WikiEN-l May 2003

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

74 participants
283 discussions

[sonyalebrun@hotmail.com: Hacker attack at Wikipedia]
by Jimmy Wales 09 May '03

09 May '03

I'm forwarding this on behalf of "Sonya Lebrun", who says that she tried to send it to wikien-l unsuccessfully. I find the claim about MyRedDice placing a photo of himself into this person's cookie folder wildly implausible, but nonetheless, I'm duty bound to say don't do that. :-) I offered my personal advice to "Sonya Lebrun" that she and her friends DW and BlackWidow would be better off just leaving wikipedia. The vague legalistic threats that have come from all of them do not tickle my WikiLoveBone. ----- Forwarded message from Sonya Lebrun <sonyalebrun(a)hotmail.com> ----- From: "Sonya Lebrun" <sonyalebrun(a)hotmail.com> Date: Thu, 08 May 2003 22:51:09 +0000 To: jwales(a)bomis.com Subject: Hacker attack at Wikipedia I am using a computer in two or three public places to access Wikipedia. You have a 35 year Cookie on users to your site so I don't need to give you my static IP address. I am proud to be a great and good friend of user Black Widow and her husband DW who also used some or all of these same public computers. I was attacked at Wikipedia by a few people, some have Wikipedia powers such as user Zoe and JohnOwnens to delete pages and do other things to any user that I cannot overcome. They attacked me solely because I stated I was a friend of Black Widow. My valid contributions were all deleted and my polite complaints were obfuscated. I will send you precise details of this later because right now their is a more urgent matter for you to take care of at once. You have a very brazen hacker named User:MyRedDice on Wikipedia who jumped in to attack me and boldly wrote on my User Page then deleted my User Page and moved my complaints from the Village Pump and the like and posted a derogatory page about me. When I accessed his page to politely ask he stop, he placed a photo of himself into this computers Windows Cookie folder. This is illegal conduct and a criminal offense. Mr. Wales, I think you know how frightening this is, and the potential consequences and damages could be substantial. I have notified my server, and will be taking other steps to protect myself. As you are responsible for this site, I would request that you take note of this serious matter and immediately take the appropriate action at Wikipedia.org to protect me and other users at Wikipedia.org from this danger and abuse. Thank you. I tried to send this to wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org. buyt Hotmail said the address could not be recognized. _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 helps eliminate e-mail viruses. Get 2 months FREE*. http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus ----- End forwarded message -----

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Transliteration
by daniwo59＠aol.com 09 May '03

09 May '03

Hi I've recently begun working on some articles about past prime ministers of Iraq, to put a little historical perspective into the conflict. The problem I have come across is that the names are transliterated in countless different names in the texts I have and, as a result, in existing articles in Wikipedia. It can get very confusing, especially with links. Is there anyone else here with some background in Arabic, so that we can develop some kind of standard transliteration system? Shukran Danny

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sysop nominations
by Daniel Mayer 08 May '03

08 May '03

Sean Barrett wrote: >A) Strawman argument; unworthy of you, mav. > >B) Who are these tin-plated tyrants that want >to make the kids wait until they're eighteen? And concentrating on the weakest part of my post and ignoring the rest isn't also beating on a straw man? ;) My point was that we shouldn't automatically give people power over others automatically based on some numerical scheme and that doing so would give unwarranted power to people who are more apt to abuse that power (such as Lir, Clutch or TMC). Admin selection, IMO, should be filtered through at least some human-controled process. But what I want is for that process to work faster and for us not to dilly dally around promoting obvious Admin choices. That is all - pardon my exaggeration. I was just trying to make a point. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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sysop nominations
by Daniel Mayer 08 May '03

08 May '03

Yikes! I forgot other people who should be sysoped; user:Someone_else and user:Mkweise. IMO the old way of promoting should be expanded to include nominations by current Admins. And all nominations should be accepted with a single "seconded" by another Admin unless there is somebody (Admin or not) on the list that disagrees. <evil>If and when there is disagreement we can just drop the nomination and not even tell the person that they were nominated.</evil> We can continue to yell and scream whenever a controversial user asks to be an Admin (like we are now) but uncontroversial users who tend to almost always work nicely with others and follow NPOV (like the ones I listed, IMO) should be promoted semi-automatically via nominations by current Admins. But we should tell them /right after/ their accounts are upgraded just so they don't freak-out and think that a developer goofed and made all users Admins. CRY HAVOC! Sorry, I'm feeling particularly Evil (TM) tonight. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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sysop nominations
by Daniel Mayer 08 May '03

08 May '03

TC wrote: >Nor am I. But conflating sysop powers on >Wikipedia with gun usage is silly and wrong. >Your principled stand against disseminating >instruments of death has little relevance >in a discussion about Wikipedia editing. Same concept, different level. Replace "gun" with "power over others" and then you should be able to get the concept without the baggage that comes with the deadly nature of firearms. As with most analogies exaggeration is used to make a point. Oh and I'm not the first person to make an analogy between sysop powers and deadly pursuits. Visit [[m:IP Death Squad]]. And banning a user from ever entering our kingdom again is, at the very least, exile. In the ancient world exile often was a de facto death sentence (and was effectively so as far as the town doing the exiling was concerned - either way they shouldn't ever have to deal with the exiled person again). -- mav __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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sysop nominations
by Daniel Mayer 08 May '03

08 May '03

KQ wrote: >No, there's not another list, and >yes, you should be reading this list >(unless you find it boring). This >list is *not* only for sysops. > >About the secret nominations: mav has >a lot of good ideas, so it's fine if >he has the occasional bad one, >and this one is a bad one. Actually all I want is to make the process run a bit smoother than it is now. It is tedious to seek-out Admin candidates, ask them to apply, and then have most of them not even bother for weeks or longer. So I want to cut uncontroversial candidates out of the selection process by, in a way, auto-sysoping them. So when I imply a "secrete" proceeding all I mean is that the candidate would not have to be the one initiating the process nor would they need to participate at all. So there is no need for any secrete mailing list or anything like that. And a technical means to "auto-sysop" would be a bad idea; like you said Lir would have been made a sysop, so would Clutch and maybe even TMC (depending on the criteria). These users would have been even more troublesome as Admins and created an even greater amount of damage (blocking IPs willy-nilly, deleting pages that should not have been deleted etc). Some people think that society would be better if every teenager were given a gun on their 18th birthday regardless of their mental state or firearms training. I'm definitely not in that camp of thought. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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Please, try to be kind to one another.
by Daniel Mayer 08 May '03

08 May '03

>His text was everything you say it is -- >POV, and in the wrong location (at best), >and partly false (perhaps). And yet, I think >that it's worthwhile for everyone (especially >Fred, but others, too) to take stock of how >this might have been handled more amicably. > >--Jimbo I agree. I also tried to moderate the tone on that talk page but I gave up. Throwing around terms like "vandal" to describe Fred is, IMO, over the top and greatly cheapens the word. A certain very longtime user throws that word around all the time to describe what he sees as anti-Israeli/Jew POV and the result is that, I at least, don't take his "vandalism" claims too seriously anymore (I also tend to stay away from articles that he edits - lest I become labeled a vandal). It is also a red herring that diverts attention away from discussing what to do with POV text (which can often be made acceptable by attributing POV and moving it to another section or even article). The result of name-calling like that is often a war between egos AND NOT a discussion about improving the disputed text. This makes compromising very difficult and it makes it near impossible for the person labeled a "vandal" to agree with his accusers that his text was not at all appropriate to begin with (since by agreeing with that he also implicitly agrees to being a "vandal"). And since when is an article supposed to be limited to one POV (in this case the "political science definition")? If there are other valid POVs on what the term means then those POVs should be included in a neutral and fair way (per our NPOV policy). Fred was just adding what he thought was valid explanatory text that described the characteristics of a communist state. This text is, IMO, is a bit biased against communist states and is also misplaced (it is really about the characteristics of totalitarian states). But this is a difference of opinion and NOT vandalism. If 10% of the effort put into writing kilobyte after kilobyte of text slamming Fred on the communist state talk page and this mailing list where put into improving Fred's text and moving it to a more appropriate page, then Wikipedia would have a great article on totalitarian states. But instead we have a talk page (and two archives!) that would be right at home in the archives of USENET flame wars. Also, saying that you putting forth "ironic mockery" is a cop-out for bad behavior; it is difficult enough to properly express those types of language and cultural subtleties in emails to close friends who are familiar with you, your culture and the way you express yourself (and who have the same or similar disposition/temperament). On a mixed list like this, with people from different cultures, dispositions and different levels of mastery of English, it is not possible to be both "ironic" and "mocking" without coming across as petulant or even mean-spirited. I know that I'm guilty of being rude at times too, but I almost always give a real apology after I have my hissy-fit. I for one am sick of the low level of discourse on many talk pages, this list and especially edit summaries. Talk pages can be archived and forgotten but we should think about how edit wars will look in a page's history a month, year, decade or more after the event. Screaming summaries like "PLEASE BAN FRED BAUDER FOR CONTINUOUS VANDALISM OF THIS ARTICLE. HIS VANDALISM HAS HAD TO BE REVERTED NEARLY 20 TIMES HERE. HE HAS DONE THE SAME ELSEWHERE " can only be answered by other screaming summaries - and all that is part of the page forever. I feel that Wikipedia is a very important project and that one day there will be historians and ethnographers mining our page histories, talk pages and mailing lists to see what made us tick as a virtual society. So we should all think to ourselves about what type of legacy we want to leave behind. Please, try to be kind to one another. -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav) __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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sysop
by Oliver Brown 08 May '03

08 May '03

I would like to be a sysop to assist in the general maintenance and welfare of wikipedia. Sincerely, Oliver King Turtle

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Sysop
by JFrost8401＠aol.com 08 May '03

08 May '03

For the benefit of an ignorant non-computer expert, what, if anything, is the difference between an administrator and a sysop? Jim (aka jimfbleak)

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Re: sysop
by koyaanis qatsi 08 May '03

08 May '03

Anthere writes: > How do you plan exactly this semi-automatic > sysop granting to remain "secret" (unknown) > to the candidate provided that it has to be > backed-up by two sysops, and not to rejected > by other sysops ? (hence to be public somehow) > > Hum...is there another list hidden somewhere > just for sysop I am not aware of ? Or is it > that being non sysop, I should not be reading > this list ? No, there's not another list, and yes, you should be reading this list (unless you find it boring). This list is *not* only for sysops. About the secret nominations: mav has a lot of good ideas, so it's fine if he has the occasional bad one, and this one is a bad one. What happened to the idea of making people sysop automatically after a certain number of edits or a certain length of time? Yes, it might have made Lir a sysop, but there are vastly more good contributors than there are bad. Also, the threat of making Lir a sysop just points out that deleting a page is relatively easy, while undeleting a page is relatively tedious. kq wikikarma: is it too late to cash in on [[Six O'Clock News]]? __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com

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WikiEN-l May 2003