Even though I'm not an admin, I'd like to offer some ideas on the matter.
The major idea I have would offer a modicum of security: Wikipedia sets up
a POP server for admins and the admins have their e-mails run through the
server. Their personal data, such as their name, is scrubbed if the Admins
wish it -- leaving only their handle on Wiki. Changing code a bit could,
theoretically, screen their IPs so they were only visible to admins or
higher -- thus eliminating one method of tracking them down.
Unfortunately, the rest is up to the Admins themselves. You can't stop
someone from collecting data about you that's freely available unless you
have evidence of malicious intent -- then the law can offer you protection.
Of course, in theory, a court order would shut down his website if it could
be proven that his actions were promoting illegal actions such as threats.
But again, legal actions are something you want to save as a last-ditch
effort since they take time and money and create a lot of publicity.
I don't know if this helps or not; I'm just a year-old editor on the project
who is concerned for the safety and security of all involved. Brandt does
not seem to be someone who has anyone's best interests in mind but his own.
--Martin Osterman
Is this still a wiki, or do we have a policy of hindering edits on
certain articles?
The George W. Bush article is rather large, about 95 kilobytes, but
fortunately like most of our larger articles it's divided into many
smaller sections which can be edited individually.
Except they can't. Someone has *deliberately* inserted a
"noeditsection" directive into this article, and all suggestions that
this hinders editing are resisted, on the grounds that, as well as
hindering legitimate edits, it hinders vandalism.
I'm in a bit of a spitting fury over this. It seems to be the
silliest situation. If I want to correct a spelling error, I should
not be hindered in doing so by the action of some well-meaning idiot.
Hi all.
One of the interesting projects on de.wiki is the idea of Personendata
- basically, a set of standard biographical details, appended to
individual articles. Name, other common names, a few words of
description, date/place of birth, date/place of death. The sort of
thing you would find on a disambiguation page, basically.
This is implemented in quite a clever way - the CSS is set up in such
a way that the "{{Personendaten}}" template isn't shown, so whilst it
remains in the page text it's invisible to the casual reader; it's
stored at the bottom of the page along with categories and interwikis
and other "housekeeping" text, to avoid editors tripping over it.
Very nice. So what does it do? It allows all sorts of applications -
see http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05/Paper-JV2 - and I'm sure
you can think of others. Build it, and they will come. One of the
smart ideas there was to tie it into the Deutsche Bibliotek authority
records (the files cataloguers use to keep authors uniquely
identified), meaning that deeplinking to works by that person is
relatively easy.
[[User:Kaldari]] has started experimenting with adding this to
articles on en: - there's only about a dozen as yet, but the idea has
promise. It's certainly a lot easier than our clumsier work with
categories, and would probably help with finding duplicate articles.
There's a page up at [[Wikipedia:Persondata]] going over the details;
any comments or suggestions would probably be appreciated.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
I used to be on the board of Brandt's public database group, but when I raised some questions about his starting to promote "research" materials from notorious antisemitic and pro-fascist organizations such as Liberty Lobby, he summarily dismissed me. When other board members raised objections, he encouraged them to resign or they chose to leave or he dismissed them. Anyway, the folks on the board who challenged him in any way were soon gone.
Brandt then wrote and published a flame attack on me and Poltiical Research Associates, where I work.
Brandt does not abide criticism of any sort, and has now created a board that appears to support him without question. I doubt that appealing to his "board" will be effective.
Cberlet
aka
Chip Berlet
________________________________
From: wikien-l-bounces(a)Wikipedia.org on behalf of geni
Sent: Mon 12/26/2005 2:33 AM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Merry Christmas from Daniel Brandt
<<SNIP>>
>
Brandt isn't the only member of the board of Public Information
Research. If we could contact the others we might be able to atchive
something. The website is registered in their name.
http://www.namebase.org/staffbl.html
--
geni
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WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
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> Pity. If they had a compatible license, $10m of investment using free
> content could get somewhere useful. And producing free content.
> -- Justin Cormack
Reply to a query of how the non-subscription material on DU will be licenced:
> It will be some form of creative commons license. We are still
> mulling over various possible versions,
> -- Bernard Haisch
--
User:Jeandré
User:Refbot has been erroneously blocked while being set up by User:Curps,
who has no email address and can not be contacted by blocked/autoblocked
user. Perhaps those with no email address should not be using features
which require email addresses. Reason given is possible impersonator of
User:SEWilcoBot, but Curps also reverted a change to SEWilcoBot's user page
which showed that functionality was being transferred to RefBot and thus
there was no such behavior to impersonate.
_________________________________________________________________
Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
I've just seen a couple of proposed decisions by the ArbCom that are very worrying from the point of view of making sure Wikipedia has reliable, sourced information.
They are on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Xed_2/Propo…
The proposals I have difficulty with are as follows:-
3.2.2 Sources demanded 2) After Xed restored, Jayjg demanded sources [6] [7] despite the fact that a simple Google search [8] gives 80,000 hits. He also removed any reference to occupation.
and
3.3.3 Viriditas and Jayjg reminded regarding NPOV 3) Viriditas (talk contribs) and Jayjg (talk contribs) are reminded that Wikipedia is a cooperative enterprise which operates by consensus. Masking of POV editing under the guise of citing NPOV and demanding sources is inappropriate
Regarding the first one, I think it is fundamentally important that the onus is on the editor inserting information into an article to provide a source. It's easy to add information - but time-consuming to check it's veracity (particularly if you don't know where it's come from).
Regarding the second one, I don't believe it can ever be wrong to ask for sources for unreference information. Indeed, one good way of NPOV'ing articles is to make sure everything in them is properly sourced.
Taken together these rulings, if passed (and they are in the balance now), could create serious difficulty when dealing with trolls and other disruptive users. User:Troll adds a "fact" in a controversial article. User:Troll then refuses to remove it because other readers can't cite a source disproving it or says it is for others to find the source, but the "fact" should remain, whilst dismissing editors who are even asking him for sources for his edits as being POV warriors and warning them that ArbCom has already found against their position.
Yours concernedly
Jon
---------------------------------
Yahoo! Photos NEW, now offering a quality print service from just 8p a photo.
Hey everyone,
I wanted to take a moment and wish everyone here a Merry Christmas (or Happy
Holidays if you don't celebrate Christmas). I know it's been a busy time
for everyone, so I hope that these wishes find everyone in good spirits!
--Martin Osterman
This is neat.
Pretty intuitive if you're accustomed to Unix shells.
wpl -type block -user David_Gerard
wp User:Tony_Sidaway
wpw
man wpl
man wp
man wpw
ls wikipedia
ma Patrick Stewart
comix able and baker
http://tonysidaway.schtuff.com/the_web_shell