from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: Requesting Sysop Status

body:
On Wednesday 13 November 2002 02:50 pm, TMC wrote:
> I see that within minutes of my requesting sysop
> status, Maveric149 rushed to the
> [[Wikipedia:Administrators]] page to alter the
> admission policy.
>
> Specifically, he added the word "trusted" to the
> criteria.  This word has not been part of the policy
> since August 12th, when it was removed by Lee Daniel
> Crocker.

Normally I wouldn't have seen your post until much later since I get the
digest (which are 3-5 a day now!). But while at work I peeked at the archives
and saw your post which brought to my attention that there is an obvious
error in the policy; the word "trusted" had been replaced by a redundant
"active". I'm sure this was a mistake by LDC since it is my understanding
that this is in still the policy -  in fact "trust" is implicit in having
extra account privileges such as deleting pages and banning IPs.

> I interpret this action to imply that Maveric149 does
> not trust me, and intends to use his post facto
> manipulation of the policy to oppose my promotion.

Well I don't trust you but I was not manipulating policy as a way to oppose
your application -- aritcle histories make this impossible anyway. If
anything, your own words and actions have assassinated your character for
you. The below text that you posted simply pointed out an error that needed
to be fixed;

"Wikipedia policy is to grant this access liberally
to anyone who has been an active Wikipedia
contributor for a while and is generally a known and
active member of the community."

Notice "...active Wikipedia contributor for a
while and is generally a known and active..."

The two "actives" jumped right off the page as being wrong. So I fixed it to
reflect the original wording and still current intent.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requesting Sysop Status

body:
On Wed, 2002-11-13 at 18:06, Tom Parmenter wrote:
>
> We see too much of that stupid ugly name already.  If sysops are
> supposed to be trusted, then that lets you right out, because I don't
> trust you.

That's why TMC is trying to score points by pointing out that Mav just
added "trusted" to the explicit guidelines only after TMC requested
sysop status.

And if I was scoring, I would give points to TMC for that. I just think
this is a tedious game, especially since he hasn't asserted what his
principles are for antagonizing people like me, Anthere and David
spector.

Actually, I can understand why people would want to antagonize me, but
really, there are more focused ways of doing that.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Censorship and bowdlerization

body:
I'd like to point out that my original certification proposal would allow a
team to be formed to certify only articles deemed not to hurt certain
sensibilities. Anyone who shares these sensibilities could add the team to his
"trusted teams" list and decide to view only articles certified in this fashion.
(As any censorship expert will tell you, whitelists are the only effective
filters.)

While I'm against all types of censorship and consider it quite dangerous to
censor sexual information in an encyclopedia, if a government mandates the
use of such filters, this should be fought on the political and legal level,
and not within Wikipedia. If Saudi-Arabia wants its own Wikipedia, it's
probably better if they have one than if they have none at all.

The team proposal is much more neutral than any "tagging" feature. For
example, another team might as well decide to select only the most instructive
articles about sexual behavior etc. I would personally strongly oppose any
attempt to create an exclusionary filter specifically for one type of subject
("family filter" etc.). But the team proposal seems to have no disadvantages.

See
http://www.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006816.html
and replies.

As for usernames, we might need a policy there eventually, I consider TMC to
be a borderline case. Individual RecentChanges filtering would also be
helpful, if just to exclude bots from being listed.

Instead of complaining about the lack any of this, you can help fix it on
wikitech-l.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: POV accusations

body:
On Wednesday 13 November 2002 02:50 pm, Christopher Mahan wrote:
> --- Bridget [name omitted for privacy reasons] <lapollutionestsimauvaise at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Its interesting how POV all these accusations against
> > me are. Why, apparently Ive been harrassing mav AND
> > April! Dear me, I can't remember having any
> > communication with April besides a talk page message
> > of
> >
> > "Instead of simply reverting all my changes would you
> > care to explain what is wrong with them?"
> >
> > As for mav...Isn't he harrassing me? I'm not the one
> > that flings around petty insults.
>
> Lir,

Jump up and down and pretend to be the victim all you want Lir, but your
inability to be civil and play nice is very evident with your constant "my
way or the highway" approach that often leads to edit wars. Heck your own
user page states your own contempt for the "inferior lifeforms" that
contribute to Wikipedia;

"I am not a nice person and few on wikipedia like me. This is because I am the
world's foremost authority. People are generally not happy when they meet
somebody who knows the great truths. I am thus extremely egocentric and
despicable. I act like a 14 year old child because I never want to grow up. I
view most humans as inferior lifeforms."

Chris Mahan wrote;
> You've heard the one about not feeding the trolls? it's a funny one.
>
> Also, you know what it means to "operate under the radar"? It's a
> military term used by low flying aircraft to achieve their objective
> (reaching target and bombing it in general) without alerting enemy
> defenses and triggering response. It's also used nowadays by
> companies that operate in stealth mode, meaning without publicly
> disclosing their activities. It is used to be able to operate without
> interference from pesky things like reporters and analysts.
>
> So, don't feed the troll and operate under the radar... It works for
> me. I accomplish my goals without interference. :)

Perhaps you should consult a dictionary on what a troll actually is before you
use the term. An internet troll is a person who is disruptive to just be
disruptive. They don't intend to contribute to conversations but only intend
to start flame wars.

I was responding to a post by another Wikipedian stating that he regretted
lifting the ban on Lir. I concured and added some detail on Lir's current
activities. After that I went on with an idea on a new boilerplate that in
effect makes people promise to abide by our rules in order to contribute to
our website. That is hardly unproductive or "trollish".

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jonathan Walther

subject: [Wikitech-l] Another pair of eyes

body:
On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 09:53:41PM -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>The following SQL statements search the Recent Changes tables.
>Unfortunately, without subqueries it gets cumbersome.

Ah, and that is the nub of it. MySQL still doesn't have subqueries.

Ed, can you do a dump of a freshly created wikipedia database and let me
see it?

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Oh, go bother someone else.

Steve Callaway wrote:

>It's much easier just to delete the pages you don't like or which don't suit
>your agenda, though, isn't it Magnus?
>
>Steve Callaway
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at epost.de>
>To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>; "sifter-l" <sifter-l at nupedia.com>
>Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 5:06 PM
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Censorship and bowdlerization
>
>
>
>
>>Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>I like the idea expressed by Anthere and others of finding a way to
>>>
>>>
>shield tender eyes from "adult" stuff. A significant minority of users
>believe that young people of a certain age should not be exposed to certain
>materials.
>
>
>>>This is totally without prejudice to the debate over whether sexuality is
>>>
>>>
>"sinful", just a reflection of the desire of many parents and educators to
>introduce some subjects step by step, keyed to the maturity level of the
>learner.
>
>
>>>Someday, we plan to make the Wikipedia available on CD-ROM for schools
>>>
>>>
>and libraries that don't have T-1 lines (or the patience to tolerate the
>"lag" problem). It would be very useful to allow a parent or educator to
>filter out a few articles such as [[****-piercing]] or [[fisting]] or
>whatever.
>
>
>>>
>>>
>>Basically, I agree that articles might (should?) be tagged as "adult",
>>as long as the default access for everyone is "no filter".
>>Likewise, as I have suggested long, long ago, and as has been suggested
>>again several times, articles might also be tagged with "categories"
>>(philosophy, biology, etc.), and by type (biography, city, etc.).
>>But, if I look at our current interface, it is already loaded with links
>>and information *about* the article, not to mention the article itself.
>>
>>Adding filters, categories, and types might be just too much for the
>>average user who passes through our humble site. The "hard core" of
>>users/writers would no doubt manage, though.
>>
>>But, the three options above might be just perfect for the "stable"
>>wikipedia version that Larry proposed. Contents there will be controlled
>>and checked anyway, so a little categorization on the side will be
>>managable to the reviewers. The readers there would see categories and
>>filters, but things like editing, talk, and all the tons of links needed
>>for an "editable" encyclopedia will not be there, so there's plenty of
>>
>>
>room.
>
>
>>Beside, we wouldn't want to give a CD-ROM with a current wikipedia dump
>>to a school anyway. The reviewed version would be perfect for that.
>>
>>Magnus
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] please help; Postgres

body:
On Wed, 2002-11-13 at 17:48, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> Brion, can you run the PHP script that makes and initializes a new
> Wikipedia database, and then run the "dumpdb" program to dump it
> as plain-text SQL?  If I could have that, it would help immensely in the
> Postgres porting work.

Sure...

http://www.wikipedia.org/tarballs/emptywiki-sampledump.sql

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] please help; Postgres

body:
On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 07:46:11PM -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:
>On Wed, 2002-11-13 at 17:48, Jonathan Walther wrote:
>> Brion, can you run the PHP script that makes and initializes a new
>> Wikipedia database, and then run the "dumpdb" program to dump it
>> as plain-text SQL?  If I could have that, it would help immensely in the
>> Postgres porting work.
>
>Sure...
>
>http://www.wikipedia.org/tarballs/emptywiki-sampledump.sql

Brion, many thanks!

Jonathan

--
                     Geek House Productions, Ltd.

  Providing Unix & Internet Contracting and Consulting,
  QA Testing, Technical Documentation, Systems Design & Implementation,
  General Programming, E-commerce, Web & Mail Services since 1998

Phone:   604-435-1205
Email:   djw at reactor-core.org
Webpage: http://reactor-core.org
Address: 2459 E 41st Ave, Vancouver, BC  V5R2W2
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from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requesting Sysop Status

body:
On Wednesday 13 November 2002 15:13, Throbbing Monster Cock wrote:
> I am a known and active member of the community.

Known to whom from where else? When I asked for sysophood, LDC (IIRR)
recommended making me one because he knew me from Lojbangug, as do Brion
Vibber, Jay Kominek, and maybe some others.

phma


from_name: koyaanisqatsi at nupedia.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requesting Sysop Status

body:
You Wrote:
>We see too much of that stupid ugly name already.  If sysops are
>supposed to be trusted, then that lets you right out, because I don't
>trust you.
>
>Tom Parmenter
>Ortolan88

Helga was quite active also, and supposedly would have qualified for
sysop-hood also.  I think trust is clearly a component we are looking
for, and I for one also don't trust you.  I regard your goals as
mischievous rather than straightforward.  I might be wrong--I've been
wrong before, quite publicly, on occasion.

kq


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] LAG

body:
Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 06:38:41PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> >I'm always suspicious when someone makes the assertion that Language or
> >Database X is vastly inferior to Language or Database Y, especially when
>
> I'm not saying Postgres would result in dramatic speedups; it's about
> equal to MySQL in speed. But I believe the slowdown caused by locks
> WOULD go away.  I agree with you that better indexing could speed things

This is just like an edit war, so let's apply the NPOV.  That is,
let's agree that we are working towards a faster, smoother operation
of the system, regardless of which combination of tools eventually
achieve that goal.  Before we have tried Postgres, let's refrain from
claiming that it has "obvious" advantages or drawbacks.  Otherwise we
risk getting entrenched in prestigious preferences, and few things can
be more destructive.

To assess whether an alternative solution really is better or worse, I
think we should begin by measuring the current performance, then
change, then measure again.  Luckily, I've been running some
response time measurements continuously since we were running the
phase II software. And yes, it has gotten worse in the last 3-4 weeks
than before.

 Week        Percentage of samples when [[Chemistry]]
 starting    took more than 5 seconds to retrieve
 ---------   ----------------------------------------
 13 May 02    9%
 20 May 02    8%
 27 May 02    8%
  3 Jun 02   11%
 10 Jun 02    8%
 17 Jun 02   n/a
 24 Jun 02   n/a
  1 Jul 02   n/a
  8 Jul 02   13%
 15 Jul 02    8%
 22 Jul 02    4% <-- move to phase III software, all gets faster
 29 Jul 02    5%
  5 Aug 02    0%
 12 Aug 02   n/a
 19 Aug 02   n/a
 26 Aug 02    1%
  2 Sep 02   n/a
  9 Sep 02   n/a
 16 Sep 02   n/a
 23 Sep 02   n/a <-- n/a means my measurement script was broken
 30 Sep 02    1%
  7 Oct 02    3% <-- still pretty good
 14 Oct 02    6% <-- worse
 21 Oct 02   17% <-- bad
 28 Oct 02   12% <-- bad
  4 Nov 02    8% <-- bad
 11 Nov 02   11% (Mon-Wed)

(Yes, in Sweden weeks start on Monday)

Let's get those numbers below 5% again.

My script only tries to retrieve (read) pages.  It doesn't try
to submit updates.  At regular intervals, it accesses a URL for a
page, and outputs a log of the date and time, the URL, the HTTP status
code, the number of bytes retrieved, and the amount of elapsed time.
If you have a better idea for how to extract useful conclusions from
such data, please let me know.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] LAG


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] unproductive posts

body:
Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> writes:

> You have already been told that you can use your user page or Meta for most
> of your POV needs. So this is hardly censorship when we offer you valid
> forums for this.

And even if we didn't it *still* wouldn't be censorship.

There is a lot of twaddle talked about censorship,
Lets go to the OED.

CENSOR (n)
   a. transf. One who exercises official supervision over morals and conduct.
   b. spec. An official in some countries whose duty it is to inspect all
    books, journals, dramatic pieces, etc., before publication, to secure that
    they shall contain nothing immoral, heretical, or offensive to the
    government. More explicitly dramatic censor, film censor.

You see that word *official*?  Its important.
What it means is this  *Only governments can censor*

If I take a book I've written to a publishers and they say "No, we'll pass"
                                                   - thats not censorship.
If I print a magazine and a large chain of newsvendors refuse to stock it
                                                   - thats not censorship.
If I take a send a letter to the Times and they don't run it
                                                   - thats not censorship.
If I publish a webpage and the webhosts say "we don't want to host this"
                                                   -  thats not censorship.
If I write a wikipedia article and Jimbo, or the community say "No thanks"
                                                   -  thats not censorship.

As someone very wisely said -- just yesterday :
          "It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia"

Now, before people get their panties in a knot over the "repression"[0] of
the majority, they should be forced to repeat that 3 times.
          "It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia"

Once more for luck?
          "It's not a human or civic right to edit wikipedia"

If someone has the ability to edit wikipedia taken away from them, we're not
harming them, we're not infringing on any right that they innately possess
and we cannot -- by definition -- be censoring them.

[0] And what a feeble middle class repression to choose to kick against.
    If you're so righteously angry, go channel it into something worthwhile
    -- like child poverty -- rather than defending your non-existent "right"
    to talk about politics on someone else's bandwidth.
--
Gareth Owen
"I love the wikipedia, but sometimes I get the impression that certain people
 on this list are very bored, and so argue about something when there's really
 bugger all to argue about. Edit some articles, for god's sake." -- LP


from_name: Imran Ghory

body:
On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, Anthere wrote:
>
> Indeed it is very dangerous. For how would we decide
> which articles are to be put in the list of "to
> filter" or not "to filter"?

Using ICRA/RSCAI labelling ?

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikitech-l] Another pair of eyes

body:
I have started to take a look at the database structure. I think
eventually I'll be able to come up with some ideas for speeding things
up. So far I've just been playing with the data.

The following SQL statements search the Recent Changes tables.
Unfortunately, without subqueries it gets cumbersome.

-- Changes by multiple users
select rc_user_text, rc_title, rc_comment from recentchanges where
rc_user in (4369, 188, 2376) order by rc_timestamp desc limit 999

-- Changes by sysops
select rc_user_text, rc_title, rc_comment from recentchanges where
rc_user in (100, 1078, 1104, 1123, 1131, 1132, 1300, 150, 166, 17, 188,
2, 24, 29, 30, 300, 31, 3113, 3362, 34, 369, 38, 39, 4, 43, 488, 51,
513, 584, 59, 62, 66, 68, 733, 83, 86, 90, 94, 95, 97, 99) order by
rc_timestamp limit 999

Other SQL statements:

-- blocked IP's sorted by blocker
select user_name, ipb_address, ipb_reason, ipb_timestamp from ipblocks,
user where ipb_by = user_id order by user_name, ipb_timestamp

-- Anonymous edits
select cur_user_text, cur_title, cur_comment from cur where cur_user=0
order by cur_timestamp desc limit 99

-- Vandal track
select rc_user_text, rc_title, rc_comment from recentchanges where
rc_user_text = '213.229.14.90' order by rc_timestamp desc

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Intlwiki-l] russian wikipedia

body:
elian wrote:
> Brion set up Russian wikipedia at http://ru.wikipedia.org/ with UTF-8
> encoding.

How do we make language links to it?  Will UTF-8 work from the English
Wikipedia?

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Family filters are not NPOV

body:
On 13 Nov 2002, Erik Moeller wrote:

> > Does this mean the NPOV is violated if a meta tag is inserted
> > to allow parents to filter out detailed specific information
> > and blueprints on bomb building?
>
> YES! By establishing a standard of what information may be desired to be
> filtered by parents and which information may not, we are grossly
> violating NPOV. What if a hypothetical parent wanted their children to be
> isolated from religious ideas?

Then they could do so easily by filtering out pages with the words
God/Demon/Christ/occult/belief. However this will also get pages which
aren't about religous ideas filtered.

Labelling isn't to let people filter more, it's to let people filter less
by letting them use more advanced methods (Labelling as opposed to
keyword search).

In the long term we want some generalized categorization system, but in
the short term we should move towards that goal by providing
categorization where it is most needed.

Imran
--
http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran


from_name: Steve Callaway

body:
Having read some of your comments and the arrogance which you have responded
to a number of people who have expressed legitimate concerns about your
actions, I would about as much consider trusting you with sysop status as I
would consider inviting George W. Bush around for supper, i.e. not very.

rgds

Steve Callaway [sjc]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Throbbing Monster Cock" <thromoco at yahoo.com>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 8:51 PM
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Requesting Sysop Status

> > I am requesting sysop status on Wikipedia.
>
> I see that within minutes of my requesting sysop
> status, Maveric149 rushed to the
> [[Wikipedia:Administrators]] page to alter the
> admission policy.
>
> Specifically, he added the word "trusted" to the
> criteria.  This word has not been part of the policy
> since August 12th, when it was removed by Lee Daniel
> Crocker.
>
> I interpret this action to imply that Maveric149 does
> not trust me, and intends to use his post facto
> manipulation of the policy to oppose my promotion.
>
> Nonetheless, my request for Sysop status still stands.
>  My edits have been useful contributions to Wikipedia.
>  I have not been involved in any edit wars, with the
> possible exception of the "Hitler's Balls" issue which
> was (and is) a difference of opinion regarding the
> copyright status of the text in question.
>
> I fit the written guidelines prior to Maveric149's
> edits.  Since I can further attest that I consider
> myself "trusted", I continue to fit the guidelines
> after his edits.
>
> --TMC
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> U2 on LAUNCH - Exclusive greatest hits videos
> http://launch.yahoo.com/u2
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
> Does this mean the NPOV is violated if a meta tag is inserted
> to allow parents to filter out detailed specific information
> and blueprints on bomb building?

YES! By establishing a standard of what information may be desired to be
filtered by parents and which information may not, we are grossly
violating NPOV. What if a hypothetical parent wanted their children to be
isolated from religious ideas? While I consider censorship of any form a
human rights violation, I can certainly understand protecting children
from religion better than protecting children from pornography. There is
no scientific evidence whatsoever that pornography is harmful to children.
Religion, on the other hand, clearly is.

A triple X standard, a standard of "tags", whatever you come up with,
*will* be a violation of NPOV. It must not, under any circumstances,
happen. Otherwise I will campaign to replace the tripple X with a triple +
standard to indicate the degree of religious content.

The only option I see where the violation of NPOV can be avoided is the
system of grouped certification I describe. Then anybody can choose the
certification/filtering scheme they prefer.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: tarquin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requesting Sysop Status

body:
Throbbing Monster Cock wrote:

>I am requesting sysop status on Wikipedia.
>
I think you're just trying to divert our attention from the suggested
policy to prevent vulgarity in usernames.

>I have been active on Wikipedia since October 15th.
>
>I am a known and active member of the community.
>
Yes, and you have cause (at least) one contributor to leave: Isis.

>Sample pages I have contributed to:
>
>[[Flag of Germany]]
>[[Rainbow Flag]]
>[[Flag of Oregon]]
>[[Oregon]]
>[[Michael Bellesiles]]: gun culture guru: your specialist POV it seems
>[[Sea of Cortez]]: you've added 17 words
>

I remain unconvinced that you're not here to cause trouble.
Changing your username might be a start.

>
>
>
>


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] LAG

body:
On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 08:25:22PM +0100, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Jonathan Walther wrote:
> > On Mon, Nov 11, 2002 at 06:38:41PM -0500, The Cunctator wrote:
> > >I'm always suspicious when someone makes the assertion that Language or
> > >Database X is vastly inferior to Language or Database Y, especially when
> >
> > I'm not saying Postgres would result in dramatic speedups; it's about
> > equal to MySQL in speed. But I believe the slowdown caused by locks
> > WOULD go away.  I agree with you that better indexing could speed things
>
> This is just like an edit war, so let's apply the NPOV.  That is,
> let's agree that we are working towards a faster, smoother operation
> of the system, regardless of which combination of tools eventually
> achieve that goal.  Before we have tried Postgres, let's refrain from
> claiming that it has "obvious" advantages or drawbacks.  Otherwise we
> risk getting entrenched in prestigious preferences, and few things can
> be more destructive.

What about trying other backends of MySQL ?
It has at least two other than the default one - afair BerkeleyDB and
InnoDB.

It shouldn't be much work as it's still MySQL and we could get some
data on which of the three is the best for Wikipedia without much
work.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] LAG


subject: [Wikipedia-l] unproductive posts

body:
On Wed, 2002-11-13 at 15:20, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Lars wrote:
> > Was this written by the real Ed Poor?  It is so stupid, that I must
> > assume that the SMTP header was forged.  I don't want to be on a
> > mailing list with people this stupid.  I would suggest that Ed just
> > pack up his things and leave the project for ever, or we should make
> > an investigation into who really sent that message.
>
> SJC wrote:
> > It's much easier just to delete the pages you don't like or which don't
> > suit your agenda, though, isn't it Magnus?
> >
> > Steve Callaway
>
> Stop it you two. Lars, Ed was trying to make a valid point and you repay that
> with a stupid, unproductive and unnecessarily combative response. Granted it
> wasn't the most productive way to accomplish his ends but Ed is one of our
> best, if not the best, community builders and he deserves much more respect
> than that. Your, comment, on the other hand, only tends to tear down
> community.

Mav, lashing out at Lars is not appropriate. Ed Poor's whole F.A.
charade could quite reasonably be considered stupid and unproductive--or
worse. Even if you don't think so, you should certainly not attack
people for stating so.

Ed may be good a building community but he's also very capable of doing
stupid and silly things. He deserves respect for the good he does, but
disapprobation for the stupid things he does. And I suspect Ed would be
the first to agree. Judge not the man, but his actions.

Lars may have gone too far in saying that Ed should leave, but it's not
entirely irrational.


from_name: elian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Requesting Sysop Status

body:
Hello Throbbing Monster Cock,

Throbbing Monster Cock <thromoco at yahoo.com> writes:

> I am requesting sysop status on Wikipedia.

Why?

greetings,
elian
--
heidegger, n. A ponderous device for boring through thick layers of
substance. "It's buried so deep we'll have to use a heidegger."


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: TMC.

body:
I wrote a hideously long email, then realized it was hideously long, so
I've put it up at meta.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMC%27s_sysop_request


subject: [Wikipedia-l] unproductive posts

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> Stop it you two. Lars, Ed was trying to make a valid point and you repay that
> with a stupid, unproductive and unnecessarily combative response. Granted it
> wasn't the most productive way to accomplish his ends but Ed is one of our
> best, if not the best, community builders and he deserves much more respect

To me this sounded like a police force that starts to kill civilians
in order to get more funds to protect the citizens better.  It's not
the way we build communities around where I live.  The point that Ed
succeeded to make with me was that he doesn't like Wikipedia and
doesn't want to be part of any community.  And the better way to make
that point would be to simply leave.  Maybe I just misunderstood
everything.  If so, I still haven't understood what's going on here.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  tel +46-70-7891609
  http://aronsson.se/ http://elektrosmog.nu/ http://susning.nu/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] What the front page of the wikipedia needs is a warning for children

body:
Karen wrote:
>> The front page should have a note on it in the introduction, saying
>> something like 'While the wikipedia does not condone obscenity,
articles
>> may contain adult concepts and language unsuitable for children.
Please
>> supervise your children's access.' or whatever...

Erik replied:
>I strongly object against this. This implies that the concept of
obscenity
>is generally shared, which it isn't. If you get your obscenity
warning label,
>I want my "religious content" warning label. And someone else may
want a
>warning label that Wikipedia may be offensive to people having
suffered from
>certain traumas. And maybe the creationists and anti-abortionists
want one, too.

I am not interested in endorsing RSAC in any way (or any other of the
clumsy inaccurate tools used to protect people from information on
breast cancer, anarchism, political prisoners, etc.)  Software IMHO
is not a substitute for parenting, which of course includes answering
difficult questions (lest you want them to find answers from someone
else, which children invariably will).

kq


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] What the front page of the wikipedia needs
 is a warning for children

body:
All comprehensive web sites allow access to material unsuitable for
children as well as copious offensive material. In addition to
encyclopedias, this is true of almost all bookstores and libraries and
internet portals. A short warning is appropriate.  But the problem is not
deliberate inclusion of offensive material; it's just a phenomenon which
comes with the territory. One can create a child safe and friendly site,
but many seeming inoxious links must be excluded.

Fred


body:
Mike Irwin wrote (for full text see beneath):

> If a minor has not established sufficient trust/respect
> with his or her guardian to be trusted online without censorship or
> spy software enabled ..... then perhaps it would be better (for
> the project and possibly for the child) if they were not participating
> at Wikipedia?

You could quite easily extend that argument, replacing "guardian" with
government and "child" with "people". Just a thought.

Steve Callaway

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net>
To: <wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 11:51 PM
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Censorship and bowdlerization

> Zoe wrote:
>
> > If we don't do this, we're going to find that Wikipedia is being
filtered out by dumb parental control software and the protective filters in
place with such search engines as Google.  Then of what use will it be to
anyone?
> > Zoe
>
> It will be useful to anyone who does not install dumb parental
> control software or rely on censoring search engines.
>
> Please consider this:
>
> If a minor has not established sufficient trust/respect
> with his or her guardian to be trusted online without censorship or
> spy software enabled ..... then perhaps it would be better (for
> the project and possibly for the child) if they were not participating
> at Wikipedia?
>
> This might discreetly eliminate a lot of problem children
> which we could do without .... unless part of our purpose is to
> help civilize or educate problem children?
>
> That pesky target audience or customer profile thingy again.
>
> Regards,
> > _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

body:
The username "Throbbing Monster Cock" is vandalism and will be
deleted.  This is an unusual situation, in that the vandalism is *in
the name* rather than *in the article*.  This would be cute if it
weren't so juvenile and stupid.

If someone wants to argue that this is anything other than a cornball
juvenile stunt, feel free.  But good luck with that.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] test

body: test


subject: [Wikitech-l] Another pair of eyes

body:
> Ed, can you do a dump of a freshly created wikipedia database and let
me
> see it?
>
> Jonathan

No, I can't. I only joined the mailing list this week, and I have
neither Developer rights nor the knowledge of how to do a Wikipedia
dump. (I do know what a dump is, though.)

Regretfully,

Ed Poor


from_name: Chris Bourke

subject: [Wikitech-l] logarithmic approximations

body:
I'm working on a project right now using GNU's multiprecision library.
However, and unfortunately, there are no library functions to do any
logarithmic functions.

I'm merely trying to get a ceiling (or floor) or the lg (base 2) of a
large integer.  Of course, I could always send it into a loop requiring
O(lg^3(n)) to get it, but I know there must be a way to do a simpler
approximation, especially since I don't need very high precision.

I asked this question of some math associates and they suggested the usual
taylor series, etc.  However, I am unable to find a satisfactory series
for a large n (taylor only works for x<1, right?).

Any help would be appreciated.

-----------------------------------------------

Chris Bourke
cbourke at cse.unl.edu
402-432-0795


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Personal categories.

body:
> --- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net>
>> > Anthere wrote:
>> > > We could put tmc in the offensive xx category ?
>> > This would presumably censor his home page.
>> > The issue of his signature scattered through
>> > random talk pages, the recent log, other
>> > meta pages and mailing lists would remain.
>> If user names were to be censored, and in particular tmc one
>> 1) recent changes will only last a couple of days
>I am uncertain what you mean here unless you are saying
>tmc would be censored from the recent changes by correctly
>selecting the filter criteria. Excellent!
>> 2) maybe some technical magic can take care of
>> converting his full name in tmc in talk pages and such
>> ?
>IMO Poor approach. It creates more work for the
>developers than for a random nit wit. This would
>leave us vulnerable to standard Denial of Service
>tactics and possibly exhaust our limited developer
>resources to the detriment of the project.

It is a poor approach if done on a real time basis, as a filtering tool. But not to clean up a database "spoiled" by an offending name (in article and page history (contributions), and in user and talk pages).

Hence, a one shot query on tables and conversion might be a good option. Of course, this requires tmc agreement, and of course, that is changing *History*. Big brother/sister Wikipedia and Thought Police. Brrrr.

>> 3) mailing lists and meta pages may have no reason of
>> being censored. It seems that most offended by X
>> issues are concerned by kids looking at the
>> questionable names. Mailing list and meta are for
>> building teams, not encyclopedic articles. So, not
>> supposed to be read by kids.
>This presumes that the only value minors can extract from the Wikipedia site or community is
>the NPOV articles.

Hum. How would you define minors ?

Is it juridical minority you are thinking of ? If so, juridical minority is not set at the same age in every country. I am still abashed by the usa situation where kids are big enough to elect ...whoever, but not big enough to have a beer. Not talking of african countries where girls are head of a family of three before the american boy can vote, and could potentially nearly be grandmothers by the time he is legally allowed to drink that beer.

If you are talking in term of maturity, we all here sometimes behave with less maturity than a 16 year old girl/boy.

>Personally I see no reason that civilized community
>standards can not be achieved such that minors can
>participate fully to the extent of their ability.

Sure. But, how are "adults" supposed to know the minors are minors ? And why would "minors" accept "adult" guiding on the account that these "adults" are pretending themselves "adults" ? We are not going to ask people their age before contributing, are we ?

>Participating with adult teams and politely yielding
>to superior knowledge or phrasing would be beneficial
>(educational for minor, available effort for the team)
>and is within the skills of most children if consistently
>predominantly presented examples worthy of emulation.
>At the moment I suspect minors would tend to diverge
>frequently from civilized behavior
>along with the rest of us. Some adults attempting to
>pull seniority on misbehaving or impolite minors while
>ignoring other adults would probably merely accelerate
>the divergence.

True. But, again, that is not a question of age. That's a question of maturity and tolerance.

Politely yielding to superior knowledge is not only age-related, it's recognition of another one superior knowledge, without knowing the extent of his expertise really. Tough!

And notice that politely yielding to superior phrasing is something most non-english speakers have to accept on the en.wiki also, 'even' when the superiority is from a 20 years younger american teenager. Also tough!

Polite retreat is not a kid "privilege".

In another message, you mentionned the possibility to set up a kiddie wiki.

If it's a read-only wiki, I see very little difference between a carefully censored (by who?) kidipedia, and a "censored-able" wikipedia. It is just another name, but it is has to do with censorship. If only, that's worse, for WE would choose what they should see, rather than their educators, who might know more of what is fit for them to read.

If it's a read&write wiki, it is unlikely the kids will learn from adults, for there won't be many adults, or few adults representative of the real world. Maybe not the best choice in terms of education.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site
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from_name: Jason Williams

body:
On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 10:27:32AM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> I strongly object against this. This implies that the concept of obscenity
> is generally shared, which it isn't. If you get your obscenity warning label,
> I want my "religious content" warning label. And someone else may want a
> warning label that Wikipedia may be offensive to people having suffered from
> certain traumas. And maybe the creationists and anti-abortionists want one, too.

Would you support a more generalised warning, though? Perhaps a "WARNING
TO PARENTS: wikipedia contains material that some consider unsuitable
for children. We would like to encourage everybody to use information
responsibly".
--
jason at jasonandali.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
> In the long term we want some generalized categorization system, but in
> the short term we should move towards that goal by providing
> categorization where it is most needed.

I strongly dispute that categorization of "adult" content is needed.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] What the front page of the wikipedia needs is a  warning for children

body:
--- Karen AKA Kajikit <kaji at labyrinth.net.au> wrote:
>  Articles
> in
> the wikipedia come up in Google all the time and while it's great
> for
> Junior to be able to find information on Golden Retriever dogs or
> the
> History of Great Britain or the Lesser Spotted Warbler, the kid can
> go
> from there to anything else in the wikipedia...

If junior can go to google and search, there are more hard-core
things out there than the Wikipedia. I wouldn't worry about it.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] As a technical matter

body:
How hard is it going to be for me to change Throbbing Monster Cock's
username to TMC?

Any discussion of the wisdom of so doing should be directed to
wikipedia-l.

I can easily change his name in the table of users, but this will
break a lot of links in articles and elsewhere?  So those would need
to be changed as well?

--Jimbo


body:
> Or rather, for their parents... while sex information etc seems to have
> a home in the wikipedia, parents might not be thrilled at the idea of
> Junior reading up on anal penetration, cock rings, and other 'adult'
> concepts. I know I wouldn't if it was my kids... some things are just
> not for juvenile eyes, if only because too much information leads to
> very awkward questions.
>
> The front page should have a note on it in the introduction, saying
> something like 'While the wikipedia does not condone obscenity, articles
> may contain adult concepts and language unsuitable for children. Please
> supervise your children's access.' or whatever...

I strongly object against this. This implies that the concept of obscenity
is generally shared, which it isn't. If you get your obscenity warning label,
I want my "religious content" warning label. And someone else may want a
warning label that Wikipedia may be offensive to people having suffered from
certain traumas. And maybe the creationists and anti-abortionists want one, too.

Wikipedia is an *encyclopedia*.  That implies certain things. If you don't
want your children to learn, don't allow them to read -- that is your right as
a parent. But not everyone wants children to be kept ignorant of sexual
matters (or the ideas that lead to such indoctrination to be perpetuated
uncritically).

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: unproductive posts

body:
On Thursday 14 November 2002 01:55 am, The Cunctator wrote:
> Mav, lashing out at Lars is not appropriate. Ed Poor's whole F.A.
> charade could quite reasonably be considered stupid and unproductive--or
> worse. Even if you don't think so, you should certainly not attack
> people for stating so.

OK I guess I repaid an uproductive post with a less than productive comment.
Ed made a mistake in what he origianally did, Lars made a mistake in stating
that Ed should leave the project and then I guess I made a mistake in being
too harsh on Lars. But calling for Ed to go was over the top.

We all live and learn.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


subject: [Wikitech-l] logarithmic approximations

body:
How about shifting left, and counting how many shifts it takes to get to the first "1" digit? This will work, if you have an unsigned two's-complement integer, won't it?

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris Bourke [mailto:cbourke at cse.unl.edu]
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 10:19 AM
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikitech-l] logarithmic approximations

I'm working on a project right now using GNU's multiprecision library.
However, and unfortunately, there are no library functions to do any
logarithmic functions.

I'm merely trying to get a ceiling (or floor) or the lg (base 2) of a
large integer.  Of course, I could always send it into a loop requiring
O(lg^3(n)) to get it, but I know there must be a way to do a simpler
approximation, especially since I don't need very high precision.

I asked this question of some math associates and they suggested the usual
taylor series, etc.  However, I am unable to find a satisfactory series
for a large n (taylor only works for x<1, right?).

Any help would be appreciated.

-----------------------------------------------

Chris Bourke
cbourke at cse.unl.edu
402-432-0795


list: sifter-l

source: wayback-mbox

subject: [Sifter-l] (no subject)


from_name: Jason Richey

subject: [Wikitech-l] Request for setting up of the Polish mailing list

body:
I'll set this up today.  My plan is to name you as the administrator
for the list.  Please let me know if you would prefer not to be the
admin.  Give me 5 minutes to set it up, but the posting address will
be:

WikiPL-l at wikipedia.org

and the subscription/info page will be:
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipl-l

Anybody else need a list?

Jason

Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:

> Dear developers and sysops,
>
> The Polish Wikipedia community would like to ask for setting up
> Polish language mailing list.
>
> We urgently need the list to help us improve our editorial process
> and decision making.
>
> We hope the new list can be open for our contributors ASAP.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Best regards,
> Kpjas.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: TMC.

body:
On Thu, 2002-11-14 at 04:02, tarquin wrote:
> Regarding the immutability of the TMC username -- are article histories
> stored as text values or User IDs?

Both.

> If it's the latter, someone with database access can hack TMC's username
> and poof! all the histories automagically change to read "Fluffy bunny
> land" or something.

That could be done with a single database query in either case.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

in_reply_to: <B9F956E3.4FA2%cunctator@kband.com>; from cunctator@kband.com on Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 01:34:27PM -0500

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> As you can see at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMC%27s_sysop_request
> I basically agree, but I'll ask you to consider a more scalable resolution;
> that is, have the Recent Changes etc. display the nickname only, and enforce
> innocuousness of the nickname.

Is the nickname actually in the database?  (Forgive my cluelessness on
this point.)  Or is the nickname just whatever someone happens to
write?

This does sound like a better solution.  I just now asked the
wikitech-l list for an opinion on how hard it would be to change his
name to TMC from Throbbing Monster Cock.  It seems not-impossible but
a pain in the neck.

But if nicknames are in the database, then that sounds like a useful
solution.

> If we can figure out a way to not have to fight, that is, give TMC a
> harmless playpen that doesn't bother anyone else, then I think everyone
> wins. TMC, other than his need for such a playpen, is a good contributor.

That's the strange thing about it, isn't it?  I agree.  His
contributions are fine.

> And I think it's good to have a few antiestablishment figures around. It's a
> sign of a healthy society.

Sure.

> But even if you think my plan has merit, I could certainly understand
> banning TMC in the meantime.

Well, I don't intend to ban him unless he tries to be a pain in the
ass about the name change.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: TMC.

body:
Tarquin wrote:

> Regarding the immutability of the TMC username -- are article
> histories stored as text values or User IDs? If it's the latter,
> someone with database access can hack TMC's username and poof! all
> the histories automagically change to read "Fluffy bunny land" or
> something.

Both: the user name is included in the record along with the article, both in the "current article" table and in the "old versions" table. There is also a user ID (a positive integer) that links to the "user name" table, so the hack you describe is possible to perform in more than one way.

For example, we could run an "update query" that changes a throbbing and monstrous barnyard fowl to a cute and harmless child's pet in each record of the article tables.

Whether we *ought* to do this is another question, of course.

If TMC agrees to adopt the nom de plume of "TMC", it would take Brion about 2 minutes to write, run and check the results of a name-change update query.

And TMC could still keep his "Chicken that ate Milwaukee" picture. It's actually funny, once you get over the double entendre.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikitech-l] As a technical matter

body:
On Thu, 2002-11-14 at 10:27, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> How hard is it going to be for me to change Throbbing Monster Cock's
> username to TMC?

User ID is 4754...

UPDATE user set user_name="TMC" where user_id=4754;
UPDATE recentchanges set rc_user_text="TMC" where rc_user=4754;
UPDATE cur set cur_user_text="TMC" where cur_user=4754;
UPDATE old set old_user_text="TMC" where old_user=4754;
UPDATE image set img_user_text="TMC" where img_user=4754;

should do it. Note that this may require TMC to re-log in (assuming
we're not banning the account entirely.)

> Any discussion of the wisdom of so doing should be directed to
> wikipedia-l.
>
> I can easily change his name in the table of users, but this will
> break a lot of links in articles and elsewhere?  So those would need
> to be changed as well?

Move the user page to [[User:TMC]] and let the redirects carry it?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Sifter-l] Formatting

body:
Sorry, folks, I forgot to use plain text on my first e-mail or to provide a Subject.

Ed "Sloppy Joe" Poor


from_name: Tom Parmenter

body:
|From: Imran Ghory <imran at bits.bris.ac.uk>
|Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 23:28:18 +0000 (GMT)
|
|On 13 Nov 2002, Erik Moeller wrote:
|
|> > Does this mean the NPOV is violated if a meta tag is inserted
|> > to allow parents to filter out detailed specific information
|> > and blueprints on bomb building?
|>
|> YES! By establishing a standard of what information may be desired to be
|> filtered by parents and which information may not, we are grossly
|> violating NPOV. What if a hypothetical parent wanted their children to be
|> isolated from religious ideas?
|
|Then they could do so easily by filtering out pages with the words
|God/Demon/Christ/occult/belief. However this will also get pages which
|aren't about religous ideas filtered.
|
|Labelling isn't to let people filter more, it's to let people filter less
|by letting them use more advanced methods (Labelling as opposed to
|keyword search).
|
|In the long term we want some generalized categorization system, but in
|the short term we should move towards that goal by providing
|categorization where it is most needed.
|
|Imran
|--
|http://bits.bris.ac.uk/imran
|

Shouldn't we be encouraging and facilitating filtering?  That is,
isn't there a model of the Wikipedia that says people can take our
Wikipedia and make their own version?  There certainly is a
possibility of filtering everything but popular culture, ending up
with brilliant coverage of the Simpsons and Tolkein, say, or a science
and technology filter, or (wait for it) a gazeteer about all the
little towns in America.  In that context, why shouldn't people also
filter out smut, or Christianity, or whatever?

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88


subject: [Wikitech-l] As a technical matter

in_reply_to: <1037299924.1206.32.camel@rdaneel.vibber.org>; from brion@pobox.com on Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 10:52:01AM -0800

body:
Sweet, that doesn't sound as bad as I thought.

Brion Vibber wrote:
> should do it. Note that this may require TMC to re-log in (assuming
> we're not banning the account entirely.)

We can talk about that over on wikipedia-l, but just to be clear, I
don't see any reason to ban him unless he gets destructive about this.
Perhaps surprisingly, his contributions are perfectly fine.

He contributed extensively to "Hitler only has one ball".  But,
strange as that article is, it's legitimate.  And he didn't start it.
And his primary role in that debate was to raise a legitimate concern
over copyrights.

I may have overlooked some other bad behavior.

Oh, but I said we'd discuss this on wikipedia-l, not here.  :-)

--Jimbo


body:
> So you don't like that wording? Leave off the first sentence then.

So it would just be "Please supervise your children's access"? No way, that
would imply that we take the POV that supervision of children's learning is
necessary to prevent them from looking at "bad information", something I am
strongly opposed against. Children should have access to all the information
they want, what they should also have is understanding parents who can explain
to them what it means. Moral behavior cannot be taught, it can only be lived
by example through affectionate parenting.

> MOST of the articles in the wikipedia are
> noncontrovertial, but not all of them, and the odds are high that it
> wouldn't occur to a lot of parents that this is the case.

Then these parents need better education. An encyclopedia can be expected to
cover human knowledge, much of which is certainly controversial.

> Articles in
> the wikipedia come up in Google all the time and while it's great for
> Junior to be able to find information on Golden Retriever dogs or the
> History of Great Britain or the Lesser Spotted Warbler, the kid can go
> from there to anything else in the wikipedia...

Gasp, so they might learn about anal sex? What a horrible thought! What a
terrible idea for them to be prepared when they actually have sexual
experiences. The history of Great Britain is certainly a story for the whole family,
what with all the murder, rape and bloodshed during the colonization.

So let's give parents better "tools" to prevent children from being informed
about sexual matters. Is that your logic? If so, I don't share it, and
neither do I believe it is NPOV.

> But I'm not going to sit here and argue about it. I've got MUCH better
> things to do with my evening.

Your evening is my morning. It's 11 AM here.

Regards,

Erik

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


body:
> Would you support a more generalised warning, though? Perhaps a "WARNING
> TO PARENTS: wikipedia contains material that some consider unsuitable
> for children. We would like to encourage everybody to use information
> responsibly".

The first sentence implies that people who want to protect children from
information somehow are especially relevant. What about people who want to
protect adults from information? Do we also want a WARNING TO CHINESE VISITORS:
Wikipedia contains material that some consider unsuitable for upstanding
citizens? There are certainly more concerned Chinese than concerned Americans.

The second sentence isn't NPOV at all, and has little meaning, because the
"responsible use" is not defined -- if it is subjective, then we don't need to
encourage people to do it.

What I could live with is: "Disclaimer: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
covering a wide range of subjects and as such contains material that some people may
consider offensive to themselves, their offspring, their relatives, their
friends, their acquaintances and, in some cases, their pets. We do not take any
responsibility for alleged emotional, physical or metaphysical harm
resulting from use or abuse of this great tome of human knowledge." But I think the
short version of this disclaimer is to put a link on the word "encyclopedia".
Which, incidentally, is already there.

Regards,

Erik

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NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] LAG

body:
On Wed, Nov 13, 2002 at 05:46:25PM -0800, Jonathan Walther wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 12:19:27AM +0100, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> >>achieve that goal.  Before we have tried Postgres, let's refrain from
> >>claiming that it has "obvious" advantages or drawbacks.  Otherwise we
> >>risk getting entrenched in prestigious preferences, and few things can
> >>be more destructive.
> >
> >What about trying other backends of MySQL ?
> >It has at least two other than the default one - afair BerkeleyDB and
> >InnoDB.
>
> Experience with InnoDB on Kuro5hin.org shows it to be problematic.  And it
> still doesn't give you subselects.  Subselects can mean some big savings in
> terms of query times.

Well, I don't remember Kuro5hin ever having so serious problems as
Wikipedia.

I mean - if there are things that we can check out just now, with very
little work, then let's do it. In the worst case, if they won't improve
anything or even be worse than current MySQL, we will just be where we
started with little efford wasted.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

body:
> The username "Throbbing Monster Cock" is vandalism and will be
> deleted.  This is an unusual situation, in that the vandalism is *in
> the name* rather than *in the article*.  This would be cute if it
> weren't so juvenile and stupid.
>
> If someone wants to argue that this is anything other than a cornball
> juvenile stunt, feel free.  But good luck with that.
>
> --Jimbo

Thank you for stepping in to settle this issue, Jimbo.

Ed Poor


body:
--- Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- Karen AKA Kajikit <kaji at labyrinth.net.au> wrote:
> >  Articles
> > in
> > the wikipedia come up in Google all the time and
> while it's great
> > for
> > Junior to be able to find information on Golden
> Retriever dogs or
> > the
> > History of Great Britain or the Lesser Spotted
> Warbler, the kid can
> > go
> > from there to anything else in the wikipedia...
>
> If junior can go to google and search, there are
> more hard-core
> things out there than the Wikipedia. I wouldn't
> worry about it.

Besides, if he/she lands on wikipedia after a google
search, he/she won't go through the main page anyway
:-)))

That's what we call "un caut?re sur une jambe de bois"
(a poultice on a wooden leg)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com


body:
|From: Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de>
|X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
|X-Authenticated-Sender: #0003262782 at gmx.net
|X-Authenticated-IP: [193.175.135.118]
|X-Flags: 0001
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 17:27:21 +0100 (MET)
|
|> Shouldn't we be encouraging and facilitating filtering?
|
|Everyone can copy and filter Wikipedia.
|
|I do not have any objections to a generic, open filtering system as part of
|Wikipedia, such as my proposed certification system. What I (and probably
|others) do have a problem with are highly specific filters or warnings, such as
|a "family filter".
|
|Regards,
|
|Erik

And I'm saying that if we facilitate filtering generally, perhaps by
making it easy to put hooks in for independently developed filters,
which might be any topic under the sun and moon, then "family
filtering" is just one more category.  There might be a dozen or more
variations just on that single category.  If you'd left the rest of my
post in the message, that would have been clear, at least to those who
don't have a knee-jerk reaction to what they imagine to be
censorship.

Tom Parmenter
Ortolan88
|


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: TMC.

body:
Regarding the immutability of the TMC username -- are article histories
stored as text values or User IDs?
If it's the latter, someone with database access can hack TMC's username
and poof! all the histories automagically change to read "Fluffy bunny
land" or something.

The Cunctator wrote:

>I wrote a hideously long email, then realized it was hideously long, so
>I've put it up at meta.
>
>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMC%27s_sysop_request
>
>
 > We shouldn't say, "It's all right to be juvenile and rude as a
contributor, but sysops require more responsibility and ability to work
with others than average Wikipedians."

Agreed. It is not alright to be juvenile or rude.
Lir...? TMC...?

>
>


in_reply_to: <200211141933.gAEJXGh20618@www.wikipedia.org>; from elian@gmx.li on Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 08:39:29PM +0100

body:
Now *this* is funny.  I also propose that we have a meta policy list,
not to discuss policy, but to discuss policies on policies.  That's
99% of what wikipedia-l is about.  :-)

elian wrote:

> Jason Richey <jasonr at bomis.com> writes:
>
> > Anybody else need a list?
>
> Yes, an english list to reduce traffic at wikipedia-l.
>
> greetings,
> elian
> --
> The first time M$ will produce something that doesn?t suck
> is when they start making vacuum cleaners.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
Done.  WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org, subscribe at
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Again, I set the admin for the list to the person who requested it.
Let me know if this is a problem...

Jason

elian wrote:

> Jason Richey <jasonr at bomis.com> writes:
>
> > Anybody else need a list?
>
> Yes, an english list to reduce traffic at wikipedia-l.
>
> greetings,
> elian
> --
> The first time M$ will produce something that doesn?t suck
> is when they start making vacuum cleaners.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


in_reply_to: <3DD3FC3C.1010807@wikipedia.be>; from giskart@wikipedia.be on Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 08:40:44PM +0100

body:
Done.  announce-l at wikipedia.org, subscribe at
http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/announce-l

Again, I set the admin for the list to the person who requested it.
Let me know if this is a problem...

I am also setting it so that only list members can post.  We may want
to eventually make a list of people who can post, but I wouldn't know
who to include...

Jason

Giskart wrote:

> Jason Richey wrote:
>
> [cut]
> > Anybody else need a list?
>
> What about a maillinglist "announce-l at wikipedia.org ?
> Only to announce software changes and other thing that have a inpact on
> all wikipedia's. NOT for posting somthing about Lir, TMC or Helga.
>
> Only for important things and well in advance. So when you come at home
> you do not have to read 60 - 80 emails to find out what discissens are
> made on the English maillinglist about your home wikipedia.
>
> No posting for the genaral public. Not for discussion, only to announce.
> Discussion -> Intlwiki-l
>
> Of cource if nobody wants to use it, it is pointless.
> ---
> Contact: giskart AT wikipedia.be
> Ook een artikeltje schrijven? Wikipedia, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
> http://www.wikipedia.be
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

body:
"Poor, Edmund W" wrote:
>
> It's easy. We just agree on the mailing list:
> 1. no obscene user names; and

Perhaps we should cc our definition of obscene
to those fools in the U.S. Judicial branch and Congress.

> 2. no using double entendres to evade rule #1

Where should we document these rules?

Personally I do not think the mailing list is adequate
ratification to reduce future problems of this nature.
This is sort of our existing process is it not?

The mailing list advises Mr. Wales.

>
> Why should we bend over backwards to accommodate someone who:
> * announces from the outset that our project is doomed

If he is right and articulates clearly why he is right
then we can take action to avoid our phophecised fate.

> * makes no constructive suggestions of his own

I thought I saw some constructive suggestions implicit
in some of his actions and statements.

> * demands power -- but won't say why

A reason is needed to scratch an itch?

>
> We should learn from the TMC episode, as it comes now to close, while it's still fresh in our minds.

Agreed.  Also, documentation from previous
incidents may exist in the mailing list archives
should we decide to get systematic or pedantic
with regard to any reengineering of existing processes.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


body:
I thought that was just a joke.

Jason Richey wrote:

> Done.  WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org, subscribe at
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> Again, I set the admin for the list to the person who requested it.
> Let me know if this is a problem...
>
> Jason
>
> elian wrote:
>
> > Jason Richey <jasonr at bomis.com> writes:
> >
> > > Anybody else need a list?
> >
> > Yes, an english list to reduce traffic at wikipedia-l.
> >
> > greetings,
> > elian
> > --
> > The first time M$ will produce something that doesn?t suck
> > is when they start making vacuum cleaners.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> --
> "Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [Wikipedia-l] King Kurt (was: TMC)

body:
http://www.nervous.co.uk/png/mayo520.png shows a chicken dwarfing what looks like 6 band members.

Ed Poor


subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

body:
It's easy. We just agree on the mailing list:
1. no obscene user names; and
2. no using double entendres to evade rule #1

Why should we bend over backwards to accommodate someone who:
* announces from the outset that our project is doomed
* makes no constructive suggestions of his own
* demands power -- but won't say why

We should learn from the TMC episode, as it comes now to close, while it's still fresh in our minds.

Ed Poor


body:
> Shouldn't we be encouraging and facilitating filtering?  That is,
> isn't there a model of the Wikipedia that says people can take our
> Wikipedia and make their own version?  There certainly is a
> possibility of filtering everything but popular culture, ending up
> with brilliant coverage of the Simpsons and Tolkein, say, or a science
> and technology filter, or (wait for it) a gazeteer about all the
> little towns in America.  In that context, why shouldn't people also
> filter out smut, or Christianity, or whatever?
>
> Tom Parmenter
> Ortolan88

I think Larry's sifter idea for a gnupedia fits the bill. Come join the discussion by visiting http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/sifter-l

Ed Poor


from_name: Pierre Abbat

subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

body:
On Thursday 14 November 2002 12:32, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> It's easy. We just agree on the mailing list:
> 1. no obscene user names; and
> 2. no using double entendres to evade rule #1

Also, no user names that are valid IP addresses, whether IP6 or IP4. This can
easily be enforced in software. Such a user name would confuse the user
contributions page.

phma


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l digest, Vol 1 #229 - 17 msgs

body:
From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Request for setting up of
the Polish mailing list

>Now *this* is funny.  I also propose that we have a
meta policy >list,
>not to discuss policy, but to discuss policies on
policies.  >That's
>99% of what wikipedia-l is about.  :-)

There is no use to set up a meta list, it already
exist and is called the main list.

elian wrote:
> Jason Richey <jasonr at bomis.com> writes:
>
> > Anybody else need a list?
>
> Yes, an english list to reduce traffic at
wikipedia-l.

Yes, an english list for english users.
No, it is not a joke.
What about copying all the main list accounts on the
english list accounts ?

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

body:
|content-class: urn:content-classes:message
|X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.0.6249.0
|X-MS-Has-Attach:
|X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
|Thread-Topic: [Wikipedia-l] TMC
|Thread-Index: AcKL/dLHa3FoEXhRTkGBSgG5I8FAegABNtOQ
|From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
|X-OriginalArrivalTime: 14 Nov 2002 17:32:16.0282 (UTC) FILETIME=[C67F57A0:01C28C03]
|X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by www.wikipedia.org id gAEHO1h11627
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 12:32:16 -0500
|
|It's easy. We just agree on the mailing list:
|1. no obscene user names; and
|2. no using double entendres to evade rule #1

Satire that can be understood by the authorities is quite properly
prohibited.  -- Ambrose Bierce, I think.

|
|Why should we bend over backwards to accommodate someone who:
|* announces from the outset that our project is doomed
|* makes no constructive suggestions of his own
|* demands power -- but won't say why
|

Indeed.

|We should learn from the TMC episode, as it comes now to close, while it's still fresh in our minds.

Not to mention the alternate name for Ed Poor incident.

|
|Ed Poor
|_______________________________________________


subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

body:
On Thu, 2002-11-14 at 10:40, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
> > As you can see at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMC%27s_sysop_request
> > I basically agree, but I'll ask you to consider a more scalable resolution;
> > that is, have the Recent Changes etc. display the nickname only, and enforce
> > innocuousness of the nickname.
>
> Is the nickname actually in the database?  (Forgive my cluelessness on
> this point.)  Or is the nickname just whatever someone happens to
> write?

An optional nickname can be set in the user preferences (so it's stored
in the chunk o' options in the user table, but not in a conveniently
accessible fashion). Its sole purpose is to appear as the text of a user
page link in ~~~-signings in talk pages.

Showing the nickname *everywhere* would make the independent existence
of the username both pointless and confusing.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Personal categories.

body:
Anthere wrote:
>
>    Part 1.1Type: Plain Text (text/plain)

> > --- "Michael R. Irwin" <mri_icboise at surfbest.net>
> >> > Anthere wrote:
> >> > > We could put tmc in the offensive xx category ?
> >> > This would presumably censor his home page.
> >> > The issue of his signature scattered through
> >> > random talk pages, the recent log, other
> >> > meta pages and mailing lists would remain.
> >> If user names were to be censored, and in particular tmc one
> >> 1) recent changes will only last a couple of days
> >I am uncertain what you mean here unless you are saying
> >tmc would be censored from the recent changes by correctly
> >selecting the filter criteria. Excellent!
> >> 2) maybe some technical magic can take care of
> >> converting his full name in tmc in talk pages and such
> >> ?
> >IMO Poor approach. It creates more work for the
> >developers than for a random nit wit. This would
> >leave us vulnerable to standard Denial of Service
> >tactics and possibly exhaust our limited developer
> >resources to the detriment of the project.
>
> It is a poor approach if done on a real time basis, as a filtering tool. But not to clean up a database "spoiled" by an offending name (in article and page history (contributions), and in user and talk pages).

Agreed.

>
> Hence, a one shot query on tables and conversion might be a good option. Of course, this requires tmc agreement, and of course, that is changing *History*. Big brother/sister Wikipedia and Thought Police. Brrrr.

Apparently not.  A "Jimmy says" flash has removed this
specific thorn.  The discussion can now move on to the
best way to avoid future rose bushes or be discontinued
until next time a wild rose patch appears in our garden.

>
> >> 3) mailing lists and meta pages may have no reason of
> >> being censored. It seems that most offended by X
> >> issues are concerned by kids looking at the
> >> questionable names. Mailing list and meta are for
> >> building teams, not encyclopedic articles. So, not
> >> supposed to be read by kids.
> >This presumes that the only value minors can extract from the Wikipedia site or community is
> >the NPOV articles.
>
> Hum. How would you define minors ?
>
> Is it juridical minority you are thinking of ? If so, juridical minority is not set at the same age in every country. I am still abashed by the usa situation where kids are big enough to elect ...whoever, but not big enough to have a beer. Not talking of african countries where girls are head of a family of three before the american boy can vote, and could potentially nearly be grandmothers by the time he is legally allowed to drink that beer.

Yes exactly.  The point where a new citizen responsible
for their own actions emerges.  In the U.S. it has indeed
been getting murkier and murkier.

I am aware that substantial variance exists within
various societies.

>
> If you are talking in term of maturity, we all here sometimes behave with less maturity than a 16 year old girl/boy.

This is consistent with my personal observations as well.

>
> >Personally I see no reason that civilized community
> >standards can not be achieved such that minors can
> >participate fully to the extent of their ability.
>
> Sure. But, how are "adults" supposed to know the minors are minors ? And why would "minors" accept "adult" guiding on the account that these "adults" are pretending themselves "adults" ? We are not going to ask people their age before contributing, are we ?

Responses in sequence:

By observed behavior I suppose.

Good question .... perhaps
we should discourage appeals to authority and simply explain
ourselves to each other.  It may appear to take some extra time
initially (and we are not an educational institution are
we ????  are we a learning organization ???? How do our
contributors improve their editing skills .... or do they?
Do we want them too?) beyond that necessary to dictate the
correct answer,  but it may actually be more efficient
overall.

I hope not.  Although sometimes it can be useful, if someone
volunteers the information, to help establish an initial
starting point for the dialogue.  Certainly the information
can be abused or misused in a variety of ways.

>
> >Participating with adult teams and politely yielding
> >to superior knowledge or phrasing would be beneficial
> >(educational for minor, available effort for the team)
> >and is within the skills of most children if consistently
> >predominantly presented examples worthy of emulation.
> >At the moment I suspect minors would tend to diverge
> >frequently from civilized behavior
> >along with the rest of us. Some adults attempting to
> >pull seniority on misbehaving or impolite minors while
> >ignoring other adults would probably merely accelerate
> >the divergence.
>
> True. But, again, that is not a question of age. That's a question of maturity and tolerance.

I would tend to agree with the reservation that many people
expect a loose correlation.

>
> Politely yielding to superior knowledge is not only age-related, it's recognition of another one superior knowledge, without knowing the extent of his expertise really. Tough!

One approach would be that in order for the superior knowledge
to recognized by someone who does not know it, it must be
demonstrated or laid out in detail for scrutiny for the less
educated or informed.

Of course some pedagogical value might accrue while wasting
the subject expert's time ....

If the debate were preserved somehow so that additional future
waves of ignorant masses might inform themselves ...

Bah!  We are not an educational institution or a debate club.

>
> And notice that politely yielding to superior phrasing is something most non-english speakers have to accept on the en.wiki also, 'even' when the superiority is from a 20 years younger american teenager. Also tough!
>

Good point.  I am not multi-lingual so I am not exposed to
attempting to reason with non English teenagers regarding the
few subjects I actually know quite a bit about.

I do not envy our multi-lingual contributors this challenge
but I admire and respect their community contribution when
they undertake it.

> Polite retreat is not a kid "privilege".
>

True.  It seems to be non instinctive learned behavior displayed
grudgingly in the face of superior force.   It seems sometimes
friendship, love, or respect for another makes it an easier
behavior for homo sapiens but I often wonder how this relates
to "stockholm syndrome".  Is this simply another brain chemistry
situation or is free will involved.   Can one simply decide one
day to enjoy be polite to others?

> In another message, you mentionned the possibility to set up a kiddie wiki.
>
> If it's a read-only wiki, I see very little difference between a carefully censored (by who?) kidipedia, and a "censored-able" wikipedia. It is just another name, but it is has to do with censorship. If only, that's worse, for WE would choose what they should see, rather than their educators, who might know more of what is fit for them to read.

Agreed.  I would think such a kiddypedia would be structured around
highly leveraged participation of parents and educational authorities.
The  advantage might be the opportunity to expose your kids to community
screened adults and educators.   If a thousand parents and a hundred
educations spent a few hours a month participating there (after the
initial community fabric is knit) maintaining the tone and lubricating
the machinery .... how many kids could be served or exposed to
civilized discourse from which to learn by example?

Current U.S. babysitting methods average 18 to 30 students per
adult and produce poorly motivated instructors and poorly prepared
graduates.

A properly written grant should be able to attract some
capital investment from the United States government to explore
this concept.   It has the potential to be quite cost effective,
provide quantitative proof of its efficacy, and address several
political issues that have been growing in the U.S. for the last
twenty years.

It could also easily be setup within the budget of a few parents, a
PTA group, or a local U.S. school.

>
> If it's a read&write wiki, it is unlikely the kids will learn from adults, for there won't be many adults, or few adults representative of the real world. Maybe not the best choice in terms of education.
>

I do not follow this conclusion.  Everybody lives in the real
world.   Perhaps the kiddypedia's would have to be structured
around specific categories of interest to parent/kid teams.
We (the community or the site owner?) might even require/allow them
to use the same account handles or interchange them occasionally.
Lots of gimmicks and approaches could be incrementally experimented
with.

Different techniques might be required for success for sites
specializing in musical interests vs. sites committed to incubating
entrepreneurial space tech teams.

Funding sources might also have to vary.  The musical sites
might support themselves by taking a small cut of properly
licensed music distributed by the site
(Say this music may be freely downloaded and given away in
any media whatsoever but there can be no charge of any
kind,  no handling charge, no media fee.   Professionally
packaged version are available at this site and the musicians
receive 50% gross revenue and the site receives 50% gross
revenue.) while the space tech sites might sell advertising
or solicit sponsorship by U.S. defense behomeths and/or
U.S. military recruiters.

Further regarding funding ... big brothers and big sisters of
America organizations seem to spend a lot of money in
the U.S. soliciting funds and volunteers via television
advertising.   A proper business plan and some ecommunication
with them might develop adequate funding to experiment with
this type of mentoring site.   They seem seriously interested
in getting some mentoring into ghettos where kids (and immature
adults) often lack a variety of role models to observe.

Regards,
Mike Irwin


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I thought that was just a joke.

The request for <wikiEN-l>?  That's no joke.
It's certainly still a controversial subject,
but there are a lot of us that think that such a list should exist,
and should take most of the traffic from <wikipedia-l>.
See, well, practically everything anthere's written lately.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Name for policy discussion list

in_reply_to: <B9F9807A.4FC6%cunctator@kband.com>; from cunctator@kband.com on Thu, Nov 14, 2002 at 04:31:54PM -0500

body:
If I understand the intent here, then wikipedia-l should become the
moderated list...

Jason

The Cunctator wrote:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at epost.de]
> > Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 3:52 PM
> > To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Request for setting up of the Polish mailing
> > list
> >
> >
> > Jimmy Wales wrote:
> >
> >> I thought that was just a joke.
> >>
> >>
> > Nope, some guys from the de.wikipedia want to discuss the project
> > without hearing about TMC and related stuff in 95% of the mails...
>
> Another mailing list is not the answer, unless it's moderated. A bbs needs
> to be set up.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


body:
Please disregard this one...  I wasn't thinking when I posted it.

Sorry,
Jason

Jason Richey wrote:

> If I understand the intent here, then wikipedia-l should become the
> moderated list...
>
> Jason
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> > > -----Original Message-----
> > > From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at epost.de]
> > > Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 3:52 PM
> > > To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > > Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Request for setting up of the Polish mailing
> > > list
> > >
> > >
> > > Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > >
> > >> I thought that was just a joke.
> > >>
> > >>
> > > Nope, some guys from the de.wikipedia want to discuss the project
> > > without hearing about TMC and related stuff in 95% of the mails...
> >
> > Another mailing list is not the answer, unless it's moderated. A bbs needs
> > to be set up.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> > http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> --
> "Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>
>

--
"Jason C. Richey" <jasonr at bomis.com>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

body:
On Thu, 2002-11-14 at 13:50, The Cunctator wrote:
> On 11/14/02 4:11 PM, "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> >> The Cunctator wrote:
> >>> As you can see at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMC%27s_sysop_request
> >>> I basically agree, but I'll ask you to consider a more scalable resolution;
> >>> that is, have the Recent Changes etc. display the nickname only, and enforce
> >>> innocuousness of the nickname.
[...]
> > Showing the nickname *everywhere* would make the independent existence
> > of the username both pointless and confusing.
>
> That's its sole current purpose, but why should the nickname only appearing
> on talk pages be any less confusing?
>
> The tagging of RecentChanges and revision edits with the username can be
> seen as equivalent to signing comments on the userpages. I don't think it's
> inherently confusing.

People can sign their edits in-page however they wish or not at all. The
tilde-signing is a labor-saving convenience feature to automatically put
in a link back to the user page, which is common in such signing; the
nick is a convenience feature for those who wish their signings to
appear differently from their user name, but still want a simple
labor-saving method to link back to their user page. If we didn't have
it, we'd still have people making manual links to their user pages whose
text wasn't identical with their usernames.

Tagging on RC and page histories, on the other hand, is automatic
tracking. Its sole purpose is to be clear and informative. It's not a
signature; it's a return address.

> The majority of people don't use a nickname, so this change wouldn't even be
> an issue for the majority of the people.
>
> I'm not saying this is a perfect idea; I just don't think its consequences
> would be mass confusion, and it certainly wouldn't be pointless.
>
> Why not? Because we can't perfectly adjudicate the inoffensiveness of
> usernames. People have even thought that my username is vulgar.

Then what makes you think that we _can_ perfectly adjudicate the
inoffensiveness of nicknames, or that if we could there would be any
reason to do so separately from hidden usernames which would never be
seen by anybody (so why do they exist?)?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>>Or rather, for their parents... while sex information etc seems to have
>>a home in the wikipedia, parents might not be thrilled at the idea of
>>Junior reading up on anal penetration, cock rings, and other 'adult'
>>concepts. I know I wouldn't if it was my kids... some things are just
>>not for juvenile eyes, if only because too much information leads to
>>very awkward questions.
>>
>I strongly object against this. This implies that the concept of obscenity
>is generally shared, which it isn't. If you get your obscenity warning label,
>I want my "religious content" warning label. And someone else may want a
>warning label that Wikipedia may be offensive to people having suffered from
>certain traumas. And maybe the creationists and anti-abortionists want one, too.
>
>Wikipedia is an *encyclopedia*.  That implies certain things. If you don't
>want your children to learn, don't allow them to read -- that is your right as
>a parent. But not everyone wants children to be kept ignorant of sexual
>matters (or the ideas that lead to such indoctrination to be perpetuated
>uncritically).
>
I can agree that if we give the parents the opportunity to block
sexually explicit material, they should also have the opportunity to
block religiously material, as well as other categories.  Some may even
want to block mathematically explicit material. In regards to my son I
would keep the filters off, but I know from my involvement in
educational politics that my view on this represents a minority of
parents.  To a large measure the issue is about the rights of parents to
decide what their own children will be able to see.  Parents already
feel powerless about the decisions they make for children in the face of
the homogenizing tendencies of educational systems.  Why should we
further erode that right by arrogating to ourselves the decision of what
should be accessible for their children?

What I am advocating is a scheme to identify articles that "could" fall
into a blockable category.  Of course there will be categorization
errors over just how bad some paricular article really is, but if we
recognize varying degrees of unacceptability the articles will
eventually get to the right place..

Eclecticology


subject: [Wikitech-l] As a technical matter

body:
I checked the user_id with the following:

	select user_id, user_name from user where user_name like 'Throb%'

and I got:

user_id  user_name
-------  ---------
4754     Throbbing Monster Cock

So I think the 5 update queries Brion wrote will work.

Ed Poor


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>What I could live with is: "Disclaimer: Wikipedia is an encyclopedia
>covering a wide range of subjects and as such contains material that some people may
>consider offensive to themselves, their offspring, their relatives, their
>friends, their acquaintances and, in some cases, their pets. We do not take any
>responsibility for alleged emotional, physical or metaphysical harm
>resulting from use or abuse of this great tome of human knowledge."
>
"Pets?!"  Would making explicit material available for cattle to watch
alter the level of bullshit?"

"Taking responsibility for alleged harm."  That's not what this is about.

Ec

>


list: wikien-l

subject: [Wikien-l] Testing

body:
Archives don't exist yet?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
|content-class: urn:content-classes:message
|X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft Exchange V6.0.6249.0
|X-MS-Has-Attach:
|X-MS-TNEF-Correlator:
|Thread-Topic: [Wikipedia-l] Family filters are not NPOV
|Thread-Index: AcKL98IiaFqLjQvlSYKnE4rHYideUAADPUhQ
|From: "Poor, Edmund W" <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com>
|X-OriginalArrivalTime: 14 Nov 2002 17:40:31.0080 (UTC) FILETIME=[ED6B8680:01C28C04]
|X-MIME-Autoconverted: from quoted-printable to 8bit by www.wikipedia.org id gAEICDh14505
|Sender: wikipedia-l-admin at wikipedia.org
|Reply-To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
|Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 12:40:30 -0500
|
|> Shouldn't we be encouraging and facilitating filtering?  That is,
|> isn't there a model of the Wikipedia that says people can take our
|> Wikipedia and make their own version?  There certainly is a
|> possibility of filtering everything but popular culture, ending up
|> with brilliant coverage of the Simpsons and Tolkein, say, or a science
|> and technology filter, or (wait for it) a gazeteer about all the
|> little towns in America.  In that context, why shouldn't people also
|> filter out smut, or Christianity, or whatever?
|>
|> Tom Parmenter
|> Ortolan88
|
|I think Larry's sifter idea for a gnupedia fits the bill. Come join the discussion by visiting http://www.nupedia.com/mailman/listinfo/sifter-l
|
|Ed Poor
|

It doesn't fit my bill because it is anti-open-source.  I would prefer
a method that uses the Wikipedia.  Then this sifter project would draw
on the Wikipedia and so could anybody else.

Tom P.
O88


subject: [Wikipedia-l] test

body:
>test
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
Tom Parmenter wrote:

>There certainly is a
>possibility of filtering everything but popular culture, ending up
>with brilliant coverage of the Simpsons and Tolkein, say, or a science
>and technology filter, or (wait for it) a gazeteer about all the
>little towns in America.
>
Wow!  We could even put it all on a CD suitable for sale in Walmart!

Ec


from_name: Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz

body:
Dear developers and sysops,

The Polish Wikipedia community would like to ask for setting up
Polish language mailing list.

We urgently need the list to help us improve our editorial process
and decision making.

We hope the new list can be open for our contributors ASAP.

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Kpjas.


subject: Fwd: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l digest, Vol 1 #229 - 17 msgs

body:
Note: forwarded message attached.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com
-------------- next part --------------
An embedded message was scrubbed...
From: Jason Richey <jasonr at bomis.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l digest, Vol 1 #229 - 17 msgs
Date: Thu, 14 Nov 2002 13:52:43 -0800
Size: 2070
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20021114/73b09702/attachment.mht>


body:
--- Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Tom Parmenter wrote:
>
> >There certainly is a
> >possibility of filtering everything but popular culture, ending up
> >with brilliant coverage of the Simpsons and Tolkein, say, or a
> science
> >and technology filter, or (wait for it) a gazeteer about all the
> >little towns in America.
> >
> Wow!  We could even put it all on a CD suitable for sale in
> Walmart!
>
> Ec

Amazingly not a bad idea. If you want to do that for real let me know
I know the right people.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com


from_name: Throbbing Monster Cock

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: TMC

body:
The one true voice of power associated with Wikipedia,
Jimbo, has ruled.  That ruling is that my account will
be deleted.

With the exception of my username, I cannot see what
faults anyone can take with my time on Wikipedia to
date.  My edits and submissions have been useful, I
have not been insulting (other than is the norm) to
other users, and I respectively carried out a debate
here on wikipedia-l with Ed regarding views on
absolute versus relative "right and wrong".

For those who asked why I was requesting sysop status,
the answer was simple.  To better deal with acts of
vandalism as they occured.  Entries that consist of
nothing of strings but "gfkjslkjskjsfglkj" or pictures
of the goatse man need to be deleted, and I would
simply be one more potential deleter.

Finally, I'll point out that Brion is correct that
deciding to adjucate the offensiveness of usernames is
just opening a whole new can of worms.  It appears
that from now on calling oneself "Sweet Pussy", "I
Love Hitler", or "George Bush is a Weenie" will all be
bannable offenses.

--TMC

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site
http://webhosting.yahoo.com


body:
How about Wikipolicy-l ?

Ed Poor

-----Original Message-----
From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at epost.de]
Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 3:52 PM
To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Request for setting up of the Polish mailing
list

Jimmy Wales wrote:

>I thought that was just a joke.
>
>
Nope, some guys from the de.wikipedia want to discuss the project
without hearing about TMC and related stuff in 95% of the mails...

Magnus


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Magnus Manske [mailto:magnus.manske at epost.de]
> Sent: Thursday, November 14, 2002 3:52 PM
> To: wikitech-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Request for setting up of the Polish mailing
> list
>
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> I thought that was just a joke.
>>
>>
> Nope, some guys from the de.wikipedia want to discuss the project
> without hearing about TMC and related stuff in 95% of the mails...

Another mailing list is not the answer, unless it's moderated. A bbs needs
to be set up.


from_name: Gareth Owen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> This would be cute if it weren't so juvenile and stupid.

And if third rate punk band King Kurt hadn't pulled *exactly* the same "joke"
about 20 years ago, even down to the picture of the chicken on the cover...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006AL7E/ref=sr_aps_music_1_2/202-9064094-7937469
--
Gareth Owen


subject: [Wikipedia-l] TMC

body:
On 11/14/02 4:11 PM, "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 2002-11-14 at 10:40, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>> As you can see at http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/TMC%27s_sysop_request
>>> I basically agree, but I'll ask you to consider a more scalable resolution;
>>> that is, have the Recent Changes etc. display the nickname only, and enforce
>>> innocuousness of the nickname.
>>
>> Is the nickname actually in the database?  (Forgive my cluelessness on
>> this point.)  Or is the nickname just whatever someone happens to
>> write?
>
> An optional nickname can be set in the user preferences (so it's stored
> in the chunk o' options in the user table, but not in a conveniently
> accessible fashion). Its sole purpose is to appear as the text of a user
> page link in ~~~-signings in talk pages.
>
> Showing the nickname *everywhere* would make the independent existence
> of the username both pointless and confusing.

That's its sole current purpose, but why should the nickname only appearing
on talk pages be any less confusing?

The tagging of RecentChanges and revision edits with the username can be
seen as equivalent to signing comments on the userpages. I don't think it's
inherently confusing.

The majority of people don't use a nickname, so this change wouldn't even be
an issue for the majority of the people.

I'm not saying this is a perfect idea; I just don't think its consequences
would be mass confusion, and it certainly wouldn't be pointless.

Why not? Because we can't perfectly adjudicate the inoffensiveness of
usernames. People have even thought that my username is vulgar.

The downside, as I see it, is more one of added complexity, and possibly
just shunting off an issue that will come back later. But I'm not going to
panic about unpredictable future possibilities.