WikiEN-l May 2006

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

184 participants
353 discussions

Unblock request
by abu hamza 26 Sep '06

26 Sep '06

Hi, my wiki name is saladin1970. I joined just 3 days but find myself banned. i was banned by Jayjg . He cited the following reasons 1) 3RR rule 2) No useful edits 3) Copyright violoations 4) attacks on talk pages They all seem very serious. yet when we look into each of the reasons, they really have no substance. 1) I have two pc's one is shared at work - hence the same ip address and editor the othe is my home pc. I only reverted 3 times, as did my collegue at work. 2) I have made many contributions, including a section on moors in the spanish inquisition, additions to the islam in china section, background info on harold shipman and contributions to alan harts page and zionism page, and turkic. 3) There have been NO copyright violations. Every post was referenced to a website or to a book. All of whom allow references to as part of their copyright. So there was NO copy right violation 4) there were no personal attacks on talk pages. The worst that could be said was that i called someone a 'zionist'. Clearly there is something more to this than the above, as these at best are minor violations that would carry warnings. however I contend that this blocking falls under the "not advised to block rule". my posts in the zionism forum have illicited strong responses . Including the person that banned me jayjg. These posts included a) a section on the talmudic three oaths - which is the reason behind orthodox jews who oppose political zionism. This was reverted many times by jayjg amongst others also i added a further reading section book entitled "zionism the enemy of the jews by alan hart", who was a itv corrospondent during the 80's. His book is well researched 'historical and political' of the lead up to the creation of israel. Given that Jayjg was part of this debate, i can see no other reason for my ban (as the reasons given are spurious) other than to eliminate a user who has a different view of zionism. for this reason i am asking a moderator to look at the material posted by me, and make a fair decisions as to whether i should be banned indefinately thanks saladin _________________________________________________________________ Are you using the latest version of MSN Messenger? Download MSN Messenger 7.5 today! http://join.msn.com/messenger/overview

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Anons banned from creating articles
by John Lee 06 Sep '06

06 Sep '06

http://news.com.com/Growing+pains+for+Wikipedia/2100-1025_3-5981119.html?ta… "Thus, to avoid future problems, Wales plans to bar anonymous users from creating new articles; only registered members will be able to do so. That change will go into effect Monday, he said, adding that anonymous users will still be able to edit existing entries." Why were Wikipedians the last to know about this? I only saw some discussion on the mailing list about this, but nothing final. Why do we have to learn of this from the media instead of straight from Jimbo? This is really disturbing. John Lee ([[User:Johnleemk]])

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Should Wikipedia make it clear to users that it is not censored for minors?
by Prasad J 20 Aug '06

20 Aug '06

Wikipedia has followed a policy whereby it's content is not censored for children. Having said that would it be useful to put a warning/advisory on the website to make it clear to users that though it is legal for them to enter the site, they should be aware that Wikipedia's content is not censored for minors and the latter may come across some sexual or other adult material so it is advisable for them to be careful what they view? As Wikipedia's popularity increases, so do the njmber of kids who access it-mainly for homework help. As a result the chances of young users coming across such material are high so perhaps a warning like this will be for the best? Also there may also be some adults who for various reasons would prefer not to view such content.

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Time 100 footage
by Jimmy Wales 13 Jul '06

13 Jul '06

Amanda Congdon (rocketboom.com) was gracious enough to be our press representative at the recent Time 100 party in New York. She got a lot of footage of the guests, which was quite a group of famous people, probably at least 100 people at the party already have wikipedia articles, many with no photos or fair use photos. As a condition of being invited, I asked that she release her footage and photos under a free license. I do not know yet exactly how we will get this, but based on what I saw, her team was mostly just doing filming, so it will probably be raw video (I asked for the highest possible resolution, so that would be the raw tape). To get good screen caps, someone will have to take this raw footage and import it into something and do captures or whatever. My guess is that, due to the size of it all, we will get a tape rather than a downloadable file. I am looking for someone with good experience with video to do something useful with it. :) Please volunteer by emailing me directly. Since I will probably just have them mail a tape copy to you, you must be reliable and known to me, because I don't want to have them mail the tape to someone who vanishes. :) --Jimbo -- ####################################################################### # Office: 1-727-231-0101 | Free Culture and Free Knowledge # # http://www.wikipedia.org | Building a free world # #######################################################################

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Wikipedia : protection, death, transubstantiation
by SJ 19 Jun '06

19 Jun '06

Protection is a hack. When it was first implemented in early 2003, it was noted as such; from the start, there has been the idea of improving on protection by "reduc[ing] the requirements for sysop intervention for useful things to happen". http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:List_of_protected_pages… Wikis are designed to be editable; the ideal wiki is as open to incoming content as possible -- a metric of a wikis success at wiki-nature might be how long it takes first-time contributors to make typical edits, and how long it takes them to get/see feedback. "Open to incoming content" isn't the same as "open to changes in what everyone else sees as outgoing content". We should strive to increase our openness to inboud content, even as we tighten quality controls on outbound content. Articles for Creation is an even worse hack than protection, and regularly fails silently and completely [the user never comes back, or thinks their work is lost; their work *is* lost]. Semi-protection is also a hack. One way to make these protection hacks work more effectively is to recognize that they are *not* the desired solution, but a quick way to implement something close. Protection is a 'reasonable' hack because anyone can still edit the talk page, leave comments for page-contributors on *their* talk pages, &c. New editors don't know any of this. Old editors and vandals don't need to be told what protection's all about. Suggestions for improving these hacks through more information : * make protection templates very short and inobtrusive; not in the header, to maintain a clean interface : most readers don't need to know about them (an NPOV or Disputed template can be placed there if needed, that's separate. If an article's being protected just b/c it was on slashdot, that's different). * keep the "edit" button for protected pages. add a little icon in that tab if needed, to denote the protected nature. Offer a message on editing, varying by protection type, explaining briefly why the protection, and where to post edits and suggestions (the talk page), with a link to a longer explanation of who can edit where, how to request unprotection, how to ask for help, &c. * update the "this page is protected from editing" message one gets when viewing the source of a protected page. make it friendlier, again linking to where one *can* suggest changes and explaining this in postive rather than negative terms. * make it more clear than it is now who applied protection when, and what their protection-summary was. pull this information into the notices listed above. -- SJ

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To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven death of Wikipedia
by Resid Gulerdem 12 Jun '06

12 Jun '06

I would like to start by applauding Mr. Wales for his wonderful idea of writing a free online encyclopedia by the contribution of volunteers. I am hoping that it can be improved to a reliable source of information as time goes. At this point, it is evident that, there are some structural problems in Wikipedia. Ignoring these problems doesn't lead to a reasonable solution and doesn't help. The main problem I can see is the unbalance between the user rights and admin privileges. It can be adjusted and corrected but the problem needs to be identified first. It might not seem to be a serious issue for one who is not effected, but it really is. It is of paramount importance to realize that motivation of ordinary users from any background can be stimulated only by a fair treatment of their edits. It is also equally important to realize that the conjuncture has a strong influence on the editors without an exclusion of the admins. Some people feel marginalized and faced to bias actions from some admins. Isn't this important enough to address? The answer to the question is strongly related to the strategic call of being inclusive or exclusive. Please note that any person leave Wikimedia is not only a minus to the community, in general, is a plus to the anti-Wikipedia community. I, myself, am at or around that border line and before crossing it I wanted to make a friendly call for a discussion of the issue. I would be glad to discuss the issue and make some suggestions for the solution if you are interested. Best, Resid __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Lovely.
by Titoxd＠Wikimedia 09 Jun '06

09 Jun '06

Well, you can see for yourselves: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3APhaedriel <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User%3APhaedriel&diff=56024251&ol did=55557465> &diff=56024251&oldid=55557465 Titoxd.

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AFC needs your help!
by MacGyverMagic/Mgm 09 Jun '06

09 Jun '06

Dear RC patrollers and vandal hunters, This is a desperate plea for help! The few people who work at "Articles For Creation" are getting overworked. They almost can't keep up with the new requests and a lot of dubious submission are left with no idea how to handle them. Even worse, occasionally "Wikipedia:Articles for creation" and "Wikipedia:Articles for creation/Today" get blanked by a newbie who isn't reading the instructions. Unfortunately, those blankings aren't always discovered in time, and this way a lot of good submissions are missed. Once they get archived, they're almost never touched. I want to ask vandalhunters to keep their eyes open for blankings and revert them on the spot so they're going unnoticed any longer. And I hope RC patrollers can be pursuaded to fulfill some requests when they come across them. We need your help! Sincerely, Mgm (in name of the overworked Meegs)

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Fwd: [Wikitech-l] Special:Contributions: index missing?
by Rob Church 08 Jun '06

08 Jun '06

There's been some discussion on a development mailing list regarding the namespace selector in contributions pages, which is expensive due to our schema arrangement. One of our database administrators has posed this question, which I thought I'd forward to this list, since it's full of users. Rob Church ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Domas Mituzas <midom.lists(a)gmail.com> Date: 23-May-2006 11:28 Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Special:Contributions: index missing? To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org> Hi! It can be a task for tool server, and can be as well derived from our xml dumps. We have all that information in recentchanges (without an index for this exact operation), but even then, I'm not convinced it has to be used his way. What is the point of per-namespace contribution feature on live site? What are the applications of it? Domas

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Saladin1970 (new thread)
by Jesse W 08 Jun '06

08 Jun '06

On May 23, 2006, at 2:00 PM, BJörn Lindqvist wrote: > When you say "no useful edits," does that mean that you are "able to > provide evidence of your accusations?" It seems to be that Saladin1970 > definitely has made useful contribution(s): I can't comment on the 2nd link you gave, but this one at least... > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php? > title=Turkic_peoples&diff=53987242&oldid=53921254. This one is already addressed *directly* below, and links to a quite long, and apparently well-referenced article on the subject: [[Xiongnu]]. While I, personally can't comment on the good faith or lack of such in the edit, it was, in fact, not useful where it was put, and was redundant (as best as I can tell) in the article where it should have been put. Jesse Weinstein

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WikiEN-l May 2006