WikiEN-l May 2010

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72 participants
72 discussions

Polarized light microscopy
by Carcharoth 21 May '10

21 May '10

Anyone know why there isn't an article on Wikipedia on polarized light microscopy? It is listed at PLM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PLM But is not even linked as a redlink. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Polarized_Light_Microsco… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Polarized_light_microsco… [Nothing under the '-ise' spelling] 17 hits for "Polarized light microscopy": http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&redirs=1&search=… http://www.microscopyu.com/articles/polarized/polarizedintro.html http://www.olympusmicro.com/primer/techniques/polarized/polarizedhome.html http://www.answers.com/topic/polarized-light-microscope http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/geology/powell/core_asbestos/analyze/PLM_… There is a redirect created four years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Polarized_light_microscope&redire… That may have made it less obvious that an article is needed. And yes, I know the answer is "because no-one has written one yet", but I thought I'd throw this out there and see what happens! Carcharoth

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* '''Delete''', non-notable terrorist. May be recreated if terrorism successful - ~~~~
by David Gerard 21 May '10

21 May '10

Spotted by Matthias: http://www.mightaswelldance.com/blog/2010/05/how-wikipedia-kept-me-out-of-j… - d.

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Country-specific blocking of websites
by Carcharoth 20 May '10

20 May '10

Might be of interest: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/10130195.stm "Pakistan has blocked the popular video sharing website YouTube because of its "growing sacrilegious content". [...] Some Wikipedia pages are also now being restricted, latest reports say. [...]" Carcharoth

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Temporal tags and outdating
by stevertigo 20 May '10

20 May '10

Recap: A while ago we discussed date conditional switching templates: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2009-May/100714.html . The problem to be corrected was the use of future tense language which then becomes outdated and thus notably incorrect. This also has a greater effect of casual correction patterns which essentially annotate the error rather than fixing it. For example: ""Apple's iTunes store *will start* to sell DRM-free 256 kbit/s (up from 128 kbit/s) AAC encoded music from EMI for a premium price (this has since reverted to the standard price)."" A proper correction would have simply changed "will start [to sell]" to "began [to sell]" and that would be that. Time and tenses require a little bit of thinking however, and an editor made a parenthetical comment (edit note, annote) in place of a considered switch of tense. Forgivable but incorrect. If the {{dateswitch}} template idea was fully implemented and used, anyone writing future events could simply write {{dateswitch|will start|began|ON DATE}} and the switch would happen on the date. The idea had some support, but people had some issues with dateswitch templates that would produce the wrong output because of some later change in the input. I guess that this might be more rare than common. The above example is notable however of where they miss the point. I note that we now have a category for some tags which relate to time, but I don't know about some of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Temporal_templates These appear to be largely template messages, and if we are to employ actual computational power in helping deal with outdating, would it make sense to make a distinction between temporal messages and temporal (functional) tags? -SC

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Re: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 82, Issue 38
by Michael Ritchey 19 May '10

19 May '10

In which year of Wikipedia's existence did it start to really attract and satisfy users? In other words, when did it hit a critical mass of good content so that users searching for information on Topic X had a reasonable chance of finding something on the site that would make them want to return as an end user rather than just a contributor who supported the site's concept? NOTICE: This email message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

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Pedantry on privileges
by Gregory Maxwell 19 May '10

19 May '10

On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: > Wow, so he's able to delete content on *one* of the 200+ languages of > Wikipedia. I'd still say the statement is substantially correct. He used > to have unlimited power on every project to do anything. Now he's > administrator on one project, and has the ability to view certain things > that other people can't view on every project. [snip] This is absolutely no different than any of the several other incidents where a sysadmin or the like had the technical ability to do something, did it, then were reminded that having the technical ability to do it doesn't actually equate to having the _authority_ to do it, and as a result they resigned that particular technical ability in order to end a perpetual argument that arises because 'okay I won't do it again' doesn't satisfy a broad enough swath of people. (I'll leave it to people to muckrake up these events for themselves, but there have been a couple that I can think of, I don't think it would be fair to the involved parties to remind people of them) Probing the bounds of your actual authority in our environment is a necessary thing that all of us do with every BOLD action, it's a consequence of the generally non-hierarchical nature of the projects. So I don't think it's justified to flog someone forever when they cross a line that was apparently obvious to everyone except them, especially since these things tend to seem far more black and white after the fact. Keep in mind the history of the founder privileged. It's a very recent thing: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/confirm/2009/Jimbo_Wales For the longest time, Jimmy was just a steward— presumably with all the rights and restrictions that being a steward entails, such as having the technical ability to delete things anywhere but only the authority to do so with the consent (or, equivalently, complete indifference) of the involved community. Activity requirements were imposed on stewardship, and Jimmy only used the technical permissions on enwp (due to traditional practices on this project) thus failing to meet the requirements. But his traditional role on enwp justified keeping some elevated privileges, so rather than cope with an exception to the steward rules a special role was created. Tada. But the change in naming of the permissions from the conventional role to the special one didn't actually confer an increase in authority— and when the extent of the actual authority to push privileged changes outside of enwp was tested the unequivocal answer[1] was that it didn't exist... and there really is no real reason to say that it ever existed. Some people want to spin this into a narrative about Jimmy's role on english Wikipedia, but thats bogus— This wasn't an english wikipedia thing, and rather than supporting the suggestion that this signals a loss of authority on English Wikipedia the actual expedience suggests the opposite: Look at relative concentrations of enwp users in the poll. ISTM that Enwp users are quite comfortable with Jimmy playing an important role as he has traditionally, and that almost everyone else is either indifferent or surprised by the notion— unsurprising because they haven't had the pleasure of working with him. (And, while it's been a long time since I've worked with Jimmy on anything, and while I disagreed with his involvement here, it's still the case that I completely understand where the traditional role on enwp comes from: He _is_ a great community member to work with... but the other project communities aren't filled with people that have that experience) [1] Or as unequivocal as anything involving 350 people can ever be: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Petition_to_Jimbo

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Arguments
by stevertigo 19 May '10

19 May '10

I was wondering how you were doing. By the way, Medcom has a backlog and needs more members. Dispute resolution seems to be in need of some overhauling again anyway. Might be a place where some leadership would help. -SC

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Fwd: Pedantry on privileges
by Anthony 18 May '10

18 May '10

On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 7:10 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Mon, May 17, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote: > > Wow, so he's able to delete content on *one* of the 200+ languages of > > Wikipedia. I'd still say the statement is substantially correct. He > used > > to have unlimited power on every project to do anything. Now he's > > administrator on one project, and has the ability to view certain things > > that other people can't view on every project. > [snip] > > This is absolutely no different than any of the several other > incidents where a sysadmin or the like had the technical ability to do > something, did it, then were reminded that having the technical > ability to do it doesn't actually equate to having the _authority_ to > do it, and as a result they resigned that particular technical ability > in order to end a perpetual argument that arises because 'okay I won't > do it again' doesn't satisfy a broad enough swath of people. > (I'll leave it to people to muckrake up these events for themselves, > but there have been a couple that I can think of, I don't think it > would be fair to the involved parties to remind people of them) > Well, it's different in that it's the founder of the organization, the technical ability was the highest given to anyone, that it was used several times in the past (even more boldly) with impunity, etc. Probing the bounds of your actual authority in our environment is a > necessary thing that all of us do with every BOLD action, it's a > consequence of the generally non-hierarchical nature of the projects. > So I don't think it's justified to flog someone forever when they > cross a line that was apparently obvious to everyone except them, > especially since these things tend to seem far more black and white > after the fact. > What was the line that was crossed? It wasn't unilateral deletion. Wales has done that and more in the past, blocking and deadminning people who deemed to question his asserted authority, and he's gotten away with it. But this time, it was different. In any case, I'd say it's newsworthy, in a way that no other deadminship ever came close to being. > Keep in mind the history of the founder privileged. It's a very recent > thing: > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stewards/confirm/2009/Jimbo_Wales > > For the longest time, Jimmy was just a steward— presumably with all > the rights and restrictions that being a steward entails, such as > having the technical ability to delete things anywhere but only the > authority to do so with the consent (or, equivalently, complete > indifference) of the involved community. > I'll have to check the records, but I believe Jimbo used his powers "unilaterally", beyond that of a normal steward, before granting himself the founder flag. In fact, I seem to remember the founder flag being invented in response to some questions over whether or not he had the authority to do certain things. But I'll have to check the records, unless you can remember what it is I'm thinking of. "19:10, 14 September 2008 Jimbo Wales<http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Jimbo_Wales> (Talk <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User_talk:Jimbo_Wales> | contribs<http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Jimbo_Wales> ) blocked Moulton <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/User:Moulton> (Talk<http://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Moulton&action=edit&r…>| contribs <http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Moulton>)with an expiry time of infinite (account creation disabled, e-mail blocked) ‎ (Incivility)" That predates the founder flag, right?

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Limited usage image tags not working?
by Del Buono, Matthew Paul 17 May '10

17 May '10

To point it out, there is a template {{badimage}} to indicate an image is on the bad images list, but simply adding this template is not enough. Adding to the bad images list requires administrator intervention. The template is purely informational. Perhaps that's where the confusion lies. Shirik ------Original Message------ From: K. Peachey Sender: wikien-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org To: English Wikipedia ReplyTo: English Wikipedia Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Limited usage image tags not working? Sent: May 16, 2010 1:17 AM If you mean [[Mediawiki:Bad Image List]] none of those three images from the last vandal hit are listed on the list. -Peachey _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

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Simple vandalism occasionally being missed
by WereSpielChequers 17 May '10

17 May '10

> 1. Simple vandalism being missed (Carcharoth) > Message: 1 > Date: Sat, 15 May 2010 14:52:56 +0100 > From: Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com> > Subject: [WikiEN-l] Simple vandalism being missed > To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> > Message-ID: > <AANLkTimFLiuM41Jcz0WnsDdI_Wl94mgqTRkEoquKnK28(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > I was recently looking up which countries were in the Congo Basin, and > the version of the article I found was this: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Congo_Basin&oldid=359085351 > > The list of countries is clearly missing. > > It was removed with this edit: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Congo_Basin&diff=357222409&oldid=… > > That was 20 April 2010 (I've now restored the list). > > Has anyone done a recent study to see how and why vandalism like that > is missed and how common it is for such things to be missed? > > Carcharoth I don't know about a formal study, but I'm finding ancient vandalism more rarely which implies there is less of it now. There is no single magic bullet for this. As I see it the hardest vandalism to stop at present is the random removal of a small amount of content via an IP that is only used for one vandalism. IPs and accounts that go on vandalism sprees usually get spotted quickly and if the Hugglers miss them eventually they will vandalise something on an active editor's watchlist. But vandals who show restraint are harder to spot. As for dealing with it, our edit filters have been improving, more stuff is being bot reverted, Huggle, recent changes patrol and Newpage patrol deal with the vast majority of vandalism almost in real time. And we have other backstops available http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Database_reports/Uncategorized_and_u… has turned out to be quite useful at identifying recently vandalised BLPs, and Poop patrol is now in alpha test. Overall I think we are getting faster at dealing with vandalism, though there is still stuff there, I recently deleted a BLP of someone who had been "raised in the woods by bears". But that had only been up for a few months, nowadays I very rarely find vandalism that has been up for a whole year. WereSpielChequers

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WikiEN-l May 2010