WikiEN-l February 2006

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

184 participants
279 discussions

Re: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: Task forces
by Daniel R. Tobias 19 Feb '06

19 Feb '06

On 18 Feb 2006 at 21:23, SJ <2.718281828(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On 2/16/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote: > > :-D Extend the length of the day beyond 24 hours. > > Now *there's* a project worth doing. Does this involve Superman and > world-sized gyroscopes? It *does* happen on occasion. If you use the UTC standard for timekeeping, you get an extra second once in a while as leap seconds get added to days (most recently on December 31, 2005). This, unfortunately, isn't all that much extra time for Wikipedia editing. A more substantial addition is made if you go by local time in areas that use daylight saving / summer time, where you get a 25th hour once a year when the clocks "fall back". Unfortunately, this is balanced by another day in the spring when you "spring forward" and lose an hour. -- == Dan == Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/ Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/ Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/

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Userboxes: A radical proposal
by Steve Bennett 19 Feb '06

19 Feb '06

Hi, What is the worst possible thing that could happen if we removed userpages altogether? Not user talk pages, but "hands off it's mine" user pages. Steve

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Proposal: Task forces
by Chris Jenkinson 19 Feb '06

19 Feb '06

Hi all, Here is an overview of some brainstorming I and a few others have done on the concept of task forces for improving policy (a task force being a temporary organisation formed to work on a single defined task or activity). Task forces would be broadly responsible for an area of policy (for example, deletion, adminship, etc.), and would be tasked with coming up with improvements to an existing policy and creation of new policies. Please take "policy" to include both guidelines and policies. General idea Members of a task force would be appointed in some way (for example via elections), and would discuss amongst themselves the problems with the existing policy, how to improve it so it better serves building the encyclopaedia, and the removal of policies which do not help the development of Wikipedia. The various task forces would work the community to get feedback on all aspects of their work, including problems with existing policies, discussion of what works and what doesn't, and comments on their suggested proposals. After a task force as a group were happy with their suggested modification of a policy, they would require consent from the community to implement it. This would probably be done via a simple straw poll, and due to the task force already having a mandate from the community to develop changes, would be typically lower than the usual "consensus" pass mark (e.g. a simple majority would be sufficient to implement the change). I would suggest a task force for each area of Wikipedia policy, such as moving pages, each administrative tool (deletion, blocking, protection, rollback), manual of style, adminship, bureaucratship, recent changes, copyright, stubs, etc. Obviously, some task forces would have larger roles than others - some task forces, such as one for bureaucrat-related policy, simply may not be necessary due to the low numbers. Use to Wikipedia This would be useful for Wikipedia because of the increasing size of the community. Due to its size, people are excluded from topics they may be interested in discussing and debating but may not know are under discussion purely due to the amount of things which are under discussion. Unfortunately this means it is likely that good ideas are excluded. Forming a body tasked specifically with reform of an area, which actively solicits feedback from the community gives people a single place to discuss topics they are interested in. In a large group, decision making becomes difficult. Inspiration The general idea of this was inspired in part by select committees in legislative bodies. In the House of Commons, select committees are groups of MPs, from all political parties, each one dedicated to a different government department. Their role is to hold the government to account, solicit feedback from the general public, and to report to Parliament. While of course a direct comparison between Wikipedia and a legislative body is naturally flawed, the concept of a small body of people, interested and dedicated to a specific field, to help improve the system to improve its functioning is a good one and works well in practice. Things to consider * How would task forces be created? * How would members of a task force be appointed? * Is a single "policy committee" a better idea than having multiple task forces? * How do we ensure that a task force is representative of opinion across Wikipedia/has community support? * How do we ensure that time spent dealing with policy does not affect contributors' time spent on encyclopaedic articles? Thoughts welcomed! I've also put this on Wikipedia, at: --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Talrias/Task_forces_proposal Chris -- Chris Jenkinson chris(a)starglade.org "Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful." -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A modest proposal.
by Michael Snow 18 Feb '06

18 Feb '06

geni wrote: >On 2/17/06, Snowspinner <Snowspinner(a)gmail.com> wrote: > > >>I would like to see all userboxes done through substitution instead >>of making TfD weep openly, which this would do. >> >>-Phil >> >> >Fair use is difficult enough to sort out as it is. If they are useing >un subst templates I can kill the fair use vio in seconds. Otherwise I >have to go through every person with the image on their user page and >ask them to remove it. > > If it's not fair use, don't ask, remove it for them. Then leave a friendly note on their talk page explaining what you've done. --Michael Snow

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Proposed wheel warring policy
by Philip Welch 18 Feb '06

18 Feb '06

At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Wikipedia:Proposed_wheel_warring_policy , discussion has died down and we have three different proposed policies. So I'm taking it to a straw poll. Feel free to register your support and opposition of the policies proposed as well as your comments—depending on how this goes, we'll decide the next step from there. -- Philip L. Welch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch

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An emotive plea for unblocking
by Jack Stephens 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

Users of Wikipedia, I write in earnest emotional trauma. I am a self-diagnosed wikiaddict, both in editing and reading, I have been a prolific wikipedia user and editor for quite a while now, I am not sure exactly how long, but I feel suitably attached to wikipedia to feel sincerely aggrieved, due to my recent blocking. My username is Jdcooper, and my IP address 128.243.220.42. When attempting to revert some vandalism today I was informed that User:Golbez has blocked me with the highly descriptive reasoning: "vandal". As someone who has never so much as THOUGHT of vandalising an article in my life, and as someone who gets highly troubled by wikivandalism, I was, I feel legitimately, sent into a devastating panic by such allegations. My only explanation is that, as I am editing from a university network (University of Nottingham, Great Britain, if anyone cares) with over 5,000 users, vandalism from one of said users may have been disproportionately punished. Whatever the case, I can assure everyone, particularly Golbez, that I am the furthest from a vandal you could ever hope to meet. I am a non-confrontational user who generally busies himself with correcting spelling mistakes, reverting vandalism, merging duplicates and sorting stubs. I have e-mailed Golbez about the misunderstanding (as I am sure this is) but I am unfamiliar with this kind of process (that of unblocking), as, not being a vandal, this has never happened to me before. I urge someone who can help me to do so, as I am anxious to get back to editing, my life is all but meaningless without it. Yours hopefully, Jdcooper

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A radical proposal
by dalbury＠bellsouth.net 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

It would mean that my lists of things to do, lists of things I have done, useful links, and suspense lists of tags I've put on articles would have to go somewhere else, probably killing portability for those items. > > From: Steve Bennett <stevage(a)gmail.com> > Date: 2006/02/17 Fri AM 11:32:48 EST > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)wikipedia.org> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Userboxes: A radical proposal > > Hi, > What is the worst possible thing that could happen if we removed > userpages altogether? Not user talk pages, but "hands off it's mine" > user pages. > > Steve > _______________________________________________ > WikiEN-l mailing list > WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l >

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Tracking banned user Andrew Morrow
by David Gerard 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

This fellow was banned as User:Amorrow for vicious personal attacks and threats against other users, and again as User:Pinktulip. His personal attacks have escalated to stalking and threats sent to other editors' employers. Fairly obviously, he's *remarkably* unwelcome on anything to do with Wikipedia. I'm trying to build up a pattern for a strong complaint, and I'm also rolling back every edit from him I see (making the edit again by hand if it's a good one). If you see any edits fitting the pattern, please email me or leave a note on my talk page. - d.

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Wikipedia merchandise
by Ben Yates 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

The wikimedia foundation makes comparatively little from selling shirts, so I've put together a new store for them on spreadshirt (which has higher quality plot prints, not just digital prints -- and which I am not in any way affiliated with, for the record) and come up with a few new designs and a fashion-y logo-ish thing. (I'm not a designer by trade, so I'm sure these could be improved on.) The store is at https://www.spreadshirt.com/shop.php?sid=21410 -- let me know what you think (though for god's sake don't buy anything from it yet; nobody but the hosting/shirtmaking company will get any money). Also, who else exactly should I contact about this? Ben Yates Wikipedia blog - http://wikip.blogspot.com

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User:Curps Blocking an IP address when he could have blocked the individual User
by Mason Patrick E SSgt 28 MUNS/MXWKB 17 Feb '06

17 Feb '06

Excuse me? I am blocked because my IP was used by a vandal???? This I am assuming is another asinine attempt by a sanctimonious Admin to stop vandals by blocking an entire IP vs. the individual user... I looked at the user ( BDOG) who supposedly vandalized something and deserved a block and I noticed that he didn't even have any contributions other than the sandbox nor was he even given a vandalism warning... Curps pull your head out... This is BS and you had better have me unblocked PRONTO! Seriously... blocking an IP address when he ( Curps) could have just blocked the user? This has got to stop... This "Admin" has repeated requests on his talk page to stop using autoblock and apparently he is quick to ban entire blocks of IPs... I will change this when I become an Admin. Someone Please contact an Admin to correct this situation... Curps is clearly being a Dick.

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WikiEN-l February 2006