Re: [WikiEN-l] [Wikimedia-l] Fwd: access to journals

[Rob]

For editors who just need an specific article or two they can't find:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Resource_Exchange/Resource_Request
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[WikiEN-l] Coming soon to a wiki near you: Meet a Wikipedian or staff!

[Rob Schnautz]

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Beginning Wednesday (August 1st), two-way communication between English 
Wikipedia editors and Wikipedia Education Program staff in the San Francisco 
office will no longer need to be directed through a middle-man anymore for 
translation. I encourage anyone of either party needing to communicate to 
the other party to check out the new Google Translate option that translates 
between WMFese English and Wikipedian English.


I’d like to thank everyone I’ve worked with and around who has helped make 
this one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve ever worked. I’ve had a wonderful 
time working with the amazing folks at the Foundation on the United States, 
Canada, and India Education Programs, as well as with the other community 
liaisons. I’ve never had the opportunity to work in such a cheerful and 
supportive environment as this. I wish all of you the best as you fill in 
any gaps I leave behind—I know you’ve got some big challenges ahead of you 
the next several months.


English Wikipedians, you haven’t seen the last of me yet! [[:en:User:Bob the 
Wikipedian]] is about to come out of hibernation. As for the IRC clan, it 
was great getting to know you, and I sure hope this won’t be the last 
opportunity I get to interact with most of you. You may now resume normal 
chat (if there’s such a thing) knowing that the only staff watching you 
during my former office hours is Ironholds. (Please be gentle with him on 
occasion, though!)


It’s been very exciting to see the Wikipedia Education Program from a staff 
perspective and to relay messages to the community. Likewise, it was 
interesting to see how the editing community felt about the Wikipedia 
Education Program, and to share those feelings with my manager and 
coworkers—that’s an experience they don’t teach you in computer science 
courses! From questions and comments to even the biggest complaints—I’ve 
enjoyed providing my services to you all. This job has opened my eyes to a 
whole new career path for me to explore in online community liaising.


I think any of you Wikipedia editors and staff will agree with me that 
having a roof over one’s head and a working Internet connection are two of 
the most valuable privileges life has to offer, so here’s a link to my 
résumé in the event someone out there has (or knows of) an opening for which 
they’d like to consider me: http://www.massmirror.com/50136cb944818


If you do plan on responding to this email, please make sure you include my 
permanent email address bobthewikiped...@gmail.com —thanks!


Adios, y’all!

Rob Schnautz
Online Communications Contractor
Global Development
Wikimedia Foundation
Evansville, Indiana, U.S.

P.S. I don’t have any plans at the moment to quit my volunteer work as 
regional ambassador for the Wikipedia Education Program to Wisconsin, 
Michigan, and Kentucky. So Jami, and all my fellow volunteers, see you on 
the other side!



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Re: [WikiEN-l] Office hour: Wikipedia Education Program

[Rob Schnautz]

Just a reminder that this will be happening in a few minutes.

Rob

From: Rob Schnautz 
Subject: Office hour: Wikipedia Education Program

The Wikimedia Foundation staff for the Wikipedia Education Program (Frank 
Schulenburg, Annie Lin, LiAnna Davis, Jami Mathewson, and I) will be hosting a 
scheduled public office hour in the #wikimedia-office IRC channel.

Date: Thursday, 21 June 2012
Time: 16:00 – 17:00 UTC (noon-1 p.m. EDT, 9-10 a.m. PDT) (click here for local 
time)
Topic: Wikipedia Education Program

This will be a general question and answer session. We have several exciting 
new developments coming up: a transition from staff-led programs to 
volunteer-led programs in North America, and a new piece of software for 
Wikipedia that will help us manage the program better. We also are happy to 
answer general questions you may have about the program.

If you have questions or concerns about the programs, or are simply curious, 
this is a great opportunity to gain better insight into these programs. If you 
are unable to attend, a link to the chat log will be posted at 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours for public viewing following 
the session.

Details on how to join the session are included below. We look forward to 
chatting with you!

Rob Schnautz
Online Communications Contractor
Global Development
Wikimedia Foundation
---
If you haven't used IRC before, it may be easiest to use a web client; this 
means you don't have to install any software on your computer. Just click here 
to join in, and then choose a username when prompted: 
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikimedia-office You may be prompted to 
click through a security warning. It's fine.
For more information about IRC software you can install on your computer, go to 
the Wikipedia entry on IRC or the Meta page on Wikimedia IRC. If using 
dedicated software, connect to the channel #wikimedia-officeconnect on the 
freenode network.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Office hour: Wikipedia Education Program

[Rob Schnautz]

Just a reminder about the office hours coming up on Thursday this week. The 
topic for this session has been expanded to include all Foundation-run 
Wikipedia Education Program initiatives, which take place in the U.S., Canada, 
Brazil, Egypt, and India.

Like all IRC office hours, the format will be an open question-and-answer 
session, so come with questions, and we’ll come with answers! Questions do not 
have to be limited to the upcoming changes (e.g. transition away from staff-led 
programs in North America, rollout of new software on Wikipedia to help support 
the program)—we’d be happy to answer general questions you have about the 
program as well.

Please refer to the information at the bottom of this email for instructions on 
how to join.

Thank you,

Rob Schnautz
Online Communications Contractor
Global Development
Wikimedia Foundation


From: Rob Schnautz 
Sent: Tuesday, 12 June 2012 2:42 PM
To: Wikipedia Ambassadors ; English Wikipedia ; Wikimedia 
Cc: Frank Schulenburg ; Annie L. Lin ; LiAnna Davis ; Jami Mathewson 
Subject: Office hour: Wikipedia Education Programs in Canada and U.S.

In anticipation of some major changes that are coming up in the U.S. and Canada 
Education Programs, the Wikimedia Foundation staff for the Wikipedia Education 
Program (Frank Schulenburg, Annie Lin, LiAnna Davis, Jami Mathewson, and I) 
will be hosting a scheduled public office hour in the #wikimedia-office IRC 
channel.

Date: Thursday, 21 June 2012
Time: 16:00 – 17:00 UTC (noon-1 p.m. EDT, 9-10 a.m. PDT) (click here for local 
time)

If you have questions or concerns about the programs, or are simply curious, 
this is a great opportunity to gain better insight into these programs. If you 
are unable to attend, a link to the chat log will be posted at 
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours for public viewing following 
the session.

Details on how to join the session are included below. We look forward to 
chatting with you!

Rob Schnautz
Online Communications Contractor
Global Development
Wikimedia Foundation

---
If you haven't used IRC before, it may be easiest to use a web client; this 
means you don't have to install any software on your computer. Just click here 
to join in, and then choose a username when prompted: 
http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=wikimedia-office You may be prompted to 
click through a security warning. It's fine.
For more information about IRC software you can install on your computer, go to 
the Wikipedia entry on IRC or the Meta page on Wikimedia IRC. If using 
dedicated software, connect to the channel #wikimedia-officeconnect on the 
freenode network.
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Re: [WikiEN-l] How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught by Reddit, _The Atlantic_

[Rob Schnautz]

This discussion has flowed onto Wikipedia's Administrator's Noticeboard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AN#False_articles_created_for_the_good_of_education

Rob

-Original Message- 
From: Charles Matthews

Sent: Wednesday, 16 May 2012 1:34 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How the Professor Who Fooled Wikipedia Got Caught 
by Reddit, _The Atlantic_


On 16 May 2012 16:49, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote:


Indeed. Why *are* the skeptical geeks now on Reddit and not Wikipedia?


And why haven't they taken those who generalise broadly from a single
example with them?

Charles

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Re: [WikiEN-l] More stringent notability requirements for biographical articles

[Rob]

I've been skimming the arguments on this matter and I'm trying to get
a handle on it.  One thing I don't understand is why Mr. Hawkins feels
so aggrieved.  Everyone is talking in abstract principles but I
haven't seen where someone details what specific wrongs have been done
to Mr. Hawkins.  Not an abstract violation of an asserted right to not
have an article, but actual publishing of incorrect or defamatory
information. This is a case of someone we've done specific wrong using
Wikipedia: 
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/19/she-was-a-librarian-but-the-internet-said-otherwise/.
 Have we done something similar to Hawkins?

From the AFD I read that one particular editor appears to have a
particular interest in Mr. Hawkins that allegedly crosses the bounds
of propriety.  I don't know if these allegations are true or not, so I
won't repeat them in detail here, but if they are true, and an editor
or editors violates policies and crosses lines in zealous pursuit of,
shall we say, overdocumenting a BLP, can't this matter be dealt with
by enforcing existing policies on article content and editor behavior?
 One allegation is that this editor wanted to file the UK equivalent
of a FOIA request to unearth records about Hawkins.  Isn't this simply
prohibited by OR?  Can't we just trout slap someone who suggests this
and be done with it?

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[WikiEN-l] Invitation to help beta-test the MediaWiki 1.19 extension for the Wikipedia Education Program

[Rob Schnautz]

The MediaWiki developers have been working hard to integrate certain elements 
of the Wikipedia Education Program into MediaWiki. If anyone is interested in 
helping beta-test the new extension, click (or copy and paste) the link below 
to get started:

http://education.wmflabs.org/index.php/MW_1.18:Community_portal/Welcome,_beta_testers!

Please note that this site does not will not represent official Wikipedia 
Education Program data. Feel free to alter the data on the wiki however you 
wish; the more testing you do, the better!

Thanks,

Rob Schnautz
Online Communications Contractor
Global Development
Wikimedia Foundation

11450 Northridge Dr
Evansville IN 47720
c. 812.746.8347
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Invitation to help beta-test the MediaWiki 1.19 extension for the Wikipedia Education Program

[Rob Schnautz]

No, the Education Program admin refers to a volunteer administrator of the 
program, such as a regional or national ambassador. The title varies 
depending on what part of the world they operate in, so simply calling them 
Education Program regional ambassador doesn't quite line up on some 
individuals. I'm personally not fond of the admin nomenclature myself, as 
it does (as you point out) confuse the individual with sysops. We're open to 
other ideas for naming the user access level if you have any.


The users that are assigned this user access level will inherit privileges 
from the ep-instructor, ep-campus-ambassador, and ep-online-ambassador, and 
will be able to administer those user access levels. Other than that, it's a 
typical autoconfirmed user.


Thanks,
Rob

-Original Message- 
From: Anirudh Bhati

Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2012 2:45 AM
To: English Wikipedia
Cc: mediawik...@lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Invitation to help beta-test the MediaWiki 1.19 
extension for the Wikipedia Education Program


Thanks for the post, Rob.  Will an Education Program admin have the same
access levels as a sysop on the English Wikipedia?

On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 1:30 AM, Rob Schnautz rschna...@wikimedia.orgwrote:


The MediaWiki developers have been working hard to integrate certain
elements of the Wikipedia Education Program into MediaWiki. If anyone is
interested in helping beta-test the new extension, click (or copy and
paste) the link below to get started:


http://education.wmflabs.org/index.php/MW_1.18:Community_portal/Welcome,_beta_testers
!

Please note that this site does not will not represent official Wikipedia
Education Program data. Feel free to alter the data on the wiki however 
you

wish; the more testing you do, the better!

Thanks,

Rob Schnautz
Online Communications Contractor
Global Development
Wikimedia Foundation

11450 Northridge Dr
Evansville IN 47720
c. 812.746.8347
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Talk pages Considered Harmful (for references)

[Rob]

On Wed, Dec 21, 2011 at 11:05 PM, Gwern Branwen gwe...@gmail.com wrote:

 1. Talk pages are where references/links/citations go to die; less
 than 10% ever make it back

This makes a lot of sense.  Many times I've removed these from the
article for valid reasons - text/link dumps, mal- or unformed
sections, etc. - and placed them on talk so editors could use them for
future edits.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] So ...

[Rob Schnautz]

If you're into mythology/cryptozoology, I did some translation from Old
Norse and Old Icelandic this summer to put together what is probably the
most complete syntheses (in any language) of [[Hafgufa]] and [[Lyngbakr]],
two legendary sea monsters.

Bob

On Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Fred Bauder fredb...@fairpoint.netwrote:

  ... written anything good on the encyclopedia lately?
 
 
  - d.

 Well, yes,

 I discovered the answer to the mystery of why Mao adopted Stalinism and
 put it into History of the People's Republic of China (1949–1976)

 A lot of people have wondered where he got those ideas. Turns out they
 came from History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik):
 Short Course which was adopted by the Comintern as official history in
 1938.

 This solution was developed by Hua-yu Li, of Oregon State University and
 published in his book, Mao and the Economic Stalinization of China,
 1948-1953, Rowman  Littlefield (February 17, 2006) (hardcover), pp. 266.
 ISBN 0742540537.

 The introduction is on the publisher's website at

 http://chapters.scarecrowpress.com/07/425/0742540545ch1.pdf

 So yes, progress is made

 Fred


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[WikiEN-l] Bug 31424 - Anecdotal evidence of IE 8 problems

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

We need your help.  We have a number of reports on the various village
pumps, helpdesks, Twitter, and such that IE8 users are experiencing
crashes merely by visiting our site.  Here's the bug report:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31424

Given the frequency and diversity of reports, there is almost
certainly something to this, even though we don't yet have a solid
repro case that a developer can actually use to fix this.

Here's what we need.  If you are actually seeing crashes, we would
love to know exact browser version (e.g. IE 8.0.7601.17514), exact
operating system version, all plugins installed and their exact
versions, and how much RAM your machine has.  Please report your
findings either in the bug report above, or if you're more comfortable
on-wiki, then here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29#If_you_can_make_IE_crash_pretty_reliably_we_need_your_help.

Thanks!
Rob

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Italian Wikipedia - probably best discussed on Foundation

[Rob Schnautz]

facepalm Just kidding; thanks for the link. :)

Bob

On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 12:59 PM, WereSpielChequers 
werespielchequ...@gmail.com wrote:

 There are reams of postings on this in the Foundation mailing list.

 foundation-l mailing list
 foundatio...@lists.wikimedia.org
 https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

 May I suggest that anyone who wants to follow this one signs up to
 Foundation, if only for the current discussion? I'm not trying to squash
 discussion here, but if people do discuss it here without reading the posts
 by the Italians, by Sue and many others on  Foundation then I suspect a
 fair
 amount will be repetition and explanation of what has been said on
 Foundation.

 WereSpielChequers


 On 5 October 2011 18:48, Rob Schnautz bobthewikiped...@gmail.com wrote:

  Woah. I just checked it.wikipedia.org because it sounded like a
  hoax...it's
  real. Does the law apply to website providers or to those who contribute
 to
  the website? If it's the former, you're right; Wikipedia is in Florida.
 But
  if it's the latter, then Wikipedia is most certainly affected by the law.
 
  Unfortunate indeed.
 
  Bob
 
  On Wed, Oct 5, 2011 at 7:40 AM, Daniel R. Tobias d...@tobias.name
 wrote:
 
   There have been a bunch of items in my Twitter feed about how the
   Italian Wikipedia has shut down in response to a proposed repressive
   law regarding mandatory takedowns of allegedly defamatory online
   material in Italy.  I have some problems with such a move, as it sets
   a precedent of having a particular language edition of Wikipedia tied
   to an uncomfortable degree with the politics of one country just
   because that's the primary place the language is spoken.  It's always
   been true that the separate editions of Wikipedia are by language,
   not country.  The Chinese Wikipedia keeps operating despite the
   repressive censorship of China, and if that country chooses to block
   it, that's their problem.  English Wikipedia doesn't belong to
   England, or America, or any other English-speaking country, though
   the fact that the primary servers are in the USA does force it to
   comply to U.S. law.
  
   Unless there are servers in Italy, the Italian Wikipedia isn't
   compelled to follow any Italian law, though there could be
   consequences for any Italy-based participants if they don't,
   including the possibility of individuals there being held responsible
   for what they write or fail to take down, or possible mandatory
   blockage of the site in that country if they choose to go the Great
   Firewall route.
  
   I remember the German Wikipedia being affected at one point by a
   court injunction, but that only shut down a redirected .de domain,
   not the site itself as a subdomain of US-registered wikipedia.org.
  
  
   --
   == Dan ==
   Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
   Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
   Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/
  
  
  
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Facepalm?

[Rob Schnautz]

If ArbCom would be damaged by people opening [[WP:DICK]] labeling cases, it
certainly wouldn't be helped by people opening facepalming cases.

Be it namecalling or implication of rude gestures, these are both civil
issues and both need attention.

At the same time, I feel the {{facepalm}} template can be (as I often see)
used effectively without directing it at another individual, usually as in
oh I can't believe I just said/did that.

And re: the Star Trek stuff, I think the most credit we can give Star Trek
(if even this) is coining the phrase (if they in fact did). It's found
throughout common American culture predating Star Trek.

Bob

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 12:42 PM, Scott MacDonald doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com
 wrote:



  -Original Message-
  From: wikien-l-boun...@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-
  boun...@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Risker
  Sent: 04 October 2011 18:25
  To: English Wikipedia
  Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Facepalm?
 
 
  So perhaps a better focus of discussion would be how to deal with
  editors
  who are unable to or unwilling to understand project guidelines and
  policies. It seems that the primary use of this template is by editors
  expressing frustration at the inability, despite their best efforts, to
  address this issue.
 
  Risker/Anne

 But 'facepalming' them in (even legitimate) frustration at their evident
 obtuseness is, like calling someone a WP:DICK, unlikely to improve their
 behaviour, whilst it encourages people to use the same facepalm in
 situations where the recipient is a good faith editor, and the inference
 that they are being obtuse is unhelpful and uncivil/inflammatory.

 Anyway, templates are always poor substitutes for actual communication,
 particularly in situations where tempers are apt to fray, and
 miscommunications are more than likely.

 Scott


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Facepalm?

[Rob Schnautz]

Usually when I facepalm it's because I have a moment, not someone
else...

I believe [[WP:DICK]] is a bigger issue than {{facepalm}} at the moment

Bob

On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote:

 On Mon, Oct 3, 2011 at 11:02 AM, Scott MacDonald
 doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com wrote:

  Granted, removing uncivil templates won't magically increase patient and
  constructive discussion, but I do suspect we'd still nevertheless delete
  {{jackass}} or {{moron}}. If people are going to mock others, we
 shouldn't
  be giving them shortcuts to do so. The existence of the template serves
 to
  legitimise such dismissive discourse.

 Template:Jackass exists as a navigational template for the show.

 Carcharoth

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Re: [WikiEN-l] [Press] 'Fixer' cleans Wikipedia entries for senior business figures

[Rob]

Looks to me like they are referring to 94.193.122.119, registered to
London Clerkenwell Residential Dynamic.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] BLP extension suggestion

[Rob]

On Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 1:09 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote:
 On Fri, 3 Jun 2011, Rob wrote:

 Part of it is that we're talking about different types of things.  The
 Kerry
 controversy is ultimately about factual claims, and therefore whether our
 article harms John Kerry depends on whether we give undue weight to those
 claims.  This one isn't about factual claims; it's about creating an
 unpleasant association, so avoiding undue weight isn't enough to keep it
 from doing harm.

 I don't understand this kind of hairsplitting.  Documenting
 fabrications is acceptable, but only the right kind of fabrications?
 Aren't, say, the factual claims of Birthers about creating
 unpleasant associations with Obama?  The last thing we need in
 Wikipedia is more systemic bias, and this is what that hairsplitting
 would lead to.

 Person X is like shit is unpleasant in a very different way from person
 X is a liar.  The latter creates an unpleasant association with that person
 only to the degree that that person is believed to have committed unpleasant
 activities.  The former creates an unpleasant association on an emotional
 level.

 You can write a balanced article that reports the claim that Obama is a liar
 without making the audience think Obama is a liar.  You cannot do this
 when the article is about comparing a person to shit.

If you don't think the Birther claims work on an emotional level, then
you haven't been paying attention to them.  All such conspiracy claims
work on an emotional level, as their adherents have proven impervious
to the intervention of logic and facts.  You're trying to make a
distinction between two kinds of claims that does not exist.  How do
we incorporate that kind of hairsplitting into policy?  And if we
managed to do so, it would create a systemic bias, favoring one kind
of targeted fabrication over another.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] BLP extension suggestion

[Rob]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 11:26 AM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote:

 Santorum is not just being victimized by Dan Savage or the news media or the
 world--he's being victimized by *us*.  That makes it our job.  Just because
 it's an already existing campaign doesn't mean we have no responsibility
 when a search for his name brings up this article as the #3 hit (and #2 if
 you only search for his last name).

We're just recording what has already been discussed in 132 reliable
sources.  We're not victimizing him any more than we are victimizing
Silvio Berlusconi
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlusconi#Sexual_scandals) or John
Edwards (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edwards_extramarital_affair)
or John Kerry 
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kerry_military_service_controversy)
or Anthony Weiner
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Weiner#Twitter_controversy).
The Kerry example is especially pertinent as both it and the Santorum
article are an entire Wikipedia article about things that other people
made up about the subject of the article.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] BLP extension suggestion

[Rob]

On Fri, Jun 3, 2011 at 6:37 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote:

 Part of it is a matter of degree.  The article on the John Kerry controversy
 isn't the #2 search for Kerry on the Internet.

And whenever people mention this, they conveniently forget to mention
that the #1 result is Dan Savage's website.  We didn't put it out
there and we aren't perpetuating it.  Wikipedia entries are typically
near the top of *any* search result.  Sometimes when I create an
article on a historical figure it shoots to the top of the results
with a day or less, even above pages that have been around for years,
edu sites, archives, etc.

 Part of it is that we're talking about different types of things.  The Kerry
 controversy is ultimately about factual claims, and therefore whether our
 article harms John Kerry depends on whether we give undue weight to those
 claims.  This one isn't about factual claims; it's about creating an
 unpleasant association, so avoiding undue weight isn't enough to keep it
 from doing harm.

I don't understand this kind of hairsplitting.  Documenting
fabrications is acceptable, but only the right kind of fabrications?
Aren't, say, the factual claims of Birthers about creating
unpleasant associations with Obama?  The last thing we need in
Wikipedia is more systemic bias, and this is what that hairsplitting
would lead to.

 And there aren't 132 reliable sources; there was a post on BLPN which
 analyzed the problems with a bunch of sources (several were self-published,
 for instance.  Of course they had to be left in as part of a compromise),
 but there are so many sources that nobody could possibly check them all.
 Furthermore, the large number of sources is itself part of the abuse of the
 system--sources are often links and raise the page's Google rank, just like
 including big templates.

That post you mentioned cherry picked a few sources out of the 132.
14 in that post were from The Stranger, the newspaper where Dan
Savage's columns originate.  The published writing of one of the two
principal players in this matter is absolutely a reliable source for
this article, as it's been long-established that people are an RS for
their own views.  The other 20 don't meet the gold standard, but
neither are they worthy of being immediately dismissed without
discussion.  But even if we throw all of them out, that still leaves
98 reliable sources that are not in dispute: major newspapers,
academic books, etc.  Nitpicking them isn't enough, you just dismiss
them out of hand with scare quotes and then try to use that fact
against it.  Shouldn't an article be well-sourced?  If you don't think
they've been properly checked, then post on BLPN and we'll both get
some people together to check them.  That's what we do here, it's part
of the editing process.  And adding reliable sources isn't good
anymore, it's doubleplusungood abuse?  This way lies madness if we
try to apply this to the encyclopedia. If you want to discuss actual
gaming of the system, we can, but let's not label proper editing and
reliable sourcing as abuse.

The most frustrating thing about this discussion is the way that
editors of long standing feel free to slur everyone that disagrees
with them.  As the conflict moves from talk page to noticeboard to
mailing list and back again (start an RFC already and let's centralize
this nonsense!)  these editors have attacked normal editing as abuse
and slurred other editors as rabid anti-Santorum partisans and gay
activists.  I really thought we were better than this.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] BLP extension suggestion

[Rob]

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 5:35 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote:

    Avoid victimization

    When writing about a person notable only for one or two events, *or
    writing about a person who is independently notable but where the
    biographical material is so prominent that it can significantly affect
    the subject*, including every detail can lead to problems, even when the
    material is well-sourced. When in doubt, biographies should be pared
    back to a version that is completely sourced, neutral, and on-topic.
    This is of particular importance when dealing with individuals whose
    notability stems largely or entirely from being victims of another's
    actions, *or writing about a topic that is largely or entirely about
    the person being a victim of another's actions*. Wikipedia editors must
    not act, intentionally or otherwise, in a way that amounts to
    participating in or prolonging the victimization.

 Additional material indicated by *s.

 It seems like the most common objection is that we can't determine who is a
 victim (to which my response is that I'm just extending an existing rule and
 we seem to have no trouble doing it for the existing rule).

We'd have the same argument regardless of this new extension of the
rule.  What damage are we doing to Santorum not already done by Dan
Savage and the 132 reliable sources documenting this matter?

I don't think BLP needs this kind of mission creep.  It's important to
protect Santorum and others from malicious editing and bad sourcing
and undue weight, but it isn't our job to protect Santorum from Dan
Savage or the news media or the world.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]

[Rob]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 2:30 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote:
 (Proposed general rule: if you launch your complaint on Wikipedia
 Review, you're already wrong.)

This is going on my user page.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia article on [[Santorum (neologism)]]

[Rob]

On Thu, May 26, 2011 at 7:44 PM, Brian J Mingus
brian.min...@colorado.edu wrote:
 I believe you will have a hard time justifying your claim that my comment is
 false (not to mention that it is a slur). It should be easy to show that the
 article is curated by at least one, and probably several, biased
 anti-Santorum contributors.

The onus is on you to prove that such a broad slur on other Wikipedia
editors is true.  Even if we accept this as truth, the solution to
such problems is typically the eyes of more editors and not deletion.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Old Wikipedia backups discovered

[Rob Lanphier]

On Tue, Dec 14, 2010 at 7:54 AM, Tim Starling tstarl...@wikimedia.org wrote:
 I was looking through some old files in our SourceForge project. I
 opened a file called wiki.tar.gz, and inside were three complete
 backups of the text of Wikipedia, from February, March and August 2001!

 This is exciting, because there is lots of article history in here
 which was assumed to be lost forever.

Wow, this is really, really amazing!  I'm not sure just how you
avoided having a heart attack after seeing this:
 --
 HomePage|979586833
 1c1
  Describe the new page here.
 ---
  This is the new WikiPedia!

Great work!

Rob

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[WikiEN-l] Pending Changes development update: October 25

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

This is another update on Pending Changes work.  Over the Hack-a-ton
weekend, Chad Horohoe and Priyanka Dhanda worked on two of the bigger
features for the November 16 Pending Changes update:

Bug 25294 - Reject button confirmation screen in Pending Changes
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25294

Bug 25289 - Make review load faster by speeding up display of old revisions
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25289

As of today, both of these are now deployed to our test site:
http://prototype.wikimedia.org/flaggedrevs

Additionally, since the last update, Brandon Harris has made a mockup
available of some additional UI changes:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Pending_Changes_enwiki_trial/NovemberReleaseDesignChanges

The full list of issues for the November 16 release is listed here:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=25293

We're not sure at this point just how much of the list we're going to
make it through, but we plan to do additional updates shortly after
November 16 with things that we don't get to.

Please provide your input in Bugzilla if you're comfortable with that;
otherwise, please remark on the feedback page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Feedback

Rob

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[WikiEN-l] Pending Changes development update: October 6

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

Pending Changes work continues apace.  The big thing we'd like to call
everyone's attention to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Feedback#Call_for_specific_feedback_on_UI_elements

We'd really like to get your input on specific suggestions that we can
implement quickly.  Speak now or forever hold your peace.  Well, maybe
not forever, but until after November.  At least, if you want to
implement your idea by November.

Here are the main development tasks that are active right now:
Bug 25294 - Reject button confirmation screen in Pending Changes
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25294

Bug 25289 - Make review load faster by speeding up display of old revisions
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25289

We'll be deploying the updates to these just as soon as they get
checked in.  Here's the location of the wiki we're using for testing
development versions:
http://prototype.wikimedia.org/flaggedrevs

...and finally, here's the full list of issues:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=25293

For those of you who might have missed it, Pending Changes was the
primary topic for Sue Gardner's office hour last week.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_Sue_2010-09-30

Please provide your input in Bugzilla if you're comfortable with that;
otherwise, please remark on the feedback page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Feedback

Thanks!
Rob

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[WikiEN-l] Pending Changes development update: September 27

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

As many of you know, the results of the poll to keep Pending Changes
on through a short development cycle were approved for interim usage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Straw_poll_on_interim_usage

Ongoing use of Pending Changes is contingent upon consensus after the
deployment of an interim release of Pending Changes in November 2010,
which is currently under development. The roadmap for this deployment
is described here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Pending_Changes_enwiki_trial/Roadmap

An update on the date: we'd previously scheduled this for November 9.
However, because that week is the same week as the start of the
fundraiser (and accompanying futzing with the site) we'd like to move
the date one week later, to November 16.

Aaron Schulz is advising us as the author of the vast majority of the
code, having mostly implemented the reject button.  Chad Horohoe and
Priyanka Dhanda are working on some of the short term development
items, and Brandon Harris is advising us on how we can make this
feature mesh with our long term usability strategy.

We're currently tracking the list of items we intend to complete in
Bugzilla. You can see the latest list here:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/showdependencytree.cgi?id=25293

Many of the items in the list are things we're looking for feedback on:
Bug 25295 - Improve reviewer experience when multiple simultaneous
users review Pending Changes
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25295

Bug 25296 - History style cleanup - investigate possible fixes and
detail the fixes
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25296

Bug 25298 - Figure out what (if any) new Pending Changes links there
should be in the side bar
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25298

Bug 25299 - Make pending revision status clearer when viewing page
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25299

Bug 25300 - Better names for special pages in Pending Changes configuration
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25300

Bug 25301 - Firm up the list of minor UI improvements for the
November 2010 Pending Changes release
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=25301

Please provide your input in Bugzilla if you're comfortable with that;
otherwise, please remark on the feedback page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Feedback

Thanks!
Rob

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Re: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Pending Changes update for July 28

[Rob Lanphier]

On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 2:48 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote:

  On Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 1:43 PM, Rob Lanphier ro...@wikimedia.org
 wrote:
   For a variety of operational reasons, we plan to leave the feature
 running
  while the community decides whether to keep the feature on, assuming
 that
  process lasts no more than a month or so after August 15.

 Sounds reasonable. You will have to very firmly commit to turning it
 off immediately if the vote/discussion goes against it though, as some
 will (despite the reasonable explanation given here) see this as a
 back-door route to keeping it on by default.


This is definitely not the case.  We plan to abide by whatever consensus
emerges.


 One question I do have is
 how much attention is given to the main talk page at WT:PEND? The
 impression I get is that most of the discussion is happening
 elsewhere, and some people will miss that discussion if there are not
 pointers from that talk pages to the talk pages of the subpages.


I believe this page is getting more attention than WT:PEND:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Feedback

Rob
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[WikiEN-l] Pending Changes update for July 28

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi folks,

It's been a little while since I've sent out an update (sorry about that).
 The Pending Changes trial continues apace, with 1,382 articles configured
to use the feature as of this writing.

Most of the work on the software that powers Pending Changes is focused on
refactoring and stability.  Some of the performance problems associated with
this feature have been fixed, and we believe we have fixed all of the
user-visible performance problems.  Looking at our backend systems, there's
some areas where this feature is still causing more load than it should,
which is where our work is focused now.

Aaron Schulz, who has done the lion's share of the development to date
(thanks Aaron!) continues to stay involved, but at a much reduced level as
he focuses on non-Wikimedia stuff, while Chad Horohoe ramps up.

We'll be publishing some statistics soon which outline per page metrics on
revisions under Pending Changes.  Nimish Gautam and Devin Finzer (Devin is
an intern that is working for Wikimedia Foundation this summer) are working
on some statistics that they'll be publishing soon.  More discussion is
here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Pending_changes/Metrics

It will be time for a vote soon about whether to keep Pending Changes
enabled on en.wikipedia.org.  We'll be pinging folks in the community about
the post-trial discussion.  If we're rigidly following the proposal, the
trial will end on August 15, regardless of whether a vote has happened.
 However, we're probably already running late for making a decision by then.
 For a variety of operational reasons, we plan to leave the feature running
while the community decides whether to keep the feature on, assuming that
process lasts no more than a month or so after August 15.

The main discussion area for this feature is here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes/Feedback

If you have comments/suggestions/questions, that's a good place to post
them.

Rob
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[WikiEN-l] Page load speed on some Pending Changes diff pages

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

Anyone who has played with Pending Changes knows that in many
circumstances, there were some very perceptable speed problems with
the feature on complicated pages (which unfortunately, tend to be the
pages that the feature is used on).  The devs on the feature (Aaron
and Chad) did some investigation, and figured out that we weren't
caching as much as we should.  This is all documented here:

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24124

This change was rolled out on en.wikipedia.org.  So, if you hadn't
played with Pending Changes in a while because of speed problems, now
is a good time to give it another shot.  Visit here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Pending_changes

...and follow the Pages with pending edits and the All pages on
trial links to find articles to try this out on.

We're not done with the performance work, but this particular fix was
pretty critical for the experience.

Rob

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[WikiEN-l] Pending Changes update for June 18

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

As I'm sure you're all aware, the Pending Changes trial began earlier this
week, and seems to be off to a great start.  There are many issues to be
sorted out both on the community policy side and on the technical side, but
everyone here seems to grappling with the community issues without a lot of
prodding.  On the development front, the team now has a blissfully mundane
software maintenance/incremental improvement process to deal with, as
opposed to feeling antsy about needing to deploy.

With the launch out of the way, William is now wrapping up and turning the
project management reigns over to me.  When I first started contracting with
WMF back in the beginning of May, I had the mistaken assumption that I'd be
taking over then, since William had/has another huge opportunity that is
looming on the horizon that appeared likely to take 100% of his time.  In
our first meeting as we started going over the transition, he resolutely
pointed out no, I'm staying until we deploy this, however long it takes.
 We are really glad he was able to stick with us through this, and we're
extremely grateful for his tenacity and commitment.  This feature would
likely have been delayed longer and would have missed many critical details
without him.  I learned a lot about project management working with him, and
enjoyed it a great deal.  Thanks William!

The main developers, (Aaron and Chad) plan to continue knocking down issues
as they discover them, as well as continuing to whittle down the backlog of
issues we postponed until after the initial deployment:
http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/46157

Some of the most significant work surrounds the reject button an a few
related tweaks.  Since the topic of how exactly to optimize the workflow is
still a subject of debate, we'd appreciate some feedback on the subject.
 The features in question are all linked to from here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:FlaggedRevs/Specifications

The trial itself is slated to last until August 15.  After that, community
consensus will be required to leave the feature on permanently.  A strict
reading of the proposed trial would suggest we're obligated to turn the
feature off immediately around August 15, but I've seen at least one comment
suggesting we leave it on that time.  I've proposed here that we instead
leave the feature turned on while we discuss the permanent status:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Pending_changes/Trial#leaverunningforvote

If you have any concerns that need the dev team's attention, please bring
them up here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Pending_Changes_issues

We're a little behind in looking at that page, but we will get back to you
if you post there.  We'll also get back to you if you prefer to post to
Bugzilla:
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=MediaWiki%20extensionscomponent=FlaggedRevs

That's all for now.  Thanks for reading!
Rob
p.s. I didn't want to turn this email into a parody of an overly-long Oscar
speech, but I also did want to specially call out Aaron Schulz, the lead
developer on this project, who did a remarkable job developing and preparing
the software for this launch as well as making sure that any problems that
we did inadvertently introduced were knocked down extremely quickly (often
within minutes of finding out).  Great work, Aaron!
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Pending Changes launched on English Wikipedia

[Rob Lanphier]

On Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 10:48 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dal...@gmail.comwrote:

  For those who want to get a sense of how the system is performing in
  terms of throughput (e.g., average time-to-approval), please visit the
  Pending Changes Stats page [7].

 the average, median and lag are all showing as
 0.0s. That can't be right, surely? Is that a bug?



Yeah, something there doesn't look right.  We'll look into it further.

Rob
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Community ready for Pending Changes (nee Flagged Protection)?

[Rob Lanphier]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 4:34 AM, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 6:29 AM, Rob Lanphier ro...@wikimedia.org wrote:

  3.  This set of pages:
 
 
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions
 
  ...still has the old vocabulary, and still refers to patrolled
 revisions
  as part of the trial (which is a separate feature that probably won't be
  completed by the time the trial is over with).
 [..]
 Might it be worth gathering all Flagged Revs pages and moving them to
 [[WP:Pending Changes/Historical discussions/...]] with redirects, to make
 clear what's what?


That would be wonderful!  I suspect there's some sensitivity around the word
obsolete since patrolled revisions is a feature that still has a popular
following.  However, at this point its just not as tightly coupled with the
pending changes trial as it once was.  So the trick is going to be to
decouple the two enough so that it doesn't confuse people about what's
happening now versus what is on the roadmap, but not so decoupled that the
patrolled revisions proposal gets exiled to Siberia.

Rob
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Community ready for Pending Changes (nee Flagged Protection)?

[Rob Lanphier]

On Tue, Jun 8, 2010 at 11:54 AM, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 One thing needed - can someone reply to this thread with a list of all
 Flagged Revs related pages (whether RFCs, proposals, or major threads) so
 we
 can see what's out there?


I don't have an organized list, but I started a stub page here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:RobLa/PC_Page_Inventory

To everyone here:  please add to the list.  Also, feel free to move that out
of my user space to wherever you feel is appropriate.

Thanks
Rob
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[WikiEN-l] Renaming Flagged Protections to Pending Changes

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

After much debate, we've settled on a name for the English Wikipedia
implementation of FlaggedRevs:  Pending Changes.  This is a slight
variation on one of the finalists (Pending Revisions) which has the
benefit of using the less jargony term changes instead of revisions.
 The MediaWiki extension will continue to be named FlaggedRevs, but the
greatly simplified subset of functionality that editors and readers on
en.wikipedia.org will see will be referred to as Pending Changes in the
user interface, help documentation, and other places that we'll talk about
this feature for non-developers working on English Wikipedia.

Thanks everyone for weighing in!  We'll be updating the message strings on
flaggedrevs.labs to reflect the new name:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Message_updates

Rob

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 3:27 PM, Rob Lanphier ro...@wikimedia.org wrote:

 Hi everyone,

 It looks like the discussion on the name is dying down, so I'd like to
 summarize what I think we've heard here:
 1.  There's no clear favorite out there.  In addition to the two ideas we
 put forward (Pending Revisions and Double Check), there's been quite a
 bit of discussion around alternatives, for example:  Revision Review and
 Pending Edits.
 2.  There's are still some that aren't comfortable changing the name away
 from Flagged Protection, but that doesn't appear to be a widely held view.
 3.  Some people like Double Check, but some people dislike it a lot.  The
 people who like it seem to be comfortable with the colloquial use of it,
 whereas the people that dislike it don't like the lack of precision and the
 possible confusion created by the use of the word double.
 4.  Pending Revisions seems to be something most people would settle for.
  It's probably not the hands down favorite of too many people, but it
 doesn't seem to provoke the same dislike that Double Check does.
 5.  Pending Edits is a simplification of Pending Revisions that seems
 to have some support, as it replaces the jargony Revision with the easier
 Edits
 6.  Hyperion Frobnosticating Endoswitch seems to have gathered a cult
 following.  Yes, we have a sense of humor.  No, we're not going there.  :-)

 A little background as to where we're at.  Double Check had an
 enthusiastic following at the WMF office, but we're not inclined to push
 that one if it's going to be a fight (it's far from the unanimous choice at
 WMF anyway).  Revision Review seems to be heading a bit too far into
 jargon land for our comfort.  Pending Revisions is the compromise that
 seems to stand up to scrutiny.  A variation such as Pending Edits or
 Pending Changes also seems acceptable to us.

 That's where we stand now.  If you haven't spoken up yet, now is the time,
 since we're only a couple of days from making a final decision on this.
  Please weigh in here:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Terminology

 Thanks
 Rob


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Re: [WikiEN-l] Renaming Flagged Protections

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

It looks like the discussion on the name is dying down, so I'd like to
summarize what I think we've heard here:
1.  There's no clear favorite out there.  In addition to the two ideas we
put forward (Pending Revisions and Double Check), there's been quite a
bit of discussion around alternatives, for example:  Revision Review and
Pending Edits.
2.  There's are still some that aren't comfortable changing the name away
from Flagged Protection, but that doesn't appear to be a widely held view.
3.  Some people like Double Check, but some people dislike it a lot.  The
people who like it seem to be comfortable with the colloquial use of it,
whereas the people that dislike it don't like the lack of precision and the
possible confusion created by the use of the word double.
4.  Pending Revisions seems to be something most people would settle for.
 It's probably not the hands down favorite of too many people, but it
doesn't seem to provoke the same dislike that Double Check does.
5.  Pending Edits is a simplification of Pending Revisions that seems to
have some support, as it replaces the jargony Revision with the easier
Edits
6.  Hyperion Frobnosticating Endoswitch seems to have gathered a cult
following.  Yes, we have a sense of humor.  No, we're not going there.  :-)

A little background as to where we're at.  Double Check had an
enthusiastic following at the WMF office, but we're not inclined to push
that one if it's going to be a fight (it's far from the unanimous choice at
WMF anyway).  Revision Review seems to be heading a bit too far into
jargon land for our comfort.  Pending Revisions is the compromise that
seems to stand up to scrutiny.  A variation such as Pending Edits or
Pending Changes also seems acceptable to us.

That's where we stand now.  If you haven't spoken up yet, now is the time,
since we're only a couple of days from making a final decision on this.
 Please weigh in here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Terminology

Thanks
Rob
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Re: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Renaming Flagged Protections

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi Phoebe,

Replies inline...

On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 12:12 AM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.comwrote:

 On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 1:04 PM, Rob Lanphier ro...@robla.net wrote:
  We're planning to change label of the Pending changes tab to Pending
  revision, since what people will see when they visit that tab is the
  pending revision, not the diff against the old version.  The nice thing
  about then naming the feature itself Pending Revisions is that it
 aligns
  with what people will see as the most prominent feature of the UI.

 Got it. Well, I personally like pending revisions, as I said (bit
 long for a tab label, but oh well).


So, as I mentioned in my previous email, we're dabbling with the idea of
Pending (something else).  See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Terminology#Pending...


Can it go to the other side of the
 history tab though, so it doesn't show up before the edit tab when
 reading across? (I'm sure there's an argument to be made both ways,
 but I'd expect a new feature to show up as the last tab in standard UI
 design).


I'm not sure what the rationale is, but I asked here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:FlaggedRevs_issues#Tab_placement_in_Vector_and_Monobook

 Where will it go in Vector?


Hrm...we should probably make Vector default on the test site.  I'm looking
into that.

At any rate, you can see it by logging in at
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org and visiting a page that has pending
revisions.  An example (as of this writing) is here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Vince_(2005)

Rob
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Re: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Renaming Flagged Protections

[Rob Lanphier]

On Tue, May 25, 2010 at 12:15 PM, phoebe ayers phoebe.w...@gmail.comwrote:

 On further thought... what about Pending edits ? I do like pending
 as part of the name, especially if this is the name going on the UI
 for the link/tab/whatever where you would see them. It also seems to
 me that the name in the UI doesn't have to be quite the same as the
 name of the feature itself -- here is where you see the pending edits,
 which are part of the revision review feature, aka
 special:flaggedrevs. (or something).


Hi Phoebe,

We considered going in that direction.  The tough part about it is that the
name goes against the grain of what we want to use in the UI.

Take a look at this page:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Vince_(2005)

We're planning to change label of the Pending changes tab to Pending
revision, since what people will see when they visit that tab is the
pending revision, not the diff against the old version.  The nice thing
about then naming the feature itself Pending Revisions is that it aligns
with what people will see as the most prominent feature of the UI.

Rob
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[WikiEN-l] Flagged Protection Revert Etiquette (Re: Renaming Flagged Protections)

[Rob Lanphier]

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 9:58 PM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote:

 By the way, I'm assuming that some edits will be of the sort I would
 normally remove the material and start a talk page discussion. In
 that case, is the right thing to do to approve the edit and then
 remove the material and start a talk page discussion, and presumably
 as a reviewer, your edit removing the material won't be caught up in
 flagged revisions itself?


Starting a separate thread since this is off of the naming topic.

I don't think it's necessary to accept the edit, since the unaccepted
version is never really marked as rejected in the edit history per se, but
rather, just never gets promoted.  The edit will still exist in the edit
history, so it's not lost forever.

The right thing to do is to do the exact same thing you would do with an
unprotected page.  If it's not obviously vandalism, you can use the undo
function with a polite note in the edit comment to discuss the change on the
talk page.  Presumably, you're doing this as an autoconfirmed user, which
means that your edits will be automatically accepted.

Rob
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged Protection Revert Etiquette (Re: Renaming Flagged Protections)

[Rob Lanphier]

On Sat, May 22, 2010 at 12:05 AM, Carcharoth carcharot...@googlemail.comwrote:

 Can you reject with a let's discuss on the talk page? What I am
 thinking is that some people use edit summaries to alert other editors
 to a talk page discussion, and if this is not possible with the
 FlaggedRevs system, I would be inclined to accept an edit and then
 revert it and suggest a talk page discussion.




At this very moment, there is no reject button.  That's one of the last
minute features that we're working on here:
http://flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia:Reject_Pending_Revision

There is already a comment entry field beside the approve (accept) button
right now, and there's no reason I can see why that same comment entry field
won't be used for the proposed reject button.

There is currently a de-approve button (which we're renaming unaccept),
but that's only for the rare case where someone has accepted a revision, and
then you're unmarking it.



 What I'm asking is whether you need to accept first or not.


Nope, you shouldn't need to.



 I get the
 impression from what you are saying that you can click undo
 straightaway and that automatically accepts the edit and undoes it in
 one step (I would replace the automatic undo summary).



Not quite.  This is what a whiteboard is really handy for  :)  I'm guessing
you may have a slightly incorrect way of thinking about how the feature
works, and that's causing some confusing in cases like this.

It may be helpful to understand how this feature works under the hood to be
able to visualize what's happening.  Each revision has a flag associated
with it (the accepted flag) which by default is false (unaccepted).
 Approving/accepting an article flips that flag to true (accepted).  The
article that gets shown is the latest one with the flag set true
(accepted).

The thing that's very confusing for people is that they want to think about
three states for a given revision:  approved, rejected, and
unreviewed.  That's not the way the feature is implemented though.
 Rejected and unreviewed are indistinguishable at the database level.

There is a distinction that's a fair approximation for rejected versus
unreviewed, which is by answering the question is there a later accepted
revision than this unaccepted revision I'm looking at?  If there is, then
the revision is implictly rejected.  If there isn't, then the revision is
implicitly unreviewed.  That's how this feature works.  We treat
unaccepted revisions after the latest accepted revision as pending
revisions.

So, back to your question.  When you click undo on a pending revision,
there's no magic accepting going on of the pending revision.  Instead,
you're just putting an accepted revision after it, thus implicitly rejecting
that revision.



 Normally, when
 reverting and adding a custom edit summary, I load the previous page
 version and save that with an edit summary. But I don't think that
 will work here, though maybe it will.


Yup, that will still work just fine.



 I suspect that any action by an autoconfirmed user will automatically
 accept something of any actions not yet reviewed. Will those
 autoconfirmed users get a warning that they might unwittingly be
 accepting edits they might not have reviewed?


Yup, they do.  There's a banner at the top of the page that tells them
exactly this.

Rob
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[WikiEN-l] Renaming Flagged Protections

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

As William alluded to, a bunch of us have been studying the user interface
for Flagged Protections and figuring out how to make it more intuitive.

In trying to solve the user interface problems as well as generally figuring
out how we're going to talk about this feature to the world at large, it
became clear that the name Flagged Protections doesn't adequately describe
the technology as it looks to readers and editors. It's a tough name to work
with. This iteration of the technology is very different from the German
implementation, and there's no flagging in the proposed configuration.
Additionally, protection in our world implies no editing whereas this
feature actually opens up pages currently protected so that everyone can
edit.

So, we would like to make a change to the name of the Flagged Protections
feature prior to deploying it to en.wikipedia.org. Under the hood, we would
still be using the FlaggedRevs extension (no change there), but the name
that we talk about in the user-visible portions of the site and
documentation would be something new.

Here were some criteria we're using to find a name:

   - Must not introduce obsolete terminology (e.g. there's no flagging in
   our proposed deployment)
   - Terminology should be consistent with terms we want to use in the user
   interface
   - Must not make too strong of a statement of quality/consensus or terms
   that make us out as publishers approving content from the mountaintop
   - Should not imply we're creating an elite new classes of users
   - Should not convey a strong sense of restriction. The feature, as
   proposed for the trial [1], is less restrictive than semi-protection
   - Should not be too geeky/too technical/too jargony
   - Should not be too slick/too cutesy. We're not doing this in the name of
   creating glossy brochures with pictures of a conference room full of people
   in formal business attire nodding with approval at a projection of a pie
   chart - we just want a name that won't be confusing.

It turns out that filters out quite a few names (including Flagged
Protection among other things). Here's the alternatives that made the cut:

   - Pending Revisions - this name is very consistent with what everyone
   will see in many parts of the user interface, and what it will be used for
   (i.e. providing a queue of pending revisions)
   - Double Check - this was a late entrant, but has the distinct
   advantage of clearly communicating what we envision this feature will be
   used for (i.e. enforcing a double check from a very broad community).

A protracted debate on the name will likely delay the eventual launch on the
feature, so we're hoping we can have a quick, respectful discussion on the
merits of the different proposals so that we can make the change quickly and
move on. We really need to have a name fully locked down no later than
Friday, May 28. Please let us know your thoughts here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Terminology

We're in the process of working on a lot of terminology tweaks in the user
interface in anticipation of the launch. If you're interested in that detail
work, I'll post more information about that on wikitech-l (hopefully by
end-of-day Monday), as well as on the talk page above.

Rob

[1] - See the proposed configuration for trial phase:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Trial
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Renaming Flagged Protections

[Rob Lanphier]

On Fri, May 21, 2010 at 3:34 PM, FT2 ft2.w...@gmail.com wrote:

 Might help to sum up what exactly it does or how it's used (2-4 bullet
 points) so that people trying to pick a name to match its features but
 haven't followed the lengthy debate, are up to date on it.


That's fair.  Here's the gist of it:
*  An unprotected article gets put under Pending Revisions/Double Check
by an admin
*  From that point forward, edits from anonymous users are listed as
pending revisions, and aren't displayed to other anonymous readers by
default (though they'll be accessible from a pending revisions tab)
*  Any autoconfirmed user can then mark the latest pending revision as
accepted, or revert to the latest accepted revision.

I just uploaded a bunch of images that may help people visualize the feature
as we see it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Terminology

Here's the permissions as we're currently planning to deploy them for the
trial:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Trial

Rob
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[WikiEN-l] Flagged Protection trial page

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi everyone,

In William's update, he wrote:

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 10:25 PM, William Pietri will...@scissor.comwrote:

 Also upcoming is [...]some work with the
 community to figure out the remaining details of the community side of
 the trial (keep an eye on RobLa's activity there)



More on that.  If you haven't kept a watch on the following page, and you're
really interested in what were planning on, I'd suggest you put this one in
your watchlist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Trialhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Trial#Reviewing

This past week, I've updated the sections on Reviewing and created a new
Initial article count limits section, as well as some shuffling and
trimming.   We want to make sure that what we have passes muster from a
simplicity standpoint, so you'll notice that what's there is greatly
simplified from some of the other proposals that have been floated.

The idea here is to make sure we have a plan ready to go if the trial were
ready to start tomorrow.   That's not to say that the trial *will* start
tomorrow, but we're getting close enough to being ready that we need to lock
these things down, because there are very few things that require code
changes that we'll be willing to consider at this point.

If you have any comments/suggestions/complaints/etc about the policy, please
reply here, or put them on the talk page for the trial.

Thanks!
Rob
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Re: [WikiEN-l] Flagged protection and patrolled revisions

[Rob Lanphier]

On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 10:25 AM, Aryeh Gregor
simetrical+wikil...@gmail.comsimetrical%2bwikil...@gmail.com
 wrote:

 How about this.  No message on the edit page itself.  When they save
 the edit, they're redirected to the draft page of that article, with a
 message at the top saying something like This is a publicly-viewable
 draft, and will be shown to all viewers by default after review.
 There's no need to mention it *before* the edit, is there?


Hi Aryeh,

I think this an idea worth discussing more, but I think the idea may get
lost if it stays solely on this mailing list, so here's what I'm going to
recommend:
1.  File a bug on bugzilla.wikimedia.org.
2.  Let me know that you've done that.
3.  I'll add further consideration to our backlog

I'm pretty doubtful that we'll be able to get to this before launch.  My
understanding here (based on what I heard in the WMF meeting, but I may have
misheard) is that what is being requested is how the German Wikipedia used
to work, and they switched it to the current behavior.  That means that, at
a minimum, we'll need some more time to think about the proposed change than
we'd like to let delay the initial trial.  That's not to say that we won't
get to it, but getting more experience with the feature would be best before
tinkering with this aspect of it.

Make sense?
Rob
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[WikiEN-l] Fwd: Ramping up the Flagged Revs trial

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi folks,

As we've gotten down to brass tacks in planning the deployment of Flagged
Revisions on en.wikipedia.org, it's become obvious that we'll probably need
to limit the number of articles put under Flagged Protection at first.  A
couple of reasons for doing this:
a)  Performance - we know already from de.wikipedia.org and from watching
flaggedrevs.labs.wikimedia.org that this feature can impact performance.
 So, we'd like to start small and build up from there
b)  Community norm development - we'd like to give the community a chance to
use this in production in a limited way to start with to get a feel for the
feature in the wild.  We suspect many people will appreciate the opportunity
to see this in action and get a better sense of the policy implications
without having to worry about finding that half of English Wikipedia is
under Flagged Protection.

So, we're planning on putting an upper bound of 2000 articles when we start
the trial.  We'll then see how this plays out.  If performance takes a
severe hit, we'll need to work with the admin community for a plan to back
down from that number (in lieu of total reverting the feature).  If things
are going well on all fronts, we can possibly bump things up.

I've outlined this here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Trialhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions/Trial

What would be useful for this group to figure out is:
1.  What articles would be the best candidates to start off with?  From a
technical perspective, it'd be really handy to have a representative sample
of traffic characteristics (e.g. high traffic and low traffic articles),
since caching is one of the big areas of performance hit.
2. If we need to start weeding out articles to get the total count down,
what order should we go in?

Please leave your thoughts on the talk page, and/or flesh out the portions
of the main article that still need love (that page in particular needs some
help).

Thanks!
Rob
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[WikiEN-l] Helping out with Flagged Revs

[Rob Lanphier]

Hi folks,

As of today, I'm working as a contractor at Wikimedia Foundation,
helping out with several things, one of which being the Flagged Revs
rollout.

One thing I'm going to be helping William and the crew out with is
working out some of the unanswered questions in the description of the
rollout phase:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Flagged_protection_and_patrolled_revisions
(and accompanying pages)

I've been following the threads and playing around with the features,
but I'm probably not as up to speed on this stuff as many of you are,
so I'm sure I'll be begging your indulgence from time-to-time.

If there is anything on the pages above that you know needs correction
or clarification based on the existing consensus, please be bold make
that fix.  Citations back to email discussions on anything
controversial would be especially helpful for me, but not required.
I'll be updating those pages based on my understanding, so it'll be
helpful to start from a base of current understanding rather than what
the understanding was a year ago.

Thanks for your help!
Rob

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Chile earthquake article vs Haiti earthquake article

[Rob]

There's also the lack of interesting controversies to spur editors'
interest in the Chilean earthquake.  With Haiti, you had Pat
Robertson's stupid comments, the alleged attempted kidnapping of
orphans, the invasion of Scientology, etc.  Haiti's geographic
proximity also increased relative coverage.  The US English language
media also largely ignores Latin America unless Hugo Chavez says
something to hurt our feelings.

Of course these theories only apply to US-based editors.  It would be
an interesting exercise to geographically map out IP addresses and see
where the interest and lack of interest is coming from.

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[WikiEN-l] Grey crossed out links in edit history (or: did I miss another software update?)

[Rob]

Not sure what's going on in the edit history of [[Sam Walton]].  There
are a number of grey crossed out links.  At first I thought it might
be a new way of displaying deleted edits but they still appear after I
log out, and deleted edits on other articles still appear in the
normal fashion.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Grey crossed out links in edit history (or: did I miss another software update?)

[Rob]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 12:50 PM, Kanon kanon...@gmail.com wrote:
 Those edits have been oversighted.
 More information on oversight can be found here:
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Oversight

How odd.  As far as I recall, there wasn't anything in those edits
except simple vandalism and reverts of said vandalism.

Thanks for clearing up my confusion.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Grey crossed out links in edit history (or: did I miss another software update?)

[Rob]

On Wed, Feb 24, 2010 at 1:15 PM, Risker risker...@gmail.com wrote:


 As an oversighter, I can review these edits, and I can tell you that, while
 some may consider it simple vandalism, the edits contained potentially
 libelous information about a person or persons that is unsuitable for public
 consumption.  The suppressions met the criteria for removal from view to
 everyone, including administrators.

For the record, I don't object to the removal of these edits, either
in principle or in this particular practice.  I don't recall anything
extraordinarily problematic, but without the ability to review said
edits, my memory isn't enough to base any sort of objection upon.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Grey crossed out links in edit history (or: did I miss another software update?)

[Rob]

Incidentally, if the oversighted edits concerned a certain gentleman
and his alleged predilection for oral copulation, then that vandal has
returned to the article.

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Re: [WikiEN-l] Age fabrication and original research

[Rob]

On Fri, Oct 2, 2009 at 2:21 PM, Ken Arromdee arrom...@rahul.net wrote:


 Searching far and wide to find a secondary source that quoted the primary
 source gains you *nothing* except compliance with Wikipedia rules.  The
 secondary source isn't going to do any better fact-checking than you did when
 you just looked at the primary source directly--it just fills a rules
 requirement.

The secondary sources (presumably, ideally) will discuss why there is
a discrepancy between the birth records and the obituaries and
encyclopedias and dig into the issue a lot further than just merely
announcing the obituaries are wrong.  Searching far and wide may be
too much to ask, and I realize that not every editor has the research
mojo of a librarian, but all I did was track down a newspaper article
and a biography.  Perhaps digging up the former is too much, but is it
really too much to ask that editors working on a biographical article
crack open a biography of the subject?

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