Hi!
Please help us in testing the latest version of MediaWiki, the software
which runs Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikiquote and all other Wikimedia
projects.
The development version can be tested at:
http://test.wikipedia.org/
You can report bugs directly on the test-wiki.
Important user-visible changes are:
- new MonoBook skin, which will probably become the new default skin (can
also be tested on http://wiki.aulinx.de)
- edit conflict merging
- category system: add [[Category:Xyz]] to an article to categorize it
- links and formatting in image captions
- MediaWiki namespace separated into MediaWiki: (for software messages)
and Template: (for custom blocks), new simplified syntax, arbitrary
transclusion
- links in edit summaries, auto-summaries shown in gray color instead of
=like this=
- support for hieroglyphs (WikiHiero)
- reorg'd user prefs (not completed yet)
- (almost) valid xhtml
- lots of other stuff
Please pass this announcement on to people on your wiki.
Regards,
Erik
The following should be added to
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewards
in time for debate before validating which of the named people should acquire these responsibilities. This is being mailed on behalf of those whose contributions have been censored, by exactly the people who would be excluded if such criteria were applied:
------------------------
=== Liars ===
People who can be shown to have lied in any Wikimedia forum ought not to be granted this power and approval, even if the lie is small. For instance, to invent serious accusations like "death threats", as RK, RickK and Daniel Mayer have done, when neutral examination of the evidence shows quite the opposite, and then repeat this lie again and again in an [[echo chamber]] like the [[Wikipedia mailing list]], does serious damage to Wikimedia's credibility.
Libel is a serious legal matter. Sanctioning it will create problems for the Foundation. And several times, the lying has in fact crossed this line.
Casual lying, such as the convenient claim that "egregious vandalism" originated from IP ranges in Halifax (when in fact it was a troll/political issue), also is a sign that someone can't be trusted to speak for any org. Certainly not one trusted to maintain the [[GFDL corpus]] and remove lies from it.
Also such fatuous statements as "no legitimate use" applied to anonymous proxies, when there
are whole IP ranges blocked, are lies. Maximus Rex makes statements like this, and they're
simply false. History of Wikipedia has shown many cases where revealing IPs or names has been
highly detrimental to those editing. There are many legitimate anonymizing uses. Like for instance adding categories like this.
=== Witchhunters ===
People who make claims about alleged or collective identity based on spurious criteria (like who has "troll" in their name, or uses an easily copied style of discourse regarding [[en:Groupthink]] and bad [[Wikipedia Governance]], which are obvious for anyone to see, all being somehow "the same person"). This would disqualify Daniel Mayer and The_Anome and Morwen, and most likely Angela and Martin Harper as well.
=== Privacy violators and/or libellers ===
A particularly serious matter is privacy violations; Some people voluntarily expose their own names, and thereby suffer some ego bruises (Daniel Mayer and Martin Harper and Robert Kaiser among them), others don't (The_Anome, Angela, Morwen, RickK). The right to conceal your name, as long as you don't use some abusive tactic like using proxy servers to mask actual death threats (not made up ones), ought to be absolute. In any case the assignment of any collective or alleged identity to some group of posts is very problematic with no [[interwiki identity standard]] (such as the one proposed based on jabber.org).
Those who assume they have the right to do "outing", assigning names (correct or not) to those who offend them, are doing violence to them. If they have a legal issue with the people they are naming, they should take it to the police and courts, who have the power to track down IP numbers. To do so from behind the shield of a pseudonym is worse, but, revealing one's own name is no excuse for revealing others'. You can do as you like to your own body - that doesn't give you the right to do so to others.
Daniel Mayer and possibly Martin Harper ought to be ruled out on this grounds. Larry Sanger and Sunir Shah set some very very bad precedents in this regard, and it's time to lose their legacy. Jimbo Wales may have listened to them too much, and not enough to his lawyers.
=== Conflicted ===
Those who habitually edit or protect pages or block IPs in which they themselves are
in a dispute: This shows a profound lack of respect for objectivity. IF there's a
valid reason to do these things, someone who is not in the edit war ought to see it.
Those who may gain commercially from certain choices about the administration of the
[[GFDL corpus]] - i.e. [[Bomis]] employees. The [[board]] is already conflicted, no reason to conflict everything else.
---------------------------------
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Please vote on
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extension_Syntax
To explain again what this is about:
Currently there is one extension, LaTeX for mathematical formulas. This
extension is called using the syntax
<math>a + b</math>.
This vote is about a general syntax for encapsulating different
extensions. For example, a music extension could be encapsulated like so:
<music>do re mi fa so</music>
Or like so:
[!music do re mi fa so]
This vote is *not* about the syntax for the different extensions
themselves (stuff like "\sin x + \ln y +\operatorname{sgn} z" for math),
it is merely about the syntax for encapsulating these extensions. Some
people think XML-like tags (like <math>) are good enough, while others
are asking for a more "wiki-like" syntax.
Voting deadline is April 12, 2004, 20:00 UTC. Please distribute this
announcement to your local projects. This is not only relevant to
Wikipedia but to all Wikimedia projects.
Let the edit conflicts begin.
Regards,
Erik
------------------------- Oorspronkelijk bericht -------------------------
Onderwerp: Re: subscribe foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org
Van: Adam Sjøgren
Datum: Zo, 4 april, 2004 13:36
Aan: walter AT wikipedia.be
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following message is a courtesy copy of an article
that has been posted to gmane.discuss.subscribe as well.
On Fri, 02 Apr 2004 11:41:40 +0200, walter AT wikipedia.be wrote:
> #gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org Mailing list
for the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization in the state of
Florida which operates the Wikipedia, Wiktionary,
> Wikibooks, Wikiquote, Wikisource, and other Wikimedia projects. mailman
dummy encode=encrypt
> url=http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Subscription messages for the requested mailing lists have been sent. The
resulting groups will be created when the first message
arrives from the mailing lists.
Best regards,
--
"Og hvis vi skal være mere korrekte, så hedder det Adam Sjøgren
Assembly kode og ikke Assembler kode" asjo(a)koldfront.dk
So by sending this posting
nntp://news.gmane.org/gmane.org.wikimedia.foundation
should exist now.
Walter