixes myself for some pending
appliance shipments, so I felt like I was helping by providing a fixed
version and bringing it to the Foundations attention. They after all
are posting dumps and telling the public to use MediaWiki with them. I
felt they should be informed there are potential issues with
the whole thing working as advertised.

It affects our efforts more directly since we provide the ability to
sync and seed new communities with entire full mirrors of wikipedia
that actually work and can resync with the Foundation. I certainly did
not want to create hurt feelings and my suggestion about a
business related list was to take many of these issues into another
forum so the Foundation could manage them separately. I have been
working very hard on these projects to help the Foundation and your
assessment is very accurate and informed.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


body:
On 05/09/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > There's a lot of them on en:. [[Wikipedia:Process is Important]] is a
> > notable one.

> Thanks. Yes, around 250; that's a good example.
>   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_essays

I should note that that category is also a dumping ground for things
that didn't make it to official guideline or policy. The most notable
example I can think of is [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/How to
present a case]] - which is a guideline anyone not following could be
presumed to be too stupid to breathe and write at the same time, but
is an "essay" because it deliberately has no official status.

- d.


body:
Oh yes, the Unblock mailing list has given me an interesting view on the
interaction between newbies and admins who regularly block users ('Wikipedia
says I was blocked for "user." What the heck is that and why I am being
blocked?' is a fairly common complaint, along with the usual autoblocks and
AOL collateral damage). I've also noted that most of us replying on the
Unblock mailing list have used "customer service" language to a high degree.

On 9/5/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ah, a great example of something where both policy and its practical
> implimentation are biting newbies.
>
> At unblock-en-l we are getting a slow but steady stream of unblock
> requests
> (a few a week) of people who were username blocked.  In most cases they
> don't understand why, because there wasn't nearly enough information left
> on
> their talk page at block time and there was no polite discussion prior to
> the block informing them of the policy and asking them to chose another
> name
> and use the name-shift functions to switch to it.
>
> As a general rule, I think that unblock-en-l is getting an interesting
> view
> into newbie interactions with Wikipedia.  One thing that concerns me is
> that
> it's hard to tell what fraction of people who should contact unblock-en-l
> actually do, as opposed to just walking away from the project.  That could
> be a very high ratio and as far as I know we have no way to tell what it
> is.
>
> If we exclude the well-known, work-in-progress AOL block problem, we see a
> slow steady stream of problem editors complaining about their latest
> block,
> innocent people caught in autoblocks on shared IP space, people who didn't
> think 3RR applied to them or didn't understand 3RR, and other minor
> issues.
>
> The problem users are not particularly a problem worth otherwise
> addressing.
>
> People caught in autoblocks on shared IP space seems to be high enough
> volume to be a potential real problem.
>
> People who don't understand 3RR seems to be a possible big deal.  It also
> comes up a few times a week.  We may have a communications issue telling
> new
> users about it...
>


body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 05/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/4/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > This means that if we want the content to grow and be *good*, we need
> > > to be more newbie-friendly.
> > > This is also a BIG stick to use on Byzantine overengineered processes
> > > and policy. Excessive process is actively newbie-hostile.
>
> > You can't expect a site the size of Wikipedia to run without a serious
> > amount of policy.
>
>
> No, which is why process is important.
>
>
> > If we stop adding policies things like living person bios would have
> > degenerated into flame wars with no way out.
>
>
> It's a good thing AFD has never done that. Oh, wait.
>
>
> > Newbies do face a steeper
> > learning curve, but in the end it is best for Wikipedia and it is the
> > project rather than the newbies we should care about. -
>
>
> The point of this is some indication that if we don't explicitly care
> about the newbies then it will in fact be damaging to the project.
> Please read the thread.

True, we should care for newbies, but we should have the good of the project
at number one. I can't find a single policy that we don't need (can you?).
Policies we don't need probably won't get promoted to policy to begin with.

AFD is only as toxic as you make it. We should all start by quiting 2-letter
nominations (NN) using lone jargon words (cruft, non-notable, etc) and start
explaining or reasoning based on references, google searches and specific
reasons that can be argued. If newbies come across reasonably argued
discussions in AFD the process would work a lot better.

Mgm


body:
On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD violates
> NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what
> the
> NPOV policy asks.

No, it merely requires our readers to assume Jesus was born in the year 0.
The dating method doesn't state anything about his supposed
God/Messiah-ness.

Mgm


body:
On 9/5/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  On 9/5/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Actually one of the major issues in the dispute is whether BC/AD
> > violates
> > NPOV because it requires Wikipedia to make an assertion the Jesus is the
> >
> > Messiah/God.  BCE/CE merely describes the condition, and thus does what
> > the
> > NPOV policy asks.
>
>
>  No, it merely requires our readers to assume Jesus was born in the year
> 0. The dating method doesn't state anything about his supposed
> God/Messiah-ness.
>
> Mgm
>
Even if it is based on Christian beliefs, it doesn't require users to
believe it to actually use it.


subject: [Foundation-l] Global Text Project

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>FYI - we need to talk to these people.
>
>http://globaltext.org/
>
>Global Text Project
>
>    * The goal is to create a free library of 1,000 electronic
>textbooks for students in the developing world
>    * The library will cover the range of topics typically encountered
>in the first two years of a university's undergraduate programs
>    * The global academic community and global corporations will be
>engaged in creating and sponsoring this library
>
>The project will create open content electronic textbooks that will be
>freely available from a Web site. Distribution will also be possible
>via paper, CD, or DVD. Our goal initially is to focus on content
>development and Web distribution, and we will work with relevant
>authorities to facilitate dissemination by other means when bandwidth
>is unavailable or inadequate. Thus, while the goal, educating the
>disadvantaged, is the same as that of the $100 laptop project, we are
>not tied to a particular device or medium.
>
>We have experience with developing a free textbook, XML: Managing Data
>Exchange. This project started in January 2004 when a graduate class
>at the University of Georgia wrote the first version of the book.
>Subsequent graduate and undergraduate classes at the University of
>Georgia and elsewhere have improved and extended the book. It has been
>used as the XML text in a variety of classes, and in each case the
>class has been required to leave the book in better shape that they
>received it at the beginning of the term.
>
>Experience with this project and the success of WikiBooks has
>convinced us that we can further develop the idea of free and open
>content books to increase the value of these books to students,
>particularly those who cannot afford paper-based textbooks. We want to
>add several innovations to improve the quality of the books.
>
>
>
>
This is a wonderful project and effort. I will visit the site and start
translations into several target languages.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Global Text Project


from_name: Sydney aka FloNight

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Semi-solid evidence that process is in fact
 dangerous to Wikipedia

body:
---- Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:

=============
Oh yes, the Unblock mailing list has given me an interesting view on the
interaction between newbies and admins who regularly block users ('Wikipedia
says I was blocked for "user." What the heck is that and why I am being
blocked?' is a fairly common complaint, along with the usual autoblocks and
AOL collateral damage). I've also noted that most of us replying on the
Unblock mailing list have used "customer service" language to a high degree.
========
On 9/5/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ah, a great example of something where both policy and its practical
> implimentation are biting newbies.
>

Agree with George Herbert's remarks.

SP


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Neil Harris stated for the record:

> Try geolocation on the basis of source IP, and select CE north of the
> Mason-Dixon line, and AD below?

I live in California, you inconsiderate clod.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Most people who need to be shot need to
 sean at epoptic.com | be shot soon and a lot. Very few people
                  | need to be shot later or just a little.
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subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List

body:
Luiz Augusto wrote:

>
>My real work isn't related to IT, I'm a historian. Jeff, please STOP talking
>about your efforts related to translation machines on this list. I and
>anothers spend only free time to devote to Wikimedia projects and these
>off-topic messages is time spendend in non-Wikimedia efforts in a Wikimedia
>only list.
>
>If you (or anothers) need to reply something to me about this message, do it
>only privately.
>
>
>
Have a great day Luiz, I completely disagree with your views, but
nonetheless, have a great day.

:-)

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Business Related List


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
On 9/5/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 05/09/06, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > major ISSUES in the debate were, on one side, that BC/AD violated NPOV and
> > on the other a mixture of "well so does BCE/CE" or "common usage trumps
> > NPOV".  And, as a result, an exception was voted to NPOV.
>
>
> And this shows the major WTF assertion. "Before Christ is a violation
> of NPOV, because it speaks in terms of Christ, whereas Before
> Christian Era ... hold on, I'll come in again."
>
>
> - d.

You know, if you want to find out what an abbrieviation stands for,
there is this great online encyclopedia ;)...... CE doesn't stand for
"Christian Era", it stands for "Common Era" (which is why geni slyly
tried to make a joke using VE, or "Vulgar Era", but everyone missed
it). More to the point however, it's not the BC that people have a
problem with, it's AD. AD stands for "Anno Domini", so "2006 AD" means
literally "in the year of the lord, 2006".

I think that the NPOV argument is rock-solid, it isn't NPOV to refer
to years as AD. I remember hearing a debate a while ago that people
had on the Arabic wikipedia. I don't know if it was a big thing, or if
it was even that big of a deal, but I think it serves well to put some
perspective on why people might not like AD. The thing was that on the
Arabic wp, people tended to write PBUH in Arabic everytime a martyr or
prophet was mentioned. Incase somebody doesn't know, PBUH means Peace
be upon him. One could argue for allowing that under NPOV using
basically the same argument that's used for AD, saying that it's
"common practice" and using that convention less people will be
confused/offended /whatever.

Again, I don't really know anything about that dispute, it might be
completly resolved, or not much of a problem to begin with. I just
think that it serves as a way to get perspective on NPOV, viewing a
very similar issue but in a different culture.

I say, no silly religious conventions should be used! Who's with me?!