Before I begin, I have CC'ed this message to the Wikipedia mailing
list, as there is some relevance there. For Wikipedia list members,
the original discussion refers to a proposal to modify deletion
policy to allow a limited form of Wikipedia article forking in order
to create a more in-depth guide to a topic in Wikibooks (which is
currently against policy, see [[WB:WIN]]). It has evolved somewhat
into a debate on what Wikibookians think of Wikibooks vs. what others
(eg. Wikipedians) think of Wikibooks.
>>> I guess that I'm trying to modify the deletion policy somewhat
>>> to allow *some* forking of Wikipedia content, provided that the
>>> content on Wikibooks really is an expansion of the Wikipedia
>>> article and not just some POV fight or fork of Wikipedia
>>> content. The nature of Wikibooks certainly allows almost any
>>> article on Wikipedia to be turned into a book, provided there
>>> are interested parties willing to write the content. Forbidding
>>> any fork would, in effect, kill almost any Wikibook stub right now.
>>>
>>
>>
>> We do not allow any content that isn't considered to be
>> instructional material. The spirit of WB:WIN is that if you want
>> to expand a WP article, then do it on WP. Personally, I am
>> opposed to any Wikipedia forking in general because of the fact
>> that I consider encyclopedia articles are not by itself
>> instructional material. Based on your post, [[The Biography of
>> Nikola Tesla]] would have been deleted whether we have the
>> changed policy or not, due to it originating from an edit war.
>>
>> I have to say that, to some real extent, the "books" part of
>> Wikibooks is really a misnomer: it's not clearly intuitive that
>> we are writing textbooks of instructional material on this wiki.
>>
> From following discussion on Foundation-l, it seems as though a
> number of people at Wikipedia and Meta have a very different
> opinion of what Wikibooks is all about, and it seems as though
> Wikibooks has in effect been turned into a general repository of
> non-fiction book-length topics. In particular, discussions around
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects seem to
> indicate a more general attitude toward Wikibooks.
>
The original concept for Wikibooks, according to its founder,
[[User:Karl Wick]] I believe, is a wiki for building textbooks.
However, Wikipedians for some odd reason decided to offload their
unwanted goods to Wikibooks: for examples, the VFD precedent there
regarding recipes has largely been the driving force behind
[[Cookbook]], even though a cooking textbook should focus little on
recipes and more on general cooking techniques. Many of the books
here have since defied their original intent: for example, [[Computer
and video games bookshelf]] (originally [[Game Guides and Strategy]])
- a textbook on beating a computer game sounds ludicrous to me.
Wikibooks also suffers from the fact that there are few active admins
and few active users of action (and thus suffering from repeated
vandal attacks). Prior to myself becoming an admin, there were over
200 pages on speedy deletion, some of them being marked for months
(although half of these were due to technical constraints). There
are possibly another 200 pages that could be easily moved out of en:
and onto their respective Wikibooks if only Special:Import was
complete (or someone did hard transwiking). Because of this, few
Wikibookians are willing to put down concrete policies that are
followed and enforced (consider that key pages such as [[WB:HNS]],
[[WB:FP]] and even [[WB:WIN]] were in constant flux). Furthermore,
Wikibookians tend to be within their own group of books, and rarely
venture into collaborating in other books (this is perhaps due to a
lack of a consistent Manual of Style). This makes it difficult to
judge the purpose of Wikibooks. Only recently have users decided to
put their foot down in respect to what Wikibooks is about, and what
it is about is instructional material. It could very well be the
case that longtime existing books such as [[Jokebook]] could be put
up in VFD for not being instructional material.
> One of the problems that Wikibooks is suffering from right now is
> that Wikiversity is not really a successful project in itself.
> Yes, there is content there, but even project like Virtual
> University (http://www.vu.org/) show more of a real academic
> environment. Another one is Diversity University (http://
> www.du.org/). Even if Wikiversity were brought up to these
> somewhat modest standards, the auxuallary role of Wikibooks would
> be considerably more apparant. Instead, Wikibooks is percieved as
> an auxuallary role to Wikipedia and the other "sister projects" of
> the Wikimedia Foundation, which has in effect a broading of scope
> effect to Wikibooks.
>
Last I checked, Wikiversity is more popular on de: than on en: to the
point of making a separate wiki for it (de.wikiversity.org). The
English version suffers from repeated content (the school for CS has
a page on data structures when we already have [[Data Structures]],
for example), and has been a frequent target for vandals, making it
seem like (to me) an anachronism.
Part of the blame perhaps lies with the structure of Wikibooks:
Wikiversity, as it was originally designed, is supposed to be broader
in scope with the rest of Wikibooks, yet the wiki is -books and not -
versity, implying that the books is bigger than the university, or
that the university is a book... Now it's no more than a book that
has special sidebar privileges.
> On Wikibooks itself I've been involved with a minor edit war where
> some people have tried to come into one of the Wikibooks I've
> created and try to turn it into a subject-based Wikipedia, and I've
> resisted the effort, particuarly on the talk pages. Somehow the
> idea that content on Wikibooks should be a book rather than a bunch
> of web pages loosely connected does not always get across.
>
Point them to [[WB:WIN]]. A good many users are Wikipedians that
think of Wikibooks as more in-depth. Wikibooks tries to teach as
well, and that's something that isn't put across clearly in many
books. Considering that it takes longer to write a book than a
single encyclopedia article, I wouldn't consider it a surprise.
> I guess what I'm trying to say is that Wikibooks is drifting from
> its original and noble foundations, and I really don't see
> significant effort to try and go back to those roots. Nor do I see
> any desire by the newer Wikibookians to try and follow that ideal,
> at least to the letter as supplimental materials to Wikiversity or
> to support specific academic standards requirements. Let me put it
> more directly and specifc then: How many Wikibooks that can be
> used as a textbook for any major college or university, or follows
> state or national academic requirements to be used as the basis for
> curriculm development as a textbook? The FHSST books are based on
> this type of standard, but that does come from outside Wikibooks to
> at least get it started. Books like "How to Build a Pykrete Bong"
> are more typical to Wikibooks, unfortunately.
>
You do have a point here. In this sense, Wikibooks as a project has
been a failure.
I truly believe the original purpose has been lost, in part due to
[[WB:FP]] forcing Wikibookians to perhaps making a one-size-fits-all
book. A good many books today are "one-page books" (eg. How to do
xxx), and may need to be merged together.
Furthermore, many of the books, such as our COTM, literally take
"instructional material" to its limit. Is a travel guide considered
instructional material? Only a trip to VFD can we find out - there
has been no precedent in many cases where we could establish what we
consider instructional material. The only major VFD debate going on
with ramifications on how instruction material is defined is whether
collaborative fiction for the purposes of education is allowed
([[Ardvark the Aardvark]]).
To date, the only real hardened concrete policies that we have is
[[WB:AT]], as it deals with Wikisource (which seems to have its
policies better enforced).
> I fail to see what the origin of motivation for creating a Wikibook
> has to do with if it gets deleted or not. It should IMHO (and
> apparently this opinion is not shared) stand on its own merits
> independently of other content on other Wikimedia projects. I have
> posted requests for deletion for content that seems to be a pure
> fork of Wikipedia content (and nothing added) to Wikibooks, and
> there are several Wikibook modules that really do need to be
> deleted on this basis.
>
Agreed. Be bold and put it on VFD. In some cases put it on speedy.
> There really isn't an effort on Wikipedia to allow book-length
> material either, which is one reason why the Nikola Tesla
> information was put here on Wikibooks. While part of an edit war,
> it seems as though contributors at Wikipedia are being told to go
> away, and that some admins at Wikibooks are saying the same thing.
> This is not a good thing to do in either case, and weakens both
> communities as a result. If, as you seem to suggest, that
> Wikibooks should be for pure textbook content, perhaps Wikibooks
> itself needs to fork and a separation between academic books and
> other non-fiction materials needs to take place.
Book-length material is inappropriate in Wikipedia because it goes
too in-depth. It may or not be appropriate material in Wikibooks
depending on whether the material is instructional in nature. For
noninstructional material that could be book length (ie. a
macropedia), we are truly stuck. IMO, Wikipedia is an encyclopedia,
and its comprehensiveness should be able to take any reasonable topic
and bring it to an arbitrary and acceptable level of depth.
Wikibooks is an instructional resource - the same level of depth can
only be reached only through tutoring its readers, and thus the two
necessitate different approaches. A good example on what Wikipedia
and Wikibooks should be in comparison to each other is how an article
on arithmetic is clearly different from a book on arithmetic: the
Wikipedia article should not teach you how to do arithmetic beyond
"doing it", while the Wikibooks module should concern itself with
strategies (eg. use manipulatives such as beans or candy) for doing
it and less to do with the history of arithmetic, which is adequately
covered by Wikipedia.
Hello
Best is to forward it to Wikipedia-l
http://www.unipark.de/uc/wikipedia/
Cheers
Ant
--- Joachim Schroer
<schroer(a)psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de> wrote:
> Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 15:55:42 +0200
> From: Joachim Schroer
> <schroer(a)psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de>
> To: wiki-research-l(a)Wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Wiki-research-l] Announcement: Survey
> study on the motivation of contributors to Wikipedi
>
> Dear all,
>
> we're a team of organizational psychologists at the
> University of
> Wuerzburg (Germany), and at the moment we're
> conducting a survey study
> on the motivation of contributors to Wikipedia.
>
> The study is available at:
> <http://www.unipark.de/uc/wikipedia/>
>
> Our project page is here:
>
<www.psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/ao/research/wikipedia.php?lang=en>
>
> I have already sent the announcement to the WikiEN
> list:
>
<http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/026281.html>
>
> The questionnaire is in English, but participants
> from other Wikipedias
> are of course invited to take part as well. Do you
> have ideas how to
> make the survey known in other projects?
>
> We'd also be happy...
> - if you could forward this link to other people who
> might be
> interested, but do not read the mailing lists, and
> - if you might put up links to our survey where they
> fit.
>
> Thank you!
> Best wishes from Wuerzburg,
>
> Joachim Schroer
>
> --
> Joachim Schroer, Dipl.-Psych.
> University of Wuerzburg
> Department of Psychology II, Industrial and
> Organizational Psychology
> Roentgenring 10
> 97070 Wuerzburg
> Germany
>
> Phone: +49 931 31 6062
> Fax: +49 931 31 6063
>
http://www.psychologie.uni-wuerzburg.de/ao/staff/schroer.php
> _______________________________________________
> Wiki-research-l mailing list
> Wiki-research-l(a)Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
>
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
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Greetings everyone,
I'm a big Wikipedia fan and use it all the time to learn a little more about science or history or to find trivia about my favorite movies and TV shows. I haven't worked as a Wiki contributor, but I've heard a lot about the problems caused by multiple users editing highly controversial articles like the one about George W. Bush, and of course the implosion that happened with the L.A. Times "wikitorial" on the Iraq war.
What I've been working on is a collaborative algorithm for editing controversial content, without back-and-forth flame wars spiraling out of control, and without aspects that many in the Wikipedia community would prefer to avoid (e.g. without rating people by their professional "credentials", and without moderators who can permanently close disputes resolving them in favor of one side or the other, which I understand many Wiki users regard as a necessary evil even when they do have to be invoked). I'm testing it out by seeding it with some editorials that many people are sure to have strong feelings on (e.g. libertarianism, the Iraq war, and -- God help me -- Windows vs. Linux), and I'd like to see if some Wiki community members would be interested in signing up and trying it out.
The forum is at www.brainjammer.com and the "secret code" to sign up for a new account is "muskrat".
The way the forum works is simple: You can post a message, and other users can post replies to your message. When another user posts a reply, you have several choices:
(a) Agree with their reply and modify your own post to incorporate their point. (This is also what you can do if the user has raised an objection but you can modify your argument to answer that objection, or if they have made a request for clarification and you are updating your post accordingly.)
(b) Withdraw your own post in response to their reply, if you think that the flaw they have found in your argument is fatal.
(c) Indicate that you disagree with the reply if it's a rebuttal. If this happens, then a "jury" of other users on the site will be selected at random to vote on who is right, in accordance with rules that are posted on the site.
So far, nothing very original. But the key rule that governs the rebuttals and the voting, is that a rebuttal to someone's post should focus on only *one* flaw. If someone posts a long and complex argument, and you post a rebuttal that highlights only one minor point in the argument that you think is wrong, but the original author refuses to concede the point and it goes to a "jury vote" and the jury votes in favor of your rebuttal, then the entire original post is "disqualified". The author can, however, re-post the essay without that flaw, if they think their argument holds up without it.
Why do it this way? My theory is that people will think (and vote) more honestly when focusing on one *highly specific* disputed point. For example, if one user writes a pro-Bush essay and a second user posts a "rebuttal" that is just an anti-Bush essay, then if you ask people to vote on who is correct, people will pretty much just vote their original prejudices. But if the first user writes in their essay that Bush voted in favor of a bill, and someone post a rebuttal citing a record showing that Bush actually voted against it, and the first user doesn't concede the point and it goes into a vote-off, you can be pretty sure that most users will vote in accordance with the factual record. Similarly, the theory is that people will vote more honestly not just on questions of fact but logic as well -- for example, if one user attacks Bush for "signing such-and-such into law", and a second user replies that Bush was on record as opposing such-and-such but was part of an omnib!
us spending bill and that Bush had no choice but to sign it without shutting the government down, then if the first user refused to concede the point, I would expect most users to vote in favor of the second user's argument that the first user's statement was misleading.
My thinking is that if this works even for controversial writings like editorials for or against the war, it could help prevent vandalism and flame wars in other peer-edited systems like Wikipedia. And the structure remains completely democratic, allowing disputes to be decided by a jury of fellow users -- on the theory that users vote honestly when voting on highly specific questions.
So, if you have a minute, please come try it out. I've put a lot of work into this in the hopes that it could help projects like Wikipedia go even further, but I can't test it myself without a critical mass of users.
Thanks and I hope some of you are as excited about this idea as I am! :)
-Bennett
Hello !
I have put back Special:Disambiguations in 1.5, it was broke since the
schema change. It works in a different way now, hopefully it will be
easier to maintain disambiguations.
Let's see how things worked before 1.5:
When someone created a disambiguation page, he had to put the
{{disambig}} template then edit a page listing all disambiguation page.
Special:Disambiguations will then find the pages pointing to an article
in that big page list.
Some problems happened: people often forgot to add or remove the
disambiguation page in the list. It took a long time to generate.
New system (commited to cvs and live on WikiMedia servers):
A page need to be configured as being a disambiguation marker. This is
done by editing [[MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage]].
Every page linking to that marker will be considered by
Special:Disambiguations as a disambiguation page. The output is then a
concatenation of "whatlinks here".
How can it be set on wikipedia ?
Most projects, if not all, use a template to mark disambiguation pages
as such. A sysop should then edit [[MediaWiki:Disambiguation]] and
replace the text there by the article name used to flag disambiguation
pages.
I asked sysops on FR,ES and EN to make the change:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Disambiguationspagehttp://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Disambiguationspagehttp://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Disambiguationspage
The same change should be made on all projects to correctly generate the
disambiguation list.
IMPORTANT:
[[Special:Disambiguations]] uses a cache. Once a sysop changed the
[[MW:]] message, you will have to wait for the page to be regenerated.
Developers in #wikimedia-tech will be able to regenerate "on demand" so
you can check if everything is correct.
Note for developers to regen enwiki:
php maintenance/updateSpecialPages.php enwiki --only=Disambiguations
Please spread the word, specially for small wikis.
cheers,
--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hasharhttp://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar(a)jabber.org ICQ: 15325080
URL : http://www.flacus.de/wikipedia/Interwiki-Link-Checker/
FAQ : [[Benutzer:Flacus/Wikipedia Interwiki-Link-Checker/de]]
Worum geht es?
In den verschiedenen Sprachversionen der Wikipedia gibt es immer noch
zahlreiche Seiten, die zwar den gleichen Namen tragen, aber nicht
miteinander verlinkt sind. Mit dem Interwiki-Link-Checker kannst Du
mithelfen, die Internationalisierung der Wikipedia zu verbessern.
Wie funktioniert das?
Benutzer:SirJective erstellt anhand der Einträge in den
Wikipedia-Datenbanken eine Liste von Seiten die die gleichen
Artikelnamen tragen (Info). Dies ist schon der halbe Schritt zum Ziel.
Die dann notwendige Überprüfung, ob es sich bei den beiden Artikeln um
denselben Inhalt handelt, kann aber leider nicht automatisiert werden
und muß von einem Menschen vorgenommen werden.
Was kann ich tun?
Hier kommst du ins Spiel. Mit dem Interwiki-Link-Checker lädst du
beide Sprachversionen in ein Browserfenster, vergleichst sie und
trägst das Ergebnis in ein Formular ein. Anhand dieser Einträge können
dann später Interwiki-Links auf die beiden Sprachen automatisch
eingetragen werden.
Wie benutze ich es?
Du gehst auf http://www.flacus.de/wikipedia/Interwiki-Link-Checker/.
Dann wählst du die Datenbank aus. Hier musst die Datenbank auswählen,
die Artikel aus der Sprachkombination enthält, die du überprüfen
möchtest. Anschließend startest du das Script.
Jetzt werden dir zwei Artikel aus den beiden ausgewählten Wikipediae
gegenüberstellend angezeigt. Im unteren Frame kannst du jetzt mit
Hilfe der Console dem Script mitteilen, ob die beiden Artikel das
gleiche Thema behandeln.
Im rechten Teil der Console kannst du die Sprache des Scriptes (nicht
der Artikel) ändern.
Was muss ich beachten?
Dein Browser muss Framesets unterstützen und in deinem Browser muss
Java-Script deaktiviert/ausgeschaltet sein. Weiterhin müssen zur
Speicherung der Sprache der Konsole Cookies aktiviert sein.
Hello.
I find it a bit weird, that you discuss about nds.wikipedia on the mailing list
and not even post a message on nds.wikipedia. I found this discussion by chance
after some people came into the wiki making changes without knowing really what
they do.
Some people here are running down admin and other users of nds.wikipedia, which
are the only people really active on that wiki for long time. They are engaged
on making it a better usable resource in Low Saxon language and we introduced a
common orthography based on the wordbook by Johannes Sass to make it consistent
so you don't have to know all the regional variants of the language, which are
for some cases mutually unintelligible. The orthography by Sass is based on the
most widely used dialect, that is also mostly used when spoken in supra-regional
media.
I think some people discussing here are speaking out of their ivory tower and
don't know what is really going on at the "base". I see some Dutch engaged
here. Let me say: Dutch variant of Low Saxon is not understandable for most of
German Low Saxon speakers (Sure, they are understandable near the border). Some
state the wiki is in Plattdüütsch rather than Low Saxon. This is so true as it
is not true. Plattdüütsch is the most important variant of Low Saxon (Low Saxon
is an academic classification) and the common name of the language in Germany.
If no Dutch contribute it is no wonder, when the wikipedia is more and more
germanized (or shall the German learn Dutch and Nedersaksisch to balance the
Dutch contribution deficits?)
You don't need all your fingers to count all regular contributors to the wiki.
Why do so much people argue here about the content of the wiki and nobody of
the people, who obviously know so much about the language, contributes?
I'm a little bit angry because of the behaviour of some.
--~~~~
Greets, Slomox
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lars Aronsson [mailto:lars@aronsson.se]
> Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 11:18 PM
> To: wikipedia-l(a)Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] collaborative editing system for controversial content
>
> Bennett Haselton wrote:
>
> > (c) Indicate that you disagree with the reply if it's a
> > rebuttal. If this happens, then a "jury" of other users on the
> > site will be selected at random to vote on who is right,
>
> One reason that voting is so often avoided in online communities
> is that it is unclear who is eligible to vote. While
> one-person-one-vote is a beautiful principle, it is not
> self-evident who can be counted as "a person". How do you
> convince your users that the voters aren't just sock puppets, or
> that they are of a mature enough age to make an informed decision?
As to the voter-qualification issue, the theory is that voting on one fact or point of logic at a time, highly specific, will make it easier for voters to grasp what they're voting on, in addition to keeping them honest.
The trickier issue is if someone creates hordes of phantom accounts to manipulate the voting, and that's a real problem that will have to be dealt with eventually. Adherence to Wiki-community principles means allowing users to participate anonymously, but that in turn means that one user can create many accounts. Note that since jurors in "jury votes" are randomly selected among the entire user base, that means if the number of accounts in the system is large, you'd have to have a very large number of accounts under your control to ensure getting, say, three spots on a seven-member jury... but someone might put in that kind of effort.
For right now, my goal is to see if the system can produce useful results *with* user-verification (that is, I'll just keep track of new users and will red-flag any large group of "users" with free hotmail accounts or accounts all in the same domain). If it can't produce useful results *with* user-verification, then it surely won't be able to produce useful results without it (since that opens up the possibility of jury abuse). So the first stage is just to get enough users to reach critical mass where the threads stay active.
Even in the limited discussions that have taken place so far, no votes have been necessary yet; one unexpected result is that when you're disputing highly specific facts and logical inferences one at a time, that keeps the users *themselves* more honest, so that disputes don't have to go to a vote. I hope you'll try it out if you think it sounds interesting.
-Bennett
There have been some great efforts to discuss and specify what a
single-login implementatoin will look like in recent months. However,
the major disagreements form the last bout of specifications -- how to
deal with name conflicts -- have not yet been addressed.
See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Single_login_specifications
and the article page itself for some of the current discussion.
The current proposal suggests that "the user under a given name with
the highest edit-count" will "Win" that name, and all other users with
that name will have a fixed period of time to find a new username.
The idea of arbitrarily forcing one user to change names seems bad and
anti-consensus to me -- if two active users have the same name, I
think they should work out something among themselves -- or be allowed
to forego the privileges of unified login. And the idea of using edit
counts to determine "winners" is particularly unappealing to me (how
about seniority? usefulness of edits? current activity?).
Please check out the current specification and comment. There will be
a lot of detailed discussion about this implementatoin at Wikimania in
August.
--
++SJ
Mark Williamson wrote:
>Hmm... according to the ISO, "nds" does not include East Low German.
>Only Low Saxon. Seems this Wikipedia is not in accordance...
Plattdüütsch covers the non-frankish parts of Low German, but there is no ISO
code for this portion. I don't know the discussion held when creating
nds.wikipedia, but I think it was intended to cover this portion, but the code
nds was chosen, because he was the best-matching code therefore. It would be
silly to separate East Low German and Low Saxon, because they are closely
related.
Servien Ilaino wrote:
>You are very wrong in saying (at least I think so) that in
>Germany are the most "important" dialects of Low Saxon...
Important is not the right word, yes (sometimes the correct English words are
lacking).
>The reason why Dutch speakers don't contribute is because
>the writing system is completely incomprehensible!
Long time no writing system was given and nevertheless any Dutch contributed.
It is not possible to write an Low Saxon/Plattdüütsch/Low German whatever
wikipedia understandable to all speakers in all parts of the Netherlands and
Germany without inventing a common writing and a common standard for the use of
words not common. But this invention can't be task of a wikipedia, but must be
based on a broad consensus in language community. Therefore we need two
projects for the main varieties Dutch-influenced and German-influenced Low
Saxon. (coming back to the original issue)
I hope nobody will think anymore, nds.wikipedia is mainly written in a corrupted
form of Low Saxon, this is not true.
Slomox (Marcus Buck)
As a user with different names on different language Wikipedias, I only
hope if somebody changes my name they let me know... (I was *Haruo* first,
at eo: and then en:, and I still use that on most of them, but in Swahili
I'm *Lilendi* (because that's what I call myself in Swahili) and in ja: I'm
*Rosharuo* (because it said Haruo was already taken) and in a couple of
languages I'm *Haluo* (in haw: Hāluo) and in non-NW American Indigenous
Wikipedias I tend to be *dzidzelalic* (Lushootseed for "Seattle (place)", as
opposed to *si?ał* = "Seattle (tribal leader)"). I haven't signed onto the
he: Wikipedia yet, but if I do I'll probably want to be *Afar.* Oh well, I
keep 'em all straight in some dark recess of my brain..*.*
Haruo
> Date: Sat, 9 Jul 2005 09:45:17 +0200
> From: Angela <beesley(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Changing username
>
> �var (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:�var_Arnfj�r�_Bjarmason>)
> made a tool recently that enables bureaucrats to rename users and told
> me yesterday that Tim Starling has just deployed it at the servers.
>
> Therefore, any bureaucrat can change the username of users on their
> wiki using [[Special:Renameuser]].
> …