subject: [Commons-l] Image donations?

body:
Museums are good repositories of such information; also non-digitized
archives.  For them digitization is an expense; if we can reliably
offer this for free, many will be glad to release copyright in
exchange for more usable access to their own materials.

The Library of Congress has a sizable collection of materials that
they want to distribute more broadly; it is indeed already PD or
equivalent, but not digitized -- or more commonly, digitized somehow
but not in many formats, not classified, not easily available.

A commons-project to create form requests and a queue for processing
inbound content would be useful.

You could say the same about archived books that have no commercial
value anymore.  The same analysis goes for processing book materials
donated to wikisource; which requires image processing and OCR and
should perhaps have a commons aspect (raw page images, raw ocr output
files, images from within the book extracted from the raw page
images), and a wikisource text aspect (text transcript, translations).
 And again ties to the book industry would be useful here.

Finally, source texts that are educationally useful could generate a
third set of materials : living wikibooks built on their foundation,
updated and improved over time.

SJ
<copynig all 3 project lists>

On 6/15/06, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> I was wondering if there is some kind of organized effort to ask
> photographers and image agencies for donations (read: GFDL- or
> CC-licensing) of images.
>
> I am thinking especially of images that we cannot take ourselves; dead
> celebrities for example (and no, don't go grave-digging ;-)
>
> There must be a huge amount of photos that have next no no commercial
> value anymore, because they are not good enough for a magazine cover,
> but would do well for documenting an encyclopedia article. Of course, we
> would prominently credit the source in the image description (which will
> be transcluded to every wikipedia that uses it), or even in the image
> title. Images could be watermarked, of course, and for largeer amounts
> of photos, we'd create a category, gallery and all. Repeaded mentioning
> (in a good light!) in a project of the wikimedia magnitude might be
> worth more than paid advertisement, fo virtually no cost.
>
> We could even offer a service: I'm sure some of us have
> (semi-)professional film scanners (I do). Deal goes like this: mail us
> your films (encyclopedia/commons-style only; not your family picknick;-)
> and a note that releases them under GFDL/CC/PD/whatever, and we'll
> upload them in high-res on commons, where you can download them. Free
> film digitization!
>
>
> With people on commons obviously interested in media, there must be some
> of us with ties to "the industry" who can initiate such contacts. "The
> Yorck Project" already donated a lot of PD images, as you might
> remember. If we can get just a few photographers/companies to release
> images as well, others might follow just to not lag behind.
>
>
> Magnus
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>

--
++SJ


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anders Wegge Jakobsen

subject:
[Foundation-l] (volunteer) job position : Ombudsperson
	checkuser (or checkuser Ombudsperson or whatever)

references:
<44928B97.5090201@yahoo.com> <m3psh9e4ps.fsf@obelix.wegge.dk>
	<e6u4ua$nrd$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> writes:

> Anders Wegge Jakobsen wrote:
> > Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> >  ...
> >
> >
> >>We need to have one or two people specifically named, so as to be able
> >>to say "please, talk to xxx" and to be *sure* a case is taken into
> >>consideration (as opposed to "but I thought someone else was taking care
> >>of this").
> >
> >
> >>Any volunteers ?
> >
> >
> >  Any idea what the workload would be? Are we talking few cases a
> > month, or several each day? In the first case, I'd be happy to help,
> > but in the second, I may run out of time.
>
> oh, goodness. A few cases a month at best ! (well, at least for now).

 In that case, I'd be happy to help. If a formal presentation is
needed, please ask. For people who have no idea who I am, I can tell
that I'm admin on dawik and bureaucrat on dawiktionary. Username Wegge
in both cases.

...

--
// Wegge


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Erik van den Muijzenberg

subject:
[Foundation-l] Dutch moderators destroy evidence of checkuser
	abuse

body:
On 16-jun-2006, at 12:32, Anthere wrote:

> Walter van Kalken wrote:
>> Have it translated by your favourite Dutch person:
>
> Being a Dutch person... could you translate that for us ?

It's just a bunch of unsubstantiated accusations Anthere.
Nothing interesting really.

Waerth apparently is soliciting for a permanent ban.

Erik vdMb aka Muijz


list: wikien-l

from_name: John Lyden

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
On 6/16/06, Cobb <sealclubbingfun at googlemail.com> wrote:
> A legit subject. So when has there ever been any actual
> lightsabre combat? Has military research made some
> significant breakthroughs without me noticing?

No, but the ravening hordes of fanboys would destroy you and we
wouldn't want that.

Imagine all the elementary-school-keepers but without the typing skills.

Would we really want that?

-Ras

--
John Lyden - rasputinaxp at gmail.com
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to
live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same
time..." -Kerouac


from_name: Lord Voldemort

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
On 6/16/06, John Lyden <rasputinaxp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Imagine all the elementary-school-keepers but without the typing skills.

>From what I understand, the same type of people likely to keep
something on lightsabers are exacly the same cool cats that would
likely have super-duper typing "skillz". Years of practice, I guess.
--LV


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
On 6/16/06, Essjay <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> Important notice: Brion totally rocks.
>
> Images can now be undeleted...Yes, I said undeleted.

Sounds nice. But how and where?
I am now at http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Upload&wpDestFile=Category_sort_example.png
through a red link, a deleted image, but possibly have no button for
undeleting.
--
Aphaia
aka
Kizu Naoko
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
On 6/16/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> We've gotten to the stage where processes that *don't exist* are cited
> by wonks.
>

Don't you love it when things come full circle. Policy is meant to
refect what is done. If it doesn't then policy is in error. At least
that was the theory back when I was first involved. I understand
things have changed a bit.

> Now, process wonks who insist we follow process regardless of the sanity
> of doing so are irritating, but they obviously have the best interests
> of Wikipedia at heart, and, provided they receive the proper therapy,
> can even become quite likeable people eventually.  There's no excuse for
> saying silly things like "nobody may remove the speedy tag; use
> {{hangon}} instead".

Just an extension of the "don't undo unjustified speedies use DRV
instead" that people keep trying to tell me.

> The problem is not that old users (admins or no) aren't keeping up.  The
> problem is that new users aren't bothering to get acculturated.

They are not doing things the way they were done in our day. I know the feeling.

> I already *know* how Wikipedia works.

That is a mistake. At best I would claim the have a rough idea how
wikipedia works but any attempt at a solid theory generaly gets
falsified when presented with the evidence.

> I help keep it running practically
> every day.  So do most of the people on the list.  And I don't
> appreciate some newbie who *doesn't* coming along and saying "you must
> do it this way, and I should know, because I'm not a newbie like you".
>

Bunch of arogant know it alls who are not prepared to accept that no
they don't know how things are done. Yup sounds like the next
generation to me. Just wait untill they start turning up on arbcom and
the like.

--
geni


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On 6/16/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am inclined to agree. A vector conversion, if possible, would be
> awesome though.

It must be possible, Corel Mosaic (iirc?) let you do this back in the early 90s.

Steve


subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
Now I've gotten "View or restore 2 deleted edits?", editing
Image:Ceiling cat 00.jpg on meta.  As Brion indicated.

Brion. You are rock.

Essjay, don't mind. Mea culpa. I was just excited too.

--
Aphaia
aka
Kizu Naoko
email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com


subject: [Foundation-l] Brion is *the man*


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Image uploads now undeletable

body:
Brad Patrick wrote:
> That is what I was thinking.  I was imagining cleanup after no touches for a
> period of time.  But this is a great advance!

It's likely that there will not be a reason to actively delete archived files.
The order of magnitude of kept images will likely remain much larger, making the
usage insignificant.

(Among other things, deleted junk is often small images copied from other web
sites, while original work is often multi-megapixel digital photos.)

If we ever do need to dump older files, of course, we can do so. Note that I've
included the timestamp of the deletion in the file archive, so it would be
relatively straightforward to, say, dump all files deleted more than one year ago.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/attachments/20060616/9a6cc163/attachment.pgp


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
Hot diggity SHAZAM!!!!!

Yes, indeedy.

*cracks whip at Commons admins* no more excuses now!!!!! woot...

Brianna


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 03:28:14PM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 11:52:10AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > > I quite like this - but I think the brackets look too much like ((
> > > )) brackets rather than [[ ]] - could you square off the corners a
> > > bit (but not entirely?)
> >
> > Maybe try splitting the difference -- brackets (which is to say,
> > square) rather than parentheses-looking things, but with curves on the
> > insides to soften the look a little.
>
> I was concerned about confusion with curly-braces; I entirely
> overlooked how much they look like parens.
>
> I suspect it's just a matter of flipping through fonts until you find
> one where the brackets are curved enough to be aesthetical (heh) while
> still being identifiable as square.

Just so we're all on precisely the same sheet of music and don't talk
past each other, some disambiguation might be in order:

  { braces }

  [ brackets ]

  ( parentheses )

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
This sig for rent:  a Signify v1.14 production from http://www.debian.org/


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
On 6/16/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>There's no excuse for
> saying silly things like "nobody may remove the speedy tag; use
> {{hangon}} instead".

What does "hangon" do that removing a speedy tag doesn't? Is there any
reason why we shouldn't just speedy the hangon tag and edit the
template to stop referring to it?


from_name: Johan Bos

body:
If Waerth wants a discussion at the international maillist, he has to
translate it himself. Not just drop his Dutch text here.

In short the following happened:
-Waerth has been blocked, but created a lot of sockpuppets to get around the
blocks.
-Walter used CheckUser, to check if the sockpuppets were his (they could
have been made by someone else to discredit Waerth.
-Walter blocked the IP, with the reason: "Sockpuppet" and *without*
referring to Waerth.
-Waerth is angry with Walter and states that Walter abused CheckUser and
violated his privacy.
-Waerth states that Walter should no longer be Steward
-Waerth states that he had to reboot his computer (I don't know if he acuses
someone for that)

In my opinion Walter used CheckUser in the way it is meant for. He did not
violate any privacy, he just did the thing a CheckUser *should* do in a case
like this.

Greetings,

Johan Bos (Jcb)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kelly Martin" <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 1:45 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Dutch moderators destroy evidence of
checkuserabuse

> On 6/16/06, Erik van den Muijzenberg <muijz at wikipedia.be> wrote:
>> On 16-jun-2006, at 12:32, Anthere wrote:
>>
>> > Walter van Kalken wrote:
>> >> Have it translated by your favourite Dutch person:
>> >
>> > Being a Dutch person... could you translate that for us ?
>>
>> It's just a bunch of unsubstantiated accusations Anthere.
>> Nothing interesting really.
>>
>> Waerth apparently is soliciting for a permanent ban.
>
> I, for one, would appreciate a fair and accurate translation.
>
> Kelly
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject:
[Foundation-l] Dutch moderators destroy evidence of
	checkuserabuse


subject: [WikiEN-l] Request for the unblocking of PatCheng

body:
On 6/16/06, Richard Fan <richardfanx at gmail.com> wrote:
> I never used the sockpuppets to engage in vandalism, but to contact
> Sasquatch, who offered to talk to me and yet failed to respond. TJive

Ok, well no one here would accept that as a legitimate use of
sockpuppeting. The only legitimate uses involve users who are not
already banned (unlike yourself). Generally speaking, blocked users
can still edit their talk page, so you can communicate that way - or
by email.

> himself used the sockpuppets from Virginia to engage in edit wars on the

The excuse that someone else did something...

> 2008 Olympics article, and yet Blnguyen unblocked him for whatever reason.

...or that someone else got unblocked for something, cuts no mustard
here whatsoever. Don't even bother.

> It's rediculous that I got banned for personal attacks several months ago,

No, that's quite standard.

> and which I apologised for, yet article vandals, POV pushers, and trolls
> such as TJive never got any punishment.

No, that's the luck of the dice. By all means, bring such things to
other people's attention, but don't expect to get special treatment
because of it.

Hope this helps!

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Is this a diffing bug?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> See this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dijon&curid=99187&diff=58875067&oldid=57372678
>
> It looks to me like the only thing that has changed here is a couple
> of new lines have been removed, and the words "Dijon is the capital of
> bourgogne and " replace "The city". However, the entire paragraph is
> highlighted in red, making it hard to see what's really changed.

The diff is paragraph-based, then shows word-based diffs within that.

Paragraph 1: lots of text has been added
Paragraph 2: has been removed

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060616/2a0a6cea/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
On 6/16/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> gospel (it's bad enough when *I* get lectured like this; what happens if
> it's a newbie getting bad advice?),

What happens is they end up giving that same bad advice to other
people...as probably happened in this case.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Problems with wikimedia mailing users

body:
TORENVLIET Nick(NA) - BRUCE POWER wrote:
> Hi all, just wanted to let everybody know... wikimedia is fast becoming
> a part of the Engineering change control and Documentation process at
> Bruce Power(www.brucepower.com) a nuclear utility in SouthWestern
> Ontario.

Uh-oh, did we forget the "this software is not rated for operation of nuclear
power facilities" in our license page? ;)

> So I've got a small problem with my installation.  It won't email users
> who have properly configured email addresses in their preferences.  The
> authenticate email option is off in localsettings.php.

1) Check the mail server's log.

2) Are you running a Windows mail server and Exchange? If so you may be being
bitten by a bug in PHP's mail function on that platform. For a workaround see
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5494

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060616/801b68d9/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/6/16, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com>:
> The board regularly receives some complaints about checkuser activity
> and what happened is either that no one look at the case, or look at
> them poorly. In 95% of case, the "abuse" is imaginary; but we can not be
> sure that one day there will not be a problem.
>
> So, what I suggest is a sort of ombuds-wo-man for checkuser, who will
> offer a sympathetic ear to complainers, take charge of investigating
> cases for the board in an official manner, mediate between the checkuser
> and the complainer when the case is litigious, educate checkuser if
> necessary, and will report to the board in case where there IS a problem.

I would be willing to do this; however, before getting into such a
function, I would want to be get some more
instruction/discussion/whatever you call it on what the rules are and
when lines are being overstepped, so that I have the capability to
make an autonomous decision in at least most of the cases; without
that, I don't think anything is really won.

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


from_name: sannse

subject:
[Foundation-l] Dutch moderators destroy evidence of checkuser
 abuse

body:
Frankly - if you don't want your IP address to appear on the block log,
then don't break the rules by using sockpuppets to circumvent a ban.

I'm sorry Waerth, but from all I've read here - you are the one in the
wrong.  Checking where the sockpuppets were coming from, and blocking
the address shown, are normal and correct.

(And this is a local issue, I think it should go to local mailing lists now)

--sannse

Erik van den Muijzenberg wrote:
> On 16-jun-2006, at 15:35, Jan Kulveit wrote:
>
>> As I understand it, the core of the complain may be in the fact,
>> Waerths
>> ip address was effectively released public, as it appeareed in
>> block log.
>>> From the circumstances and whois record showing its in Thailnd,
>> outside observer can associate the revealed ip and Waerth (yes, with
>> some level of doubt).
>
> Ironically, if Waerth had not complained, nobody would have known it
> was his IP-address. After all it was just a Thailand-based IP-address.
> Nobody could know for sure it was Waerths.
>
>
> +++Muijz
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


body:
On 16-jun-2006, at 13:45, Kelly Martin wrote:

> I, for one, would appreciate a fair and accurate translation.

Since Waerth is Dutch himself, he is the one to provide one in the
first place.

I the meantime I will discuss the matter briefly; refering to http://
meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser_Policy#Wikimedia_privacy_policy

Well first, Waerth uses the subject "The mods destroy proof of their
abuse of power".
Apparently he is refering to the fact that his complaint is no longer
to be read in De Kroeg (Dutch villagepump).
However his complaint was only moved - to the backroom of De Kroeg.
At NL this is standardprocedure for wild accusations as Waerth is
knowing very well.

In the bodytext Waerth complaints about user Walter who blocked the
IP-address Waerth was using for sockpuppetry.
Waerth states:

1) checkuser is a tool for stewards
2) checkuser can be used in a case of utmost emergency only, to find
the IP-address of somebody severely vandalizing the wiki
3) Walter used checkuser; proof: he blocked my (Waerths) IP-address
4) by using checkuser Walter violated all regulations concerning
checkuser
5) Walter violated my (Waerths) privacy
6) Walter violated the rule that checkuser should be restricted to
emergencies only
7) Walter violated the rule that the use of checkuser needs the
agreement of several people

I will refute this as follows:

1) The CheckUser Policy states ""Only a very few editors and Stewards
are allowed to have the CheckUser status. Editors will only have
CheckUser status locally."
It follows checkuser is not restricted to stewards. Besides: Walter
*is* steward of nl.wikipedia, plus he is approved for checkuser
capability.
2) It also states: "The tool is to be used to fight vandalism or
check abuse of sockpuppets, for example when there is a suspicion of
illegal voting."
It follows the use of checkuser is not restricted to vandalfighting.
It can be used for investigation into sockpuppetry as well.
In this particular case, Waerth was using several sockpuppetts to
escape a ban. The use of checkuser for an investigation into
sockpuppetry is in accordance with the CheckUser Policy then.
3) Strictly speaking there is no evidence for this; though it sounds
reasonable. However Waerth should proof his accusation first.
4) Again: Walter used checkuser for an investigation into Waerth
escaping a ban by means of sockpuppets,  in accordance with the
CheckUser Policy.
5) At http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciaal:Ipblocklist a IP-block by
Walter is mentioned. It reads as follows:

Op 15 jun 2006 22:58 (vervalt op 17 jun 2006 22:58) blokkeerde Walter
(Overleg): 203.144.160.245 (bijdragen) (ipadres van actieve sokpopper)

I'll translate the entry:
On 15 jun 2006 22:58 (ends on 17 jun 2006 22:58) Walter (Discussion)
blocked: 203.144.160.245 (contributions) (ipaddress of active
sockpuppeteer)

Though other moderators mentioned Waerth while blocking other
sockpuppets of Waerth, *Walter* didn't.
So, no violation of privacy there.
6) Checkuser Policy states: "The tool is to be used to fight
vandalism or check abuse of sockpuppets, for example when there is a
suspicion of illegal voting."
Therefore the use of checkuser is not restricted to emergencies;
Walter didn't violate the policy then.
7) NL doesn't have an Arbitration Committee yet. Therefore the
relevant rule is: "The community must approve at least two CheckUsers
per consensus. Activity will be checked mutually." NL has two users
that are approved for checkuser capability. Whether they investigated
the case at hand together, as the Checkuser Policiy seems to indicate
should be the proper procedure, I don't know. But Waerth is the one
to substantiate his accusation here that they didn't, and he doesn't.

I would say the accusations of Waerth are not substantiated enough
and to a great extent they can be simply refuted by pointing to the
relevant lines in the Checkuser Policy, as I have demonstrated above.

I think Waerth should withdraw his accusations and stop trolling.

Erik vdMb aka Muijz


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 04:49:50PM +0200, ryan at dobreprogramy.pl wrote:
> There are some things I personally don't like with this (potentially) new
> logo and wanted to share my thoughts with you.
> - as Jay R. Ashworth stated before, brackets are not "square enough" and I
> strongly agree with his statement

Well, nice to know someone doesn't think I'm daft.

> - I see no purpose for four different types of blue color (two for brackets,
> two for text)

Well, I don't think they're actually 4 *colors*; I think they're more 4
different tints of one color.  About a PMS 320 or so, I think, if my
memory serves.

> - IMNSHO one font should be enough for logo; making "catch phrase" in italic
> should be enough

On this I might disagree.  But, since the tagline is medium-italic, and
the mainline is bold-roman, they might well *be* the same font, for all
I know.

> - I personally don't like proposed catch phrase; "Power your ideas" is
> shorter, but even if MediaWiki changes logo, changing phrase isn't necessary
> at all ("Because ideas want to be free" seems to be closer to MW's idea)

Hmmm... As I noted, I think the choice of tagline is *a separate thing*
from the logo redesign proposal.

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 05:07:53PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> On 16/06/06, ryan at dobreprogramy.pl <ryan at dobreprogramy.pl> wrote:
> > at all ("Because ideas want to be free" seems to be closer to MW's idea)
>
> I'd rather ditch the motto.
>
> > But I like this new flower a lot and would love to see it in MW's logo.
> > Great piece of work, Erik. :]
>
> Echo that. The flower isn't bad. Can we see the proposed logo sans motto? :)

Well, note too that the tagline is always optional on such logos: you
use it "on the retail box", but not necessarily on the default site
skin...

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Brad Patrick wrote:
> Do you have a handle on how large the deleted content will be? Seems we
> could end up hosting a *lot* of deletions = lot of space.

Deleted text has always been much, much smaller than the non-deleted text,
and the old image directories have always been much smaller than the current
image directories. Storage space for commons is growing at a phenomenal
rate, and deletable images are only a small part of that. We need to make
sure we have an architecture which allows us to expand our capacity to
multiple terabytes of files, while keeping costs down and maintaining some
redundancy. Commons is going to get that big regardless of deletion policy.

We haven't reached consensus on exactly what software design we're going to
use, but I believe we're largely in agreement that more amane-type machines
would be useful. I've asked for another one or two depending on budget; I'm
not sure what the status of that proposed order is.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 06:55:38PM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> > > of cute. "Power your ideas" sounds like a dot-com startup trying to
> > > get off the ground.
> >
> > Wait a minute ... are you saying my MediaWiki stock options are
> > worthless? BRION, YOU LIED TO ME!!!!
>
> No, but we did reassign them all among ourselves. >:D

Just as long as they're not back-dated...

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On 6/16/06, Mark Bergsma <mark at nedworks.org> wrote:

> Yes. So let's continue using the old logo - I like it a lot more...

Sure - though I'd like to see an open contest (with the existing logo
being one option) when we hit MediaWiki 1.9.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
On 6/16/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Don't you love it when things come full circle. Policy is meant to
> refect what is done. If it doesn't then policy is in error. At least
> that was the theory back when I was first involved. I understand
> things have changed a bit.

Purely descriptive policy is pointless. Purely prescriptive policy
with no basis in common practice is hard to make effective. Policy on
Wikipedia should be somewhere in the middle - prescribing behaviour
that most people agree with, and that many people already follow.

Alternatively put:
Descriptive policy describes what people do do.
Prescriptive policy describes what people should do.
Good community policy describes what most people think people should do.

Steve


from_name: Hsiang-Tai Chien

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deletion in own userspace

body:
I usually put a {{delete}} to a subpage that I do not want to use anymore
and soon an admin will delete it for me. Maybe you can do that, too.

H.T.

-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 3:04 PM
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Deletion in own userspace

 6/16/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> And what if they've moved an article from the main namespace to their
> userspace? How would you prevent users deleting real articles in this
> way?

Ordinary users can move articles into their userspace???

Steve

___________________________________________________
 ??? Yahoo!?????? 7.0???????????
 http://messenger.yahoo.com.tw/


from_name: Shinjiman

subject: [Wikitech-l] An issue on Cite.php extension

body:
Hi all,

Someone just found out about an issue using the "Cite this article" function.
for example, when we see the "Wikipedia" article as of 00:33, 16 June
2006, [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia&oldid=58859884].
The URL link to the "Cite this article" is linking to the current
version of the article. It should supposed to cite that article as of
that modification time, instead of the current revision , IMHO. Is
this really an issue about the Cite.php extension?

thanks and regards
Man


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] Brion is *the man*

body:
Essjay wrote:
> Important notice: Brion totally rocks.
>
> Images can now be undeleted...Yes, I said undeleted.
>
> I'll be leading group worship at the Church of the Almighty Brion at 7PM
> UTC tomorrow.
>

Err... not sure I can make it, but I've updated
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Confirmdeletetext to reflect
this.

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20060616/72d0a62e/attachment.pgp


from_name: Mark Ryan

body:
On 16/06/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> In any case even if keeping deleteds were to double our image capacity
> requirements they may well be worth it (consider detecting reuploads
> of previously deleted images, even modified copies of previously
> deleted images) ... but lets not forget to calculate the real cost of
> storage (it's not just the $120 that a 320gb disk costs... think of
> backup, etc).

Maybe they should just be deleted automatically after a 3 or 6 month
inactive period or something.

~Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 11:52:10AM -0600, Chad Perrin wrote:
> > I quite like this - but I think the brackets look too much like ((
> > )) brackets rather than [[ ]] - could you square off the corners a
> > bit (but not entirely?)
>
> Maybe try splitting the difference -- brackets (which is to say,
> square) rather than parentheses-looking things, but with curves on the
> insides to soften the look a little.

I was concerned about confusion with curly-braces; I entirely
overlooked how much they look like parens.

I suspect it's just a matter of flipping through fonts until you find
one where the brackets are curved enough to be aesthetical (heh) while
still being identifiable as square.

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Jan Kulveit

body:
As I understand it, the core of the complain may be in the fact, Waerths
ip address was effectively released public, as it appeareed in block log.
>From the circumstances and whois record showing its in Thailnd,
outside observer can associate the revealed ip and Waerth (yes, with
some level of doubt).

Jan Kulveit [[User:Wikimol]]

On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 03:01:17PM +0200, Erik van den Muijzenberg wrote:
> On 16-jun-2006, at 13:45, Kelly Martin wrote:
>
> > I, for one, would appreciate a fair and accurate translation.
>
> Since Waerth is Dutch himself, he is the one to provide one in the
> first place.
>
> I the meantime I will discuss the matter briefly; refering to http://
> meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser_Policy#Wikimedia_privacy_policy
>
> Well first, Waerth uses the subject "The mods destroy proof of their
> abuse of power".
> Apparently he is refering to the fact that his complaint is no longer
> to be read in De Kroeg (Dutch villagepump).
> However his complaint was only moved - to the backroom of De Kroeg.
> At NL this is standardprocedure for wild accusations as Waerth is
> knowing very well.
>
> In the bodytext Waerth complaints about user Walter who blocked the
> IP-address Waerth was using for sockpuppetry.
> Waerth states:
>
> 1) checkuser is a tool for stewards
> 2) checkuser can be used in a case of utmost emergency only, to find
> the IP-address of somebody severely vandalizing the wiki
> 3) Walter used checkuser; proof: he blocked my (Waerths) IP-address
> 4) by using checkuser Walter violated all regulations concerning
> checkuser
> 5) Walter violated my (Waerths) privacy
> 6) Walter violated the rule that checkuser should be restricted to
> emergencies only
> 7) Walter violated the rule that the use of checkuser needs the
> agreement of several people
>
> I will refute this as follows:
>
> 1) The CheckUser Policy states ""Only a very few editors and Stewards
> are allowed to have the CheckUser status. Editors will only have
> CheckUser status locally."
> It follows checkuser is not restricted to stewards. Besides: Walter
> *is* steward of nl.wikipedia, plus he is approved for checkuser
> capability.
> 2) It also states: "The tool is to be used to fight vandalism or
> check abuse of sockpuppets, for example when there is a suspicion of
> illegal voting."
> It follows the use of checkuser is not restricted to vandalfighting.
> It can be used for investigation into sockpuppetry as well.
> In this particular case, Waerth was using several sockpuppetts to
> escape a ban. The use of checkuser for an investigation into
> sockpuppetry is in accordance with the CheckUser Policy then.
> 3) Strictly speaking there is no evidence for this; though it sounds
> reasonable. However Waerth should proof his accusation first.
> 4) Again: Walter used checkuser for an investigation into Waerth
> escaping a ban by means of sockpuppets,  in accordance with the
> CheckUser Policy.
> 5) At http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciaal:Ipblocklist a IP-block by
> Walter is mentioned. It reads as follows:
>
> Op 15 jun 2006 22:58 (vervalt op 17 jun 2006 22:58) blokkeerde Walter
> (Overleg): 203.144.160.245 (bijdragen) (ipadres van actieve sokpopper)
>
> I'll translate the entry:
> On 15 jun 2006 22:58 (ends on 17 jun 2006 22:58) Walter (Discussion)
> blocked: 203.144.160.245 (contributions) (ipaddress of active
> sockpuppeteer)
>
> Though other moderators mentioned Waerth while blocking other
> sockpuppets of Waerth, *Walter* didn't.
> So, no violation of privacy there.
> 6) Checkuser Policy states: "The tool is to be used to fight
> vandalism or check abuse of sockpuppets, for example when there is a
> suspicion of illegal voting."
> Therefore the use of checkuser is not restricted to emergencies;
> Walter didn't violate the policy then.
> 7) NL doesn't have an Arbitration Committee yet. Therefore the
> relevant rule is: "The community must approve at least two CheckUsers
> per consensus. Activity will be checked mutually." NL has two users
> that are approved for checkuser capability. Whether they investigated
> the case at hand together, as the Checkuser Policiy seems to indicate
> should be the proper procedure, I don't know. But Waerth is the one
> to substantiate his accusation here that they didn't, and he doesn't.
>
> I would say the accusations of Waerth are not substantiated enough
> and to a great extent they can be simply refuted by pointing to the
> relevant lines in the Checkuser Policy, as I have demonstrated above.
>
> I think Waerth should withdraw his accusations and stop trolling.
>
>
> Erik vdMb aka Muijz
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject:
[Foundation-l] (volunteer) job position : Ombudsperson
 checkuser (or checkuser Ombudsperson or whatever)

body:
Nathan Carter wrote:

>I would be interested in assisting in this area if there were to be two
>people doing the job.
>Nathan Carter (Cartman02au)
>
>
Is Checkuser is kind of Wikipedia specific or has this function spread
to all wikis?

Might cc this thread to the various Wikipedia lists and the Wiki
Ambassaders or other language chapters looking for partners.

Two is excellent for alternate viewpoints and highly increased reliability.

Three is the first odd number which provides both redundancy and no
deadlock capacity assuming each checker provides a firm yes or no there
is or is not a problem.   Three way spread with complicated opinions
probably means more review is necessary to figure out what the hell is
really going on or a simple no conclusion.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
Matt R wrote:
> On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>> Just when you think you've seen it all...
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Herostratus
>>
>>
>> One editor opposes adminship on the grounds that Herostratus has
>> some nicely executed fake "categories" on his user page:
>
> We need to enforce sane rationales for votes on RfA ... somehow.
> Particularly for oppose votes, since they carry much more weight.
> Failing that, perhaps we should start a Wiki society that, for every
> oppose vote judged to be idiotic, automatically mass votes in favour
> of the candidate.
>
> And I'm only half-joking ;-)
>

TINC.

See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_cabals

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060616/088ae287/attachment.pgp


from_name: Erik van den Muijzenberg

body:
On 16-jun-2006, at 15:35, Jan Kulveit wrote:

> As I understand it, the core of the complain may be in the fact,
> Waerths
> ip address was effectively released public, as it appeareed in
> block log.
>> From the circumstances and whois record showing its in Thailnd,
> outside observer can associate the revealed ip and Waerth (yes, with
> some level of doubt).

Ironically, if Waerth had not complained, nobody would have known it
was his IP-address. After all it was just a Thailand-based IP-address.
Nobody could know for sure it was Waerths.

+++Muijz


body:
That's true, it's a fact that blocked IP's appear in the block log. That's
normal, that's the case with any block and no reason for a complaint.

One time Waerth even released *my* IP in the block log. He blocked HIMSELF
and used my IP as a description. I never understood that, but it's no
problem, because I even placed a note myself at the userpage of my IP. But
now Waerth has no reason to complain about the fact that his IP is in the
block log.

Johan Bos

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jan Kulveit" <jk-wikifound at ks.cz>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 3:35 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Dutch moderators destroy evidence of
checkuserabuse

> As I understand it, the core of the complain may be in the fact, Waerths
> ip address was effectively released public, as it appeareed in block log.
>>From the circumstances and whois record showing its in Thailnd,
> outside observer can associate the revealed ip and Waerth (yes, with
> some level of doubt).
>
> Jan Kulveit [[User:Wikimol]]
>
> On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 03:01:17PM +0200, Erik van den Muijzenberg wrote:
>> On 16-jun-2006, at 13:45, Kelly Martin wrote:
>>
>> > I, for one, would appreciate a fair and accurate translation.
>>
>> Since Waerth is Dutch himself, he is the one to provide one in the
>> first place.
>>
>> I the meantime I will discuss the matter briefly; refering to http://
>> meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser_Policy#Wikimedia_privacy_policy
>>
>> Well first, Waerth uses the subject "The mods destroy proof of their
>> abuse of power".
>> Apparently he is refering to the fact that his complaint is no longer
>> to be read in De Kroeg (Dutch villagepump).
>> However his complaint was only moved - to the backroom of De Kroeg.
>> At NL this is standardprocedure for wild accusations as Waerth is
>> knowing very well.
>>
>> In the bodytext Waerth complaints about user Walter who blocked the
>> IP-address Waerth was using for sockpuppetry.
>> Waerth states:
>>
>> 1) checkuser is a tool for stewards
>> 2) checkuser can be used in a case of utmost emergency only, to find
>> the IP-address of somebody severely vandalizing the wiki
>> 3) Walter used checkuser; proof: he blocked my (Waerths) IP-address
>> 4) by using checkuser Walter violated all regulations concerning
>> checkuser
>> 5) Walter violated my (Waerths) privacy
>> 6) Walter violated the rule that checkuser should be restricted to
>> emergencies only
>> 7) Walter violated the rule that the use of checkuser needs the
>> agreement of several people
>>
>> I will refute this as follows:
>>
>> 1) The CheckUser Policy states ""Only a very few editors and Stewards
>> are allowed to have the CheckUser status. Editors will only have
>> CheckUser status locally."
>> It follows checkuser is not restricted to stewards. Besides: Walter
>> *is* steward of nl.wikipedia, plus he is approved for checkuser
>> capability.
>> 2) It also states: "The tool is to be used to fight vandalism or
>> check abuse of sockpuppets, for example when there is a suspicion of
>> illegal voting."
>> It follows the use of checkuser is not restricted to vandalfighting.
>> It can be used for investigation into sockpuppetry as well.
>> In this particular case, Waerth was using several sockpuppetts to
>> escape a ban. The use of checkuser for an investigation into
>> sockpuppetry is in accordance with the CheckUser Policy then.
>> 3) Strictly speaking there is no evidence for this; though it sounds
>> reasonable. However Waerth should proof his accusation first.
>> 4) Again: Walter used checkuser for an investigation into Waerth
>> escaping a ban by means of sockpuppets,  in accordance with the
>> CheckUser Policy.
>> 5) At http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speciaal:Ipblocklist a IP-block by
>> Walter is mentioned. It reads as follows:
>>
>> Op 15 jun 2006 22:58 (vervalt op 17 jun 2006 22:58) blokkeerde Walter
>> (Overleg): 203.144.160.245 (bijdragen) (ipadres van actieve sokpopper)
>>
>> I'll translate the entry:
>> On 15 jun 2006 22:58 (ends on 17 jun 2006 22:58) Walter (Discussion)
>> blocked: 203.144.160.245 (contributions) (ipaddress of active
>> sockpuppeteer)
>>
>> Though other moderators mentioned Waerth while blocking other
>> sockpuppets of Waerth, *Walter* didn't.
>> So, no violation of privacy there.
>> 6) Checkuser Policy states: "The tool is to be used to fight
>> vandalism or check abuse of sockpuppets, for example when there is a
>> suspicion of illegal voting."
>> Therefore the use of checkuser is not restricted to emergencies;
>> Walter didn't violate the policy then.
>> 7) NL doesn't have an Arbitration Committee yet. Therefore the
>> relevant rule is: "The community must approve at least two CheckUsers
>> per consensus. Activity will be checked mutually." NL has two users
>> that are approved for checkuser capability. Whether they investigated
>> the case at hand together, as the Checkuser Policiy seems to indicate
>> should be the proper procedure, I don't know. But Waerth is the one
>> to substantiate his accusation here that they didn't, and he doesn't.
>>
>> I would say the accusations of Waerth are not substantiated enough
>> and to a great extent they can be simply refuted by pointing to the
>> relevant lines in the Checkuser Policy, as I have demonstrated above.
>>
>> I think Waerth should withdraw his accusations and stop trolling.
>>
>>
>> Erik vdMb aka Muijz
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Foundation-l] Mail Stats

body:
In the category 'nice to know':

I made a script to measure who is most involved in public mailing lists
discussions, and on which lists.

You'll find a complete list of mailing lists and how their activy changed
over time
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/

For each list you'll find a breakdown of posts by author, with board
activity added separately, e.g. for the foundation list
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/foundation-l.html

Powerposters get their own page (*). They are all combined at
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/_PowerPosters.html

Overall board activy on public mailing lists has not significantly decreased
over time
http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/Board.html
Most change of activity can be alluded to less board posts on technical
lists.

Caveat: be careful with interpretations.

1 Please don't confuse number of posts of a person with relevance of that
person's contributions. Less may be more in some cases.
2 People who seem less active may be very active on private mailing lists.
3 Lists that are hardly active may have a private couterpart.
4 People may have posted with different names, some are already interpreted
as aliasses, but probably some not yet.
5 Over time the character of some lists may have evolved as new more
specialized lists were introduced.
6 There is no strict separation between lists. Non technical lists will
contain technical discussions from time to time.

These stats are autoupdated daily.

By the way, I hope to refresh wikistats as soon as a reasonably complete set
of new downloads is available, with most major wikipedias included.
http://download.wikimedia.org/

Erik Zachte

* Known bug: for some powerposters with special chars in their name their
own page is not linked properly.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Unrelated: Delphine pointed out my posts break mail threads.
That was not on purpose e.g. to draw attention.
I follow lists through pipermail and copy/paste texts I quote.
I'll subscribe to mail, and reply in orderly fashion.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mail Stats


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
On 6/16/06, Cobb <sealclubbingfun at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > "George Herbert" wrote,
> > AFD is not an acceptable substitute for a cleanup notice and some cleanup
> > efforts.
>
> I didn't say that it was... but you snipped all that out, and just replied
> to
> the bit that suited you.

I snipped down to what I felt your focal point was.  However, if you
insist, then here's that paragraph in toto.

>But... the only reason this AFD was "keep" is because of the number of
>Star Wars voters. Take a look at the history of the article too. Short of
>slashing and burning it (and then it may as well have been deleted),
>it's not going to get any better because it was named for and written from
>a fictional viewpoint by masses of fans who cannot tell real from
>imaginary...  and as a result it is fundmentally unencyclopedic. It should
>have been deleted, if only to preserve the illusion that AFD isn't a big joke
>and to give it a chance to start again (with a different name).

The comment "because it was named for and written from a fictional
viewpoint by masses of fans who cannot tell real from imaginary" seems
odd to me.  They don't own the article.  If I had bandwidth today I
could hop on over there and start doing a major edit on it.  Or you
could, or we both could.  The majority of the active current
contributors being fans doesn't mean that we can't fix it.

You seem to think that AFD is a big joke because we have bad articles
surviving.  My point, and several others point, is that we have bad
articles on appropriate encyclopedic topics survive AFD, and my
argument is that that's entirely proper since we should be doing
cleanups on them instead of arguing about deleting them.  When you
just go in and AFD it, part of the perceived point is that you believe
that it's not a topic worthy of being in Wikipedia.  In some cases
that's not the AFDers intent, but largely it is.

WP editors and admins seem to be largely inclusionary, so you've
already lost many of those battles.  When you lose it by a landslide
because of a bunch of energetic Star Wars fans' it's making another
more unfortunate point as well.  In a sense, every time AFD is misused
in this manner, trying to "clean up" an article on a valid topic by
AFDing it and perhaps recreating it, it brings disrepute to the
process and a lot of "no" voters in.  We would be better off if such
AFDs weren't called in the first place.  AFD should be the last final
response to an unsalvagable article after you've tried cleanup tags,
getting involved in cleaning it up, and asking other editors to help
if the article's usual editors feel too much ownership and keep doing
unencyclopedic things.

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
It went to the local list *as well*. And better: There is a discussion about
it at the local NL.wiki. At the local wiki there is a copy of the complete
text of Waerths original email as well.

Johan Bos

> (And this is a local issue, I think it should go to local mailing lists
> now)
>
> --sannse
>


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
On 6/16/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey, me too... I mean, at what point are you no longer a newbie?

When you start complaing about newbie culture. Personaly I reqard
anyone who was editing regualerly before 22nd of December 2004 as
definetly not a newcomer

> I
> mean, I just passed a year of editing, but still feel like I am new.
> At least you've been here since 2004.
> --LV

Year of adminship is a measure that often seems to work well.9

--
geni


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deletion in own userspace

body:
>   It would be nice if on Wikipedia, ordinary users could delete pages
> (perhaps not including their basic User talk: page) from their own
> user space.

And what if they've moved an article from the main namespace to their
userspace? How would you prevent users deleting real articles in this
way?

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] newbie culture

body:
On 6/16/06, Lord Voldemort <lordbishopvoldemort at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Death Phoenix <originaldeathphoenix at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The END of 2004, my friend, the end. ;-)
>
> Still longer than me, and the rest of us wahoos.  We never had to walk
> to our dial-up computers, uphill both ways, on Windows 3.1, from AOL,
> like you oldbies. ;-)

Heh wait to you run into people who remeber the usermod days and CamelCase.

Then you have the slightly newer ones who remeber quickpolls and no
subpages on AFD and haveing to use {{msg:stub}}.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Mail Stats

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:

>In the category 'nice to know':
>
>I made a script to measure who is most involved in public mailing lists
>discussions, and on which lists.
>
>You'll find a complete list of mailing lists and how their activy changed
>over time
>http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/
>
>For each list you'll find a breakdown of posts by author, with board
>activity added separately, e.g. for the foundation list
>http://www.infodisiac.com/Wikipedia/ScanMail/foundation-l.html
>
>
snip rest

Eric,

There may be a minor error in one of your loops or pattern matching
comparisons, or the explanation above is slightly off.

 The appears enwiki-l stats appear to shut off at five posts.   Perhaps
the graphics is truncated for ease of use and the totals are accurate?

There was a single post by me to enwiki-l.

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2002-November/000003.html

The header was:

*Michael R. Irwin* mri_icboise at surfbest.net
<mailto:wikien-l%40Wikipedia.org?Subject=%5BWikien-l%5D%20Getting%20started&In-Reply-To=>
/Fri Nov 15 03:32:18 UTC 2002

/The other two places I expected to see data on my activity it was there
under Michael R. Irwin.   Some of it originated from the above email
address and some from my current address so I have concluded your
processing routines were focused on the name Michael R. Irwin which is
what is shown in the y-axis of the summary stats.

It seemed to accurately pick up posts signed as both mirwin and as my
later handle lazyquasar but they were all annotated as from Michael R.
Irwin in the header so that was not surprising.

Forgive my pickiness but these stats look incredibly useful for some
kinds project management activities such as proposal preparation or
analsysis of participation trends but it is easy to draw wrong
conclusions if the basis for the data presented and being used is
misunderstood.

Obviously any subtle error off by one on my data may be way off for
someone else.

Any further explanation to clarify exactly what is counted and how it is
summarized if the data is not exactly accurate in the counts of all the
emails in the archives would be appreciated by me.

Thanks!

regards,
Michael R. Irwin
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] Mail Stats


from_name: Steve Summit

subject:
[Wikitech-l] double apostrophes in titles (was: Categories on
	nap.wikipedia.org don't work)

body:
Last month, Sabine Cretella was having trouble with double
apostrophes in page and category titles, since they were of
course treated as wiki markup for italicizing.  A workaround of
using '' was suggested and seems to work.  Platonides
suggested using Unicode single quotes (U+2019) instead of
apostrophes, and I meant to suggest using Unicode apostrophes
(U+02BC).  Phil Boswell suggested using an invisible "breaker" or
"joiner" between the two apostrophes, such as U+200D Zero-width
Joiner.

And there's at least one more possibility: today I happened to
notice that there's also a Unicode double apostrophe character,
U+02EE.  I'm not sure, but it might be tailor-made for Neopolitan.


from_name: ryan at dobreprogramy.pl

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
This is my first post, so hello everyone! :)

There are some things I personally don't like with this (potentially) new
logo and wanted to share my thoughts with you.
- as Jay R. Ashworth stated before, brackets are not "square enough" and I
strongly agree with his statement
- brackets are a bit to blurry
- I see no purpose for four different types of blue color (two for brackets,
two for text)
- IMNSHO one font should be enough for logo; making "catch phrase" in italic
should be enough
- I personally don't like proposed catch phrase; "Power your ideas" is
shorter, but even if MediaWiki changes logo, changing phrase isn't necessary
at all ("Because ideas want to be free" seems to be closer to MW's idea)

But I like this new flower a lot and would love to see it in MW's logo.
Great piece of work, Erik. :]

Thanks for reading. Best regards,
Dominik Dalek


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Another (rare) category type

body:
On 6/16/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Captain Cynical sits on my shoulder and whispers in my ear: "that's to avoid
> all those maroons who would immediately AFD such a list on the grounds that
> it should be turned into a Category".
>
> Sometimes i wonder if he's right...

Can Captain Cynical tell me whether it's ok to have glossaries in
Wikipedia? What about lists of terms? What about lists of dictionary
definitions of terms? What about slang terms in certain subcultures?
What about lists of such terms? What about individual definitions of
various words?

(I think the answer is: Yes, no, no, maybe, no, yes but only if the
article goes beyond that).

I'm still feeling guilty that I supported the successful deletion of
"List of fighting game terms", whereas if it had been renamed
"Glossary of fighting game terms" it would apparently have been ok.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
On 6/15/06, Cobb <sealclubbingfun at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Why AFD just does not work, or, what happens when zealots flood a
> "discussion" with keep votes.
>
> * "I can't find this anywhere else"
>
> * "Keep and Cite as per Nscheffey. This page is extremely useful to my
>   Star Wars: Jedi Academy clan, it's no worse than some other sci-fi
>   entries, it just needs citations!"
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightsaber_combat
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Lightsabercombat
>
> Will any admin have the brass ones to do the correct thing and delete
> an awful unsalvageable article, or will they count up the votes, wimp
> out, declare "no consensus" or "keep" and let an unencylopedic
> carbuncle survive?

It is a legit subject. The article can be cleaned up with the liberal
use of machete editing. It would be nice to have something explaining
why the fighting styles are mostly rather stupid but I can live
without that.

--
geni


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On Fri, Jun 16, 2006 at 09:44:52PM +0200, Ryan wrote:
> > Well, I don't think they're actually 4 *colors*; I think they're more 4
> different tints of one color
>
> Go on. Laugh at my English even more. I dare you! ;]

If you insist.  :-)

> > they might well *be* the same font, for all I know.
>
> Impossible - catch phrase is in handwriting, name is non-sheriff type. Two
> different typefaces (fonts) for sure.

Yeah, I guess even the italicized version of a sans font is still sans.

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

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On 16/06/06, ryan at dobreprogramy.pl <ryan at dobreprogramy.pl> wrote:
> at all ("Because ideas want to be free" seems to be closer to MW's idea)

I'd rather ditch the motto.

> But I like this new flower a lot and would love to see it in MW's logo.
> Great piece of work, Erik. :]

Echo that. The flower isn't bad. Can we see the proposed logo sans motto? :)

Rob Church


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
On 6/16/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> To answer your general question about doing the right thing, the answer
> is "Yes, despite whatever the 'new generation' might think". To refer to
> your specific case, the decision was correct. I don't see how lightsaber
> combat is an unencyclopedic topic. Rather fanboyish? Yes. But
> encyclopedic? Hell yes.

What a weird article. It mixes star wars world and real world in a
very confusing way, following "Jedi Master Yoda mastered this style to
perfection and uses it often when in battle with many foes." with "In
the deleted scenes of Revenge of the Sith, General Grevious kills
Shaak Ti with a Trakata technique."  The article would certainly be
improved if it focused much more on the real world, and when these
supposed techniques appear in which films or books.

I do not find an article about purported lightsaber techniques
particularly encyclopaedic, because it documents something which does
not actually exist. An article which documents which techniques appear
in which films is much more encyclopaedic, as it tells us something
more about the real world.

Look at this: "Unlike most martial arts involving a weapon, lightsaber
combat is an art that is utilized before the weapon is ever drawn and
ignited. This is due to the philosophy that a Jedi must only draw his
weapon as a final recourse." - comparing "lightsaber combat" to a real
martial art is almost insulting. This could probably be rewritten in
an appropriate way.

Another good one: "NOTE: In real life, the name may have been derived
from the Japanese verb ataru, which means "to hit", "to strike."" - at
the very end of a long paragraph, the begrudging admission that real
life actually exists.

Well...another reason for me to stay away from fanboy articles, I hate
them. This article deserves to exist, but boy could it be redone. And,
you know, they could cite at least *one* source, just to make us
happy.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Deletion in own userspace

body:
On 6/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ordinary users can move articles into their userspace???

Yes, of course. They can move any non-protected page anywhere they
like. And that ability shouldn't be removed considering how many
newbies accidentally make their user page in the article namespace and
it needs to be moved to the userspace.

Angela


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Mail Stats

body:
> Erik Zachte
  -------------------------------------------------------------
> Unrelated: Delphine pointed out my posts break mail threads.
> That was not on purpose e.g. to draw attention.
> I follow lists through pipermail and copy/paste texts I quote.
> I'll subscribe to mail, and reply in orderly fashion.

Better yet, read them through gmane. It is working great. Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Mail Stats


list: textbook-l

from_name: John Pozniak

body:
After a quick look, I generally like much of the content of the proposal. One point I Really like is:

    Whether a book meets this criterion or not will be discussed on WB:VFD before deletion

I take this to mean that VFD should be for book deletion only. Individual modules within a book should be deleted or included in the book as decided by the editors _of that book_. I think right now we tend to micro-manage our books, with editing decisions made by the entire community, not the contributors with the most knowldge.

I'll ponder this some more before yammering on beyond comprehension.

John (gentgeen)

----- Original Message ----
From: Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk>
To: textbook-l at wikimedia.org
Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 2:38:39 PM
Subject: [Textbook-l] Rewrite of Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks

In the light of all these discussions about what Wikibooks' scope is, I have drafted a
proposed rewrite of What is Wikibooks here:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks:Inclusion_criteria/Proposal


from_name: Abigail Brady

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On 6/16/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> As MediaWiki 2.0 is slowly moving closer, I think we should consider
> replacing the current logo. The problems I have with it (and I say
> that as its co-designer) are that the colors feel washed out, the
> flower is asymmetrical, and the square brackets look just a tad bit
> too square and ordinary.
>
> I found a very nice flower photograph on Commons, and decided to
> experiment with it a bit. The result can be found at:
> http://scireview.de/wiki/logos/

I quite like this - but I think the brackets look too much like (( )) brackets
rather than [[ ]] - could you square off the corners a bit (but not entirely?)

--
Abi


from_name: Petr Kadlec

subject: [Wikitech-l] Is this a diffing bug?

body:
Hi!

On 16/06/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> See this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dijon&curid=99187&diff=58875067&oldid=57372678
>
> It looks to me like the only thing that has changed here is a couple
> of new lines have been removed, and the words "Dijon is the capital of
> bourgogne and " replace "The city". However, the entire paragraph is
> highlighted in red, making it hard to see what's really changed.
>
> Maybe a case to bear in mind if anyone's playing with the diffing algorithm?

I guess this is still the same issue that has been mentioned when the
new algorithm was announced. See the thread at
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-February/034109.html

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


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 6/16/06, Michael R. Irwin <michael_irwin at verizon.net> wrote:
> Nathan Carter wrote:
>
> >I would be interested in assisting in this area if there were to be two
> >people doing the job.
> >Nathan Carter (Cartman02au)
> >
> >
> Is Checkuser is kind of Wikipedia specific or has this function spread
> to all wikis?

CheckUser is available on all Wikimedia projects.

> Two is excellent for alternate viewpoints and highly increased reliability.
>
> Three is the first odd number which provides both redundancy and no
> deadlock capacity assuming each checker provides a firm yes or no there
> is or is not a problem.   Three way spread with complicated opinions
> probably means more review is necessary to figure out what the hell is
> really going on or a simple no conclusion.

My personal recommendation is for a commission of five, one of whom
should be a Board member.  Without a Board member, the commission can
only be advisory.

Kelly


subject: [Textbook-l] Rewrite of Wikibooks:What is Wikibooks

body:
Jon wrote:

>I don't intend my draft to be perfect - please go ahead and improve it.
>
>All constructive comments would be welcome!
>
>
A couple of potential problems you may wish to think about.   I am not a
wikibookean because I am not a textbook writer.   I have used some of
your books and left a few comments or questions occasionally in
technical areas I was studying.   One caveat, some of your authors have
started advocating no external links so your "textbooks" look like
traditional textbooks.   If this becomes the prevailing norm I will no
longer use  your "textbooks".   I will either buy a "real" "textbook" or
find another free source online linking around to augmenting or better
or different online information so I can cross check things that I do
not understand well or that conflict with my growing understanding of
the subject material.

**  "A textbook is....

    * a is a book which is actually usable in an existing class.

That class may be at school, college, university, a professional
training centre or an adult education centre. We would expect the
subject to be taught in a number of learning institutions, one in the
whole world is not enough."

This is a better definition in my view than some interpretations I have
seen that presumed the "textbook" must be currently used in an active
class or used in one previously.   Obviously this narrow interpretation
limits your community members and bookshelf assets to existing textbooks
and textbook writers.   I assumed at the time the narrow defination was
being applied in some kind of wheel war against a perceived opponent but
I did not bother to check out what was really going on.   Merely noted
that if this idiocy spread then the wikibooks site would probably be of
very little use in the near future to me or much of Wikiversity, which
is currently viewed by many as being on the leading edge of
experimenting with new modes of educational materials and self or group
study activities that are not traditional formal classes.

Perhaps a exposition on the time frames that draft outlines or materials
can remain in place UNUSED by courses somewhere while the project lead
seeks sufficient expertise and skill and applicable knowledge from your
community to get the book to it "textbook" status which complies with
specific format requirements and attract a known "course" using it
rather than a few students dropping in occasionally via the web.

In my view the above definition for inclusion is still severely lacking
as I had many undergraduate classes which cited books which were not
"textbooks" as useful references in the subject matter for auxillary
reading.   In my view almost any wikibook written in a somewhat
objective matter or well labeled subjective manner (the author's
objective view of the universe vs. Jimbo's communities' objective
consensus view of the universe hereafter referred to as NPOV) can be
useful in some type of learning activity by someone at some time.   As
an uninformed, not a member, of your author based community; I would
expect to find such a book at a site named "wikibooks.org".  No doubt
someone will eventually start a "not a textbook wikibook.org" sometime
and the larger audience's needs or wants for reference books or other
books will be met elsewhere.

**  "a book written in a similar style to books usable in existing
classes and which is about a subject worthy of study"

You presume to decide for your future users and authors what subject of
human knowledge is worthy of study and what style or presentation is
effective?    You may find this limits and taints your community of
qualified academic writers.

Not a large problem for me except some militants from your community are
very attached to the concept that "textbooks" that evolve at Wikiversity
shall be relocated to "Wikibooks".   NO DUPLICATION of materials.   If
your editors subsequently decide a "textbook" is not worth studying it
is going to have a detrimental impact on the Wikiversity community and
its customers or students or participants when it is deleted.   Sure it
can be recovered if it has not been purged completely but who needs the
hassle of convincing some Wikibookean bureaucrat or Wikimedia Foundation
member to give it back or undelete at Wikiversity?

My personal solution is that Wikiversity can maintain whatever materials
locally that its active study groups or community members choose as long
as they are not illegal according to Florida state law or U.S. Federal
law (copyright issues, slanderous material, subversive calls for
revolution, movement data on troops or encryption codes ...
treason/espionage) or the negotiated terms of tenancy with the Wikimedia
Foundation (NPOV, No Nazi propraganda, etc.).   No doubt some local
community standards will evolve that detail what are appropriate
materials.  Wikiversity does not need them installed by fiat from
external sources.

**

      "The "not a duplicate" criterion

Forking is where a Wikibook on some topic is copied internally in
Wikibooks. We should only have one textbook on each subject that is
directed at the same audience. For example, having a book on Chemistry
for students sitting a specific exam in the UK at aged 18, and another
one on Chemistry for students sitting a specific exame in the US at aged
18 is reasonable. Having two textbooks on Chemistry both directed at
students sitting the same exam is not."

This above is a silly policy.   As a student when I hit a subject that
is tough going for me personally often the next thing I do is buy a
couple of more "textbooks" and "references" on the subject.  Different
people think, organize, and study in different ways.   There can be no
"only one best" policy unless you plan on toggling between paradigms as
the collective community membership ebbs and sways with the tides and
sunspot cycles.

When two authors with diametrically opposed ideas on the best order of
subject matter for students with a given background show up or a
professor teaching four different courses of the same material to
sections of students with known different backgrounds  how are you going
to decide between the two or provide four different books on the same
subject?   The loser will undoubtedly be a loss of a potentially
valuable community member.   I note that you specifically deal with the
target audience issue and this is a big improvement over the existing de
facto standard that I have seen in used as justification for deletion
that there can be only one "textbook" per subject.   I have seen this
used or advocated in cases that were not forks.  I am not sure what was
really going on.  Perhaps it was intended as a temporary policy to jerk
the collective quality of "textbooks" up in a specific area to impress,
amaze, retain users as future Wikibookeans.   All it did for me was give
a chill and memories of Nazi bookburning on TV and some religious types
and some scientific types advocating exclusion of specific books and
subjects in American schools. Only approved books allowed on campus.

When an author shows up for the book used throughout the Ivy League and
most of the Northwest on a specific technical subject and generously
FDL's his book for all future generations covering heat, mass and
momentum transfer  (3 courses in one textbook) because the equations are
all similar and it is better than two books treating singular subject
but worse than the remaining one how are you going to decide which books
to delete and which to keep?

When the existing community starts to thin out to only existing authors
using their "textbooks" in their own classes is this a good thing or bad
thing for wikibooks?  Do you want only a few good people or a large
community of volunteers?  Keep in mind most "textbooks" published
professionally have a huge cast of paid and unpaid persons involved in
their creation and maintenance.   Pick up any "textbook" and read the
credits and foward typically written by the authors attempting to give
all credit that is due and the usual ending note appologising for any
people they forgot or inadvertently omitted send us a letter reminder
and we will put you in the credits for the next edition.

Hope the above is useful to you.   If not perhaps it will earn it
bandwidth by stimulating better wording for your basic policies as written.

In conclusion, it was a fairly clear writeup of my dim understanding of
what the currrent policies are intended to be at Wikibooks.   Once again
I am not a Wikibookean, only an occasional user of your ever improving
products.

Thanks for your efforts!

Sincerely,
Michael R. Irwin
aka lazyquasar


from_name: Cobb

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
>geni on Fri, 16 Jun 2006 16:59:07 +0100, wrote:

>It is a legit subject. The article can be cleaned up with the
>liberal use of machete editing. It would be nice to have
>something explaining why the fighting styles are mostly
>rather stupid but I can live without that.

A legit subject. So when has there ever been any actual
lightsabre combat? Has military research made some
significant breakthroughs without me noticing?


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Textbook-l] Wikiversity and Wikibooks

body:
Jon wrote:

>I was interested to see Cormac ask us what we thought of the latest Wikiversity proposal.
>
>I confess I still, after all this time, am unsure what it is: the name suggests that it is meant
>to be for wiki-based university-level learning, but I don't think that's right. And if it's not
>right, at the very least a new name would be advisable.
>
>
The name is fine.   Ever see a group of high school students or grade
schoolers walking around or through facilities on campus ogling how it
happens at the big time?   The name will not scare all students in any
specific segment and peer encouragement, googling, and  link following
is likely to be the major source of new users.

At the moment we intend to provide universal educational coverage.   As
participants start creating content we will migrate towards methods and
content that is useful to people of all ages and categories who have
access to the web.   Obviously it will fill in as people are interested
in creating content to study so it will be patchy for a while.

>
>I would also like to question the relationship between Wikiversity and Wikibooks, as it really
>is time for the separate Wikiversity project to leave Wikibooks module namespace behind -
>I believe that would leave Wikibooks with the Wikiversity textbooks, which it would then
>be able to integrate into its own systems and categorisations. Any Wikiversity project
>pages could be moved to the Wikibooks namespace - although MetaWiki or the incubator
>would seem to be better places.
>
>I think this move is important. As some of you will be aware, I see the future of Wikibooks
>as having a strong core set of textbooks suitable for school exams surrounded by many
>other good textbooks for other types of studying. I am splitting these up into the following
>(and bear in mind that a textbook may fall within none or more than one of these):
>Wikijunior (for textbooks for 8 to 12 year olds)
>Wikistudy (for textbooks for exams typically first sat at ages 15 to 19)
>Wikiversity (or Wikiuniversity) (for university-level learning)
>Wikiprofessional (for textbooks for professionals)
>Wikilearn (for textbooks for adult learning)
>Wikids (if we ever have books for under 8s)
>These categorisations would, of course, sit alongside the current "by subject" style bookshelves.
>
>
The above was a common desire from a lot of people reviewing and
participating in the proposal writing.

Obviously where we go depends on the actual participants at Wikiversity.

Personally I have no intention on relying on an external community
unless they are very user friendly and policies that make sense.
Since any low engineering course I was ever exposed to had shelves of
books at the University library dedicated to different and overlapping
pieces of the puzzle and often the Instructor specified a couple of
books, some of which were not "textbooks" but merely "reference" books
on a given topic not well treated in his chosen "textbook"; I really do
not see how any independent groups not organized as courses and therefor
more, not less, diverse than college course can rely exclusively if at
all on Wikibooks.

I have outlined a couple a ways that  policy conflicts can cause
problems unless specific procedures are designed to avoid them when
moving  "textbooks" or  study materals between wikis without the express
permission and authorization from the authors of the Wikiversity
materials attempting to create learning trails for those who will follow.

Likely it will be an ongoing debate as there were advocates of this
specified cookie cutter approach from most of the existing wikimedia
communities attempting, in my view, to guarantee captive markets and
limited competition for materials attractive to users and potential
future participants and contributors.

By all means checkout Wikiversity proposal on meta and provide some
comments.  It has gotten rather small and inactive there lately and
needs some encouragement.

It is accessible from the Wikiversity tab on Wikibooks.   Then towards
the bottom click  on the proposal at meta link.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On 16/06/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/16/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 16/06/06, ryan at dobreprogramy.pl <ryan at dobreprogramy.pl> wrote:
> > > > at all ("Because ideas want to be free" seems to be closer to MW's idea)
> > >
> > > I'd rather ditch the motto.
>
> > I'm glad someone else said it first. "Ideas want to be free" is kind
> > of cute. "Power your ideas" sounds like a dot-com startup trying to
> > get off the ground.
>
> Wait a minute ... are you saying my MediaWiki stock options are
> worthless? BRION, YOU LIED TO ME!!!!

No, but we did reassign them all among ourselves. >:D

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On 6/16/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16/06/06, ryan at dobreprogramy.pl <ryan at dobreprogramy.pl> wrote:
> > at all ("Because ideas want to be free" seems to be closer to MW's idea)
>
> I'd rather ditch the motto.

I'm glad someone else said it first. "Ideas want to be free" is kind
of cute. "Power your ideas" sounds like a dot-com startup trying to
get off the ground.

Steve


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Foundation-l] the easy way or the less easy way

body:
On 6/16/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello
>
> Not sure anyone realise that here, but... my suggestion to go for a
> model such as the Apache Foundation is not entirely gratuitious.
>
> 2 years ago, I have been elected to represent the Foundation members.
> For a little while, I tried to set up the membership stuff and some of
> you may remember the discussion around the member dues.
> That discussion went nowhere. So, for a year, Angela represented all of
> you and I represented no one :-)
>
> At the following elections, we just dropped these two notions of
> volunteer representative/member representative.
>
You seem to be implying here that the original bylaws only provided
for "contributing" members.  This is incorrect.  According to the
original bylaws, "all persons interested in supporting the activities
of the Foundation who have contributed under a user name to any
Wikimedia project prior to the election ballot request deadline" are
volunteer members.  Angela represented the volunteer members.  You
represented both the volunteer members *and* the contributing active
members (of which there were none).

> Our bylaws are severaly outdated, and on several points, totally
> inappropriate. In short, they need to be *changed*.
> I invite you to have a good look at them, and in particular to the whole
> sections about membership :
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_bylaws
>
> Does that section fit with reality ?
>
It provides for a type of member which doesn't exist, and in my
opinion should not exist.  It needs to be modified, but it doesn't
*have* to be completely overhauled.

> Since these bylaws needed many changes (not only on the membership
> part), a new draft has been proposed and is currently on the board wiki.
>
> This new version has a very short "membership section".
>
[snip]
> ARTICLE III - MEMBERSHIP
> The Foundation shall have no members.
>

So the original bylaws had *everyone* as members, and the proposed new
bylaws have *no one* as members.  Unfortunately, it seems to be
possible for three members of the board to make this change.  I urge
all the board members to vote against it.  At the very least, I hope
the board will first poll the current membership (the community) to
see what they think about the idea.

> The second version of the bylaws (the ones standing on the board wiki)
> is the same (it would make no difference in terms of board of trustees
> organisation), but for pointing out a reality : there is no Foundation
> membership.
>
That is only the reality of the situation because the board has made
it so.  According to the bylaws, the membership "shall consist of all
persons interested in supporting the activities of the Foundation who
have contributed under a user name to any Wikimedia project prior to
the election ballot request deadline. The only other qualification for
membership shall be the creation of a user account on some Wikimedia
project. Volunteer Active Members shall have all the privileges of
active members."

Now, admittedly, it was a bad idea making the membership this broad.
At the least, one should be required to submit an application
providing ones identity.  But to say that the fact that the membership
is defined too broadly is equivalent to there being no membership at
all is not at all valid.

> Roughly, this model would be what I would qualify as a Private
> Foundation. Or Business Foundation. It is a Foundation which focus a lot
> on the efficiency of business (except that there is no business
> model...but well...) and would privilege addition of famous or wealthy
> members in the future.
> DON'T GET ME WRONG ! Right now, the majority of board members wish very
> much that there be community members on the board... but that's in good
> part because we are currently still 5 members. Now, imagine we add 2
> famous guys. We'll have a board of 7 with 2 from the community only.
> Then, imagine we add 2 other big guys. The community part will be 2/9.
> Of course, the addition could be of 2 guys from the community. In such
> case, they would be appointed.
>
> What I mean to say is that in this model, the community existence would
> really be recognised up to 2 people, which would be elected by the
> community. The rest of the members would come from an internal decision.
> Self-appointing board... with no terms limit.
>

Again I think your terminology is confusing.  Right now there are 4
members of the board who are part of the community, and there is 1
member who very well might not be on the board much longer.  Only 2
members of the board were *voted in* by the community, but that
doesn't mean they are the only members who are part of the community.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.  It makes absolutely no
sense to have any board members who aren't members of the community.
I can't for the life of me imagine why the hell anyone would want
that, and I haven't heard anyone explain it either.

> The Apache model is entirely different. I would call it a public
> Foundation or a Community Foundation. Majority of members would be
> garanteed from the community. There would be term limits. It would be a
> collective running. This is very much the model of our local
> associations in Europe... and that might be where the problem lies. I
> think the model of Associations (public/members) is very much european;
> whilst the model of Foundation (private/upon appointement) is very much
> american and hard to understand by europeans.
>

I don't think the American/European dichotomy is a valid one.  There
are a large number of membership non-profit organizations in the
United States.  In fact, I'd guess most public charities in the US are
membership based organizations.

Now maybe it's true that Europeans don't have very many private
non-membership foundations.  I don't know about this.

> I would prefer the second model myself, but I will NOT fight for it
> *alone*. I will not alone try to push for a system if there is no
> *active* support. I will not try to set up a scheme to see it abandonned
> on the board wiki.
>
I don't think very many of the current members (let's say, everyone
who voted in one of the two elections) are aware that there is
currently a proposal to take away their membership.  I'll have to
think about how best to publicise this.

> As I can not be sure whether it would be the best choice for the
> Foundation, I tried to see how I would appreciate each model as an
> individual and I invite you guys to do the same with self-honesty
> (estimate which one would be best for the general good and which one
> would be best for you).
>
If the foundation explicitly drops its members I think the community
will grow more and more distant.  I think at some point there will be
a fork, and the foundation will lose everything but a couple
now-worthless trademarks.

If the foundation adopts a membership model, I don't think there will
be a fork.  Ultimately I don't know if this is a good thing or not,
though.  That depends on how effectively the model is implemented.

Anthony


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki logo experiments

body:
On 6/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 16/06/06, ryan at dobreprogramy.pl <ryan at dobreprogramy.pl> wrote:
> > > at all ("Because ideas want to be free" seems to be closer to MW's idea)
> >
> > I'd rather ditch the motto.

> I'm glad someone else said it first. "Ideas want to be free" is kind
> of cute. "Power your ideas" sounds like a dot-com startup trying to
> get off the ground.

Wait a minute ... are you saying my MediaWiki stock options are
worthless? BRION, YOU LIED TO ME!!!!

;-)

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 11:23:11 -0700, "George Herbert"

>On 6/16/06, Cobb wrote:
>> A legit subject. So when has there ever been any actual lightsabre
>> combat? Has military research made some significant breakthroughs
>> without me noticing?

>Legit fictional:
>It's a major aspect of the Star Wars series, which are well past the
>credible size of popularity where major subjects within the fictional
>series are worth having articles about.  Fictional aspects are perfectly
>reasonable to report on.

I have no problem with an article on "Lightsaber (Star Wars)"... the toys,
the stunt work... the effect it has had on popular culture etc etc. They
could even mention that some people have taken the styles developed
for the films and tried to replicate it at a serious level. All of this
could
be written in an encyclopedic manner, with reference to sources, instead
of being original research and fan waffle.

But... the only reason this AFD was "keep" is because of the number of
Star Wars voters. Take a look at the history of the article too. Short of
slashing and burning it (and then it may as well have been deleted),
it's not going to get any better because it was named for and written from
a fictional viewpoint by masses of fans who cannot tell real from
imaginary...  and as a result it is fundmentally unencyclopedic. It should
have
been deleted, if only to preserve the illusion that AFD isn't a big joke and
to
give it a chance to start again (with a different name).

>Legit real-world martial art phenomenon: There are a few people trying to
>replicate the movie fighting style at a serious level.

Not with lightsabers they aren't.

Anyway, I'm not here to fight a case for deleting it. I'm just pointing out
a
particularly hideous case of why AFD is a grotesque broken horror show.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deletion in own userspace

body:
On 6/16/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/16/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That seems quite reasonable. Would a "special" {{delete}} template
> > along the lines of "This isn't even in the main user space, can some
> > admin just kill it?" be an improvement? You would have at least one
> > pair of eyes checking it...
>
> If it also puts the page in the regular speedy deletion category, that
> might be a good idea.

Better to use {{db-owner}}, it's specially for users requesting
deletion of user subpages. There is only one category for speedy
deletion candidates, but it's easy to spot pages in the "User"
namespace.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Upload size and distribution

body:
I made a quick runthrough of the upload directories to see how big the total
file set for each wiki is, with an eye towards getting bulk dumps of uploads
ready again.

A pretty pie chart and raw data are here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Upload_distribution%2C_June_2006

All together, current-versions of files without thumbnails total about 372
gigabytes. Commons makes up the vast majority, with over 245 gigs. English
Wikipedia squeaks in nearly another 60 gigs, German Wikipedia then just shy of
20 gb, then they start rapidly dropping off from there.

Giant tarballs are a rather unwieldy way to distribute file dumps at the larger
sizes: they require 2x the disk space (for staging complete and in-progress
builds) and of course if anyone downloads them it all comes out of our central
bandwidth.

Wegge's doing some testing with BitTorrent; it might or might not be feasible to
build torrent files that simply reference all the individual files, so we can
use hardlinks to maintain a snapshot without eating up the full disk space on
the server. This also avoids the need to keep or extract a large archive file
for the downloader.

Given the number of files (about 650k in Commons now) and their wild and crazy
filenames this might not be totally feasible, but we can hope.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060616/4121331d/attachment.pgp>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
On 6/15/06, Cobb <sealclubbingfun at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Why AFD just does not work, or, what happens when zealots flood a
> "discussion" with keep votes.
>
> * "I can't find this anywhere else"
>
> * "Keep and Cite as per Nscheffey. This page is extremely useful to my
>   Star Wars: Jedi Academy clan, it's no worse than some other sci-fi
>   entries, it just needs citations!"

en.wikipedia is highly inclusive, and this article fits a pattern
established by pages such as:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_OS-tans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuneScape_monsters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfleet_ranks_and_insignia

Yes, it should be cleaned up and referenced, but I see no reason to
delete it. I for one welcome our new lightsaber wielding overlords.

Erik


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] No big deal?

body:
G'day Matt,

> On 6/15/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>> Just when you think you've seen it all...
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Herostratus
>>
>> One editor opposes adminship on the grounds that Herostratus has
>> some nicely executed fake "categories" on his user page:
>
> We need to enforce sane rationales for votes on RfA ... somehow.
> Particularly for oppose votes, since they carry much more weight.
> Failing that, perhaps we should start a Wiki society that, for every
> oppose vote judged to be idiotic, automatically mass votes in favour
> of the candidate.
>
> And I'm only half-joking ;-)

RfA is like AfD: its major problems are social --- that is to say, a
culture that "oppose, too few portal edits" is acceptable has appeared.
  The solution isn't to hang around on the list complaining that
"oppose, bites newbies left right and centre" is an inappropriate view,
but to get onto RfA and:

a) Set a good example!

b) Point out stupid comments.

If every time someone said "oppose, has only been here three years with
20 000 edits and beloved by nearly everyone, rather than four years, 30
000 edits and everyone", someone *else* posted a reply pointing out just
how silly such a view is, it might die out.  And the good thing about it
is it's self-correcting: if you say "$x is silly", and $x is in fact a
Very Good Point, then you will look silly and the practice of $x will
continue.

Either way, getting involved as a general rule is a Good Thing.

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


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - bursting the bubble

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>On 6/12/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>>4  Someone suggested that the committee "oversee" the sending of proper thanks, etc. Note that the average donation last year was $25 and we raised about half a million, i.e., 20,000 thank you notes. While it is good of you to volunteer overseeing me sending them out, it would be much more helpful if you would actually lick the envelopes.
>>
>>
>It's good that you pointed this out.  The committee should certainly
>consider making sure there are enough volunteers to handle such a
>task.  And someone should buy you one of those sponge things so that
>Wikimedia doesn't have to pay for your worker's comp when you get
>poisoned by envelope glue :).
>
Alternatively, use self-adhesive stamps that you can just peel off of a
backing sheet.

Ec


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why AFD just does not work

body:
On 6/16/06, Cobb <sealclubbingfun at googlemail.com> wrote:
> A legit subject. So when has there ever been any actual
> lightsabre combat? Has military research made some
> significant breakthroughs without me noticing?

Whwn have actual [[Ainur]] existed?

--
geni