On Tuesday 26 October 2004 15:49, Ray Saintonge wrote:

> This is starting to look a little like spam.

So, public relations and cooperation among communities is spam? Do you want me to stop posting on your mailing lists?

> I don't really have enough time to edit much on Wikipedia.

On Tuesday 26 October 2004 22:26, David Gerard wrote: The reason I have not answered that question is because it was first asked by a person who offended me ("as faulty as your logic", 23 October 2004). Although I have ignored his e-mail address, thanks to your webarchive it came to my attention that he repeats his attacks: http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2004-October/031751.html Please note that I am a bit touchy and any kind of personal attack is not compatible with my culture and my education. I have no problem with people who disagree with me, but I have zero tolerance for things who engage in personal attacks. That said, I also don't understand why I need to answer this question. Is it some kind of policy in Wikipedia to say your user names in emails? I notice many people post without mentioning their usernames and I wonder why you picked me specifically. Does it matter? I cannot understand why you ask this question. Are your mailing lists restricted only to your members? I don't think so, because it was very easy for me to register (if that's not the intended behaviour, you need to configure your Mailman installation). You can find me in many mailing lists or fora, including FSF-GNU/GNOME/CC/AMD, and I am lurking on many other mailing lists and communities, while I have also joined projects such as Drupal.org and OpenFormats.org and very soon I will join KDE. Slashdot has published stories written by me (KDE/FSF's WIWO...) and my karma there is Good. My university dissertation is on wikis. I notice some people refer to me as "he/she" and I wonder whether they have noticed who am I. I was lurking here for some time before I decided to start posting, so I had accumulated many possible suggestions and ideas about Wikipedia. Since I decided to start posting, I started remembering whatever I had thought about all that time, so perhaps some people disliked me because of the initial quantity of my postings. Although I have already asked whether anybody wants me to stop posting, nobody said something like that, so I understand that I should be welcome here - but I still notice that some participants seem to dislike me and I cannot understand why. I don't really have enough time to edit much on Wikipedia. I have my own projects and soon/hopefully will have my own nonprofit organisation. So, although my community website now is still very new (just opened this August, but already serving more than 65 thousand hits per month), it will certainly become very known and important in the near future. My interests in the Wikipedia community are mostly establishing public relations, helping each other to improve our community policies and sharing software development tips and practices. I mostly want communication with Wikipedia decision makers, the Board and the development team, so that we can find ways to cooperate as independent separate projects. So, I think it should be obvious that I participate in your mailing lists as a representative of a friendly website which seeks to have relations, cooperation and knowledge sharing with Wikimedia. But if WMF does not wish to cooperate or thinks I am a "competitor", then you can just say so and I will leave. I suspect that some people may dislike me because I have my own wikis. Please try to understand that I am not a "competitor" of Wikipedia. I have written interesting articles under the GFDL that you can copy if you like (by providing proper attribution under all the terms of GFDL - please include the authors' names in the article). See for example this article of NerdyPC.org, my knowledge base wiki on computer hardware and the Information Technology industry: http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/AMD_Opteron - note the most recent version under development is at http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Test:AMD_Opteron Finally, I would like to know how we can implement interwiki links to each other and whether WMF is interested in this kind of linking. -- NSK Admin of http://portal.wikinerds.org Project Manager of http://www.nerdypc.org Project Manager of http://www.adapedia.org _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

NSK -- 1. You've just written a 694 word-strong reply. You have not however answered the question whether you edit the Wikipedia and whether or not you have an account. You wrote: Ok, so DO you or DON'T you edit? DO you or DON'T you have an account? 2. Now correct me if I'm wrong: You're not actually contributing to the Wikipedia. You've not submitted any code towards MediaWiki development. You have however downloaded the MediaWiki software which was developed "in this corner of cyberspace" (and you're permitted to do that). You've then set up your own website(s) with MediaWiki which you've talked about, like, A LOT in your posts to our Wikimedia-related lists here. You have BIG PLANS for your website(s) but as of now little has materialized. There don't appear to be much other contributors to your wikis yet, besides yourself, yet you're kinda seeing your efforts as somehow fully equivalent to what has happened "in our corner". Finally, you've ventured to advise us on what we really are and ought to be (and you've persisted even when people made it very clear that they perceived your advice as running counter to the very principles our projects are founded upon). 3. You suspect that people dislike you and that they do so because they somehow don't want you to have your own wikis. Lemme put it like this: Imagine some person travelled to the U.S. Now imagine that it turns out that that person didn't actually come as an immigrant, and didn't come to settle in and become a citizen of the country but rather proceeded to lecture the citizens of the U.S. that the Declaration of Independence and all these old handwritten papers were fundamentally unimportant because all men are not created equal and actually, certain people are per se inferior and not to be trusted and it is ok to rape and murder them and plunder their houses, whereas others are really not to be blamed of anything of any consequence, whatever happens and, err... actually... Ahem. Forget what I said. This last point I cede to you. Thanks and regards, Jens Ropers

On Wednesday 27 October 2004 04:26, Jens Ropers wrote: Define edit. Define account. Define contributing.

No, I haven't. I would be willing to do that, though. Yes. Thank you for making available this software. Yes. They are NerdyPC.org (Information Technology), Adapedia.org (Computer Science), Jnana.Wikinerds.org (a playground), MaatWorks.Wikinerds.org (software engineering). In the future I will set up wikis on Science Fiction, Biology, Law, OpenSource et cetera. I have paid money for all that. I can use 80GB of monthly traffic (to be upgraded today). If you like you can ask me to not talk about my wikis here. Wikipedia is the largest wiki and I think its mailing lists are useful for general discussion and not only just WP. You could open a discussion(a)wikipedia.org mailing list for general wiki discussion. Yes. The Wikinerds.org endeavour was started this August. I think I am building it pretty fast! There are some people who are interested and some people have user accounts in the Wikinerds Portal (drupal), Jnana and NerdyPC. Not counting myself: 3 users in portal.wikinerds.org 1 user in nerdypc.org 1 user in jnana.wikinerds.org (plus 1 anon) 1 user in forum.wikinerds.org 0 users in adapedia.org 0 users in maatworks.wikinerds.org 0 users in collab.wikinerds.org 0 ftp users (which means no userpages) 0 email users (we can give free POP emails @wikinerds.org)

Well, as I said, Wikinerds started in August! It's a new site.

I am currently the only person who contributes content to the Wikinerds Community. Well, perhaps I need some more sleep (sometimes I don't have sleep for I checked some of my previous posts and I think I was a bit wrong in some occasions. Perhaps it would be a good idea to develop an e-mail protocol with a "CANCEL MSG" command. Certainly, Wikinerds is not as successful as Wikipedia, yet, although it will soon be very successful. Just sharing ideas. You are free to send me your ideas about my projects, too. I will read them all and reply. I love sharing ideas, even if I disagree with some of them! I am sorry; my mistake.

Isn't it more beautiful to write US ? I mean, is the point really necessary?

Wikipedia is the largest wiki and I think its mailing lists are useful for general discussion and not only just WP.

3. You suspect that people dislike you and that they do so because they somehow don't want you to have your own wikis. Lemme put it like this: Imagine some person travelled to the U.S. Now imagine that it turns out that that person didn't actually come as an immigrant, and didn't come to settle in and become a citizen of the country but rather proceeded to lecture the citizens of the U.S. that the Declaration of Independence and all these old handwritten papers were fundamentally unimportant because all men are not created equal and actually, certain people are per se inferior and not to be trusted and it is ok to rape and murder them and plunder their houses, whereas others are really not to be blamed of anything of any consequence, whatever happens and, err... actually...

Jens Ropers wrote: so because that it turns immigrant, and didn't but rather Declaration of fundamentally actually, trusted and it is ok whereas others are whatever To put this more starkly: Imagine visiting a country that has a known reputation for human rights violation. You meet with a small group of people and the conversation turns to the human rights situation where you have tremendous ideas about what THEY can do to improve things. Some of the group show a great deal of enthusiasm about your proposals. After the conversation ends you go to the airport and home. You later receive a message that one of the people in the group was an incognito agent for the government who subsequently arranged for the arrest and re-education of some of the group. What responsibility would you accept for that situation? Ec ok ok point taken _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

let me spell out a couple of things

Don't tell them they are wrong

you are just one person.

and thinks he knows everything.

If you just asked if you could add an interwiki link from Wikipedia to your

without offerring anything in return

link exchange

Close enough. Just edit the page on meta and the interwiki table will be

From: "Jean-Christophe Chazalette" <jean-christophe.chazalette(a)laposte.net> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 20:44:02 +0200 To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Subject: [Foundation-l] Arbitration committe and content French Wikipedia has chosen to set up an arbitration committee by a vast majority of 85,24 % (pros 52 people, cons 9 people) during a poll that took place from sept.19 to oct. 24. There is now a second and last poll about the arbitration rules. Point 10 of the current poll offers people to vote for one of the following : "The arbitration does not relate on the relevance or the validity of the articles but only to individual behaviors (10.A)" or "the arbitration can relate with all the conflicts without distinction and can relate directly to the relevance or the validity of the articles (10.B)." There were in the past some serious edit wars about various topics or articles, often related to religion or eco-sciences. The current poll is expected to last until nov. 7 and could lead to enforceable rules if at least 20 have voted. Now, I am told that the alternative 10.B is completely out of the line regarding wiki philosophy. An arbitration committee could never settled a dispute in giving a mandatory point of view regarding an article. That makes sense to me. But yet, 6 people voted in favor of 10.B. Anthere seems to see a very serious risk of "fork" here. Even if I support her point of view I'm wondering if it's not a big fuss out of a small thing. So in the same time I'm trying to make things clear on the French Village pump, I'd like to have some feedback from everybody in the foundation, especially from the wiki veterans, not to mention Jimbo himself of course. Thanks. villy _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

As the english committee ever given as one of the arbitration decision "revert this article to this person version which is the neutral one" or "delete this article as being inaccurate and irrelevant".

What we do is ban the POV warrior from the area they are focusing on. And invite them to edit other areas. We don't get into the content of the article. We let that take care of itself. Often we don't even seriously look at it. What we look at the the POV warrior's edits as he deletes others points of view and continually inserts his own. Fred l

From: Anthere <anthere9(a)yahoo.com> Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 23:17:28 +0200 To: foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org Subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Arbitration committe and content Translation of 10B is this : Arbitration will apply to all type of conflicts, without distinction and arbitration decisions may directly be applied to relevance/accuracy or validity of contents. ----- Arbitration applied directly to validity of articles may be interpretated by "arbitration comittee will have the authority to do anything it will decide to ensure neutrality or accuracy of articles. Anything might be reverting to a specific version or deletion." In short, I claim that the sentence as written is allowing arbitration committee to become a sort of super-editor which has authority to decide over the community what is correct from what is not. I do not recognise this as being acceptable within wikipedia rules, and I do not see that as being helpful in any way in our theoretical goal of reaching NPOV. Quite the opposite. This said, there are two different groups of people, and each group is giving a different interpretation of the sentence. I proposed a new sentence to replace, but this does not hide the fact that some users indeed *want* an arbitration committee to decide for the community what is neutral and accurate in case of dispute, rather than the community itself.

From: Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com> Reply-To: Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com>om>, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 17:50:14 +0200 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Arbitration committe and content Well, very simply speaking, we have to have _some_ way to decide what an article is going to look like in the case of conflict. There are various possibilities for that: * We take the POV of the one who shouts loudest * We take the POV of the majority of editor * We take the POV of the person with the longest breath * We take the POV of the most civil person * We take the POV of a group of selected editors not involved in the conflict * and perhaps a number more

From: Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com> Reply-To: Andre Engels <andreengels(a)gmail.com>om>, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 18:30:01 +0200 To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Re: Arbitration committe and content On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 10:15:31 -0600, Fred Bauder <fredbaud(a)ctelco.net> wrote: Still, this begs the question of what is a 'significant' point of view. Also, as you say, there are those finer points. Do we show the points of view as equals, or do we say "this is what most experts think, but others say that"? Which is given first, or do we first state the part that both agree on and only then the opinions? How much should be written on a certain POV? And then there are the arguments that aren't about POV at all, but about inclusion (whether inclusing in Wikipedia as a whole or in a particular article) or about the way Wikipedia is to look like. Every day Wikipedia has many of those decisions. In many cases there is just someone editing the way s/he likes it, and nobody who cares noticing. In many other cases a short discussion gets to an agreeable answer. But there still isn't anything to get to answer when it is not. Andre Engels _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

French Wikipedia has chosen to set up an arbitration committee by a vast majority of 85,24 % (pros 52 people, cons 9 people) during a poll that took place from sept.19 to oct. 24. There is now a second and last poll about the arbitration rules. Point 10 of the current poll offers people to vote for one of the following : "The arbitration does not relate on the relevance or the validity of the articles but only to individual behaviors (10.A)" or "the arbitration can relate with all the conflicts without distinction and can relate directly to the relevance or the validity of the articles (10.B)." There were in the past some serious edit wars about various topics or articles, often related to religion or eco-sciences. The current poll is expected to last until nov. 7 and could lead to enforceable rules if at least 20 have voted. Now, I am told that the alternative 10.B is completely out of the line regarding wiki philosophy. An arbitration committee could never settled a dispute in giving a mandatory point of view regarding an article. That makes sense to me. But yet, 6 people voted in favor of 10.B. Anthere seems to see a very serious risk of "fork" here. Even if I support her point of view I'm wondering if it's not a big fuss out of a small thing. So in the same time I'm trying to make things clear on the French Village pump, I'd like to have some feedback from everybody in the foundation, especially from the wiki veterans, not to mention Jimbo himself of course. Thanks. villy although i am new to the site and cnnot call myself a

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At the same time, I think that the advantages would be minimal. If the problem users are got out of the way, then good users can find the right answer for an article. Almost never is the *content* the problem, the problem is *people* with poor social skills, poor editing skills, etc. So if the ArbCom resolves the behavior issue, then the article content can be taken care of by other others acting in the normal wiki way.

NSK wrote: Please publish it online.

On Wednesday 27 October 2004 22:33, Ray Saintonge wrote: I do support GFDL but I doubt I would allow commercial exploitation and modification of my dissertation, unless you can offer me very good arguments in support of this. BTW most of my wikis allow every author to choose any licensing they like and I have received good comments about this. For example: http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php?title=User_talk:MattisManzel&cur… Has Wikimedia examined other licensing options? I know there are many people who mostly support CC et cetera.

Wikisource documents are open to be edited, very little substantive

but the exploiters also have to follow the GFDL rules. They have no right to claim that they have the copyright on your dissertation.

The subject comes up from time to time, but the difficulty is obtaining permissions to change the licensing for existing articles. Many of the contributors are no longer available, or anonymous.

NSK (nsk2(a)wikinerds.org) [041027 10:11]: it was first asked by October 2004). Therefore it can never be asked again by anyone else ever? I used to have a girlfriend like that. Used to. this question. Is it in emails? I notice I wonder why you Because I'm trying to work out how much credibility to assign to your radical and jarring ideas for the project. question. Are your think so, because it intended behaviour, you It matters in terms of how seriously your suggestions are going to be taken. The reason I ask is to know whether you have *any* experience of this wiki, the one you're advancing the ideas for. Your messages so far seem to indicate you don't actually understand much of Wikipedia culture; with a username, it would be possible to see what your edits are like, what you do and so on and get more of a handle on where you're coming from. including FSF-GNU/GNOME/CC/AMD, It's not a True Name thing (that being no secret), but your persona within Wikipedia - if any. The essential point I'm trying to get across is that you're starting from a position of no credibility. If that's fine by you, then continue as you are; however, if you wish to be taken seriously and (as I tried to explain before) your ideas gain traction, I suspect it won't be adequate. communities, while I have OpenFormats.org and very soon I by me (KDE/FSF's dissertation is on wikis. wonder whether they have Then surely you see what I meant about the phenomenon that although an outside perspective is good, you need to be able to explain it in insider terms for traction. Per project. This being not just any wiki, but the biggest by a long shot. Ask [[User:Kate Turner]] about the difference in feel between a small wiki and Wikipedia. of a friendly website knowledge sharing with thinks I am a leave. I wouln't say that at all (speaking only for myself). interwiki links to each linking. That would be a nice thing. At present it's largely hackable through templates in the 'External links' section of articles. you go brother,fight the good fight - d. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

This is starting to look a little like spam. Ec NSK wrote: _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l