WikiEN-l June 2006

wikien-l@lists.wikimedia.org

151 participants
160 discussions

Username blocks on companies
by Erik Moeller 21 Jun '06

21 Jun '06

I don't know how common this is: # 01:30, June 19, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "Shout magazine (contribs)" with an expiry time of indefinite (username, existing company) # 01:02, June 19, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "Shi star entertainment (contribs)" with an expiry time of indefinite (username, existing company) # 21:04, June 18, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "ParsInternet (contribs)" with an expiry time of indefinite (Username (name of existing company)) # 00:59, June 19, 2006 RadioKirk blocked "Hammond Publishing (contribs)" with an expiry time of indefinite (username, existing company) Given that we probably want people to identify who they work for, especially when editing articles where this is relevant, is it a good idea to block company accounts without any edits on sight? If so, perhaps we should at least modify the talk plage template to indicate to the user how they can put the company information on their user page? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Hammond_Publishing for an example of the current template. Erik

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Conservative notice board
by Tony Sidaway 21 Jun '06

21 Jun '06

I have closed the deletion review of the "Conservative notice board" under the so-called "Snowball" clause. This was a wikiproject created in bad faith by a person who spammed the talk pages of 52 other editors saying that they had identified themselves as conservatives and inviting them to join. How this ever got to the stage of deletion review I have no idea. There was never a chance that this bad faith project could be accepted. I have therefore closed the review, endorsing the deletion, which was unquestionably correct. By discussing the *possibility* that it could ever exist on Wikipedia, we were giving the wrong impression about the purpose for which Wikipedia exists, and saying that we don't care about our core policies.

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Why AFD just does not work
by Cobb 21 Jun '06

21 Jun '06

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/Lightsabercomb… 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?

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More quotes from AfD
by Ilmari Karonen 21 Jun '06

21 Jun '06

"And yes, anything that can be deleted, probably should be deleted, because we must have articles only on truly worthy topics so to continue to be highly regarded by the reading public." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Resonance_%28M… (I disagree, obviously. Other than that, I'll let the article and the debate on it speak for themselves.) -- Ilmari Karonen

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Experts needed on Fundraising Committee
by Daniel Mayer 21 Jun '06

21 Jun '06

So far, we only have one person proposed to be on the committee with any type of professional fundraising experience (volunteering for Wikimedia does not count). I would therefore like to make one last plea to anybody reading this that has any experience with fundraising for a non-profit. We *really* need at least a few people with relevant knowledge about any major aspect of this topic (seeking funds from individuals/companies/trusts, tax/reporting requirements, technical aspects of online fundraising systems and donor/sponsor management). Please sign up below (in the 'People interested in participating' section) and state what experience/training you have along with your preferred level of participation in the committee (full member, advisor, consultant or volunteer): http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_committee#People_interested_in_p… NOTE: Signing up does not guarantee any role above volunteer. -- mav __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More quotes from AfD
by Cobb 20 Jun '06

20 Jun '06

>"Steve Bennett", Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:38:14 +0200, wrote: >This all has the positive side effect of making it easier for people >expert in one domain to contribute to discussions in their domain. Making it easier for trekkies to vote on trekkie AFDs... I was actually thinking more along the lines of ensuring that an AFD is exposed to a wider selection of Wikipedians. One criticism of AFDs is that after the second day, the only people who still bother to vote/comment are those with an interest in the article. A recent AFD of Star Trek material had to resort to repeatedly relisting it in order to get wider exposure... otherwise, it would have just been the Trekkie voters still hammering away (OMG! Trek article! Keep! Keep!) despite the subject being 100% original research.

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Another KIND of categories: (Was: Types of categories)
by Drini drini 20 Jun '06

20 Jun '06

Well, the discussion about the "kind of categories" missed a very important one: Categories used to group wikipedians by poitical/religious beliefs like [[Category:Muslim Wikipedians]] [[Category:Born-again Christian Wikipedians]] [[Category:Flying Spaghetti Monsterist Wikipedians]] [[Category:Roman Catholic Wikipedians]] etc which are sometimes used to raise voting blocks. The emphasis on "this user is/believes foo" is quite different from "this user is interested in foo". if I recall correctly, categories as the ones I mentiones above are not welcome on wikipedia, but I may be wrong. Can someone else please give me mroe feedback? Maybe previous discussions, statements by jimbo or arbcom, etc... Otherwise, I'm depopulating such categories (which over 95% of them are done via userboxes) and removing them afterwards.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More quotes from AfD
by Redvers ＠ the Wikipedia 20 Jun '06

20 Jun '06

From: Mark Gallagher > its only *current* problems can be > cured if we're > willing to put in the effort. Well, always one to be clever-clever, I thought I'd put Mark to the test and spend 24 hours policing AfD. And you know what? He's right. A little less moaning on about AfD here and a bit more work on AfD itself and you can start seeing a change. 1) Cut down the size of AfD by removing the malformed ones as they appear. 2) Cut down the size of AfD by spotting the speedy ones mistakenly nominated for the full process in good faith and killing them off immediately. 3) Reverse those who would tag a disputed AfD for speedy delete anyway and administer a slap for it so they don't do it again. 4) Make those who shout "speedy delete!" state a [[WP:CSD]] criterion for it. Don't listen to squirming on the subject. After doing those four steps - easy and satifying - you're left with an AfD process that makes more sense. Also, you immediately see a change in user behaviour. Screams for out-of-process speedy deletions have quietened a little since this morning. A day or so more of sharp slaps to those advocating them and the problem will be in abeyance. The nominations left are, broadly: 1) Ones that have a snowball's chance of surviving but deserve to go through the process 2) Ones that have a snowball's chance of being deleted but deserve to go through the process 3) Those where people have completely grasped the wrong end of the AfD and CSD stick 4) Those that are content disputes pretending to be AfD cases Of those, 1 and 2 can be left to get on with it. 4 can be watched to see if the AfD process can produce a better article or solve the dispute by proxy, with no need to get involved other than to remove the speedy notices also tagged to the article by the people discussing the article. That leave the sticky problem of 3, where the AfD process is most broken. For instance, [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/John-Hedley Desmond Lucy McConnell]] deserved to be deleted under existing AfD precident. But it didn't deserve speedy deleting and certainly not under CSD-G4, having never come to AfD before, having attracted robotic "G4 speedy and edit protect" votes (and they were votes) from the clueless, and having altered in format since the first CSD deletion. So that helps narrow down the problem with AfD (although it gets us nowhere nearer a solution). So, as I said, Mark is right and less complaining here and more work on AfD is the best course of action. If nothing else, an hour spent on "AfD Patrol" gets more done and gets us closer to understanding what the future for AfD is than an hour spent emailing this list. IMHO. ->REDVERS ___________________________________________________________ All New Yahoo! Mail Tired of Vi@gr@! come-ons? Let our SpamGuard protect you. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html

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Re: [WikiEN-l] MS Word to Wiki markup converter (Johntex)
by John Tex 20 Jun '06

20 Jun '06

> > Hello, > > I think it is time to inform the community about the Word2MediaWikiPlus > converter I wrote: > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Word2MediaWikiPlus > > Download macro and installer directly: > http://www.beadsoft.de/files/Word2MediaWikiPlus.zip > > To improve the acceptance of the wiki software in our company I needed a > user friendly converter. > > This converter comes with an installation routine, has comfortably > dialog boxes and works with the english and german office versions. > > If you have MS Photo Editor installed, it will extract and upload images > from the document, too. > > It converts most things found in normal documents, like > > - text formatting and colors > - headings > - lists > - tables, also nested > - images > - footnotes > - page headers and footers > - text boxes > - framed paragraphs > > By now I find it easier to write in Word and convert, especially tables. > This macro can be used as an image extractor of the document, without > any wiki usage. > > It has been extensivly tested and can be considered as a stable beta > release. > > Since the macro can be localized, I would like contact to users, who use > a non german and non english Microsoft office. > > Enjoy, > Gunter Hello Gunter, Thanks for sharing this great tool with us. One note is that on Office 2003 (English), it seems necesary to allow access to VB projects in order for the install to work. I have e-mailed you screenshots from installation in the English version, which you may distribute freely in future versions of the installer if you would like. Best, Johntex

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More quotes from AfD
by Cobb 19 Jun '06

19 Jun '06

>Stephen Bain wrote: >I agree. People have been saying it is broken for as long as I've been >here and it seems to work ok. Talk to people who don't want anything deleted from Wikipedia, and AFD is marvellous because it is wide open to abuse by them, despite the empty rhetoric about it not really being a vote. The problem is, I think, that lots of people who comment here don't actually take part in AFD. They don't see the day-to-day crap... they just see a system that keeps struggling along despite being hopelessly broken and unscalable. AFD is such a demented system that it's very often less hassle to just ignore rubbish than even try to get it deleted. No doubt certain inclusionist factions on Wikipedia rather like things that way, and claim it is a self-regulating mechanism rather than a system that cannot cope and which people avoid.

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WikiEN-l June 2006