from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms -
	Project Has Been Around For A While

body:
Indeed - while experts should not be allowed a monopoly on articles,
they should certainly be allowed some measure of control: ie, they
cannot remove information, or turn it into POV, but...

Well, unfortunately it would seem we have academics with one POV vs.
loonies with another. Rarely do we have Academics with one POV vs
Academics with another POV, which is what we need if Wikipedia is to
be reliable: sensible neutrality, rather than insane neutrality. We
don't want people like Edo Nyland or Antifinnugror able to insert
their POVs as if they were academic opinions on the level of those of,
say, Oswald Szemerenyi or even Joseph Greenburg.

Mark

On Fri, 07 Jan 2005 17:55:58 +1100, Tim Starling
<t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> I think the experience of academics on Wikipedia is much the same as the
> experience of non-specialists on Wikipedia, or of academics acting as
> non-specialists. Academics, as well as other non-insane people, must
> fight with various kinds of looneys if they want the Wikipedia article
> in question to be accurate and neutral. Dispute resolution only works
> where the POV-pushers also break rules of behaviour, otherwise the only
> solution is to fight forever. Put the article on your watchlist, revert
> and argue for as long as you both shall live. In the case of popular
> articles, there's a constant stream of new POV-pushers, so you have to
> keep arguing and fighting even after the original warriors have gotten
> bored and left.
>
> Larry Sanger wants a shortcut out of this process for experts. I would
> prefer having a shortcut even for non-experts. Various models have been
> proposed in the past, "content arbitration" is a particularly neat term
> for it.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Alternates to PHP: Wikipedia with a fast C-Engine?

body:
Urs C Muff schrieb:

> mono is not the issue, mono is stable.

Yes, but we'll lose an order of magnitude in terms of speed, compared to
C/C++. Don't get me wrong, I like C#, and would like to try it for some
large application one day. But if we switch to another implementation at
all, we should primarily aim for speed.

Magnus


list: foundation-l

from_name: Paweł 'Ausir' Dembowski

subject: [Foundation-l] Lista Wildsteina

body:
After the debate, I think it'd indeed be best to delete it (at least
for now).

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Lista Wildsteina


from_name: Arne Heizmann

subject: [Wikitech-l] Converting ZopeWiki data to MediaWiki?

body:
Hi.

Here at CSR, we are thinking about replacing our company-internal wiki,
which is currently running ZopeWiki, with MediaWiki. (I had nothing to
do with that decision *whistles innocently*... :) )

Does there exist a tool to convert the ZopeWiki data to a MediaWiki
database?

Thanks!
Timwi


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikistandards (was Requests for new Wiki projects)

body:
kylelutze wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I'm not sure wikibooks is the best place to start, but a wikistandards
> site is definitely something I'm interested in. There's only a couple of
> problems I see with it. As it is a wiki, and some of these standards are
> rather important, if somebody puts some false info into a standard, and
> people start using it while most others are using the correct one, this
> could lead to problems. The other is copyright infringements being made
> easily because some fool decides to post standards to a closed source
> project(I don't know if there is an easy legal way around this).
>
> Kyle
>
I don't think that this is nearly so much of a problem.  There would
eventually have to be some way to "freeze" a standard so only admins or
trusted individuals would be able to make minor changes to the standard.
 This would happen when a standard is considered "complete" by the group
putting the standard out, and would be a community decision.  The point
there is precisely that you don't want people inserting something into
the standard after people are trying to implement it.

The "new" version (2.0 or whatever) certainly should be modifyable, and
that would be no different than any other wikimedia project... subject
to vandalism like any other wiki page.  Trust me, most parts of a
standard are going to have some extreame scrutiny in it, and it is more
likely that people are going to be inserting "false" history into
mainline wikipedia entries, and getting away with it, than somebody
inserting false specifications into a standard.  Page history will also
be a good tool to find out just who did what, and would be used quite
often in the process of standards development.  I think editing wars
where two groups of people keep putting their "changes" into the
standard would be more of a headache, and trying to "lock out" the other
group.

As far as copyright violations, again this is just like copyright
violations for any other part of all of the Wikimedia projects.  Indeed,
I think it would be much easier for community members involved with
something like Wikistandards to be able to identify copyright violations
than would be the case for multimedia items like images or sound clips.
 Those who work regularly with these standards would be able to identify
immediately when something has been copied illegally and it would be
fairly easy and straight forward to delete that content.  It would be
important, however, to remind new users to Wikistandards that they
should avoid copyright violations, particularly existing standards that
have clear copyright like ISO standards.

One potential legal hassle that would be unique to Wikistandards would
be a group trying to reverse-engineer an existing standard.  Clearly the
copyright would be under the GFDL (or whatever is reasonable.... this
isn't a huge issue in this case), but there would be some other legal
minefields like the DCMA or the Patriot Act (in the USA) that might come
into play and kill the project, with possible arrest of participants in
the reverse engineering process.  Of secondary concern would be people
who have been "contaminated" by seeing the original specification
(closed, propritary, and subject to Non-disclosure agreements) and then
putting some of that original copyrighted specification into the reverse
engineering effort.  Or worse yet, the company(ies) involved with the
original spec deliberately contaminating the reverse engineering spec
and through that killing the spec.  I'm not even sure what policies
should be reasonable to try and avoid these issues.  I do think groups
like the EFF and Groklaw would get heavily involved if legal issues did
come up, particularly if individuals arrested were otherwise innocent
participants in the process.  Indeed, such arrests would make major
headlines, particularly among "geek" news sources like Slashdot or Wired.

The only reason I'm suggesting to start through Wikibooks is only
because these are already book-like projects, and it is a good way to
bootstrap the whole thing to see if it can be a viable project on its
own.  Even if Wikistandards die and doesn't do too well, the content can
be maintained by the existing Wikibooks community, even if it is an ugly
step child.

--
Robert Scott Horning
218 Sunstone Circle
Logan, UT 84321
(435) 753-3330
robert_horning at netzero.net


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] os.wikipedia.org (Cyrillic only will do)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Updates to any file in MediaWiki should be submitted as a unified diff
> against the files in CVS (cvs diff -u) FOR EACH AFFECTED BRANCH (the
> REL1_4 release branch is not the same as the current development work in
> HEAD), posted as a file attachment to a bug report in Bugzilla.
> Assurances that it's been tested are helpful.

I added brions text above to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Locales_for_the_Wikimedia_projects
put a deprecated note on the page and removed all red links.

For creating clean locales, I propose to set up a wiki only for this
purpose where a team of volunteers can translate the locales via the
mediawiki namespace in a coordinate effort (doing this via the mediawiki
namespace has the advantage that you can test the stuff live and see
formatting errors instantly). At a certain deadline these translations
could be all converted at once into the according Language files and
released together with mediawiki. If that's sounds feasible to you and
someone sets up a wiki for this, I'm willing to maintain the german
language version.

greetings,
elian


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] os.wikipedia.org (Cyrillic only will
	do)


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.4beta6 released (SECURITY)

body:
Ben Brockert wrote:
> From: Brion Vibber <brion.vibber at gmail.com>
>>Beta 6 also introduces the use of rel="nofollow" attributes on external
>>links in wiki pages to reduce the effectiveness of wiki spam. This will
>>cause participating search engines to ignore external URL links from
>>wiki pages for purposes of page relevancy ranking.
>
>
> How is the per-project option coming on this?

Still there, same as it's always been.

As you're aware, there's no hurry here. The attributes cause no harm to
the functioning of the wikis.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] me and my 3RR block

body:
Dante Alighieri (dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com) [050204 11:48]:

> Anyway, I'd also like to point out that I'm not certain that the ArbCom (which is currently reviewing the 3RR) has the authority and jurisdiction to do so unless the question is raised in a case which they are hearing. I suggest that Slrubenstein either request Arbitration against the rule itself (if that seems feasible within the bounds of our system) or else against me for blocking him (which is probably the best bet, and to which I don't object) so that the ArbCom can officially look into the matter.

If you look at the Darwin-Lincoln case that's currently in arbitration,
you'll see a statement of principle on the 3RR which has gained six votes
and so looks like passing (if no-one changes their vote before it closes):

"3RR is not an entitlement
"4) The three revert rule is an electric fence, not an entitlement. The 3RR
is intended as a means to stop sterile edit wars. It does not grant users
an inalienable right to three reverts every twenty-four hours or endorse
reverts as an editing technique. Persistent reversion remains strongly
discouraged and is unlikely to constitute working properly with others."

Although it doesn't directly address your point, "an electric fence, not an
entitlement" should reasonably indicate that if you do a fourth revert in
24 hours, you may get zapped.

The point of the 3RR is that doing four reverts in 24 hours was held (and
then voted) to be *such* a stupid and counterproductive thing to do in the
live article space that it was safe to write an almost mechanical rule to
cover it. Repeated reverts are bad!

And, as I pointed out, other admins can (and have) remove 3RR blocks,
presumably if they feel the editor in question won't offend again, which is
presuambly why slr was quickly unblocked in this case. Not that that says
anything against Dante, who was blocking per 3RR.

- d.


from_name: Sheng Jiong

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia in Chinese dialects

body:
> Are there
> schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to
> standard Mandrin, are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published
> in large numbers, is there a movement. In short, has someone shown a
> notable and documentable desire to separate dialects from Chinese? My
> research (posted some time ago) found a case, but not an overwhelming
> one, for some degree of linguistic separationism in progress.

A very good point indeed. And I also agree with Andrew's view, that
Wikipedia's chief aim is to write encyclopedias, not promoting any
kind of promoting of languages. If any Chinese dialects any other than
Mandarin has received significant attention in the world, and that
people have gotten used to writing/reading these languages, there is
of course a need to set up a Wikipedia in this language. But the truth
is, all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language,
and extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects. In
fact we do not even know what writing system we should use should
there be a Chinese dialect Wikipedia.

And to Mark: please do note that I speak Shanghainese rather than
Min-nan. Therefore among those opposers there is also a native speaker
of the language. It is not as you wrote that only those who do not
speak the language oppose the proposal. I am still strongly opposed to
the set up of any Chinese dialect Wikipedias. And I am not actually
glad to see the Min-nan Wikipedia too. I simply doubt if any Min-nan
speakers can understand the current Min-nan Wikipedia.

[[User:Formulax]]


from_name: Manfred Rebentisch

body:
Am Donnerstag, 3. Februar 2005 22:32 schrieb Magnus Manske:
>
> The "big stuff" is surprisingly easy - it's the "little" things that
> will take time. We have so many functions beyond "edit-parse-render" -
> the long list of special pages alone. Did you think of how to move and
> manage the 100+ translations? The interaction with our squid servers?
> Template dependencies? (I could go on here...)

I did not know all details of the actual wikipedia code. But I have know-how
about such projects.

I implement a simple method for translations ( think, you mean more than 100
language translations?), and this method is flexible too. I use a database
for all text. All text is read to memory, shared by all threads. On a request
there is no need for read the database. If database is changed, a method can
be called to refresh the internal buffers while mutex'es avoid conflicts.
HTML-Templates can be written like this:

<h2 cpForms:textid="1127" cpForms:textgroup="TIT" cpForms:textnote="Titel
Benutzerregistrierung">Benutzerregistrierung</h2>

The Template-Parser delete the extra-tags but look for the textid together
with the actual language from Browser / user. The text
"Benutzerregistrierung" is used as a default for german in this case.

There were hard discussions about the method of using an identifier for the
text (here 'textid=1127'). But it is a effizient method.

A code snippet using translations in C-Code:

    PTLangTrans lgTrans;
    ...
    /* Language "de", "deu", "de_DE" */
    lgTrans = st_cdo->textmap(st_cdo, user->getMainLanguage(user) );
    text = lgTrans->findIns(lgTrans, 801, "Admin-Login", "LBL",
          "Admin-Anmeldung, Administrator oder Forums-Maintainer etc.");
    composer->assign(composer,      "VAL-USRLOGINSUBMIT",   text);

With this, the parser get a variable to exchange "{VAL-USRLOGINSUBMIT}" in a
HTML-Template. With method findIns() the text will be inserted to the
database, if a text is not found.

Manfred


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.3.10 released (SECURITY)

body:
On Friday 04 February 2005 09:50, Brion Vibber wrote:
> MediaWiki 1.3.10 is a security release.

Does 1.3.10 includes the rel=nofollow thing?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Mark Pellegrini

subject: [WikiEN-l] AIDS and HIV denial

body:
Would this be a good time to mention that, this week, both [[Evolution]]
and [[Big bang]] became featured articles?  [...I claim some credit for the former :)  ]

--Mark
Raul654/Featured Article Director


body:
NSK wrote:
> On Friday 04 February 2005 09:50, Brion Vibber wrote:
>>MediaWiki 1.3.10 is a security release.
>
> Does 1.3.10 includes the rel=nofollow thing?

No.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Layout of namespaces

body:
On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 14:30:04 +0100, Sabine Cretella
<sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> Hi, my next question - and I am not sure if this is the right list to
> ask these questions, so if I am wrong, please tell me.

MediaWiki-l would probably be a slightly better choice, as that is
aimed more at general users, where as wikitech-l is more for core
developers and Wikimedia Foundation admins.

> Now "Aiuto:" always has a red background - so there must be a place
> where I can set up this layout.
[...]
 > 1) where to edit these layouts?

I think this is done through CSS - specifically, the site-wide
customisation in [[MediaWiki:Monobook.css]]. So,
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.css contains this
section:

/* Colore di fondo delle pagine Aiuto */
.ns-12 * #content { color : black; }
.ns-12 * #content { background : #FFEEEE; }
.ns-12 * #p-cactions li { background : #FFEEEE; }
.ns-12 * #p-cactions li a { background : #FFEEEE; }

Where the 12 is the internal number of the namespace in question.

> 2) is there a problem if I would like to create a separate namespace
> (for example "Projects:") and where to create the pre-defined layout for
> this part.

I imagine (although I wouldn't guarantee) that if you use the "custom
namespaces" feature, the outputted content will include attributes
like the others, so that if you define namespace #100 as "Projects:",
pages in that namespace will obey CSS rules beginning ".ns-100 *". So
if you put them in your MediaWiki:Monobook.css page, they will apply
to anyone using the monobook skin and looking at those pages.

HTH
--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikitech-l] Layout of namespaces

body:
Hi, my next question - and I am not sure if this is the right list to
ask these questions, so if I am wrong, please tell me.

On the Italian wiktionary there are different namespaces:

Wikizionario:
Aiuto:
etc.

Now "Aiuto:" always has a red background - so there must be a place
where I can set up this layout.

The two questions I have:

1) where to edit these layouts?
2) is there a problem if I would like to create a separate namespace
(for example "Projects:") and where to create the pre-defined layout for
this part.

I had a look at this:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Custom_Namespaces
But this does not help me with what I search for.

Thank you!!!

Sorry, I know these are basic questions.

Ciao, Sabine.


from_name: Susan Jordan

subject: [WikiEN-l] take me off this email list!

body:
Please take me off your email list. Somehow my son was looking up
information and now I am getting tons of email. Thanks


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Google preventing comment spam

body:
On Tue, 25 Jan 2005 08:57:02 -0600, Kevin Puetz <puetzk at puetzk.org> wrote:
> The best proposal I've seen so far is to apply it to all recently-modified
> pages (with 'recent' determined per project by how fast you think the
> editors will get it cleaned up - probably a day or so is reasonable). That
> assumes that it will get cleaned up before the timeout expires, and
> prevents it from being visible to a robot in the interim. But links that
> survive for a while still become rankable. And it's fairly simple, unlike
> tracking, per-link, whether or not it has been verified.

Although this *seems* simple, the database request needed to determine
"how old is this page" is not, I suspect, a quick one, and server
effeciency is a *BIG* issue with the Wikimedia sites. Add to that the
complications to do with the cache - the simplest solution might be to
block "nofollow" pages from being cached at all, which is an
additional waste - and it begins to look like an imbalanced
compromise. It would be better to determine more precise circumstances
under which the attributes are appropriate, and at least the costs
would be well spent.

Personally, I think a combination with new validation or edit patrol
features would be a better route to go down - if a state could easily
be associated with the article to say "this version has been approved
by a trusted user", that would seem a good criterion for removing the
"nofollow"s. Of course, you still get some cache awkwardness, but
unlike "age of this version", the software could explicitly purge the
cache when the approved status changed (since someone would have done
that action), so you could have the version with the "nofollow"s in
cached until that happened. So you get less cost, and a better match
with the general intentions.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project
	Has Been Around For A While

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> If anything, I think we're more elitist than that: we look at academia
> and say "Yes, pretty good, but we should do better."

Yep. In addition, the tendency of some to blindly defer to individual experts
is a dangerous thing. Expects are humans too, and thus have their own bias and
shortcomings.

For example, my intro to college chemistry instructor was a bit miffed that his
doctoral work on molecular structure modeling was not accepted by the
scientific community. So he taught us that part of the class (Valence Shell
Electron Pair Repulsion model) with a clear bias against it.

He also thought that chlorine radicals were not responsible for the ozone hole
(in opposition to scientific consensus on the issue). I was smart enough to see
past his bias, but I'm sure many of my classmates bought what he said and the
contempt for what he had to teach, as gospel.

I could also easily see this guy as a POV-pusher on Wikipedia who would try to
use his PhD credentials as an argument stopper (don't get me wrong, he is a
nice guy, but very opinionated).

I've had several other PhD professors like this as well. So blindly showing
deference to people with impressive-sounding credentials is not a panacea (as
Larry seems to imply). In fact, it could be a recipe for disaster.

We must instead look beyond the individual and try to fairly and accurately
present the topic at hand. That can and should be done by mixing the best
aspects of academia with the best aspects of enthusiastic armatures.

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - now with 250MB free storage. Learn more.
http://info.mail.yahoo.com/mail_250


from_name: Ben Brockert

body:
From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
>As you're aware, there's no hurry here.

There was a hurry, because it would have been good to turn it off before Google re-indexed the site, but now it's too late for that.

I asked on the page, but got no reply: what exactly will it take to get it turned off for any specific project?

Ben


body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> We must instead look beyond the individual and try to fairly and accurately
> present the topic at hand. That can and should be done by mixing the best
> aspects of academia with the best aspects of enthusiastic armatures.

Argh. That should be 'amateurs'. :)

--

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
The all-new My Yahoo! - What will yours do?
http://my.yahoo.com


body:
Ben Brockert wrote:
> From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
>> As you're aware, there's no hurry here.
>
> There was a hurry, because it would have been good to turn it off
> before Google re-indexed the site, but now it's too late for that.

What's the rush? It'll be indexed again, and again, and again. The web's
a dynamic place, and things change on it over time.

> I asked on the page, but got no reply: what exactly will it take to
> get it turned off for any specific project?

The combination of interest and getting around to it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Alex Kwan

body:
Hello,

Stirling Newberry wrote:
> Mandrin? This should be something which is documentable. Are there
> schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to standard
> Mandrin,

No, but I know plenty of HKers can write in Cantonese (with Hanzi)
without having been taught.

> are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published in large
> numbers, is there a movement.

How large is large? Does net forums count? Especially when wikipedia
started as a Internet project? Many HKers in HK net forums/boards/bbs
write in Cantonese.

> In short, has someone shown a notable and
> documentable desire to separate dialects from Chinese?

I don't view it as a separation from Chinese, but a separation from
Mandarin.

> some degree of linguistic separationism in progress. However, a stronger
> case could be made for a desire to incorporate vernacular idioms into
> standard mandrin, or as an important cultural dialect within the whole,
> as there are many culturally significant dialects in English which,

The differences aren't as minimal as the differences among dialects in
English. And while incorporating slang words, etc. from different
"dialects" into Mandarin is possible, that doesn't stop Cantonese/Yue
from being something completely different from Mandarin.

> Instead of arguing with each other about what "we" would like, it seems
> better to spend time finding out what the readers want, and then finding
> a means to provide that.

Well, a wikipedia is a new enough concept to the potential users that I
doubt they would be unhappy to learn that there's a Cantonese/Yue
wikipedia, in addition to the "traditional" Mandarin vernacular one.

little Alex


body:
Hello,

Andrew Lih wrote:
> television content is not in the local dialect, but in putonghua. For
> Guangdong's local media, it's largely the same case.

I...disagree. I've been to Guangzhou many, many times. There are tons of
local TV and radio programs in Cantonese/Yue, in addition to the Hong
Kong programs they watch/listen to. Every time I was in a taxi, if the
driver is from the local region, his radio is always tuned to a radio
station that speaks Cantonese/Yue.

little Alex


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject: [Wikitech-l] Layout of namespaces

body:
> Now "Aiuto:" always has a red background - so there must be a place
> where I can set up this layout.
>
> The two questions I have:
>
> 1) where to edit these layouts?

You can modify the appearance of Monobook skin for a wiki at
[[MediaWiki:Monobook.css]], see e.g.
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Monobook.css?action=edit --
each namespace has its own CSS class, so that the background can be
namespace-specific (see ns-0, ns-1 etc. there).

> 2) is there a problem if I would like to create a separate namespace
> (for example "Projects:") and where to create the pre-defined layout for
> this part.
>
> I had a look at this:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Custom_Namespaces
> But this does not help me with what I search for.

AFAIK this is useful only for separate installations of MediaWiki,
e.g. at your own server. On Wikimedia wikis, you are not allowed to
define custom namespaces. IMHO the only possibility to modify the
appearance is to use inline "style" attributes in the contents of the
articles.

-- [[ cs:Mormegil | Petr Kadlec ]]


body:
Hello,

Sheng Jiong wrote:
> is, all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language,
> and extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects.

...citation? How do you know? From what studies are you pulling this
information from? You can't just say it and assume it to be true.

I mean, many printed ads in Hong Kong that are written in Cantonese/Yue,
using puns and so on. Many slogans of those products are written in
Cantonese/Yue. The most recent example I can think of, in fact, is a
government ad (from the Equal Opportunity Committee) trying to
discourage racism.

> fact we do not even know what writing system we should use should
> there be a Chinese dialect Wikipedia.

Well, I would suggest Hanzi script first and consider whether we should
do the romanization later on, though I think romanization would be too
confusing to really be useful.

little Alex


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Daniel Mayer stated for the record:

> --- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>>We must instead look beyond the individual and try to fairly and accurately
>>present the topic at hand. That can and should be done by mixing the best
>>aspects of academia with the best aspects of enthusiastic armatures.
>
>
> Argh. That should be 'amateurs'. :)

I thought it was a good metaphor.  Wikipedia is a generator, and we're
all whirling around inside it....

--
  Sean Barrett     | Johnnie's in the basement
  sean at epoptic.com | mixin' up the medicine,
                   | I'm on the pavement
                   | thinkin' 'bout the government.


subject: [WikiEN-l] AIDS and HIV denial

body:
--- Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's be careful with wording here.  There is nothing to *prove*
> evolution, the age of the Earth or the link between HIV and AIDS.
> What there is is a great deal of evidence, probably overwhelmingly so,
> to suggest these things.  I personally agree with all these points,
> but it is not correct to say that they are proved.  Also, I think any
> claims that the Holocaust did not occur are absolute nonsense -
> however, there are reasonable arguments against evolution.  We must,
> however, understand that peer-review does *not* alone make something
> true and undisputable.

It is possible to say something is 'true beyond a reasonable doubt'. This is
the case for the HIV/AIDS issue and for the age of the Earth (along with plate
tectonics, btw).

Micro evolution (small-scale genetic changes in a population) is also in the
'true beyond a reasonable doubt' category, but macro evolution (large-scale
changes over a longer time, leading to the formation of new species) is still
in the 'preponderance of evidence' stage (although, with increasing evidence to
support this idea each year and with the consensus view of biologists being
that it is 'true beyond a reasonable doubt').

-- mav

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.
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from_name: steven l. rubenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Me and my 3 reverts

body:
Dante Alighieri wrote,

>I responded to a DIRECT request that Slrubenstein be blocked for violating
>the 3RR. Note that this direct request was posted not only on the Admin
>noticeboard, but on my Talk page. Now, in my opinion (as someone who reads
>the 3RR to mean what it SAYS, "three reverts to the same ARTICLE in 24
>hours") was that Slr had obviously violated the rule. That he had pretty
>clearly been baited was irrelevant. How would it have looked if we ignored
>a straightforward violation by a longtime contributor and told the "new
>guy" that he had "done it too" and that that somehow made it OK?

As Dante mentioned, he and I have had quite pleasant and civil discussions
of this.  Since some people misinterpreted the intent of my first e-mail, I
was not in any way accusing Dante of any kind of misconduct.  My comment
that I thought the application of the rule in this case was frivolous was
not a comment on Dante's judgement or intentions -- it was a comment on the
limits of the rule.  And, as most people understand, my intention was only
to raise some general issues worth discussion.

Earlier, David Gerard wrote:
>The article history doesn't matter. It won't actually be a disaster for the
>article to have something stupid in it for ten minutes.

And my point is, that there are situations where the article history really
does matter.  There are different reasons for edit wars, and different
reasons for reversion.  I guess many people disagree with me, but I think
that different kinds of edit wars for different reasons might require
different policies.  I certainly agree that when one edit is reverted back
and forth several times (the narrowest understanding of the 3RR), then the
block policy makes perfect sense and is necessary.

Sometimes the volleys of reverts are both the result of and expressions of
a serious lack of wiki-etiquette and incivility.  In these cases, the block
policy makes perfect sense and is necessary.

But sometimes the reverts have to do with serious differences over
content.  I think this is an important distinction, because in such cases
having a night, a couple of days, even a week to cool down, will not change
things.  Moreover, our other dispute-resolution mechanisms (mediation,
arbitration) are not well-suited to resolving conflicts over content.  I've
said this before and I will say it again, we need some sort of mechanism,
or series of mechanisms, for resolving major conflicts over content.  In
cases where everyone has a fair amount of knowledge about something (Bush's
inaugural speech or Doom), we can count on the disorganized sensibilities
of the community as a whole to sort out conflicts.  But in cases where only
a small number of community members have the knowledge or interest to
involve themselves in an article, the informal mechanism doesn't work very
well.  I am not advocating anything like peer-review; I am not sure what I
would recommend -- I just think it is something we need to think about and
discuss.

And in the cases where several -- five, ten, fifteen -- reverts involve as
many different edits of different passages, this could be an indication
that, despite brief volleys of reverts, participants are finding ways to
work through the situation on their own.  In my experience this occurs
where there is a serious conflict over content, but a desire for people to
come up with some mutually acceptable solution.  In such cases, two or more
parties might willingly tolerate some multiple reverts.

I know that in my case Jalnet2 asked for me to be blocked.  I just wonder
whether he would have changed his mind if he knew that he would be blocked
too.  Maybe I am wrong, maybe my case is not the best example.  But I do
believe that there have been and will be cases like the ones I suggest
above, where we could use other policies.

Steve

Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 15:12:28 +0800, Alex Kwan <litalex at slashyalex.com> wrote:
> I...disagree. I've been to Guangzhou many, many times. There are tons of
> local TV and radio programs in Cantonese/Yue, in addition to the Hong
> Kong programs they watch/listen to. Every time I was in a taxi, if the
> driver is from the local region, his radio is always tuned to a radio
> station that speaks Cantonese/Yue.

That's somewhat true, as folks native to southern Guangdong tune into
HK-based and local Cantonese sources. Certainly they have the
strongest local dialect programming in China, especially arts, culture
and popular programming.

However, more and more, the region is being filled by migrants from
other regions, because of the economic prosperity and worker
shortages. In the extreme case of Shenzhen, Cantonese is not widely
spoken among the 4.5 million inhabitants because the population is
largely transplanted from other places. Because of this, and the
ambition to be national satellite broadcasters, putonghua makes up the
bulk of the content of these media groups. But your point is valid.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Felix Wan

body:
On Thu, February 3, 2005 8:54 pm, Sheng Jiong said:
>> Are there
>> schools being set up to teach written vernaculars as opposed to standard
>> Mandrin, are there novels, dictionaries etc. being published
>> in large numbers, is there a movement. In short, has someone shown a
>> notable and documentable desire to separate dialects from Chinese? My
>> research (posted some time ago) found a case, but not an overwhelming
>> one, for some degree of linguistic separationism in progress.
>
> A very good point indeed. And I also agree with Andrew's view, that
> Wikipedia's chief aim is to write encyclopedias, not promoting any
> kind of promoting of languages. If any Chinese dialects any other than
> Mandarin has received significant attention in the world, and that
> people have gotten used to writing/reading these languages, there is of
> course a need to set up a Wikipedia in this language. But the truth is,
> all Chinese dialects other than Mandarin remain a spoken language, and
> extremely few books/articles/etc. are published in dialects. In fact we do
> not even know what writing system we should use should there be a Chinese
> dialect Wikipedia.
>
Max Weinreich: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy". If we
follow that line of thinking, then yes, since there is no public education
in the world that teaches written Cantonese, we should not have an
encyclopedia in it.

Although I cannot find the official language policy of Wikipedia, but from
what I observe, Wikipedia does encourage minority languages, even allows
those without official status, even constructed and fictional ones. I
appreciate this respect of our rich human culture.

Compare to most other minority languages, Cantonese is more qualified to
have a Wikipedia. Although written Cantonese has not obtained any official
status from any government in the world, it is at least an official spoken
language in Hong Kong. Written Cantonese is used in police reports to
record words of witnesses verbatim. The *official* language policy of Hong
Kong recognizes "2 wen 3 yu" - 2 written languages (wen): Standard British
English and Standard Chinese (Mandarin vernacular); 3 spoken languages (yu):
British English, Cantonese Chinese and Mandarin Chinese (Putonghua).

Compared to the huge amount of publication in Standard Vernacular Chinese
(Mandarin baihua), publication in Cantonese appears to be few, but the
number is significant. There are more and more articles and novels written
in Cantonese. People have gotten used to writing and reading in Cantonese,
especially among the younger generation of Hong Kong. They discuss in Net
forums in Cantonese. Sometimes they receive requests from Mandarin speakers
to translate what they are talking about. Who say those two are the same
when written?

Although most Cantonese speakers from Hong Kong knows how to read and write
in Cantonese if written in traditional Hanzi, many people do not find it a
serious language just because writing in it has been discouraged in schools.
However, even that is changing. There has always been dictionaries on how
to pronounce Chinese characters in Cantonese. There are more publications
on the study of Cantonese vocabulary, grammar, and most importantly, on
orthography of Hanzi to represent Cantonese words not found in Mandarin.
Those publications are, however, written in Standard Vernacular Chinese.

Writing something as serious as an encyclopedia in Cantonese will be
unprecedented, and will not gain any support from a government in today's
political climate, but I do not think denying it with that reason is
consistent with the policy of setting up Wikipedia in a new language.

> And to Mark: please do note that I speak Shanghainese rather than
> Min-nan. Therefore among those opposers there is also a native speaker
> of the language. It is not as you wrote that only those who do not speak
> the language oppose the proposal. I am still strongly opposed to the set
> up of any Chinese dialect Wikipedias. And I am not actually glad to see
> the Min-nan Wikipedia too. I simply doubt if any Min-nan speakers can
> understand the current Min-nan Wikipedia.
>
Actually, I appreciate that the setting up of the Min-nan Wikipedia in
spite of opposition from unglad Chinese speakers. I can read peh-oe-ji,
and I can find enough cognates to understand what is going on, but I just
do not know enough Min-nan to contribute. The complete Bible has been
translated into Min-nan using peh-oe-ji and many Min-nan speakers can read
it. Surely ZH-MIN-NAN people need to get more Min-nan speakers involved.

There is one complication about Chinese dialects though: every literate
Chinese can read Standard Vernacular Chinese, even if they cannot speak
Mandarin. Probably no one has ever spoken Classical Chinese, yet it has
been the standard written language for thousands of years. Chinese are
so accustomed to writing in a common language they never speak that some
do oppose writing in their own dialect. In the early 20th century the
literate elite strongly opposed writing in Vernacular Mandarin for similar
reasons: vernaculars are not for serious literature and so on. So don't be
surprised if we find Cantonese speakers strongly oppose written Cantonese.

Let's do a thought experiment. How much linguistic difference from standard
English dialects is required for a Wikipedia to be set up in a new English
dialect? While previous examples like "British vs. American English" or
"New York English" fail to illustrate the point, if there is a request for
a Wikipedia in "Ebonics" (African American Vernacular English), or
"Singlish" (Singaporean Vernacular English), will it be strongly opposed?
That's about how those strong opponents feel against written Cantonese. We
need to understand their concern to communicate with them effectively.

That is why the concern that written Cantonese on a serious subject may look
too similar to that in written Mandarin have really got my attention, so I proposed an experiment. So far no one opposed the experiment. I will go
ahead and try.

I consider myself a strong proponent for common languages: Putonghua,
English as an international language, even constructed IAL, because they
are useful for mutual understanding and communication. But I just do not
believe we need to suppress minor dialects to achieve the goal.

So my stand point is still this: if there is enough interest in a Wikipedia
in a Chinese dialect, let them try.

Felix Wan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
David Gerard stated for the record:

> It's such a pity {{toomanyboxes}} fell to [[WP:TFD]].

'Tis a pity deletionists have no sense of humor.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Johnnie's in the basement
  sean at epoptic.com | mixin' up the medicine,
                   | I'm on the pavement
                   | thinkin' 'bout the government.


from_name: Godfrey Lee

subject: [Wikitech-l] anyway to download just the metawiki help pages?

body:
Could you reply by e-mail?

mailto:godfrey.lee at cognos.com

Thank you very much in advance.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> Take a look at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921
>
Beautiful! By the time readers get to the content, they are in a
properly skeptical frame of mind.

I don't know that any new rules are necessary though; I doubt
it's very common for an article to get so much attention, but
for all of it to be superficial. Usually somebody develops
enough curiosity to research it in more depth and justify
removing most of the tags.

The documentation for each template could include a sort of
"hierarchy"; people putting on VfD should be able to have the
tag "overwrite" the others, since not much point in cleaning
up or NPOVing an article that's about to be deleted.

Stan


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Arne Heizmann wrote:
> Here at CSR, we are thinking about replacing our company-internal wiki,
> which is currently running ZopeWiki, with MediaWiki. (I had nothing to
> do with that decision *whistles innocently*... :) )
>
> Does there exist a tool to convert the ZopeWiki data to a MediaWiki
> database?

None that I'm aware of, but if you write one we could include it. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Robert Brookes

subject: [WikiEN-l] Me and my 3 reverts

body:
--- "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:

Quote 1:
>
> And my point is, that there are situations where the
> article history really
> does matter.  There are different reasons for edit
> wars, and different
> reasons for reversion.

Quote 2:
>
> But sometimes the reverts have to do with serious
> differences over
> content.  I think this is an important distinction,
> because in such cases
> having a night, a couple of days, even a week to
> cool down, will not change
> things.  Moreover, our other dispute-resolution
> mechanisms (mediation,
> arbitration) are not well-suited to resolving
> conflicts over content.  I've
> said this before and I will say it again, we need
> some sort of mechanism,
> or series of mechanisms, for resolving major
> conflicts over content.

I would wish to support the feelings expressed above.

RC police cannot solve this issue. The cause rather
than the symptom needs to be addressed.

cheers
Robert

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
All your favorites on one personal page ? Try My Yahoo!
http://my.yahoo.com


from_name: Stirling Newberry

body:
On Feb 4, 2005, at 7:15 PM, Felix Wan wrote:

> On Thu, February 3, 2005 8:54 pm, Sheng Jiong said:

> Max Weinreich: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy". If we
> follow that line of thinking, then yes, since there is no public
> education
> in the world that teaches written Cantonese, we should not have an
> encyclopedia in it.
>

In our case, a language is a dialect that can support the writing of,
and whose readers desire,  its own encyclopedia.

I'll leave aside my quarrels with Weinreich's definition of language.
That was a long time ago, in a different professional incarnation.


body:
On Thu, February 3, 2005 5:55 am, Sj said:
> I like this idea.  3 good articles and 20 good stubs, with a
> translated main page, should be sufficient interest to start a new
> language/dialect, or at least to provide content on which to base
> arguments about why the new project should not start.
>
> I would put such new content on Meta, with pages like
> meta.wikimedia.org/New-lang/yue/Main Page
> meta.wikimedia.org/New-lang/pinyin/Zhongguo
>
> I don't have anything personal against nomenclature like zh-min-nan,
> zh-yue-han, etc; particularly if that allows us to use some third-party
> group's decisions on nomenclature; but the above short names should at
> least identify the proposed new wikipedia unambiguously.
>
Thank you, and some other people for supporting this idea. Considering
suggestions of page location, I have just set up the testing ground at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/Test-WP/zh-yue

These are my reasons:
1. I prefer to call it "Test" since that should invoke the least objection.
2. I prefer to make it systematic so that other controversal proposals may
   use the same method, so I should include "WP" for Wikipedia proposals.
3. "zh-yue" should most likely be the domain of the Wikipedia if it gets
   approval. It is unlikely to have more than one versions of Cantonese in
   near future.
4. Somehow ":" had unexpected redirection effect, so I used "Test-WP".

I hope that supporters of Cantonese can start adding some test articles
under this structure:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/Test-WP/zh-yue/Article

Let's see what happens.

Felix Wan


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
But due to an unfortunate oversight, I see the "cite sources" and
"unreferenced" tags are missing. ;-)  ~~~~

On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 01:32:25 +0100, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921
> How many different ways do we need to express that an article should be edited?


from_name: David Bruhn

subject: [Foundation-l] New Project

body:
I've proposed a new project, Wikibate
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibate>. Come check it out.

- David Bruhn


subject: [Foundation-l] New Project


from_name: Taco Deposit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
These cleanup templates are all listed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Cleanup

TD

-----Original Message-----
From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]
On Behalf Of Erik Moeller
Sent: Friday, February 04, 2005 6:32 PM
To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

Take a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921

How many different ways do we need to express that an article should be
edited? When did Wikipedia become about editing pages to tell others how
to edit pages?

I would support either radically cutting down the number of these
templates, or limiting their use by policy to two total top-level boxes
per page. Templates would be ordered by priority, so something
ridiculous like "POV check" wouldn't have a chance if there are two
important templates on the page already.

More controversially, I would even say that there's no point in an
article being on Cleanup and VfD at the same time. Both are instruments
of exposure, it's enough to use one of them and hope people fix the
article because they see it there. Otherwise people will just keep
adding Cleanup to any article on VfD out of fear that it will otherwise
not get fixed before being deleted.

Regards,

Erik
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
At 09:01 PM 2/4/2005 -0500, Stacey Greenstein wrote:

>I agree that we should move the tag location of many tags to the talk
>pages. [[WP:RM]] does this with the {{move}} tags. I suppose a
>{{tagged}} tag could be made to indicate the sub-par-ness of the
>article, with a link to the talk: page and an edit link.

If nothing else, I think the "stub" tags (and associated categories) should
go to the talk pages. These stub categories are very "meta", in that they
don't group articles based on subject matter so much as they group them
based on their characteristics as articles. Things that are only of use to
editors should generally stay off the main articles, IMO.

--
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Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.5 - Release Date: 2/3/2005


from_name: Frank v Waveren

subject: [Wikitech-l] Block table optimisation (backport from HEAD)

body:
On Fri, Feb 04, 2005 at 09:43:17AM +0100, Christof Damian wrote:
> doesn't this break for mysql 3.23 ?
>
> I mentioned this on http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1244
> already.
Nope, check the elseif ( $options=='' ) { in front of it.

--
Frank v Waveren                                      Fingerprint: BDD7 D61E
fvw@[var.cx|stack.nl] ICQ#10074100                      5D39 CF05 4BFC F57A
Public key: hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net/468D62C8              FA00 7D51 468D 62C8

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from_name: sannse

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
More opinions would be welcome at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Autofellatio#Poll:_Should_the_image_be_shown_inline.2C_or_as_a_link.3F

This is an explicit image of the act of autofellatio - at the moment we
are not getting a very clear idea of the community view on this question.

Please reply there rather than on-list, this is just to get a wider
selection of contributors commenting there.

Thanks

--sannse

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body:
On Fri, Feb 04, 2005 at 08:15:07PM +0100, Frank v Waveren wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 04, 2005 at 09:43:17AM +0100, Christof Damian wrote:
> > doesn't this break for mysql 3.23 ?
> >
> > I mentioned this on http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1244
> > already.
> Nope, check the elseif ( $options=='' ) { in front of it.
Oops, read the wrong one. Yeah, I think this breaks MySQL. Hold on,
let me see if I can do it without using UNION, but otherwise I think
it might be worthwhile to require whatever version introduced UNION.
(or have a $wgOldMysql option that falls back on slow behaviour,
unless people object to having that).

--
Frank v Waveren                                      Fingerprint: BDD7 D61E
fvw@[var.cx|stack.nl] ICQ#10074100                      5D39 CF05 4BFC F57A
Public key: hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net/468D62C8              FA00 7D51 468D 62C8

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subject: [Wikitech-l] New table  required for Head?

body:
On Fri, Feb 04, 2005 at 07:36:40AM -0800, Rich Holton wrote:
> In trying to run the code currently in HEAD, I find that it needs a
> table called "group". Is there a mechanism for building this table?
> Barring that, is there information on what the table is supposed to
> look like?

The table layout for HEAD is radically different to that in 1.4, group
is just the start of it. I think it might be easiest to setup a clean
HEAD install and import your changes back in somehow. I don't know if
there's already code for this though.

--
Frank v Waveren                                      Fingerprint: BDD7 D61E
fvw@[var.cx|stack.nl] ICQ#10074100                      5D39 CF05 4BFC F57A
Public key: hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net/468D62C8              FA00 7D51 468D 62C8

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from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] AIDS and HIV denial

body:
On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 10:16:33 -0800 (PST), Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> He is using the same tactic used by certain religious
> fundamentalists who deny that there are any peer-reviewed
> papers which prove that Evolution occurs, and the same
> tactic used by religious fundamentalists who claim that
> there are no peer-reviewed papers which prove that the
> world is 4.5 billion years old.
>
> In all such cases there *are* such papers, and in all cases
> Wikipedia articles *do* link to reputable cites which have
> vast amounts of peer-reviewed scientific information on
> this topic.  We can add more citations of course, but
> Pasternak's claim is not meant to improve the article.  It
> is meant to mislead, obfuscate, and push AIDS-denial, and
> it is written in the same way that Evolution deniers and
> Holocaust deniers work.  They give the appearance of being
> rational, but they distort statements made by other people,
> and refuse to accept any evidence at all.

Let's be careful with wording here.  There is nothing to *prove*
evolution, the age of the Earth or the link between HIV and AIDS.
What there is is a great deal of evidence, probably overwhelmingly so,
to suggest these things.  I personally agree with all these points,
but it is not correct to say that they are proved.  Also, I think any
claims that the Holocaust did not occur are absolute nonsense -
however, there are reasonable arguments against evolution.  We must,
however, understand that peer-review does *not* alone make something
true and undisputable.

Smoddy


from_name: Stacey Greenstein

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
I agree that we should move the tag location of many tags to the talk
pages. [[WP:RM]] does this with the {{move}} tags. I suppose a
{{tagged}} tag could be made to indicate the sub-par-ness of the
article, with a link to the talk: page and an edit link.

Stacey Greenstein
aka UtherSRG

On Sat, 5 Feb 2005 01:56:07 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 01:32:25 +0100, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> > Take a look at
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921
>
> Ok I'm impressed but on the other hand be glad it didn't have half a
> dozen stub notices on it. One option would be to put the majority of
> tags on talk pages. In fact everything except an apology notice
> (something along the lines of "it has come to our attention that this
> page is below our normal standards. We apologise this and hope the
> problem will be fixed soon. If you think you can fix this yourself
> please click here" ok a bit less coperate sounding would be good), VFD
> tags and protected tags could be put on talk pages.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: kylelutze

subject: [Foundation-l] New Project

body:
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Hash: SHA1

This is more or less what the discussion area should be for. this goes
back to that topic a while ago where I think this is just another
unnecessary split off. That's just my thoughts anyways

Kyle

David Bruhn wrote:
| I've proposed a new project, Wikibate
| <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikibate>. Come check it out.
|
| - David Bruhn
|
|
| _______________________________________________
| foundation-l mailing list
| foundation-l at wikimedia.org
| http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
|
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subject: [Foundation-l] New Project


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
I think this would be an interesting project for the developers:

Create a kind of tag that, when placed on a non-talk page, displays a
"this article is sub-par" kind of message, but puts a more descriptive
message on the talk page.

On Fri, 04 Feb 2005 20:13:42 -0800, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> At 09:01 PM 2/4/2005 -0500, Stacey Greenstein wrote:
>
> >I agree that we should move the tag location of many tags to the talk
> >pages. [[WP:RM]] does this with the {{move}} tags. I suppose a
> >{{tagged}} tag could be made to indicate the sub-par-ness of the
> >article, with a link to the talk: page and an edit link.
>
> If nothing else, I think the "stub" tags (and associated categories) should
> go to the talk pages. These stub categories are very "meta", in that they
> don't group articles based on subject matter so much as they group them
> based on their characteristics as articles. Things that are only of use to
> editors should generally stay off the main articles, IMO.
>
> --
> No virus found in this outgoing message.
> Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
> Version: 7.0.300 / Virus Database: 265.8.5 - Release Date: 2/3/2005
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Bill Konrad

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Take a look at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921
>
That's nothing. Check out
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgman%2C_Michigan_school_shooting_plot

It used to have six tags until David Gerard removed  {{cleanup-importance}},
though it has recently gained a manually-created note equivalent to
{{in-use}}.

BTW, I agree that this proliferation of tags on the article page is not
particularly helpful for readers.

Bkonrad


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> There's something interesting about all of this discussion: no serious
> person in the wikipedia community, no matter where they may fall on
> the spectrum of "respect/deference to professors" holds the
> anti-elitist view that Sanger ascribed to us.
>
> If anything, I think we're more elitist than that: we look at academia
> and say "Yes, pretty good, but we should do better."

I think there is a good deal of substance in Larry Sanger's and Robert
McHenry's criticism.  They are correct as long as they describe the
problem they see.  However, the outsider's perceived anti-elitism
doesn't necessarily originate from an intentional anti-elitism in the
community.  And since it isn't intentional, it is quite impossible to
"abandon" this anti-elitism, so Larry fails provide a solution.  He
suggests a fork of the project.  Yes, maybe he should try this.

I personally think (does anybody know?) that the core of Wikipedia
users (and contributors) still consists of people who look for
information on the web only.  If you write a blog entry, it is far
more convenient to link to a Wikipedia article that explains a
concept, than to link to or reference an article in Encarta or
Britannica, to which the reader might not have access.  (If the
Wikipedia article doesn't exist, you might even take the time to write
it.)  This is the typical situation where Wikipedia wins over
traditional encyclopedias.  But there are many other situations where
it does not, at least not yet, maybe next year.  If a student wants a
good overview of the history of Czech literature, she might be lucky
and this topic happens to be well covered in Wikipeda, but more likely
it is better presented in Britannica or even Encarta.  The number of
topics or areas that are well covered in Wikipedia is increasing for
every year, but we are still far from the coverage of traditional
encyclopedias.

A search on en.wikipedia for "history of Czech literature" gives very
odd results.  Maybe it's not just the contents, but also the search
function that needs improvement.  Go to encarta.msn.com and the same
search yields the articles "Czech Literature" and "Book", or on
britannica.com it yields "Czech literature", "Literature", "Czech
Republic, history of", "Hus, Jan", and "Mathesius, Vilem".

So the student might try Wikipedia and be lucky or maybe not.  But if
the student asks a librarian, that librarian isn't going to risk his
professional appearance on a source that depends on his being lucky.
He is going to tell the student to use Britannica, nothing less.  The
library reference desk is a situation where traditional encyclopedias
win and where Wikipedia loses big time.  Correct me if I'm wrong.

At least in theory, the sales force of a commercial business has the
double task of selling products (or services) and collecting
information from prospective customers.  If Britannica sales people
discover that customers prefer the World Book Encyclopedia because of
its illustrations, they will return and tell their editors that more
and better illustrations are needed.  Focus is then put on improving
those aspects that make a difference in the competition. Free software
developers don't get this kind input, which explains why Linux has
been so slow in replacing Microsoft Windows on the desktop.  And the
Wikipedia community faces the same lack of input from outsiders.  I
don't know how to solve this.  Maybe we need a sales force.

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


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Please don't use the term "dialect" or "language" in this case without
understanding the background.

Thousands of years ago, when Chinese was first written down, the
language was already splitting into different dialects, with very
minor but noticable differences. They were called ?? or regional
speech (read in modern Mandarin as fang-yan).

Over hundreds of years these dialects diverged further, but being
spoken in a relatively small area (this is still thousands of years
ago), they still were not remarkably different.

When the Chinese empire began expanding, these dialects (still called
"regional speech") were spread to the far reaches of the empire, and
learned as a second language by indigenous people who were eventually
assimilated, and loaned some words, grammar, and phonology to the
dialect of the locale they were in.

Over such a large area, these dialects diverged and by the 1700s could
be counted as languages (??), but this term was used generally to
distinguish Chinese from foreign tongues and sometimes foreign tongues
from one another. Even as separate languages, they were termed
"regional speech" ?? because that is really what they are - spoken
within the Chinese empire and related to one another, together forming
the Han family of languages, with a standard based roughly on the
spoken language of around 2000 years before but matching somewhat
closely the modern Cantonese or Hakka.

With the ever-increasing polarized view of the world as Chinese vs
Foreign, the speech, habits, and country of the Chinese were seen as
more and more united, as one opposed to "Foreign". Also, Chinese does
not mark plurals, so "??" (modern Mandarin han-yu) can be translated
as both "Han language" and "Han languageS".

However the issue of terminology only came when Western lexicographers
needed to translate Chinese words to Western languages for their
dictionaries. Using a Western linguistic model of the time, "regional
speech" maps almost directly to "dialect".

So in the Chinese languages, this is not really a concern as you refer
neutrally to "the speech of Shanghai" or "Wu speech" or "the speech of
the northern region".

However, in English, it has been a cause for debate, many people
saying the term "language" should be used, but others saying "dialect"
should be used.

In fact, the amount of time for which Chinese speech varieties have
been diverging for one another is longer than that between French and
Spanish or Dutch and German.

Mark

On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 19:21:35 -0500, Stirling Newberry
<stirling.newberry at xigenics.net> wrote:
>
> On Feb 4, 2005, at 7:15 PM, Felix Wan wrote:
>
> > On Thu, February 3, 2005 8:54 pm, Sheng Jiong said:
>
> > Max Weinreich: "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy". If we
> > follow that line of thinking, then yes, since there is no public
> > education
> > in the world that teaches written Cantonese, we should not have an
> > encyclopedia in it.
> >
>
> In our case, a language is a dialect that can support the writing of,
> and whose readers desire,  its own encyclopedia.
>
> I'll leave aside my quarrels with Weinreich's definition of language.
> That was a long time ago, in a different professional incarnation.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
Rich Holton wrote:
> In trying to run the code currently in HEAD, I find that it needs a
> table called "group". Is there a mechanism for building this table?

Did you run the installer or update.php?

> Barring that, is there information on what the table is supposed to
> look like?

The table definitions are all in tables.sql.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
Take a look at

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921

How many different ways do we need to express that an article should be
edited? When did Wikipedia become about editing pages to tell others how
to edit pages?

I would support either radically cutting down the number of these
templates, or limiting their use by policy to two total top-level boxes
per page. Templates would be ordered by priority, so something
ridiculous like "POV check" wouldn't have a chance if there are two
important templates on the page already.

More controversially, I would even say that there's no point in an
article being on Cleanup and VfD at the same time. Both are instruments
of exposure, it's enough to use one of them and hope people fix the
article because they see it there. Otherwise people will just keep
adding Cleanup to any article on VfD out of fear that it will otherwise
not get fixed before being deleted.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
There needs to be something on the article itself that signals there's
an acknowledged problem with a page, because if readers see something
that's clearly biased, but it has no dispute tag on it, they'll think
Wikipedia is satisfied with the bias. The tag tells them there's an
on-going content dispute, which tends to enhance our credibility. The
tag might also encourage the reader to try editing the article.

Slim

On Fri, 4 Feb 2005 23:18:24 -0500, Bill Konrad <bkonrad123 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> > Take a look at
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921
> >
> That's nothing. Check out
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bridgman%2C_Michigan_school_shooting_plot
>
> It used to have six tags until David Gerard removed  {{cleanup-importance}},
> though it has recently gained a manually-created note equivalent to
> {{in-use}}.
>
> BTW, I agree that this proliferation of tags on the article page is not
> particularly helpful for readers.
>
> Bkonrad
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 01:32:25 +0100, Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Take a look at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kryon&oldid=9939921

Ok I'm impressed but on the other hand be glad it didn't have half a
dozen stub notices on it. One option would be to put the majority of
tags on talk pages. In fact everything except an apology notice
(something along the lines of "it has come to our attention that this
page is below our normal standards. We apologise this and hope the
problem will be fixed soon. If you think you can fix this yourself
please click here" ok a bit less coperate sounding would be good), VFD
tags and protected tags could be put on talk pages.

--
geni


body:
Ok, how about this? It turns out the wheel has already been invented,
so I'm using $wgDBmysql4. With a little code ugliness you could fix it
to use separate selects on 3.x, but I'm assuming nobody runs a serious
Mediawiki on MySQL 3.x anymore.

--
Frank v Waveren                                      Fingerprint: BDD7 D61E
fvw@[var.cx|stack.nl] ICQ#10074100                      5D39 CF05 4BFC F57A
Public key: hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net/468D62C8              FA00 7D51 468D 62C8

-------------- next part --------------
--- includes/Block.php~	2005-02-03 22:07:20.000000000 +0100
+++ includes/Block.php	2005-02-05 02:26:24.000000000 +0100
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
  * loaded or filled. It is not load-on-demand. There are no accessors.
  *
  * To use delete(), you only need to fill $mAddress
- * Globals used: $wgBlockCache, $wgAutoblockExpiry
+ * Globals used: $wgBlockCache, $wgAutoblockExpiry, $wgDBmysql4
  *
  * @todo This could be used everywhere, but it isn't.
  * @package MediaWiki
@@ -61,6 +61,7 @@
 	# Get a ban from the DB, with either the given address or the given username
 	function load( $address = '', $user = 0, $killExpired = true )
 	{
+		global $wgDBmysql4;
 		$fname = 'Block::load';
 		wfDebug( "Block::load: '$address', '$user', $killExpired\n" );

@@ -81,10 +82,18 @@
 			$sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_user={$user} $options";
 		} elseif ($user=="") {
 			$sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) . "' $options";
-		} else {
-			$sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE (ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) .
-				"' OR ipb_user={$user}) $options";
-		}
+                } elseif ( $options=='' || $wgDBmysql4!=true) {
+                        # If there are no options (e.g. FOR UPDATE), use a UNION
+                        # so that the query can make efficient use of indices
+                        $sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) .
+                                "' UNION SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE ipb_user={$user}";
+                } else {
+                        # If there are options, a UNION can not be used on older versions of MySQL,
+                        # use one SELECT instead. Will do a full table scan. On MySQL 3.x, do this
+			# without options to as UNION with FOR UPDATE isn't supported there.
+                        $sql = "SELECT * FROM $ipblocks WHERE (ipb_address='" . $db->strencode( $address ) .
+                                "' OR ipb_user={$user}) $options";
+                }

 		$res = $db->query( $sql, $fname );
 		if ( 0 == $db->numRows( $res ) ) {
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] They don't want a fork - they want to change
	*this* project (was A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project
	Has Been Around For A While)

body:
Wikipedia has strong network effects, but like any bubble, needs to fulfill
its promise, by actually filling in reliable content, a project Larry Sanger
is unlikely to assist with either personally or by mobilizing other talent.

Fred

> From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2005 23:24:59 +1100
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] They don't want a fork - they want to change *this*
> project (was A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project Has Been Around
> For A While)
>
> Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se) [050205 09:24]:
>
>> I think there is a good deal of substance in Larry Sanger's and Robert
>> McHenry's criticism.  They are correct as long as they describe the
>> problem they see.  However, the outsider's perceived anti-elitism
>> doesn't necessarily originate from an intentional anti-elitism in the
>> community.  And since it isn't intentional, it is quite impossible to
>> "abandon" this anti-elitism, so Larry fails provide a solution.  He
>> suggests a fork of the project.  Yes, maybe he should try this.
>
>
> He specifically didn't suggest a fork, as far as I can see - he wanted to
> change *this* project's working methods.
>
> The thing is, it's blindingly obvious that Wikipedia is going to be THE
> encyclopedia. Wikipedia, not some other open-content web-based
> encyclopedia, will have the brand identification Britannica had in the 20th
> century. We are it. We are the one. Anyone else catching up is as unlikely
> as FreeBSD taking over market share from Linux, even as its fans swear by
> it.
>
> The annoying aspect of this is that (a) the POV warriors have a point: this
> is the popular one they need to hit to push their POV as NPOV; (b) people
> annoyed at Wikipedia don't form a fork with different policies, they're
> going to try to change this project instead. So Larry Sanger doesn't talk
> about forming another project with policies to his liking - he talks about
> how to put a spanner in the works of this one before it's too late.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: NSK

subject: [Foundation-l] New Project

body:
On Saturday 05 February 2005 06:06, David Bruhn wrote:
> I've proposed a new project, Wikibate

Well, the problem with debate projects is where to set their limits:
- would you accept neonazis to disseminate their ideas on it?
- etc...

How do you plan to solve this kind of problems and what limits are to
considering to impose?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org/slashdotting2005feb4


subject: [Foundation-l] New Project


from_name: Nicholas Knight

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy

body:
steven l. rubenstein wrote:
>> Cheesedreams is now editing under User:Cheese-Dreams. I thought all
>> the sockpuppets were blocked? I've blocked this one now anyway. --fvw*
>> 23:44, 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)
>> This is just a new sock. Sigh - I don't think CD gets it. --mav
>> Darling, your so wrong, I get it very well, I just ignore you,
>> darling. CheeseDreams 11:35, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
>> The other note is that CheeseDreams uses a dialup and this makes it
>> impossible to block her IP range. She can redial as many times as she
>> likes, and she doesn't need to use open proxies. Rhobite 04:28, Feb 1,
>> 2005 (UTC)
>> LOL, you cant stop me now, darling. CheeseDreams 11:35, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Contact her ISP. If you can't get them to drop her, call the upstream
provider(s). If that doesn't work, block every IP range associated with
the ISP and tell anyone affected to complain to the ISP. Wikipedia is
getting big, it's time to start throwing some weight around when users
are engaging in wildly abusive activities.

"You are using <someISP> which harbours a user who has repeatedly
engaged in egregious abuses against Wikipedia. Because it is impractical
to block individual users of <someISP>, we have been forced to block
everyone using <someISP>. It is up to <someISP> to remove the abusive
user from their network. Users of <someISP> will remain blocked until
confirmation has been recieved from <someISP> that the abusive user's
service has been terminated. We urge you to contact <someISP> and
request that they take action.

<someISP contact information>"

The abuser will be gone, and the ISP will have a (potentially large) PR
problem until they decide to do the right thing.


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bots not working

body:
Hi, I was wondering quite a lot when yesterday my bot for the Italian
wiktionary did not work anymore ... then I heard about problems witn
"one" user - vandalism of course.

Now because of this one person it is impossible to upload contents given
from colleagues for the Italian wiktionary (at the moment the Sicilian
wiktionary is not involved, but it will be soon, when the second part of
the wordlist is ready). What I can't understand is why you blocked the
bots for all wikimedia sites - wouldn't it be enough to do this first on
the one where you have the problems? Why do all of us now be unable to
work properly because of one stupid person who seemed love disturbing
just one site?

And: did you ever think about taking legal action against this person?
There are authorities that are there for jus this job ...

Of course some people do this as they have nothing else to do for the
whole of their day and are somewhat disturbed and simply "must" ruin
work of others, but there could also be someone interested in
miscrediting wikimedia.

Sorry, but I am absolutely not happy with this.

Best wishes - and today I'll be offline just to show a form of protest.

Sabine


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Bots not working


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Bots not working

body:
I have been working on getting the Pywikipediabot confirm to the new
rules, but it seems to not have worked. I don't know what I am doing
wrong :-(

Andre Engels

On Sat, 05 Feb 2005 09:02:57 +0100, Sabine Cretella
<sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> Hi, I was wondering quite a lot when yesterday my bot for the Italian
> wiktionary did not work anymore ... then I heard about problems witn
> "one" user - vandalism of course.
>
> Now because of this one person it is impossible to upload contents given
> from colleagues for the Italian wiktionary (at the moment the Sicilian
> wiktionary is not involved, but it will be soon, when the second part of
> the wordlist is ready). What I can't understand is why you blocked the
> bots for all wikimedia sites - wouldn't it be enough to do this first on
> the one where you have the problems? Why do all of us now be unable to
> work properly because of one stupid person who seemed love disturbing
> just one site?
>
> And: did you ever think about taking legal action against this person?
> There are authorities that are there for jus this job ...
>
> Of course some people do this as they have nothing else to do for the
> whole of their day and are somewhat disturbed and simply "must" ruin
> work of others, but there could also be someone interested in
> miscrediting wikimedia.
>
> Sorry, but I am absolutely not happy with this.
>
> Best wishes - and today I'll be offline just to show a form of protest.
>
> Sabine
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] They don't want a fork - they want to change *this*
	project (was A Solution to Larry Sanger's Criticisms - Project
	Has Been Around For A While)

body:
On Feb 5, 2005, at 7:24 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se) [050205 09:24]:
>
>> I think there is a good deal of substance in Larry Sanger's and Robert
>> McHenry's criticism.  They are correct as long as they describe the
>> problem they see.  However, the outsider's perceived anti-elitism
>> doesn't necessarily originate from an intentional anti-elitism in the
>> community.  And since it isn't intentional, it is quite impossible to
>> "abandon" this anti-elitism, so Larry fails provide a solution.  He
>> suggests a fork of the project.  Yes, maybe he should try this.
>
>
> He specifically didn't suggest a fork, as far as I can see - he wanted
> to
> change *this* project's working methods.
>

Given how wikipedia is structured, anyone with the server power can
fork anytime they are willing to sponge down the material. And as for
anti-elitism, it is has POVs too, often notable and documentable, and
which should be present.

A great deal of the thrash on this issue is because in Wikipedia one
can "look inside the sausage factory" and see the infighting and
arguing that goes on. One can't see this in academia. Imagine if every
academic journal had a section after each article of all of the drama
processing that went into the paper - academia wouldn't quite look as
shiny. Or do we need to bring up Charles Van Doren's role in the 21
scandal back in the 20th century?

The truth of much of Larry's criticism is that it is annoying for
someone who knows the material to have to fight with people who don't,
and wikipedia's rules are not currently structured for the impatient
academic, who views the world as he glides into class, dumps his POV,
and obliterates poor dissenting undergraduates with withering
objections and a few points off on class participation. In fact, even
fairly patient people have levels of "wikistress" which are probably
higher than is sustainable.

Improvements do need to be made, many of our mechanisms are not well
implemented and are frustrating to deal with. We still need to
integrate citations into our text in a more thoroughly wiki manner (and
here I will insert a crass plug for getting more people involved with
wikicite which would do just that), we do need to improve how we handle
disputes, and we do need to improve a host of other details.

Sanger's points do have merit, however, before taking measures of the
kind he proposes, we should continue to place faith in the mechanism of
participatory dialectic that has produced more than most people would
have thought possible in a very short time.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
<slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

> There needs to be something on the article itself that signals there's
> an acknowledged problem with a page, because if readers see something
> that's clearly biased, but it has no dispute tag on it, they'll think
> Wikipedia is satisfied with the bias. The tag tells them there's an
> on-going content dispute, which tends to enhance our credibility. The
> tag might also encourage the reader to try editing the article.

Sure. I'm not saying all the tags should go, but I don't think including so
many tags is not going to help it get fixed any faster than one or two. And
if you look at the edit history, there really isn't any sort of "on-going
content dispute"--only a random editor who stopped by and slapped a whole
bunch of tags on the article and has not since returned. Though he/she did
at least leave a note about what they felt was not NPOV on the talk page,
which I think is an absolute minimum for placing an NPOV tag on an article
in the absence of an ongoing dispute.

Bkonrad


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: [[Talk:Autofellatio]] - Poll

body:
sannse a ?crit:
> More opinions would be welcome at:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Autofellatio#Poll:_Should_the_image_be_shown_inline.2C_or_as_a_link.3F
>
> This is an explicit image of the act of autofellatio - at the moment we
> are not getting a very clear idea of the community view on this question.

without getting involved in the issue of showing or not showing the
picture, just a comment...

... the lowest part of the image is cut. I actually wondered if it was
REALLY autofellatio...It may be that the image is not honestly reporting
what we are led to believe it is.

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: promotional items (was no subject)

body:
Thanks for the proposition Chad and NSK, but I had an idea.

We are sharing many things, like articles. We coedit articles.
We are not sharing all of our promotional items, and usually, we can not
coedit them.

As a result, we tend to do again what other people have already done,
and generally, we lack promotional items.

I invite you to look at this page :
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_promotion

For those of us going outside to promote wikipedia, answering
journalists, going to meetings, etc... it is not a very satisfying page.

For example, at least 2 people have made business cards. But these
models are not here.

I know as a fact some leaflets are not here. I know italian made a nice
one. I cannot see it.

I made presentations of wikipedia. Many others did, but they cannot be
reused if not listed here. One of mine is currently hosted by a craowiki
editors, NOT on wikipedia.

We have now great leaflets here, but they are not available, either in
final version, or in workable version, because I have no easy hosting place.

Elian told me we were cruelly lacking promotional items for FOSDEM.

I think this is poor. We need to have access to the version of leaflets
or business cards so we can improve them. We need to have access to
leaflets in other languages so that when we go to multilingual events,
we can provide a wide diversity of leaflets in several languages.

So, here is my suggestion

I would like that a little bit of room is planned on one of wikimedia
servers to host all these promotional things. This is Jimbo and Angela
to answer here.

Second we need to have a way to upload this data on the server. So,
possibly to have a contact person which can do it for us with no access
to servers. This would be Brion to comment for example ?

Third, I would like that accross all languages, we make an effort to
gather all existing information, in degraded pdf version for email
sending, in good pdf version for printing and in workable version
(photoshop, illustrator, xpress, whatever).

What do you think ?

Anthere

Chad Perrin a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Anyway, the resulting pdf which may be printed is
>> about one mega in size. Where could I host it so that
>> other people might use it later to print more leaflets
>> if they wish so ?
>
>
> Is this just a general request for someone to offer to host it on a web
> server somewhere, or are you looking to connect it to the Wikimedia
> family of sites somewhere (or are you asking something else entirely)?
> If the former, I've got a little webspace and bandwidth to spare.
>
> --
> Chad


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Fred Bauder stated for the record:

> The Arbcom will enforce any Wikipedia policy you choose to make subject to
> limitations Jimbo may impose. Problem here is that outlaw status might
> extend for over one year.

Other incorrigible scofflaws have been "hard-banned" for life; for
CheeseDreams to be added to that list is hardly inconceivable.

--
  Sean Barrett     | It's just as bad to move your fingers
  sean at epoptic.com | fast near sharp objects as it is to move
                   | sharp objects fast near your fingers.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Main Page vandalism, emergency modes,
	and image checking

body:
Sj a ?crit:
> The Main Page on en: was vandalized yesterday, when a penis image
> remained on the page for many minutes.  It was vandalized again today
> -- a goatse image remained there for almost /20 minutes/.
>
> Today it happened during a particularly slow time of the morning,
> around 14:35 UTC, perhaps in combination with other use of the site
> that slowed it down.  It was noticed quickly, but it took a good 17
> minutes for it to be successfully deleted once the problem had been
> announced on IRC, by the seemingly-omniscient Jimmy Wales.
>
> While everyone was fretting over the site's slowness, a few problems
> presented themselves:

I am perplex. Is not the main page protected ?

> * There was no one-click way to remove or delete an image

Two clicks

> * There was no packaged way to shut down all access to the site in an emergency

?
Developers and stewards can do this anytime.
Well, I never tried (suddenly wonder if I should not try to check if
this feature is working)

> * There was no packaged way to quickly redirect all visitors (to en:,
> say) to another site or page

Even if that existed, I doubt it would be quicker than to freeze the
site, which developer and steward can do. But, agreed.

> * There was no way to bring the site[s] to (or restart the site in) an
> 'emergency mode' that only allowed limited access (say, by logged-in
> users)

Well, this would not remove the bad pictures to readers.

> ** Even had there been such a way, there were few (only 1-2) people
> with shell access who would have been able to run shell scripts, and
> it took an extra minute or two to get someone's attention.
> * There were a limited number of ways to reach the collection of devs
> to let them know there was an emergency.
>
> This was not the worst emergency in the world, so the last point in
> particular was not as big a deal as it might have been.

Basically, something must truely escape me. How come an image cannot be
deleted in less than 20 minutes ????

Any sysop can do this. 200 or 300 people on english wikipedia;

What am I missing here ???

> ===========
> Possible solutions:
>
> 1) Documentation: write down a standard way to quickly block all
> incoming requests / take down a site in an emergency / put up in its
> place a try-back-soon message or redirection to a static snapshot (see
> 3)

I go try to block a site *immediately*
I will choose a small one :-)

> 2) Code: add an 'emergency mode' that redirects all visitors to a
> static read-only snapshot of the site taken once a day

This is a good idea. I support this.

> 2.1) Code: add a text-only mode that only produces text
> 2.2) Code: add a one-click (js widget?) option [maybe 2 clicks with
> some kind of pop-up confirmation that doesn't require rendering
> another whole WP-page] so that even when the site is very slow, evil
> images can be deleted in under 15 minutes
> 2.3) More Code: add a different 'emergency mode' that only allows a
> limited set of users [logged-in users?  users on a specific list?] to
> use the site.
>
> 3) Code + Image Policy:  add an IMAGE REVIEW step that imposes a time
> delay (or requires user approval) before an image can be displayed
> live on a page [until then the image could still be linked to via an
> html link]

Not very wiki :-(

> 4) Offer pagers <s>and implantable homing devices</s> to devs who are
> going to be in the vicinity of computers anyway and are willing to be
> on-call for certain parts of the day; something more reliable than the
> blinking of an IRC window.
> ============
>
> 1),  2), and 3) seem important to me.   2) also has useful
> implications for periods of deep sloth, and for taking things down to
> make changes.   3) addresses many problems we are having, not just on
> the main page.
>
> Please comment or suggest implementations.
>


body:
The Arbcom will enforce any Wikipedia policy you choose to make subject to
limitations Jimbo may impose. Problem here is that outlaw status might
extend for over one year.

Fred

> From: "steven l. rubenstein" <rubenste at ohiou.edu>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 05 Feb 2005 11:08:40 -0500
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Cheese Dreams/proposal for a *new* policy
>
>
> Okay, maybe some people are unaware of CheeseDreams exponential use of sock
> puppets to get around the ArbCom's one year ban on Jesus (or is it
> Christianity?) related articles.  I know I am partisan, but I think we can
> fairly say Cheese Dreams is now out of control:
>
>> Cheesedreams is now editing under User:Cheese-Dreams. I thought all the
>> sockpuppets were blocked? I've blocked this one now anyway. --fvw* 23:44,
>> 2005 Jan 31 (UTC)
>> This is just a new sock. Sigh - I don't think CD gets it. --mav
>> Darling, your so wrong, I get it very well, I just ignore you, darling.
>> CheeseDreams 11:35, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
>> The other note is that CheeseDreams uses a dialup and this makes it
>> impossible to block her IP range. She can redial as many times as she
>> likes, and she doesn't need to use open proxies. Rhobite 04:28, Feb 1,
>> 2005 (UTC)
>> LOL, you cant stop me now, darling. CheeseDreams 11:35, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
>
> As Rhobite points out, it will be very difficult if not impossible to block
> CheeseDreams.
>
> I know there has been much discussion of ways to get around the
> difficulties in blocking someone whose IP address is shared, or who can
> easily move from one IP address to another.  I happen to know next to
> nothing about computers, so all I can say is I trust the people working on
> this problem and wish them luck.
>
> But I do have another proposal for dealing with these kinds of situations:
> give the ArbCom the power to declare a user an "outlaw."
>
> We would need clear guidelines for how to decide who is an outlaw, but for
> one thing we must be specific that this is someone who has utter disregards
> for bans or partial bans, and who cannot effectively be blocked.
>
> There should be some deliberation at the ArbCom before declaring someone an
> outlaw, to ensure due process.
>
> The consequence of being an outlaw is this: anyone -- any editor, sysop or
> not -- can revert an outlaw's work at any time, without restriction (so if
> doing so means that they must revert more than three times in one day,
> their reverts will still be considered legitimate and they won't be punished).
>
> My thinking is this: in the case of CD right now, blocking is not effective
> so all we really can do is revert her work.  Right now this is being done
> primarily by sysops, and however large the list of admins are, in the case
> of someone as reckless as CD this still becomes a big job.  My idea is that
> there are some violations of behavior -- eg. when someone laughs and says
> "you can't stop me now" -- that the best thing to do is to mobilize the
> entire community to take action.
>
> Okay, I know that this sounds off the wall.  Please just think about it,
>
> Steve
>
>
> Steven L. Rubenstein
> Associate Professor
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bentley Annex
> Ohio University
> Athens, Ohio 45701
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
Erik Moeller wrote

> How many different ways do we need to express that an article should be
> edited?

I don't know.  Of those on the cited Kryon page, the 'importance' tag is de
trop.

> More controversially, I would even say that there's no point in an
> article being on Cleanup and VfD at the same time.

Disagree.  There is every reason to think that good cleanup would sometimes
change Delete votes to Keep votes, and no reason to think the same people
read  the two lists.

>Both are instruments
> of exposure, it's enough to use one of them and hope people fix the
> article because they see it there. Otherwise people will just keep
> adding Cleanup to any article on VfD out of fear that it will otherwise
> not get fixed before being deleted.

Why is that a problem?  Article X survives VfD, still needs cleaning up; X
displayed one tag, then two for about a week, then a different tag.  Seems a
rational process.

Charles