body:
On 10/9/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:49:56 -0500, "Parker Peters"
> <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> My thoughts exactly.  "Parker Peters"' last example turned out to be
> >> an unambiguous vandalism sock.  I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps
> >> Parker Peters isn't better known to us by another name...
>
> >"Unambiguous"? Hardly. Unless you didn't bother to read my reply earlier?
>
> Yes, I read it.  I also reviewed the contribution history, which is
> after all the main thing.

As did I. And I came to the opposite conclusion. It's my opinion that the
edits might have been poorly phrased but they met the standard of RS, V, and
were consistent with writings in other articles we have regarding the same
subject matter.

>Your definition of "vandalism" seems to be that you disagree with an edit.
> >That's not a definition of "vandalism" that anyone at Wikipedia is
> supposed
> >to follow, and the last person I met who followed that was a definite pov
> >warrior.
>
> Nope.  It was a POV warrior and a pretty blatant sock.  Honestly, not
> worth the bytes already spilled.

Again, I reached the opposite conclusion.

Now, where are the diffs Jimbo asked for? The last case seems much
> more interesting.
>

The diffs were forwarded to Jimbo directly in a private email, before his
public request for diffs. I'm waiting for his private response on the
matter.

Parker


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Gregory Maxwell stated for the record:

> On 10/9/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
>
>>Jimbo, I don't want to throw any more JP-5 on the fire, but if any other
>>editor speedy-deleted an article that had survived three AFDs, the
>>deletion would be immediately reverted with demands that he follow
>>procedure.  I am a staunch support of AGF (as well as BOLD and OFFICE
>>and most importantly IAR) so I assume that the clear and present danger
>>of irreversible damage to the project was so extreme as to prevent any
>>prior discussion -- but the abruptness of this action does warrant at
>>the very least a raised eyebrow.
>
>
> Your claim that if an article was speedied which had been AFD kept in
> the past would be immediately undeleted is factually inaccurate.
> Laughably so.

I'm glad you're amused.  Not everyone is laughing, though.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | To bite off your shadow is neither easy nor
 sean at epoptic.com | painless. It demands a single-mindedness
                  | that is almost unknown in this day.
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ivan Krstić

subject: [Wikitech-l] Insight into users' behaviour

references:
<egaq0d$l7s$1@sea.gmane.org>	<f30e42de0610080633j7c91f7a2y3d2f5e86d61e56ee@mail.gmail.com>	<egb9bm$2f0$1@sea.gmane.org>	<egbvjt$k6$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<egefqe$uub$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Only the upload interface? o.O

I invited Celeste to the hacking days to brief us on the general
findings of the OpenUsability.org evaluation of the German Wikipedia:

http://openusability.org/download.php/89/germanwikipedia_usabilitytest_edit.pdf

She focused on the image upload interface as it was identified as one of
the worst current usability offenders.

--
Ivan Krsti? <krstic at solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/9/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> In light of this, I am going to undelete and list the article for a
> fourth AfD.

Phil, it already went up on deletion review and last I looked it was
majority keep deleted.

To me it seems that you're just invoking your wikiright to create more
drama over a minor issue... and I really don't think it's helping
anything.

If the folks complaining here spent as much time researching it as
they have complaining about it they would probably have noticed that
the question of it being an office action had already been asked on
the talk page (which was not deleted), and it was pointed out days ago
that Danny performed the edit with his non-office account.


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 10/9/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In light of this, I am going to undelete and list the article for a
>> fourth AfD.
>
> If the folks complaining here spent as much time researching it as
> they have complaining about it they would probably have noticed that
> the question of it being an office action had already been asked on
> the talk page (which was not deleted), and it was pointed out days ago
> that Danny performed the edit with his non-office account.

Actually, Danny was not all that forthcoming, if you read the talk page.
  He danced around the direct question I asked him.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "What Joe Mauer's doing is sick. He's 23 years old. What's
	he going to do when he gets man muscles?" - Torii Hunter
	on Joe Mauer.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources: problems with [[WP:RS]]

body:
On Oct 9, 2006, at 7:06 PM, Matt Brown wrote:

>
> I disagree.  Lots of editors disagree.  Because, if you look closely,
> the reliability of a source has more to do with who is writing it and
> their reputation, how well they are trusted, and the nature of the
> subject matter, than defining something simply by what medium it
> appeared in.

The problem here is that we have two reliabilities in play. The first
is "is the source reliable enough to be used in the article," which
we're basically sane about. Nobody has gone in and eviscerated [[Spoo]].

The second is using reliability as the latest code for notability, In
this case, a standard for notability that is flagrantly different
from the practical standard used in articles is used as a cover for
deleting articles, often being used to ignore the numeric consensus
on AfDs because [[WP:RS]] is cited in [[WP:V]], essentially giving it
a pseudo-policy status, despite its deep flaws. What is particularly
dangerous here is that it tends to be done unilaterally, and then
supported on DRV, which has, as has been previously noted, been
overrun by lunacy.

[[WP:RS]] is merely comically useless in the first case. It is wildly
dangerous in the second, and such unilateral moves should be just as
unilaterally overturned until such a time as we have a process for
reviewing them that is not dominated by an unrepresentative sample of
the community.

-Phil


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
Kris & Adrian wrote:
> So it did have a reference to WP:OFFICE then.
>
> I'm sorry Jimmy but what you've written above has to be the worst case
> of whitewashing ever.
>
> "It wasn't WP:OFFICE but it was."

AGF, please.  That is not what I said.  Danny has made it very clear in
the past that he has two accounts.  One he uses for WP:OFFICE actions,
i.e. actions taken temporarily by the office based on some emergency
situation (usually but not always legal in nature).  And his normal
account, which he uses as every other editor on the project.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
Precisely.

Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 09/10/06, Kris & Adrian <emailus at btopenworld.com> wrote:
>> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>>> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>>>
>>>> Unilateral deletions are performed hundreds of times a month by
>>>> Wikipedia Admins on the basis of their own judgement.  Perhaps I
>>>> shouldn't find it shocking that some [[troll (Internet)|opportunist]]
>>>> found it useful take advantage of Danny's high profile in order to
>>>> play out a little bit of performance art.
>>>  >
>>>  > It is unfortunate and uncharacteristic to see you equate the elevation
>>>  > of experienced judgement and consideration over strict policy
>>>  > conformance with a lack of deference to the community.
>>>
>>> I think that a significant amount of the confusion here has to do with
>>> it being a little unclear whether this was intended as a WP:OFFICE act.
>>>   It was done under Danny's normal account, with no reference to
>>> WP:OFFICE, so I think it is safe to assume this was Danny acting in his
>>> capacity and a long standing and widely respected editor exercising
>>> editorial judgment in a manner consistent with our longstanding policies
>>> of being bold.
>>>
>>> It just so happened, as it turns out, that it was triggered by a call to
>>> the office.
>> So it did have a reference to WP:OFFICE then.
>>
>> I'm sorry Jimmy but what you've written above has to be the worst case
>> of whitewashing ever.
>>
>> "It wasn't WP:OFFICE but it was."
>
> "It was caused by contact to the office" is *not* "It was WP:OFFICE".
> WP:OFFICE is shorthand for an "office task"; one made by and for the
> Foundation. Danny is one of the people who occasionally do these
> tasks. It does not cover anything that has a tangential connection
> with the actual office, because...
>
> Several hundred people "contact the office" every day - usually by
> email, occasionally by phone. A number of people, most heavily Danny,
> handle this stuff, and almost always do so without further reference
> to "the Foundation" - articles are cleaned up, copyvios hurried along
> to deletion, abusive talk page messages removed, egregious bits of
> stupidity caught, a hundred and one things quietly kept ticking over.
>
> If I handle one of these because someone sent an email to the office,
> it doesn't class as WP:OFFICE. If Kat Walsh or David Monniaux do it,
> it doesn't class as WP:OFFICE. If Danny does it in his normal routine
> of handling complaints - and in most cases, the only difference
> between Danny and the rest of us doing it is that he has a phone to
> answer, too - then *it isn't WP:OFFICE*, and the many and myriad
> complexities involved there don't come into it.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:OFFICE
>
> This argument is bad enough without redefining concepts on the fly...
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On Oct 9, 2006, at 8:18 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>
> Phil, it already went up on deletion review and last I looked it was
> majority keep deleted.

DRV is a joke, dominated by people with a warped interpretation of
policy and principle, and with rules that change at will so as to
favor deletion as frequently as possible.

No responsible admin should pay any attention to decisions reached on
DRV.

-Phil


list: foundation-l

from_name: Andrew Gray

subject:
[Foundation-l] Ensuring veracity of articles based on print
	sources

body:
On 08/10/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:

 > But of course.
> >
> > The problem is, the original proposal here was to
> > deal with people
> > making up sources - an explicitly bad-faith action.
> > But the suggested
> > system is a system that is equally suceptible to
> > being gamed in
> > bad-faith. You want to game this? You make a false
> > claim with regards
> > to a reputable (but hard to identify) work. Done.
> >
> > So instituting this system wouldn't deal with the
> > bad-faith people in
> > any way, and just create vast amounts of (admittedly
> > automatible, but
> > still) make-work for "verifiers". Which doesn't
> > really help the
> > project, it just plasters around the original
> > problem...
>
>
> So you do not believe in having any organized method
> of fact checking?  That people should only fact check
> disputed articles?  I am not sure what your position
> is  after reading the above.

My position is that the proposal originally suggested in this thread -
of confirming the existence of books so as to deal with bad-faith fake
sources - just won't work, because it means a good deal of work but is
trivially easy for the people who we assume are trying to fool us to
keep fooling us. We need fact checking. But having a system that
sounds like fact checking and looks like fact checking but doesn't
work is a net detriment.

> I think at some point an organized method of fact
> checking needs to happen, although it is debatable if
> we are at that point yet.  My understanding of this
> method is it would assign fact checkers work "per
> book" rather than "per article" which is IMHO *much*
> more efficient.

Yes, this would be the most sensible way of doing it. We just need to
find some way of apportioning the checking load in a sane manner.

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


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 09/10/06, Kris & Adrian <emailus at btopenworld.com> wrote:

> Will we have to delete Coca Cola etc if they start "demanding" editorial
> control?
>
> Could we have some further clarification on this please?

Certainly.

Company A makes an obscure sex toy. There appear to be three people in
the world who care about it, and they're all trying to use us for
advertising.

Company B is an international household name, with a turnover in
billions of dollars, about whom entire shelves of material have been
written.

I think there is a pretty clear distinction between the two, and
arguing we've set some kind of "precedent" for all corporations by
deleting an article on a silly piece of unimportant plastic just
doesn't hold water.

There are justifiable reasons to worry about the implications of
Danny's action, but I really don't think we need to worry that this in
some ways means we're now beholden to anyone with a PR guy and a
phone. (Personally I feel the article was asking to be deleted pending
a user looking after it, since it had degenerated into an
unmaintainable mess of spammers and counter-spammers, but I accept
that's an unusual view... and I feel it was rather helpful of the
spammer to identify the spam for us!)

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


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Kris & Adrian wrote:
> > So it did have a reference to WP:OFFICE then.
> >
> > I'm sorry Jimmy but what you've written above has to be the worst case
> > of whitewashing ever.
> >
> > "It wasn't WP:OFFICE but it was."
>
> AGF, please.  That is not what I said.  Danny has made it very clear in
> the past that he has two accounts.  One he uses for WP:OFFICE actions,
> i.e. actions taken temporarily by the office based on some emergency
> situation (usually but not always legal in nature).  And his normal
> account, which he uses as every other editor on the project.
>
> --Jimbo

I don't want to be confrontational, but the edit summary used was
exactly contradicting that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Fleshlight&diff=79363277&oldid=79354273

Kylu may have misinterpreted something, but it's been a point of great
confusion since he did it.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/9/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Company A makes an obscure sex toy. There appear to be three people in
> the world who care about it, and they're all trying to use us for
> advertising.

Please stop this.  The Fleshlight is significantly more notable than
this.  Using insulting arguments like this is rude.

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


from_name: Parker Peters

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight (Johntex)

body:
On 10/9/06, John Tex <johntexster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote
> >>I'm not understanding this point -- why then do we have articles on
> >>things such as [[Pipe organ]] or even people such as [[Donald Knuth]]
> >>-- both of these can be easily looked up online, and they take up some
> >>much more disk space than [[Fleshlight]]
> >
> >I think the answer to this question is to check the availability of
> >recorded media celebrating skilled operators of the pipe organ versus
> >the fleshlight.  Organists are notable, wankers are not.
>
> That is an amusing quote, but I don't think it proves anything.  If
> wankers
> are not notable, then perhaps we should delete [[sex toys]] and how about
> deleting [[Masturbation]] while we are at it?

Don't forget [[Lesbian Bukkake]]. Someone actually had the gall to ask for
an illustration on that page.

Yikes.

Speedy deleting this was not the best way to handle the situation.  If it
> was not an office action then it should have gone to AfD.

Correct!

Likewise, I urge Danny to be more forthcoming about whether something is or
> is not an office action.  WP:Office is far too serious a policy to leave
> editors guessing about whether it applies or not.

Good-faith editors have already been bitten by such ambiguities in the past.

Parker


from_name: Ian Woollard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 09/10/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> Which brings us back to Fleshlight. It was the subject of a subtle edit war
> between the company that manufactures it, and a similar company which wanted
> to  have an external link on the Fleshlight page.

I think that this is one of the big advantages of German-style ideas
like [[Wikipedia:Timed article change stabilisation mechanism]].

It makes it much more expensive to link farm (since they have to make
~50 good edits before changes appear, which costs *time* and hence
(for a company) *money*). They *need* the edits to quickly appear;
because they often get reverted quite quickly, adding a time delay
puts a spanner in the works for them.

Fundamentally, these kinds of ideas primarily add *visibility* about
the editors identities; it gives incentives not to be anonymous, not
to vandalise, and not to link farm, but as soon as editors register
accounts, then the wikipedia has a way of tracking and gaining
visibility of the editors character; without in any way necessarily
giving away their true identity. And these schemes do it without
preventing anonymous editors from making useful contributions.

> Danny

--
-Ian Woollard

"Victory can be perceived but not created."
For your own security, the Department of Homeland Security is watching you.


from_name: Clarence Risher

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Regarding Ogg Theora and its file extension;
 should it be changed on the commons?

body:
Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 06:12:49PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
>> Obvious conclusion: let the MIME type and file headers say whether
>> it's Theora or MPEG4, let the file extension say whether it's audio or
>> video.  Otherwise the only way a user can tell whether something is
>> audio or video is by opening it, which is annoying.
>
> . . . or by using a specific set of applications that will determine,
> and show, that information for you -- which can also be annoying if you
> don't happen to like those applications.  I, for instance, am not a huge
> fan of GUI file browsers.  I prefer to use terminal emulator windows as
> my "file browsers", with command line tools like ls and tree for viewing
> directory contents and filesystem hierarchy.

Then you can do what non-GUI-file-browser users have done for over a
decade with their MP3 files.  Use a file-header-reading program to
rename the files.  Just because a few people can't read ID3 tags is not
a reason for everyone in the world to give their MP3s huge filenames.

> This does raise a question for me, though: considering that, as far as
> I'm aware, there aren't any problems with MPEG4 that are solved by
> wrapping it as an Ogg file (to make it Ogg/MPEG4) -- why bother?  It's
> kind of off-topic for this discussion, and maybe I'm missing something
> important, but I don't see the point in making an MPEG4 file into an
> Ogg/MPEG4 file except, perhaps, as some sort of kewler-than-thou
> notation.  Is there a technical benefit to this?

MPEG4 is less than optimal in a few areas, such as multilingual
subtitles.  OGG+MPEG4 is a popular (relatively) choice among
fandub/fansub groups who translate foreign videos.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/9/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> Jimbo, I don't want to throw any more JP-5 on the fire, but if any other
> editor speedy-deleted an article that had survived three AFDs, the
> deletion would be immediately reverted with demands that he follow
> procedure.  I am a staunch support of AGF (as well as BOLD and OFFICE
> and most importantly IAR) so I assume that the clear and present danger
> of irreversible damage to the project was so extreme as to prevent any
> prior discussion -- but the abruptness of this action does warrant at
> the very least a raised eyebrow.

Your claim that if an article was speedied which had been AFD kept in
the past would be immediately undeleted is factually inaccurate.
Laughably so.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 07:55:24 -0500, "Parker Peters"
<onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:

>I second this suggestion, it seems like a good one.

Done long since.

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


from_name: James Redmond

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising season launch

body:
On Oct 9, 2006, at 3:42 PM, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> It would be nice if proper financial reports were made available befor
> the start of another round of fundraising.  We owe it to potential
> donors to let them know that we believe in fiscal responsibility.

Under US law, the Foundation is required to provide copies of its
three most recent 990s* to anyone who requests them.  It should be
trivial to post them in PDF format on the Foundation site as
other .orgs have done.

A summary of audit findings may not be a bad idea either, but there
is no obligation to post those.

*"990" is the number of the form used by non-profit organizations to
report their revenue and expenses to the US Internal Revenue Service,
the federal tax agency.  (My new project: clean up the relevant en:
article.)

Jim Redmond
jim at scrubnugget.com


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/9/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Unilateral deletions are performed hundreds of times a month by
> Wikipedia Admins on the basis of their own judgement.

Thousands

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/9/06, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com> wrote:
> It makes it much more expensive to link farm (since they have to make
> ~50 good edits before changes appear, which costs *time* and hence
> (for a company) *money*). They *need* the edits to quickly appear;
> because they often get reverted quite quickly, adding a time delay
> puts a spanner in the works for them.
>

Judging by comments on SEO and webmaster froums there are already
people who will make a number of good edits in order to get their link
in. The general opinion appears to be that we are pretty good at
removeing spam links.

--
geni


from_name: Jonathan Leybovich

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:
>
> --- Jonathan Leybovich <jleybov at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>Yes, a blind-vote citation-checking system in which
>>aggregate results
>>are captured.
[snip]
>>
>>I think it might also be useful to use the results
>>of citation-checking
>>as a feed into some sort of trust ecology.
>>Fact-checking is mostly
>>tedious, unrewarding work, and so the users who have
>>shown themselves to
>>be competent and reliable at it are probably going
>>to be trustworthy or
>>at least good-faith in other areas as well.  This
>>would of course not be
>>the only input to a user's "trust rating", but
>>probably one of the more
>>significant ones.
>>
>>
>
> I think this is an absolutely brilliant idea!
>
> Birgitte SB

Thank you :)  A lot of the work required for such a system I've already
done while beginning to implement my proposal for a central
bibliographic database- [[m:Wikicat]]- and it could just as well be
adopted to your more efficient source/book-driven fact checking regimen.
  If some sort of hosting/demo testbed were provided (*ahem*) it would
not take me that long to whip up a basic demo.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Quitting Wikipedia and wanted you to know why.

body:
On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 14:14:02 -0400, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
wrote:

>> The most egregious account I've seen was brought to us a few days ago, where
>> an admin blocked a user and then tag-teamed with a non-admin to repeatedly
>> remove the user's unblock requests, and finally got a third party to lock
>> the user's talk page for "unblock abuse."

>Diffs?

My thoughts exactly.  "Parker Peters"' last example turned out to be
an unambiguous vandalism sock.  I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps
Parker Peters isn't better known to us by another name...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 09:13:07 -0400, Phil Sandifer
<Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

>Danny, the Office does not and should not be determining inclusion
>criteria on its own and imposing them without the consent of the
>community. Fleshlight survived AfD three times.  For the Office to
>declare "Sorry, community - you're wrong" is a new approach for the
>Office, and one I think is a very, very bad one.

Think of it as an advanced example of assuming good faith.  The
company cannot bear for the "advertising value" of "their" article to
be diluted.  The only way we can accommodate that is to delete it.
Danny was very kind to do this, and the project is not measurably
poorer as a result, it being trivially easy to find the product on the
internets should one be so inclined.

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


from_name: Timwi

references:
<egaq0d$l7s$1@sea.gmane.org>	<f30e42de0610080633j7c91f7a2y3d2f5e86d61e56ee@mail.gmail.com>	<egb9bm$2f0$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<egbvjt$k6$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
>
> Our upload interface came under some heavy criticism from a usability expert
> at Wikimania hacking days.

Only the upload interface? o.O

> The point was well taken by the dev team, and we discussed ways to
> improve it at the time. In particular, we proposed to implement [...]

I'm glad to hear that plans exist to improve things, and even more that
they came from a usability expert. Thanks for the info :)

Timwi


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Process essay is almost essay-shaped now

body:
On 09/10/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
> On Sep 14, 2006, at 9:43 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> > Dear smart people,
> > Please look over
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:David_Gerard/Process_essay and hack
> > it to bits.

> Pretty good, David.... I liked in particular the section on "You
> can't legislate against misunderstanding or malice"
> My question is, is such a reliance on process and the inherent
> bureaucratization a natural evolution of a community of people
> wanting to create an encyclopedia based on NPOV, V and NOR? Is that a
> reversible/stoppable evolution? Is the current stratification of
> users (e.g. "inadvertent committees" or such similar groups; admins,
> etc.) unavoidable?

I suspect so. Politics starts when you have two people in the same
place; when you have a few thousand in the same place, it's surprising
the result is anything *other* than politics.

That is: an organisation and a hierarchy will form whether you want it
to or not. And pretending you don't or shouldn't have one won't stop
it forming, and will just make it dangerous to your cause. (I posted a
link to an essay about this to this list a while ago, though I can't
find a link.)

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 09/10/06, Jossi Fresco <jossifresco at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Pretty good, David.... I liked in particular the section on "You
>>can't legislate against misunderstanding or malice"
>>My question is, is such a reliance on process and the inherent
>>bureaucratization a natural evolution of a community of people
>>wanting to create an encyclopedia based on NPOV, V and NOR? Is that a
>>reversible/stoppable evolution? Is the current stratification of
>>users (e.g. "inadvertent committees" or such similar groups; admins,
>>etc.) unavoidable?
>>
>>
>I suspect so. Politics starts when you have two people in the same
>place; when you have a few thousand in the same place, it's surprising
>the result is anything *other* than politics.
>
>That is: an organisation and a hierarchy will form whether you want it
>to or not. And pretending you don't or shouldn't have one won't stop
>it forming, and will just make it dangerous to your cause.
>
In my involvement with parents' associations one of the most common
excuses that I hear for not becoming involved is that it's too
political.  It's hard to communicate that such an attitude too easily
creates results contrary to what they might want.

Ec


body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
>
>
> My position is that the proposal originally suggested in this thread -
> of confirming the existence of books so as to deal with bad-faith fake
> sources - just won't work, because it means a good deal of work but is
> trivially easy for the people who we assume are trying to fool us to
> keep fooling us. We need fact checking. But having a system that
> sounds like fact checking and looks like fact checking but doesn't
> work is a net detriment.
>

Almost every system of security relies on countermeasures that are- not
invulnerable- but only cost more for the attacker to breach than are
worth the effort of breaking.  Outrageous claims that contradict common
knowledge or sense are going to be scrutinized and weeded out anyway,
source or no source.  And so what we really have here is the possibility
of bad-faith editors introducing fabricated citations to support, at
worst, moderately false assertions.  There are various levels of
automatic validation that could be done at the time the citation is
created using data from open bibliographic databases- from checking
whether the book is of an appropriate subject and that the page cited
falls within the book's pagination range to more involved CAPTCHA-like
challenges such as: Where was the book published? and: What is the
highest Roman numeral used in the preface?  This is only moderately
easier for an owner of the source to verify (and indeed, bad-faith
owners could own the source in question anyway), but it quickly becomes
for trouble than it's worth for the citation creator if their only
motivation is mischief.  Before introducing countermeasures we need to
determine where that threshold actually lies and so avoid introducing
more hoops for good-faith editors to jump through than are absolutely
necessary.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/9/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> George Herbert wrote:
> > On 10/9/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Company A makes an obscure sex toy. There appear to be three people in
> >> the world who care about it, and they're all trying to use us for
> >> advertising.
> >
> > Please stop this.  The Fleshlight is significantly more notable than
> > this.  Using insulting arguments like this is rude.
> >
> >
>
> No, a rude insulting argument would be "anyone who gives a flying rat's
> arse about this thing is a sick perv and should be banned". See the
> difference?
>
> PS. I count "being mentioned on the Something Awful forums" towards
> notability the same way as "being mentioned on Slashdot".
>
> --
> 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

More than three people have exhibited concern abount the action here
on this list.  It is rude and insulting TO US to blow off the concerns
in this manner.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/9/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> I think that a significant amount of the confusion here has to do with
> it being a little unclear whether this was intended as a WP:OFFICE act.
>   It was done under Danny's normal account, with no reference to
> WP:OFFICE, so I think it is safe to assume this was Danny acting in his
> capacity and a long standing and widely respected editor exercising
> editorial judgment in a manner consistent with our longstanding policies
> of being bold.
>

No. The guideline is "be bold in updating articles". It doesn't really
apply to admin actions.

--
geni


from_name: Kris & Adrian

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
>>Unilateral deletions are performed hundreds of times a month by
>>Wikipedia Admins on the basis of their own judgement.  Perhaps I
>>shouldn't find it shocking that some [[troll (Internet)|opportunist]]
>>found it useful take advantage of Danny's high profile in order to
>>play out a little bit of performance art.
>
>  >
>  > It is unfortunate and uncharacteristic to see you equate the elevation
>  > of experienced judgement and consideration over strict policy
>  > conformance with a lack of deference to the community.
>
> I think that a significant amount of the confusion here has to do with
> it being a little unclear whether this was intended as a WP:OFFICE act.
>   It was done under Danny's normal account, with no reference to
> WP:OFFICE, so I think it is safe to assume this was Danny acting in his
> capacity and a long standing and widely respected editor exercising
> editorial judgment in a manner consistent with our longstanding policies
> of being bold.
>
> It just so happened, as it turns out, that it was triggered by a call to
> the office.
>

So it did have a reference to WP:OFFICE then.

I'm sorry Jimmy but what you've written above has to be the worst case
of whitewashing ever.

"It wasn't WP:OFFICE but it was."


body:
Kpjas wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I've followed closely the thread about verifying content and citing
> (book) sources.
>
> My comment would be that obviously not all (book) sources that have
> even been proven to exist are credible and reputable.
>
> As I am a believer in "Work through WikiProjects" motto I think
> WikiProjects could prepare lists of reputable printed sources in
> different fields and eventually (dis)qualify a given source.
>
> In my opinion we need more WikiProjects that are vivacious and full of
> "experts". All dubious Wikipedia content should be directed towards
> WikiProjects for verification.
>
>

This brings up an important issue- that of source criticism.  A
nominally accurate citation is still not worth much if the underlying
source is not authoritative in the field.  This can be measured, though,
by starting to map the authority relationships within a literature,
capturing not only how many citations are made of a particular work, but
also what TYPE:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiTextrose#Citation_Analysis

For example, a work that is cited dozens of times is not necessarily
more authoritative than one that is cited less frequently if more than
half of those citations are negative and attack its claims.  Building
such a database would allow non-experts to quickly orient themselves to
what is state-of-the-literature and act without the oversight of
WikiProject experts (not to mention create a resource that, in time,
could be very useful in its own right).  Not that such WikiProjects
could not be useful as well, only that they are inherently non-scalable,
and certainly more inegalitarian in their effect than I think is
necessary- elevating certain users to the role of oracle rather than mentor.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>
>
>>On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 14:51:22 -0700, "Silas Snider" <swsnider at gmail.com>
>>wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm not understanding this point -- why then do we have articles on
>>>things such as [[Pipe organ]] or even people such as [[Donald Knuth]]
>>>-- both of these can be easily looked up online, and they take up some
>>>much more disk space than [[Fleshlight]]
>>>
>>>
>>I think the answer to this question is to check the availability of
>>recorded media celebrating skilled operators of the pipe organ versus
>>the fleshlight.  Organists are notable, wankers are not.
>>
>>
>How many celebrated skilled operators of [[Donald Knuth]] are there?
>This is kind of a weird criteria for establishing "notability", I don't
>think it's widely applicable.
>
It seems that that notability now depends on what kind of organ you play
with. :-)

The high degree of subjectivity connected with the idea of notability
can only result in this being a battle that never ends.

>Personally, I have no idea whether Fleshlight is notable or not without
>doing further research I probably don't care to perform. But that's what
>talk page debates, AfD, RfC and such are for. We have ways of reaching
>community consensus on such things.
>
I feel the same way about the subject.  I can sympathize with the Danny
being under unremitting pressure from idiotic phone callers, but it is
also important to clarify the demarcation between Foundation and
Wikipedia (or other project) responsibilities.  As office staff Danny is
too easily seen as acting out of greater authority than the rest of us.
This is the perception even when it is not the reality.  Thus when it
comes to routine admin actions he needs to show more restraint than the
rest of us.  Perhaps discussing the issue with admins that he trusts
before taking action, and delegating to them the task of dealing with
the problem article would be a more peaceable way of dealing with it.
This would leave him more free to reserve his  OFFICE powers to
situations where the potential for legal liability is unquestionable.

If the reason for taking action is that the article has been the
persistent target for spam or edit wars deleting the article ranks right
up there with decapitation as a cure for a headache.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 09/10/06, Kris & Adrian <emailus at btopenworld.com> wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> >
> >>Unilateral deletions are performed hundreds of times a month by
> >>Wikipedia Admins on the basis of their own judgement.  Perhaps I
> >>shouldn't find it shocking that some [[troll (Internet)|opportunist]]
> >>found it useful take advantage of Danny's high profile in order to
> >>play out a little bit of performance art.
> >
> >  >
> >  > It is unfortunate and uncharacteristic to see you equate the elevation
> >  > of experienced judgement and consideration over strict policy
> >  > conformance with a lack of deference to the community.
> >
> > I think that a significant amount of the confusion here has to do with
> > it being a little unclear whether this was intended as a WP:OFFICE act.
> >   It was done under Danny's normal account, with no reference to
> > WP:OFFICE, so I think it is safe to assume this was Danny acting in his
> > capacity and a long standing and widely respected editor exercising
> > editorial judgment in a manner consistent with our longstanding policies
> > of being bold.
> >
> > It just so happened, as it turns out, that it was triggered by a call to
> > the office.
>
> So it did have a reference to WP:OFFICE then.
>
> I'm sorry Jimmy but what you've written above has to be the worst case
> of whitewashing ever.
>
> "It wasn't WP:OFFICE but it was."

"It was caused by contact to the office" is *not* "It was WP:OFFICE".
WP:OFFICE is shorthand for an "office task"; one made by and for the
Foundation. Danny is one of the people who occasionally do these
tasks. It does not cover anything that has a tangential connection
with the actual office, because...

Several hundred people "contact the office" every day - usually by
email, occasionally by phone. A number of people, most heavily Danny,
handle this stuff, and almost always do so without further reference
to "the Foundation" - articles are cleaned up, copyvios hurried along
to deletion, abusive talk page messages removed, egregious bits of
stupidity caught, a hundred and one things quietly kept ticking over.

If I handle one of these because someone sent an email to the office,
it doesn't class as WP:OFFICE. If Kat Walsh or David Monniaux do it,
it doesn't class as WP:OFFICE. If Danny does it in his normal routine
of handling complaints - and in most cases, the only difference
between Danny and the rest of us doing it is that he has a phone to
answer, too - then *it isn't WP:OFFICE*, and the many and myriad
complexities involved there don't come into it.

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

This argument is bad enough without redefining concepts on the fly...

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


body:
On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:47:01 -0600, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>> Not really. If there are no reputable sources for a topic, then that
>> topic may not be suitable for Wikipedia. For example, if the only
>> source for a subject is a bunch of USENET postings or a couple of
>> blogs, the subject may not pass the threshold of notability.
>
>[[Spoo]] is a featured article whose references are mostly Comuserve,
>GEnie and Usenet forum postings. Those postings turned out to be
>reputable sources for information on Spoo, after intense scrutiny by
>large numbers of editors. There are even articles that are about
>entities that are solely or primarily confined to Usenet itself;
>[[Kibology]] for example. It'd be hard to have any sort of article there
>at all without basing it on Usenet postings in some way.

Which is, I presume, why Jossi used the word "may".

As usual the exception proves the rule; the vast majority of things
verifiable solely from blogs are indeed uttery unsuitable.

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


body:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 16:49:56 -0500, "Parker Peters"
<onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:

>> My thoughts exactly.  "Parker Peters"' last example turned out to be
>> an unambiguous vandalism sock.  I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps
>> Parker Peters isn't better known to us by another name...

>"Unambiguous"? Hardly. Unless you didn't bother to read my reply earlier?

Yes, I read it.  I also reviewed the contribution history, which is
after all the main thing.

>Your definition of "vandalism" seems to be that you disagree with an edit.
>That's not a definition of "vandalism" that anyone at Wikipedia is supposed
>to follow, and the last person I met who followed that was a definite pov
>warrior.

Nope.  It was a POV warrior and a pretty blatant sock.  Honestly, not
worth the bytes already spilled.

Now, where are the diffs Jimbo asked for? The last case seems much
more interesting.

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


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-10-10

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

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

Passed 420 of 437 tests (96.11%) FAILED!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 18:32:19 -0400, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
wrote:

>> However, I would expect that our long term participants could stand
>> together, .. that they could see the clearly good intentions of each
>> other, and not allow petty difference of opinion get in the way of
>> friendship, respect, and our over arching goals (which I think we
>> *all* agree does not include Wikipedia being turned into a free
>> advertising forum).

>This is one of the finest paragraphs in this entire thread.

Damn right.  On DRV this is turning into a witch-hunt, with the
spammers being given infinitely more consideration than Danny.  That
sucks badly.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 14:51:22 -0700, "Silas Snider" <swsnider at gmail.com>
wrote:

>I'm not understanding this point -- why then do we have articles on
>things such as [[Pipe organ]] or even people such as [[Donald Knuth]]
>-- both of these can be easily looked up online, and they take up some
>much more disk space than [[Fleshlight]]

I think the answer to this question is to check the availability of
recorded media celebrating skilled operators of the pipe organ versus
the fleshlight.  Organists are notable, wankers are not.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

references:
<575.7a654fa5.325b31f8@aol.com>	<9B0D9C32-0780-494E-95E5-EEB93D6B63A2@gmail.com>
	<89gli2drms7tpdj97peel0nqd5dhgr2egg@4ax.com>
	<452AC763.8020304@internationalhouseofbacon.com>

body:
On Mon, 09 Oct 2006 18:04:19 -0400, Jeff Raymond
<jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:

>> Think of it as an advanced example of assuming good faith.  The
>> company cannot bear for the "advertising value" of "their" article to
>> be diluted.  The only way we can accommodate that is to delete it.

>And that, of course, is a load of hooey.

Your evidence for this example of "assume ill faith" being?

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


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 10/9/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In light of this, I am going to undelete and list the article for a
>> fourth AfD.
>
> Phil, it already went up on deletion review and last I looked it was
> majority keep deleted.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review#Fleshlight

A large number of the "keep deleted" votes are using "it was an OFFICE
action by Danny" as a basis, which as it turns out is simply not true. A
lot of the other "keep deleted" votes are using various arguments that
are more appropriate to an AfD instead, and I was under the impression
that DRV is not supposed to be just a re-run of AfD.

A prime example of why this sort of thing should not actually be a
_vote_, IMO. Trying to figure out this DRV's result simply by counting
bold-faced words left standing at the end of an arbitrary deadline makes
no sense here.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/9/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/10/06, Kris & Adrian <emailus at btopenworld.com> wrote:
>
> > Will we have to delete Coca Cola etc if they start "demanding" editorial
> > control?
> >
> > Could we have some further clarification on this please?
>
> Certainly.
>
> Company A makes an obscure sex toy. There appear to be three people in
> the world who care about it,

evidences suggest otherwise:

http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=3299&p=7

> and they're all trying to use us for advertising.

Shear number of edits to article suggsts they are not very sucessful.

--
geni


from_name: Simetrical

body:
Very interesting usability analysis.  We should take this stuff to
heart.  A lot should be fairly simple to implement (although much is
non-development, e.g., too-verbose messages/help).

On 10/10/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> Page 13, the "[Edit]" links are too far up from the horizontal line that marks a new section (thus leading new users to think they are for the section above, not the section below).
>
> Tried adding:
> ----------------
> div.editsection { vertical-align: bottom; }
> ----------------
> to main.css ; that made no difference (in Firefox). Any CSS guru want to indicate whether it's possible to do this (move the "[Edit]" text down closer to the horizontal new section line), and if so maybe how ?

http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4525


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 20:23:53 -0400, Phil Sandifer
> <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The second is using reliability as the latest code for notability, In
>> this case, a standard for notability that is flagrantly different
>> from the practical standard used in articles is used as a cover for
>> deleting articles, often being used to ignore the numeric consensus
>> on AfDs because [[WP:RS]] is cited in [[WP:V]], essentially giving it
>> a pseudo-policy status, despite its deep flaws. What is particularly
>> dangerous here is that it tends to be done unilaterally, and then
>> supported on DRV, which has, as has been previously noted, been
>> overrun by lunacy.
>
> In other words, someone deleted an article you like on a subject from
> teh internets.

That's an appeal-to-motive fallacy. Even if this were true (and don't
forget to assume good faith) and it's the reason Phil is complaining,
it's still entirely possible that the "reliable sources" guideline is
still flawed and Phil's arguments sound.

If [[Spoo]] can maintain featured article status while being based
largely on things that WP:RS explicitly says "should not be used as
primary or secondary sources", something is clearly broken somewhere. I
consider the Spoo article to be of very good quality so I'm inclined to
believe it's WP:RS that's the problem.

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from_name: Jason Potkanski

subject: [WikiEN-l] Living bios - "negative" or "controversial"?

body:
I suggest "potentially defaming, slanderous or libelous"

http://www.chillingeffects.org/defamation/faq.cgi#QID726

Question: What is a "false light" claim?

Answer: Some states allow people to sue for damages that arise when
others place them in a false light. Information presented in a "false
light" is portrayed as factual, but creates a false impression about
the plaintiff (i.e., a photograph of plaintiffs in an article about
sexual abuse, because it creates the impression that the depicted
persons are victims of sexual abuse). False light claims are subject
to the constitutional protections discussed above.

Question: What is a "fair and true report"?

Answer: A report is "fair and true" if it captures the substance,
gist, or sting of the proceeding. The report need not track verbatim
the underlying proceeding, but should not deviate so far as to produce
a different effect on the reader.

Editors acting with malice who create articles just to fill
Controversy and Criticism sections and leave everything else empty is
what BLP is trying to stop.

-jtp

>>top

On 10/4/06, Cheney Shill <halliburton_shill at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > See [[WT:BLP]]. I've been changing "negative" to
> > "controversial",
> > since controversy is the problem as I see it, and using
> > the word
> > "negative" is blatantly throwing NPOV out the window.
>
> Controversial is definitely better than negative.  Not sure
> there is an ideal 1 word summary, but it definitely
> shouldn't be dependent on whether or not it's positive or
> negative.  Maybe doubtful, risky, dubious, unsettled, or
> unreliable.  Today's living bio example of choice:  Mark Foley.
>
> ~~Pro-Lick
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
> http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (now a Wikia supported site)
>
>
> --spam may follow--
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Chad Perrin

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Regarding Ogg Theora and its file extension;
	should it be changed on the commons?

body:
On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 09:54:30PM -0500, Clarence Risher wrote:
> Chad Perrin wrote:
> > On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 06:12:49PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> >> Obvious conclusion: let the MIME type and file headers say whether
> >> it's Theora or MPEG4, let the file extension say whether it's audio or
> >> video.  Otherwise the only way a user can tell whether something is
> >> audio or video is by opening it, which is annoying.
> >
> > . . . or by using a specific set of applications that will determine,
> > and show, that information for you -- which can also be annoying if you
> > don't happen to like those applications.  I, for instance, am not a huge
> > fan of GUI file browsers.  I prefer to use terminal emulator windows as
> > my "file browsers", with command line tools like ls and tree for viewing
> > directory contents and filesystem hierarchy.
>
> Then you can do what non-GUI-file-browser users have done for over a
> decade with their MP3 files.  Use a file-header-reading program to
> rename the files.  Just because a few people can't read ID3 tags is not
> a reason for everyone in the world to give their MP3s huge filenames.

I don't see how "huge filenames" have anything to do with . . .
anything.

>
> > This does raise a question for me, though: considering that, as far as
> > I'm aware, there aren't any problems with MPEG4 that are solved by
> > wrapping it as an Ogg file (to make it Ogg/MPEG4) -- why bother?  It's
> > kind of off-topic for this discussion, and maybe I'm missing something
> > important, but I don't see the point in making an MPEG4 file into an
> > Ogg/MPEG4 file except, perhaps, as some sort of kewler-than-thou
> > notation.  Is there a technical benefit to this?
>
> MPEG4 is less than optimal in a few areas, such as multilingual
> subtitles.  OGG+MPEG4 is a popular (relatively) choice among
> fandub/fansub groups who translate foreign videos.

Thanks for the information.  Now I know.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
"The measure on a man's real character is what he would do
if he knew he would never be found out." - Thomas McCauley


list: textbook-l

from_name: John McC

subject: [Textbook-l] Special pages not updating

body:
The cached special pages on en.wikibooks do not seem
to be updating (uncategorized, orphan, etc.). They had
been updating weekly for a while, but it's several
days late. How can I get them updated? There are some
"lost" wikiversity pages that are currently beyond the
1,000 page limit on the uncategorized list, and we did
a bunch of work the past week to reduce the backlog in
order to make these re-appear so they can be imported
(already-imported pages are all categorized as such,
so it's handy to be able to see the ones that aren't
categorized yet).

-Johnny

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


from_name: Birgitte SB

body:
--- Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 08/10/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>  > But of course.
> > >
> > > The problem is, the original proposal here was
> to
> > > deal with people
> > > making up sources - an explicitly bad-faith
> action.
> > > But the suggested
> > > system is a system that is equally suceptible to
> > > being gamed in
> > > bad-faith. You want to game this? You make a
> false
> > > claim with regards
> > > to a reputable (but hard to identify) work.
> Done.
> > >
> > > So instituting this system wouldn't deal with
> the
> > > bad-faith people in
> > > any way, and just create vast amounts of
> (admittedly
> > > automatible, but
> > > still) make-work for "verifiers". Which doesn't
> > > really help the
> > > project, it just plasters around the original
> > > problem...
> >
> >
> > So you do not believe in having any organized
> method
> > of fact checking?  That people should only fact
> check
> > disputed articles?  I am not sure what your
> position
> > is  after reading the above.
>
> My position is that the proposal originally
> suggested in this thread -
> of confirming the existence of books so as to deal
> with bad-faith fake
> sources - just won't work, because it means a good
> deal of work but is
> trivially easy for the people who we assume are
> trying to fool us to
> keep fooling us. We need fact checking. But having a
> system that
> sounds like fact checking and looks like fact
> checking but doesn't
> work is a net detriment.
>

Either you misread the proposal or I did.  Or  else
this message was not in the part of the thread I
thought it was.  Because I certainly believed we were
talking about actual fact-chaecking.  Not simply
corfirming that sources exist.

Birgitte SB

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


body:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 20:23:53 -0400, Phil Sandifer
<Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

>The second is using reliability as the latest code for notability, In
>this case, a standard for notability that is flagrantly different
>from the practical standard used in articles is used as a cover for
>deleting articles, often being used to ignore the numeric consensus
>on AfDs because [[WP:RS]] is cited in [[WP:V]], essentially giving it
>a pseudo-policy status, despite its deep flaws. What is particularly
>dangerous here is that it tends to be done unilaterally, and then
>supported on DRV, which has, as has been previously noted, been
>overrun by lunacy.

In other words, someone deleted an article you like on a subject from
teh internets.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Corporate vanity policy enforcement

body:
On Wed, 4 Oct 2006 18:32:09 +0100, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>> That's begging the question. In what way is deleting uncited,
>> unverifiable, unimportant, often vanity content "working outside the
>> process"?

>Who are you to judge what is unimportant? We have verious processes
>for deletion for exactly that reason.

The process allows for me to use my discretion.

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


body:
On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 19:49:39 -0500, "Parker Peters"
<onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Yes, I read it.  I also reviewed the contribution history, which is
>> after all the main thing.

>As did I. And I came to the opposite conclusion. It's my opinion that the
>edits might have been poorly phrased but they met the standard of RS, V, and
>were consistent with writings in other articles we have regarding the same
>subject matter.

And if you read Naconkantari's recent post you'll see that the IP
address was the same each time.

>The diffs were forwarded to Jimbo directly in a private email, before his
>public request for diffs. I'm waiting for his private response on the
>matter.

So we have one example which is a righteous block and one about which
you are prepared to make vague arm-waving assertions but not present
the evidence here.

I think I'm through with this.

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


from_name: Jon D

subject: [WikiEN-l] No references in the 'end product'?

body:
This is the general idea behind BibTeX.   There are tens of thousands
of BibTeX formatted references available from scholar.google.com,
CiteSeer, ACM digital library, and many others.  It's a great system,
and I think could really help with references in Wikipedia.

-Jon


references:
<452AE1BE.20901@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKCEDBJAAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<7c2a12e20610092336n6578989awb1e02082b2d4552e@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 10/10/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:

> > http://openusability.org/download.php/89/germanwikipedia_usabilitytest_edit.pdf

> Very interesting usability analysis.  We should take this stuff to
> heart.  A lot should be fairly simple to implement (although much is
> non-development, e.g., too-verbose messages/help).

There's something about some en: admins making them explain everything
in mind-numbingly excessive detail. Something that would take a simple
subject-verb object sentence gets turned into three sentences with
four dangling modifiers and two words over four syllables. Just in
case someone didn't get a TERRIBLY IMPORTANT detail shoved in their
face right there, y'know. Large chunks of Mediawiki: space need
rewriting in Comprehensible.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Insight into users' behaviour

references:
<452AE1BE.20901@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKCEDBJAAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<7c2a12e20610092336n6578989awb1e02082b2d4552e@mail.gmail.com>
	<fbad4e140610100023w28fd2a0ata405696ca35b6ff3@mail.gmail.com>

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>
Date: 10-Oct-2006 08:23
Subject: Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Insight into users' behaviour
To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>

On 10/10/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:

> > http://openusability.org/download.php/89/germanwikipedia_usabilitytest_edit.pdf

> Very interesting usability analysis.  We should take this stuff to
> heart.  A lot should be fairly simple to implement (although much is
> non-development, e.g., too-verbose messages/help).

There's something about some en: admins making them explain everything
in mind-numbingly excessive detail. Something that would take a simple
subject-verb object sentence gets turned into three sentences with
four dangling modifiers and two words over four syllables. Just in
case someone didn't get a TERRIBLY IMPORTANT detail shoved in their
face right there, y'know. Large chunks of Mediawiki: space need
rewriting in Comprehensible.

- d.


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
Why do I read David's posts?  Sure, he's one of the better writer on the
listserv, and actually had interesting stuff to say, but there are other
people who can string a few coherent words together, like Erik or Ray.  But
I'm not crazy enough to follow all the conversations here, so I pick and
choose what I read.  David's writing is funny, sarcastic and ironic.  All
indications that he has a brain and a sense of humour.  Should be ban humour
next?  After all, someone may feel like they are being made the butt of a
joke, and that would be so much worse for the morale of the project than
would be the ban on humour.

Ian


references:
<452AE1BE.20901@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKCEDBJAAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<7c2a12e20610092336n6578989awb1e02082b2d4552e@mail.gmail.com>
	<fbad4e140610100023w28fd2a0ata405696ca35b6ff3@mail.gmail.com>
	<f1c3529e0610100034y1a149c8ai8217c559e5f55143@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 10/10/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > There's something about some en: admins making them explain everything
> > in mind-numbingly excessive detail. Something that would take a simple

> I'd love to go over some of these excessively wordy messages and trim
> them. Especially all the ones that go, "You can do X at the [[whatever
> page]]". Instead of just "Click [[whatever page|here]] to do X".

Point me at a pile of them. [[Special:Allmessages]] is the entire
Mediawiki: space.

> (if I were an admin) :)

Heh. Check [[:en:WT:RFA]] for the latest on the horrors of RFA.

- d.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

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

Guettarda stated for the record:

> Getting back to the original point, there's actually far more scope for
> sarcasm when you are forced to call someone "the honourable gentleman from
> foo".  Sadly, they don't seem to utilise that opportunity as well as they
> might.

Wasn't there a Congresscritter who became famous for a comment on the
order of "my honorable opponent deserves to be kicked by a jackass, and
I'm just the one to do it!"?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Eight, sir; seven, sir; six, sir; five, sir;
 sean at epoptic.com | Four, sir; three, sir; two, sir; one!
                  | Tenser, said the Tensor. Tenser, said the Tensor.
                  | Tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFK79O/SVOiq2uhHMRAog0AJsEH/0lsWKL5vsoOD9CbQtOyaoWhQCfbxlS
PU8ho/MTp9ututvDFwkKxHI=
=JlIZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Is this really permissible behavior by an admin?

body:
On 04/10/06, Nacon Kantari <naconk at gmail.com> wrote:

> It's not my fault that the person can't figure out that when you come on IRC
> THREE TIMES in TWO WEEKS with the SAME IP, you're a sockpuppet.  The
> original block was an IP block for violating NPA in edit summaries.  The
> second block was on NoLongerScieno for being an obvious sockpuppet of the IP
> addresses to violate 3RR.  The third block was on ScienoSitter, an obvious
> sock, when he came on IRC and I matched the IP address to NoLongerScieno.
> The fourth block was a repeat of the third one with Xvidme.  Anything else?

*cough*

- d.


from_name: Lane, Ryan

body:
> Why would any of those applications need to support it?  File
extensions
> are archaic, a dying anachronism in today's world of file magic and/or
> MIME types.  Let them go.
>

[snip]

>
> The disadvantage is that they are arbitrary, and convey almost no
useful
> information about the actual contents of the file.  And, to bring up
an
> odd anti-example, would you have us rename a Theora+Vorbis file from
> .ogv to .oga just because we deleted the Theora stream?  That would be
> like having a dozen extensions for PNG images just to indicate which
> chunks are used.

If file extensions are archaic, and convey almost no useful information
about the actual contents of the file, then why use file extensions at
all? Why not let people name files whatever they want, and just like
MIME types always figure it out?

I completely agree that using file extensions to tell an application
what type of file it is using is archaic, but saying the file extension
is useless for humans is an error in judgment. When you don't have an
application to tell you immediately what kind of file a file is, it is
extremely useful to have a file extension to at least give you a rough
guess.

If extensions weren't useful, they would no longer exist.

V/r,

Ryan Lane


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

body:
It's time for Chinese people to learn other language :)

Ilario

----Messaggio originale----
Da: shizhao at gmail.com
Data: 10.10.06 11.00
A: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Oggetto: Re: [Foundation-l] Unblock for English Wikiepdia in China

Yes. only zh wp blocked.

2006/10/10, mingli yuan <mingli.yuan at gmail.com>:
> Good news!!
>
> Many people reported that English Wikiepdia is unblocked in
China.
> We are waiting for more infomation about the unblock.
>
> User:Mountain
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Chinese wikipedia: http://zh.wikipedia.org/
My blog: http://talk.blogbus.com
CNBlog: http://blog.cnblog.org/weblog.html
Social Brain: http://www.socialbrain.org/default.asp
cnbloggercon: http://www.cnbloggercon.org/

[[zh:User:Shizhao]]
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Unblock for English Wikiepdia in China


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
Oskar wrote:
> Look, if a wikipedia user is uncivil, he's uncivil. We are all
> relatively intelligent people, we know when a person is uncivil,
> whether he uses hyperbole, sarcasm, satire, iambic pentameter, or
> whatever.

Your sarcastic use of the noble iambic pentameter in this
sentence is offensive to me as a poet.  Please be more civil
in future.

But seriously...

> A blanket ban on sarcasm seems outrageously misguided.
> I mean, show me an example of a user that's mean in a sarcastic way.
> Doesn't that ALREADY fall under WP:CIVIL?

I asked more or less this question on the talk page just now,
and the original proposer claims that it "is not a 'ban' on
sarcasm per se", but rather "an explanation that sarcasm is a
form of rudeness, as some people seem not to be aware of it".
He proposes to include it in "the list of 'minor offenses',
alongside other similar forms of incivility."

Given that inadvertent incivility due to the limitations of the
written medium is a constant problem, compounded by different
senses of humor, a mild reminder (e.g. on that list of minor
offenses) isn't necessarily inappropriate, pointing out that
sarcasm can be misinterpreted and can be uncivil if too biting
or if directed at a particular person.


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Spam, Office et al

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

> Danny did not make this decision in a vacuum. There were a series of
> emails over the course of six months leading up to this; there was also
> an IRC discussion lasting at least half an hour in which Danny discussed
> the details of those emails.

None of these were on the wiki, however, making those of us that were not
privy or aware of such discussions to view these as being in a vacuum.

> >
> AD-VER-TISE-MENT. Spam. Deletable under the new speedy deletion criteria
> for spam which Brad had made not long earlier.

Yes, an "advertisement" in their mind that had survived an AfD through the
community, a group of editors who believed that the article merited
inclusion. Thus, the spam should have been edited, period, not deleted as
it was.

This is the part people seem to be failing to grasp here from my end.
This wasn't some completely unknown product that no one ever saw, edited,
or AfD'd.  It would be entirely uncontroversial and no one would care in
the least if it were.  This was an article that had community approval,
and should have never gotten to this point.  Danny, who was working as
just another administrator in this case, decided that the consensus (you
know, the way we do things) didn't matter, and just acted.  Not a good
thing.

It's bad enough we rushed into a bad spam CSD policy.  It's worse when we
try to justify obviously poor decisions based around it.

-Jeff

--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 10/10/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's something about some en: admins making them explain everything
> in mind-numbingly excessive detail. Something that would take a simple

I'd love to go over some of these excessively wordy messages and trim
them. Especially all the ones that go, "You can do X at the [[whatever
page]]". Instead of just "Click [[whatever page|here]] to do X".

(if I were an admin) :)

Steve


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Absolutely amazing...

body:
I understood backlog to mean a horrible amount of work that cannot be done
by a few admins working in tandem in a single go. 100 seems to be a good
cut-off. But we should have things deleted before the cat hits that number.

I think backlogs in CSD are caused by one of three things:
1) Too little admins online to work on it.
2) Mass creation of deleteable articles after press attention.
3) Mistagging for speedy when it should be deleted with an alternative
procedure.

On 10/6/06, Rory Stolzenberg <rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Posted simultaneously at WT:RFA
>
> I just saw the current message above the backlog tag at CAT:CSD. It reads:
> <!-- Remove the comments around the line below this message (Adminbacklog)
> to add a backlog tag. To remove the backlog tag, put comments tags around
> it. Usually, the tag is added if there are 100 or more articles (or 200
> articles & images combined) in this category. -->
> When did it become acceptable to have 100 articles or 200 total things in
> CAT:CSD? Since we now have backlogs more often, that means we should raise
> the criteria for what is actually a backlog? Is this why we're
> unnecessarily
> raising our standards on RfA, because if we don't have as many "backlogs,"
> but still have just as many pages waiting to be processed, then we don't
> need as many admins? This is appalling. We might as well stop promoting
> admins and just delete the backlog tag, then we wouldn't have any
> "backlogs"
> and nobody would have to do anything! Wouldn't that be nice? Ugh. This is
> just silly. We need to stop dicking around and start actually being
> productive. We're here to run an encyclopaedia, not pretend we're doing so
> and accomplishing absolutely nothing.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: [Wikitech-l] Throttling rebuildall.php?

body:
On 10/6/06, Mike O <mikeo at operamail.com> wrote:
> I guess I'll have to ask the ISP why it happens. I can't think of any reason.

I don't know this script at all, but another general solution to this
class of problem is to split the script up so it indexes, say, 1000
articles per call. Then you could call it multiple times with a
command line parameter, like "rebuildall 0", then "rebuildall 1000"
etc.

Just in case that hadn't occurred to you :)

Steve


from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
> > What exactly is the disadvantage to using two different file extensions for
> > Ogg rather than one?
>
> The disadvantage is that they are arbitrary, and convey almost no useful
> information about the actual contents of the file.

Well I don't know about you, but being able to quickly and easily determine from filename alone whether something is a video or an
audio file is most definitely "useful information" to me.

> And, to bring up an
> odd anti-example, would you have us rename a Theora+Vorbis file from
> .ogv to .oga just because we deleted the Theora stream?

If you have a video + audio file, and you delete the video stream, then yes, it would make sense for the file extension to change
from the video file extension to the audio file extension.

> That would be
> like having a dozen extensions for PNG images just to indicate which
> chunks are used.

I don't care about PNG internal chunk encoding. Neither does 99.99% of the population. That's why PNG uses one file extension, not a
dozen. People care about things that affect them. The distinction that matters to users is audio-only versus video (with or without
audio). (Anything that falls outside that, most people don't care, *because it doesn't affect them* .)

Ultimately however this decision will be made collectively by the users of these formats converging on file extensions that work
well for most people, by people voting with their feet and thereby creating de-facto file-extension standards where formal ones do
not exist. And from what limited in-the-wild usage that I have seen of these formats (the MP3 and XviD/DivX formats are still
massively more popular) the trend does seem to be towards different file extensions for audio and video.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Should anons edit Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy?

body:
> Cheney Shill wrote:
> > Anons should not be editing policy.  As you point out, it
> > contributes little (nothing that couldn't be done with a
> > throw-away account) and just wastes admin time.  And may
> > even lead to the frustration that has been voiced on this
> > list by admins quitting wiki.  Utterly pointless.
>
> I see it as pointless too, but sure not as much that someone should
> construe a wiki-quitting reason out of this.
>
> It's just a waste of time to watch and revert these anon-policy changes.
> Yet another reason to remove these pages from one's own watchlist
> (another form of IAR ;-).
>
> It serves more as a honey-pot for vandals, with ensuing potential
> collateral damage caused by IP blocks.
>
> But it's probably not that important. I was just a bit astonished to see
> that we we cannot semi-protect the policy about semi-protection ;-)
>

(and WP:FULL should be fully protected! And WP:CSD should b<BZZZZZT> GAAAAH ow
that hurt)

I used to log in to edit the occasional meta-page, thinking I needed a Real
Pseudonym to be Taken Seriously. But then I tried it logged out, and found it
wasn't true, I don't get reverted (any more than I did before).

I'm actually pretty impressed that this is the case.

Regards,
Dan Mehkeri

(and WP:VAND should be vabnali<BZZZZZZZZT> GAAAAAAH alright sorry sorry)


from_name: Sebastian Moleski

body:
On 10/10/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2. Concerning comments on past fundraisings, not every donors of us
> didn't seem parts of editing community and some thought themselves not
> parts of the community but just visitors/users. Before starting a new
> fundraising campaign, we are better to remind whom we will ask a help.

Is this meant to imply that we should not look for donors who aren't
actively involved in our projects?

Sebastian Moleski


from_name: Parker Peters

body:
Responses inline:

On 10/6/06, Nacon Kantari <naconk at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Well, I've been watching this for a while, so I guess it's time for my
> side
> of the story.
>
> (apologies as this was copied from a chat transcript)
> He was originally blocked as an IP editor for making personal attacks in
> edit summaries
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Front_organization&diff=prev&oldid=76401860
> Then created an account to bypass 3RR
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Front_organization&diff=77587861&oldid=77587483
> was blocked and came on IRC contesting the block
> said that he didn't know who the IP editor was
> I did a /whois and it was the same IP as the IP editing the article
> [15:53] * Joins: NoLongerScieno (n=Mike at cpe-70-114-*-*.houston.res.rr.com)
> <IP removed by me for email, actual available>
> next weekend, he tried the same thing
> as [[User:XVidMan]]
> [19:47] * Parts: XVidman (n=Xvid at cpe-70-114-*-*.houston.res.rr.com) <IP
> removed by me for email, actual available (both are same)>
> [18:16] * Joins: ScienoSitter (n=James at cpe-70-114-*-*.houston.res.rr.com)
> <IP removed by me for email, actual available (different)>
>
> According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Enviroknot, this
> indef-blocked editor edits through houston roadrunner IP addresses.  This
> is
> what led me to block all of the accounts as obvious sockpuppets of
> [[User:Enviroknot]].  Granted, I may have been in error with the block
> messages, but I fully stand by the blocks.

In the first place: none of the accounts did you block as a "sockpuppet of
[[User:Enviroknot]]." Rather, as I check, you've blocked NoLongerScieno
indefinitely for "name..", Inshaneee blocked Xvidme first as a "sockpuppet
of Blainetologist" and then you reblocked as a "sockpuppet of
NoLongerScieno", and you've blocked ScienoSitter with a reason of
"(vandalism-only
accou{nt)" with a tag on the userpage claiming it's a sockpuppet of
NoLongerScieno.

>From looking at the user talk page, I see at least two incidents where you,
the blocking admin, removed an unblock request template from the user's
page.  I don't care what your excuses are, I don't care what your
explanation is: THAT was out of line, as was OmicronPersei8's removal of the
unblock template.

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

Now, if you're going to bring up the name "Enviroknot", as David Gerard did
earlier, I've been doing a little research back into the history. Since I
don't have access to the "secret evidence" side of CheckUser, I've only been
able to go by the contributions list, and I've yet to find a diff from the
Enviroknot account that breaks our rules, save for removing templates from
the userpage.

For that matter, I think the hoarding of "evidence" like this is bad.
Houston's a huge city. Roadrunner, like it or not, appears to be their
bigggest ISP, or at least one of the top 2 (SBC/Yahoo appear to be the
other; Roadrunner's cable modem, SBC is DSL, so they probably have plenty of
markets where only one or the other is available). It'd be like if we were
to take Cox Cable or AOL and declare "X vandal always has an IP from Cox,
therefore all new users from Cox are sockpuppets."

But that's the sort of problem we get, and it directly conflicts with AGF
and Be Bold too.

Now that you're on the defensive, you're completely willing to try to attach
the name "Enviroknot" to this based on IP address, even though from every
supposed "Enviroknot sock" I've been able to hunt down, there isn't an edit
on Scientology or even a reference to it to be found?

This may be incivil of me, but I think your belated accusation and attempt
to link that case to yours are very Bad Faith.

I also have a problem with your being the blocking admin in the first place,
since you were clearly by the page history spending your time edit warring
with these accounts.

As an ancillary topic, I see that the page for [[User:Enviroknot]] has had
the ban almost indefinitely extended (all the way through May now), but
there's a severe lack of diffs or any reason for the extensions, either on
the user page or on the affected arbcom page. The last one to have anything
close to proper notation is one from Demi, which states that
[[User:ForgetNever]] (who was editing on the arabs and anti-semitism page)
is a sockpuppet of KaintheScion as established by CheckUser... except that
as I understand how CU works, it shouldn't give any result of the sort for
the difference in time between when the accounts were killed and created
respectively.

The previous "extension", placed by Anonymous Editor (who I'll note seems to
have been involved in edit warring in the past, on the same contentious
topics) merely bumps it in March with no linking and no reporting
whatsoever.

The last properly recorded "extension" according to the arbcom discussion
page is to August 1, 2006. The last one up until Demi's which shows any
notation whatsoever is by DMcdevit, who put a link to his discussion diff
with Jayjg into the comment, but didn't bother to report it anywhere else.

Mirv's "addition" of "information" in question shows no evidence linking a
supposed sockpuppet, has no information notated to the arbcom filing as to
who the supposed sockpuppet was, and is damning in that we're again hoarding
up evidence to attack any new editor.

I can't tell if they're a sock, but unless there is some other secret
function of CheckUser going on we're not being told about, then the only
"match" is to a huge ISP in a huge city, editing on a similar topic, and
that dubious "match" is being used to push continual extensions to a block
in a case that I can't say for sure was even a sockpuppet to start with.

That's very poor form, people.

Also, Parker Peters, if you are IRC user pakaran, we did have a discussion
> about this.  If not, my apologies.

No, I'm not. But I did watch your discussion with the person as they came
in. Civility is important. Even when you think someone is acting in bad
faith, even if you think you are right, you need to be civil.

Your conduct was as far from civil as possible.

Parker


from_name: Dschwen

subject: [Wikitech-l] installed fonts for SVG->PNG

body:
Am Saturday, 7. October 2006 10:29 schrieb Dschwen:
> Hi,
> what Fonts are installed on the wikimedia servers that can be used by the
> automatic SVG->PNG conversion.
> A list could be helpful for people who create SVG illustrations. And since
> I heard a couple of complaints about 'poor font support' maybe the list can
> be extended?
> Best

Well, it would need a user with server access to answer this question. Anyone?
Since the current situation is apparently putting off qualified graphics
designer type people from using this fileformat (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Maps#SVG_has_poor_font_support)
I'd say looking into this matter wouldn't be completely useless.

By the way which SVG Converter are the wikipedia servers using? rsvg?

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dschwen
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dschwen
http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dschwen
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dschwen


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] RFA has gone weird

body:
geni wrote

> More arbcom members in future can be arranged.

You can bring a horse to water, but can you make it drink?

Charles

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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Sebastian Moleski wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 2. Concerning comments on past fundraisings, not every donors of us
>> didn't seem parts of editing community and some thought themselves not
>> parts of the community but just visitors/users. Before starting a new
>> fundraising campaign, we are better to remind whom we will ask a help.
>>
>
>
> Is this meant to imply that we should not look for donors who aren't
> actively involved in our projects?
>
> Sebastian Moleski
Hoi,
I would say that if we can target specific donors in a way in which it
makes sense to them, that would be better. I will ask some of the
organisations that I am involved in if they would be so kind and
consider donating things.. My request to them will be more personal than
the standard request for help .. Some of these potential donors may be
not active at all involved in any of the WMF projects.
Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
On 10/10/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Is this meant to imply that we should not look for donors who aren't
> > actively involved in our projects?
> >
> > Sebastian Moleski
> Hoi,
> I would say that if we can target specific donors in a way in which it
> makes sense to them, that would be better. I will ask some of the
> organisations that I am involved in if they would be so kind and
> consider donating things.. My request to them will be more personal than
> the standard request for help .. Some of these potential donors may be
> not active at all involved in any of the WMF projects.
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>

This is what I was trying to get at. I think there are a lot of potential
donors that know fo Wikimedia (mostly through Wikipedia I'd imagine) who
would be willing to support our cause even if they aren't active themselves.
We shouldn't hesitate to make use of that potential for the benefit of the
foundation and all its projects.

Regards,

Sebastian Moleski


from_name: Ligulem

body:
Cheney Shill wrote:
> Anons should not be editing policy.  As you point out, it
> contributes little (nothing that couldn't be done with a
> throw-away account) and just wastes admin time.  And may
> even lead to the frustration that has been voiced on this
> list by admins quitting wiki.  Utterly pointless.

I see it as pointless too, but sure not as much that someone should
construe a wiki-quitting reason out of this.

It's just a waste of time to watch and revert these anon-policy changes.
Yet another reason to remove these pages from one's own watchlist
(another form of IAR ;-).

It serves more as a honey-pot for vandals, with ensuing potential
collateral damage caused by IP blocks.

But it's probably not that important. I was just a bit astonished to see
that we we cannot semi-protect the policy about semi-protection ;-)

--Ligulem


subject: [WikiEN-l] wtf.

body:
On 10/10/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/10/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I was speaking on the level of the organisation, not the individuals who
> > make it up - over-PC, fear of anything which might offend, quick to
> > prosecute, &c.
> >
> > I find it's the lion tamers that tend to be grey and dull.
>
> >From what I've seen of the British government, they're a riot. I mean,
> come on, booing in the parliament! That's awesome! You should see how
> it is over here, it's all touchy-feely crap and bad architecture.

Getting back to the original point, there's actually far more scope for
sarcasm when you are forced to call someone "the honourable gentleman from
foo".  Sadly, they don't seem to utilise that opportunity as well as they
might.

Ian


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Insight into users' behaviour

references:
<452AE1BE.20901@solarsail.hcs.harvard.edu>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKCEDBJAAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<7c2a12e20610092336n6578989awb1e02082b2d4552e@mail.gmail.com>
	<452B6270.6010500@gmail.com>

body:
On 10/10/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> helpful. It is the English interface that is leading in this way and I
> am sure that the English community is less active in messages than any
> of the other language communities because they have not the same need to
> change things.

Check [[:en:Special:Allmessages]]. The messages are fiddled with lots and lots.

- d.


body:
Sebastian Moleski wrote:
> On 10/10/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> Is this meant to imply that we should not look for donors who aren't
>>> actively involved in our projects?
>>>
>>> Sebastian Moleski
>>>
>> Hoi,
>> I would say that if we can target specific donors in a way in which it
>> makes sense to them, that would be better. I will ask some of the
>> organisations that I am involved in if they would be so kind and
>> consider donating things.. My request to them will be more personal than
>> the standard request for help .. Some of these potential donors may be
>> not active at all involved in any of the WMF projects.
>> Thanks,
>>     GerardM
>>
>>
>
> This is what I was trying to get at. I think there are a lot of potential
> donors that know fo Wikimedia (mostly through Wikipedia I'd imagine) who
> would be willing to support our cause even if they aren't active themselves.
> We shouldn't hesitate to make use of that potential for the benefit of the
> foundation and all its projects.
>
> Regards,
>
> Sebastian Moleski
Hoi,
The only thing you have to be careful about is HOW YOU ASK IT. You can
not say that you are Wikimedia Foundation. You are not. You should also
only approach those organisations you know personally. When you start
sending mails or e-mails in the dark, you are in effect spamming. This
is something you should do only when you /do /represent the WMF
officially or one of it's chapters.

I have seen a mailing that was not either by the WMF or a chapter and it
gave me a sinking feeling because imho it made it hard for either WMF or
the Dutch chapter to ask for money. You need to be careful.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources: problems with [[WP:RS]]

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote

> The problem here is that we have two reliabilities in play.

<snip>

> The second is using reliability as the latest code for notability, In
> this case, a standard for notability that is flagrantly different
> from the practical standard used in articles is used as a cover for
> deleting articles, often being used to ignore the numeric consensus
> on AfDs because [[WP:RS]] is cited in [[WP:V]], essentially giving it
> a pseudo-policy status, despite its deep flaws.

Deciding notability on the basis of verifiability is very far from a panacea. I wish people understood that it is faute de mieux, holding a newspaper over your head in a cloudburst in the absence of an umbrella.

Charles

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from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Comments on the new wikipedias

body:
2006/10/9, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:

> > If that is the case, then isn't using it against our policies of only
> > using open source?
> Hoi,
> This is like saying: I do not want to use the kilo or the Ampere because
> you are not interpret in a way that you see fit. Open Souce is about
> SOFTWARE. But ISO-639 are about STANDARDS it is no use if it is not used
> as a standard ie as a given.

We use free standards as well as free software. Standards that may not
be used in some way are not free.

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


body:
On 10/10/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 19:49:39 -0500, "Parker Peters"
> <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >> Yes, I read it.  I also reviewed the contribution history, which is
> >> after all the main thing.
>
> >As did I. And I came to the opposite conclusion. It's my opinion that the
> >edits might have been poorly phrased but they met the standard of RS, V,
> and
> >were consistent with writings in other articles we have regarding the
> same
> >subject matter.
>
> And if you read Naconkantari's recent post you'll see that the IP
> address was the same each time.

And, even if a sockpuppet of a "name.." editor, the important thing is to
assume good faith and at least try to get a new editor to respect others and
policy on wikipedia.

As the edits didn't rise to the level of vandalism (and still don't,
regardless of what you or Naconkantari who was edit warring will try to
claim), the blocking is still out of line.

>The diffs were forwarded to Jimbo directly in a private email, before his
> >public request for diffs. I'm waiting for his private response on the
> >matter.
>
> So we have one example which is a righteous block and one about which
> you are prepared to make vague arm-waving assertions but not present
> the evidence here.

No, I'm respectfully waiting Jimbo's wishes, though that's since gone by a
bit now that Naconkantari has posted, and it ought to be easy enough for you
to look at the contributions lists and page history yourself instead of
violating [[WP:DENSE]].

I think I'm through with this.

You appear to have been for a while and just trying to make some sad game of
a real issue.

Parker


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Re: Re: [Wikitech-l] Insight into users'
	behaviour

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>There's something about some en: admins making them explain everything
>
>
>in mind-numbingly excessive detail. Something that would take a simple
>subject-verb object sentence gets turned into three sentences with
>four dangling modifiers and two words over four syllables. Just in
>case someone didn't get a TERRIBLY IMPORTANT detail shoved in their
>face right there, y'know. Large chunks of Mediawiki: space need
>rewriting in Comprehensible.
>
Nothing is more difficult to explain than a simple concept.

Ec


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fleshlight

body:
On 10/10/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> PS. I count "being mentioned on the Something Awful forums" towards
> notability the same way as "being mentioned on Slashdot".

That wasn't a link to the forums.

--
geni


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
The ISO standards are a bit more than just language standards. They are
absolutely free to use them as is. You are not allowed to represent codes
that you make up that confuse with what is in the standard. For ISO-639 this
is absolutely reasonable given that there are over 7000 codes to start off
with.

So if you refuse to use standards that you can not change start telling
people in the city how many bunder your father has on his farm. You will
find that many do not have an idea how wide an area that is.

Free is a relative thing. For some things it makes no sense at all to have
them Free as in you can change it in any which way. The standard
organisations have several ways in which they can be influenced. You can
discuss with them about language issues and, that is what the language
subcommittee of the WMF hopes to do. In the mean time, you have to realise
that the ISO standards are an integral part of how the world wide web works.
When you decide that you will not use these standards, I am afraid your
computer will not be able to communicate with the Internet. Standards are
standards for a reason.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 10/10/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2006/10/9, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> > > If that is the case, then isn't using it against our policies of only
> > > using open source?
> > Hoi,
> > This is like saying: I do not want to use the kilo or the Ampere because
> > you are not interpret in a way that you see fit. Open Souce is about
> > SOFTWARE. But ISO-639 are about STANDARDS it is no use if it is not used
> > as a standard ie as a given.
>
> We use free standards as well as free software. Standards that may not
> be used in some way are not free.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>