Meta:Babel/Archives/2007-07

Protection of Privacy and Checkusers on zh.wikipedia

According to the CheckUser policy of wikipedia，

• • The community must approve at least two CheckUsers per consensus. Activity will be checked mutually. The user requesting check user status must request it within his local community and advertise this request properly (village pump, mailing list when available, ...). The editor must be familiar with the privacy policy. After gaining consensus (70%-80%) in his local community, with at least 25-30 editors' approval, the user should list himself under Requests for permissions with a link to the page with the community's decision.If an insufficient number of voters do not allow to vote for two checkusers on a wiki, there will be no checkuser on that wiki. [1]

I am greatly astonished to see that user:Shizhao [[2]] whose status has never been approved by anyone is now the SOLE user with access to CheckUser in the chinese wikipedia![[3]] This situation is totally against the wiki CheckUser policy cited above.

In fact,not only user:Shizhao never has the approval of any chinese wiki user to gain the access to CheckUser right, but the very idea of having access to CheckUser right by any chinese wiki user is NOT approved in chinese wikipedia! (See the discussion in chinese Wikipedia talk:Checkuser)

It is well known that thousands of Chinese internet users are jailed and toutured by the Police for their daring FREE SPEECH; and the wikipedia site is offically blocked by the Chinese Communist Government. Those who have find some way to bypass "the Great Firewall" and write articles here like "6.4 Tiananmen massacure" ,"Falungong persecution","Human right in Chia"... risk grave danger if their PRIVACY is leaked by Wikipedia.

A Chinese journalist Shi Tao was imprisoned for 10 years for releasing a document of the Communist Party to an overseas Chinese democracy site,the Chinese government can get him only beacuse Yahoo!cn released his Email information, Yahoo! is currently being suited in US for this.

User:Shizhao claims to live in Beijing now(according to his blog). What can he do if the THOUGHT POLICE of the Chinese Communist Party demand him to reveal the IP addresses of wiki users? Who can say that User:Shizhao is not himself a THOUGHT POLICE of the Chinese Communist Party?

Dear Wikipedia, Please

• 1. immediately REMOVE User:Shizhao's UNAUTHORIZED CheckUser right.
• 2. check out how this happened.
• 3. find a way to protect the privacy of wiki users from being abused like this.

THANKS! --Protect-our-PRIVACY 20:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Shizhao is a steward, and therefore has checkuser rights on any wiki without an existing checkuser. Perhaps he should remove the right himself, however, given that he is already an authorized steward of the Wikimedia foundation, there is little more point to this. Bastique 21:10, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

to protect the privacy of chinese wikipedia users and to follow the checkuser policy,Shizhao must be removed from having checkuser right by another person OR be removed from steward status.--Protect-our-PRIVACY 21:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

If he was not elected he has to remove his status; but I'm convinced he uses the checkuser tool only when needed, in accordance with policy, and he doesn't release any data. --.anaconda 21:23, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

As Shizhao's omnipresent checkuser access is against policy, I have removed it. I am sure, however, that he has been acting in good faith, as he is a well-trusted member of the community. Please note that the checkuser logs are available to all stewards and checkusers, and if any checkuser is abusing the privelege, it is transparent to all of us. Bastique 21:32, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! The protection of privacy of the chinese wiki users deserve special attention beacuse of the potential risk they have to face.--Protect-our-PRIVACY 01:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

According to some users on Zh.wikipedia, they attacked other users, destroyed other user’s contributions, registered multiple IDs to keep acting the same when other ID were banned, or simply logon as IP only user to acted (or pretended) as different users.

This has been an issue when some users could not have or continue having the response or interaction with others and started doing things not in good manner. Just ban the ID or IP obviously is not enough as I suggested in the past. There are other mechanism should be implemented or considered to deter this kind of behavior. However, I do not believe Shizhao is trying to violate wikipedia’s policy according to his record and who he is trying to check. There are registered and anonymous users in recent days trying to stop anyone who bag them to respect other users and wikipedia’s policy and attack those users who bag them. Due to the situation and experience I had, I do not feel this so called Protect-our-PRIVACY is really trying to tell the whole story.--Cobrachen 02:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Because user:影武者 on , vi, en, fr, de, ko wp register user:Louer, pretend to be user:Louer and personal attack (see zh:Wikipedia:互助客栈/求助#有人冒認 User:Louer, zh:User talk:Louer#其他语言的用户名), User:Tomchiukc request me CheckUser these users.--Shizhao 02:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

PS: Protect-our-PRIVACY is new user on zh wp --Shizhao 02:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Due to the recent attacks on Chinese Wikipedia, Shizhao was just acting on behalf of protecting Chinese Wikipedia because many Chinese Wikipedia users had asked for checking the IP address of the attackers. I do not think it's fair to say Shizhao is against the policy.

PS: Protect-our-PRIVACY is not only a new user on zh.wp but also a new user on meta. I doubt what he requested here can be trusted. --H.T. Chien / 眼鏡虎 02:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Let me state that as a fellow steward I am not questioning Shizhao's judgment or capability. My removal of the Checkuser access should be considered a favor to Shizhao, as none of us are to retain those authorizations indefinitely without community support. Bastique 02:53, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I am not here to charge user:Shizhao for any crime that he has done or not done, I simply demand everyone to follow the formal WIKI POLICY。 What user:Shizhao and his mate User:Cobrachen are talking about is simply irrelevent. According to the record [4], user:Shizhao has auto-authorized the checkuser right well before 2006.5.14. --Protect-our-PRIVACY 03:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

What crime he has done or not done? Any real evidence? At Zh.wikipedia there are so many false accuses in recent days. He definitely has done something to trigger those "USERS" to attacked others, but it doesn't mean it's crime. So, until you have good evidence, you could not say it's crime, not matter he was involved or not. It's just some decision he or other steward made.--Cobrachen 03:11, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

To Bastique: I am just curious. Is it right for you to remove shizhao's checkuser function without having an in-depth discussion with the whole community, especially people from the Chinese Wikipedia?--Seasurfer 03:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Bastique is right. I did not promptly remove checkuser on zh wp --Shizhao 03:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Folks, I have two proposals about the discussion above

1. How about setting a section or a subpage about user:影武者 and his impersonifications on Vandalism reports? I assume Westerner Wikimedians (and currently they are majority of actively involved into the global community) currently have no idea how heavily Eastern Asian language projects suffer this sequel of vandalism, and it will be beneficial for us all to have a hub about relevant informations. I know another page about him or her on Japanese Wikipedia and suppose there is another somewhere else.
2. And how about moving this discussion once to Requests for comments/Checkuser right on the Chinese project? This page is not aiming to have a lengthy discussion anyway, and I assume all of you would agree it continues for a while... --Aphaia 03:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

A problem: how process Cross different Wikimedia wikis Request for CheckUser? --Shizhao 04:00, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Aphaia, we should bring this issue back to Chinese Wikipedia and reach a consensus. Let's try not to clog this place.--Seasurfer 04:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• • It is not a surprise that User:Shizhao,User:Seasurfer and User:Cobrachen etc..are all in the same line, because they know each other well before;theese chinese wiki administrators have formed a gang to suffocate any voice against the abuse of their status, a really sad situation. Since no one can stop Shizhao and his comrades's abuse of "power" in chinese wikipedia, the discussion here is justified.--Protect-our-PRIVACY 04:48, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• Where is the evidence you could provide that we know each other as you described here? Just because we are all users of zh.wikipedia or just because we are all living in the same planet? You keep acting like this without evidence, you are just pushing yourself into more troubles and discrediting anything you said and going to say. Think twice before your next posts.--Cobrachen 05:44, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

This is blatantly not right. You accused Shizhao in chinese wikipedia without prove and disseminated the wrong idea has already violated the rules in wikipedia. Moreover, you still cannot prove that Shizhao violate his position as a steward. I strongly suggest you to show evidence before bringing up such a serious accusation.--Seasurfer 05:00, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• "Bastique is right. I did not promptly remove checkuser on zh wp --Shizhao 03:38, 8 February 2007 (UTC) "

I simply donnot care who Shizhao or User:Seasurfer is, what I care is to how to protect the privacy of millions of chinese wiki users from illegal access by any unauthorized person.--Protect-our-PRIVACY 05:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• To Bastique:According to this so called Protect-our-PRIVACY;spost on zh.wikipedia, he also accused you and other stewards which could chnage your own group menberships from another to Nonoe are abusing wikipedia's policies and rights. Since he used the same log list as evidence in the beginning of this post. I believe someone would want to explain to him what this log really means so he would not make more mistakes.--Cobrachen 05:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• The Zh: wikipedia has no Arbitration Committee. According to CheckUser policy#Access, the community has two options:
  1. The community must approve at least two CheckUsers per consensus (which, so far as I can tell, has not happenedzh:Wikipedia talk:Checkuser)
  2. There will be no checkuser on that wiki. Editors will have to ask a Steward to check if UserX is a sockpuppet of UserY. To do so, simply add your request to Requests for CheckUser information listing these users and explaining why you ask for such a check (with links).
• As far as I know, no such request has been filed on RfCU. And, in any case, stewards are not supposed to work for their own (home) wikia, in fear of any potential conflict of interest.

--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月08日( Thu ), 06:02:10+06:02 06:07, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

On the page of RfCU，it stated "If there are no users with CheckUser rights on your project, and you wish for information on an editor or an IP address, please make a public request on this page, or contact a steward privately via email or IRC." It seems to allow user contact steward privately for the Checkuser request. Therefore, the request might not be filed on RfCU.--Charlotte1125 06:33, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Charlotte1125; using checkuser without open request isn't necessarily equal to abuse in my opinion. Also I think it may not be a case of "conflict of interest". As far as I know conflict of interest for steward means non-self requested desysoping on the project the steward is active. --Aphaia 08:30, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• Shizhao has said "Bastique is right". What user:shizhao has done and seen can not be reverted;we can do nothing if user:shizhao has releashed any personal information of wiki users to a third party. What we should consider is to find a way or make a rule to prevent any unauthorized person, steward or not, from assessing the IP addresses of chinese wiki users.--Protect-our-PRIVACY 07:06, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

You have misunderstood what Shizhao said here because you do not fully understand how the account management on MediaWiki is working. Maybe you should know it better before you say anything. Try to install MediaWiki on your PC from MediaWiki.org and then do some admin tasks, then you will know what Shizhao means.

I'm a little sick about this argument now. Can you just stop the complain because you do not understand how the account management works in Wiki-projects? Thanks. --H.T. Chien ( Talk / Contributions ) 16:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

• • It is not a surprise that User:Shizhao,User:Seasurfer and User:Cobrachen etc..are all in the same line, because they know each other well before;theese chinese wiki administrators have formed a gang to suffocate any voice against the abuse of their status, a really sad situation. User:Htchien's words above gives us another example of this situation. It is interesting to notice the talk of the 4 chinese wiki adminstraters (User:Htchien,User:Seasurfer; User:Charlotte1125and User:Cobrachen) above show no sign of care of the real point: the Protection of Privacy. It's understandble that User:Htchien,User:Seasurfer; User:Charlotte1125and User:Cobrachen do not care about the PRIVACY of chinese wiki users who live in China since these 4 do not live in mainland China,what they only care is to defend their friend user:shizhao.

• • For clarity, I summarize the points again:
• 1.The chinese wiki community has already rejected the idea that anyone there should be authourized to the CheckUser status for the reason of potential risk of leaking privacy ro the chinese government.

• 2.User:shizhao's status as steward gives him the access to the IP address of all chinese wiki users, User:shizhao has used this privilige since 2005 without being approved by any Cn wiki community member. This situation is centainly contray to the CheckUser Policy cited above.

• 3.User:shizhao has been the sole user in chinese wikia who has the CheckUser right, the way he uses CheckUser can not be checked by any chinese wiki user.

• 4.Due to the special situation that nealy all Chinese wiki users have to face, having their real IP addresses checked by someone unauthorized by the chinese wikia community constitutes grave potential personal danger for all Chinese wiki users, especially when the only chinese wiki user who enjoys the Checkuser status acually lives in Beijing, that's to say,under the direct rule and watch of the Chinese Communist Party — the infamous BigBrother of internet.

• 5.No one wants to challenge the good faith of user:shizhao or his co-administers in Cn wikia,that's not the point.

• 6.My conclusion is: The best way to protect the privacy of all wiki users is to follow strictly the wiki CheckUser Policy  :“If an insufficient number of voters do not allow to vote for two checkusers on a wiki, there will be no checkuser on that wiki”etc... Metawiki should consider to make a rule to avoid the possible conflict between CheckUser Policy and a steward's omnipotent privilige in the case of chinese wikia: the steward status of a wiki user should not automatically give him/her the right of acting as the sole CheckUser user in the wikia he belongs to. --Protect-our-PRIVACY 18:37, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree. I'm convinced that this right has potentially put user:shizhao in a political dilemma. Under chinese strick rule on internet censorship, powerful user on Wikipedia where many sensitive information has been written will potentially be targeted by the govnerment and it's not necessary for him to have such great risk to deal with Thought Police.

P.S. Protect-our-PRIVACY seems to be banned in Chinese wiki without breaking any rule, after proposing checkuser issue. [5] --歲月流星 06:48, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

There are no checkusers in Chinese Wikipedia. With the same username Jusjih, I am in the USA while being an admin of Chinese and English Wikipedias, Chinese and English Wiktionaries, Chinese, English, and multilingual Wikisources, and Wikimedia Commons, may I nominate myself to eventually become a steward here? I am planning for adminship here first.--Jusjih 09:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

You will be able to nominate yourself to the next election someday occurs. Currently we have no plan of steward election. And there is no explicit relevance between stewardship and meta sysopship. I rather recommend you to nominate you as checkuser on Chinese Wikipedia or whatever the local project you are interested in and big enough have their own checkusers. --Aphaia 10:52, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The highest userclass that I have at Wiki sites is being a bureaucrat at Chinese Wikisource, Chinese Wiktionary, and Wikimedia Commons. I am thinking whether to run for a steward eventually becuase I see distrusts toward Shizhao here. Shizhao from Beijing, the capital of Red China, is the only Chinese-speaking admin and steward here. At various Wiki sites, I am highly concerned of my fellow admins who are physically in Red China because they are much more vulnerable to politically motivated criminal arrests and prosecutions (persecutions indeed). Based on your suggestion, I will consider requesting checkuser privilege at needed Wiki sites and prepare myself for adminship here, before I consider running for a steward here, as the steward policies are somewhat complex and serious. After all, I consider Red China and American non-acceptance of the rule of the shorter term in our way improving Wiki sites.--Jusjih 16:19, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

What do you mean by highest?--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月23日( Fri ), 16:10:49

W:En:WP:OFFICE

Is there a meta page for the Office Action (=BradPatrick) Policy?--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月08日( Thu ), 16:02:33+16:02

As far as I know, no. I don't know any other wikis WP:OFFICE applied than the English Wikipedia nor on which office actions were taken. You found something on meta? --Aphaia 17:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

But it seems that the page belongs here:

This page is a Wikimedia-wide official policy. It was established by Jimbo Wales as necessary for the Foundation's governance.

--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月08日( Thu ), 17:02:12+17:02

The pagehistory suggests that the English Wikipedians took to themselves to expand its reach from on English Wikipedia --> English Wikipedia (And elsewhere) ---> Wikimedia-wide, after User:Jimbo Wales wrote the text without clearly specifying its scope [6]. Thus I take it that it does not automatically apply to other projects.--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月09日( Fri ), 05:02:19+05:02

It accords with what I heard from office people last year; they seemed to intend to apply it to and only to the English Wikipedia, while they didn't clearly deny it should have been applied only to that, and admitted they could apply it to the other projects unanimously, specially in the circumstance they hadn't face the urgent necessity to act under this policy on other projects. We could discuss beforehand publicly if we would like to move or copy it to meta, perhaps on foundation-l, before we really move it to this project. --Aphaia 06:11, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

• The scope is vauge, as many things here are, but it has clearly been used outside of en:wp: see commons:Commons:Pantone color chart. There was quite a mailing list discussion about this, havent found it in the archives yet though. xaosflux ^Talk 18:14, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Thank you. Let me be specific. We are trying to formulate a few policies on w:zh: more clearly. En:WP:OFFICE is a minor point; but if it should be there, it should be there with a proper references.--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月11日( Sun ), 12:02:55+12:02

• • • Since that is Wikimedia-wide, that should probably be here.--Jusjih 09:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Special bot in yi.wikipedia

Most Yiddish speaking users have English as second language and or Hebrew. we need a bot who should sort out automatically those 2 languages it should always appear on top of interlanguage list. in Hebrew wikipedia they have such a bot in use. can somebody help develop this important feature?--יודל 13:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

• Since many interlanguage links are sorted by the pywikipediabots interwiki.py program, let me suggest to the folks responsible for maintaining this software know of your request. File a bug at Sourceforge for it - I know, it should be rather simple to implement. --Purodha Blissenbach 09:06, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Fair use

Hallo, I am a new user. I have a question. I can upload images in fair use in meta? my english is not very well. Thank you.

Der kenner 22:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Never. We accept only GFDL licensed data, and also we recommend you to upload your media to Wikimedia Commons, unless you find a strong reason not to share them project-wide. --Aphaia 01:48, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

There is no good reason here to upload "fair" use images here. When uploading media of your own, or with a free-use license including public domain, you should use Wikimedia Commons. (I suppose that you are commons:User:Der kenner?) Should you have a good reason to claim fair use on a copyrighted image, do not share it project-wide, but upload it to proper Wiki sites accepting fair use. English and Chinese Wikipedias both accept fair use images if there are good reasons to upload them, but even many Wikipedia language subdomains forbid fair use images when most of their users are in countries not allowing fair use as in the USA where the Wiki server is.--Jusjih 16:29, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

Publish Articles

Firstly sorry if i posted this in the wrong place, it has nothing to do with language issues but I was directed here from the main-page talk-page. I was wondering, is there any place in wikimedia projects where one can publish articles? I thought perhaps wikibooks, but it is purely for textbooks and manuals, not ordinary novels. It is my understanding that the wikiproject aims to offer free as much knowledge as copyright laws allow, and perhaps creating a compendium of the 'free' books on the internet would be possible? I would have no idea, but it would be an interesting resource. — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 203.208.92.26 (talk)

We have no project for novels or essays in general. If you published it already or granted some digree for it, it would be within the scope of Wikisource. It doesn't mean however they accept anything. Thank you. --Aphaia 17:35, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

As I administer English, Chinese, and Multilingual Wikisources, I would like to point out s:Wikisource:What_Wikisource_includes. Your original work cannot be published as an article in Wikisource when you are not notable unless you are making translations or annotations to existing notable published works. If you want to publish your own work to be licensed under GFDL you may want to create a username and publish your works as a subpage of your userpage but not as an article.--Jusjih 15:39, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Administrators

Hi.

Is there any way to find all Meta:Adminstrator users?

Special:Listusers/sysop? – rotemliss – Talk 18:34, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

I hope someone knows what happened to my edit diff, becuase I don't. You are welcome to revert if necessary. – rotemliss – Talk 18:42, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

• It happened to me before. Perhaps there was an anonymous user who edited before you did, and the two edits were confused.--Hillgentleman | 書 |2007年02月24日( Sat ), 22:22:47

The confused edits would cause an edit conflict. Special:Listusers/sysop gives an automated list of admins. It does not tell admins' language skills, but manually prepared Template:List of administrators shows their language codes.--Jusjih 18:12, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't always cause an edit conflict now we have automatic conflict merging. If 2 people edit close enough together, one can get lost from the history. It's happened to me before. Angela 18:24, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

Question

I have noticed that the Wikimedia Foundation servers have not been working quite well lately, so I'm experiencing constant lagging. Because my computer is quite obsolete, I would like to know if others have noticed this.--Orthologist 21:30, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

The same happens to me sometimes. Cbrown1023 talk 21:31, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Block me

I am planning to run a Tor router from my computer. Please softblock me so I can continue to edit from my wikipedia accounts. 71.163.140.31 01:29, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

This is approved by the user editing at that ip. Firefoxman 01:31, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Block here, or enwiki? Majorly _{(o rly?)} 01:42, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Aromanian Wikipedia

Does it has an administrator? It's oftenly vandalized and it seems that there is nobody to react. That is nobody among administrators, to block vandalisers and to protect templates and so on. I'd like to take more care about this matters but I don't know how to acced to an administrator election there. Very little people works there, and only sporadically.ro:User:Alex:D

Yes, there is an administrator, User:Eeamoscopolecrushuva and the edits you are claiming are "vandalism" were endorsed by him (e.g. [7] and [8]). He is a native speaker of the language, so back off.--Slavomakedonec 23:10, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

The country is called by constitution Republica Makedonija, and so is recognised at other wikipedias. So don't tell me about that.ro:User:Alex:D

That's your POV. The Albanian Wikipedia for example sees otherwise as does the Greek one. Romanian nationalism not allowed here, let the native speakers do their work. Just because Eeamoscopolecrushuva is not a pro-Romanian Aromanian and doesn't subscribe to Romanian propaganda regarding the Aromanians, that doesn't make his views less important.--Slavomakedonec 23:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Foundation issues

I'm interested in getting informed opinions about the question I asked at Talk:Foundation_issues#ultimate_authority.3. Cheers, Nat Krause 00:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Meta:Protected uncreated articles

I created a page for Meta:Protected uncreated articles (editable only by sysops). Your comments to its talk will be apprciated. --Aphaia 08:01, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

After consluting with Aphaia, this was moved to Meta:Protected against recreation and the {{protected title}} template was introduced to make the information on pages blocked from being recreated a bit more informative. This is now parallel with how Commons and w:en do things in this area to reduce confusion. Comments welcomed! ++Lar: t/c 17:05, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Community versus Principles

I would like to ask a general question and opinion (seeking to address a particular issue later on):
Into what extent can a particular community, participating on one of the language versions of one of Wikimedia projects, adapt the Wikimedia principles to its particular needs or desires? For example, consenting (or voting) on the inclusion of original research, or—the other way around—on the exclusion of some categories of information, just because some find it inappropriate? --AtonX 09:07, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Non-wikimedia use of Mediawiki localisation

Hi, I'm not sure where to put this, but can someone point us in the right direction? On fy: we've had a question from another site who would like to set up a MediaWiki. They found the language file they got with it is rather "behind the times", and would prefer to use the messages of the Frisian Wikipedia as a starting point.

1. Our guess was they could export our messages by copying the text on the php-version of Special:Allmessages. Will this do?
2. How do they import those messages into their wiki?

fy:User:Mysha

The best way would be to submit updated West Frisian language files (see MediaWiki localization). These will benefit any future Wikimedia projects or third-party MediaWiki installations in the language. —{admin} Pathoschild 03:03:31, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Obviously, since the advice there is to make small changes, this is never going to happen. All the more so because of all the guidelines here. But it's nice to know that, in theory, there is a way to do so. fy:User:Mysha

A question about a deleted page and a blocked user

en:User:Jason Gastrich is banned from enWP for disruption and vanispamcruftisement. His user page was deleted by Meta:Requests for deletion/Archives/2006/01#User:Jason Gastrich and protected against re-creation, but he has a sockpuppet account, user:Ruth Ginsling, and the same deleted vanity biography has now been posted at that user page and reverted a number of times. I don't know whether this is considered worth fixing or not. Just zis Guy, you know? 23:46, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Looks to me like it needs some sort of attention. The contribution history is tangled and not completely instructive. Since the "Ruth Ginsling" user doesn't appear to be blocked, but also doesn't appear to be the person making the reversions to the deleted Jason Gastrich Bio version, it's not clear if protection of that page is the right approach or not. But that would be my first instinct. That and possibly block the user(s) reverting to that version. But I've been accused of being block happy elsewhere. ++Lar: t/c 10:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed Gastrich's bio from page history. MaxSem 20:22, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta:Babel/Archives/2007-07&action=edit

Crazy Blocking Policies at Wiktionary

The policies and guidlines at Wiktionary are probably the most crazy out there. If you make a mistake you are blocked without any warnings. This is fine if this is a new wiki that is just starting out, but this wiki is not brand new. This odd policy of blocking people on there first offense without any warning I feel will ruin the wiki by scaring away many good editors who mean no harm. For an example, in December 2006, I added a deletion tag to a article I did not already know was deleted. For this I got blocked for a hour! Then I got active in vandal fighting and was making a lot of mistakes, and warning people, wich is against policy there. I got a indef block. Fortunatly I was unblocked a few days later but because of there bad, ineffective policy they could of lost someone who was trying to help out. Today, March 18, 2007 I was blocked yet again for a week because I added a internal link to headers to a dead end article! When you vandalise at wikipedia you usualy do not get a block that long! The thing is I was not even vandalising. The sad thing is someone who was blocked for vandlaism right after me for vandalism by the same guy was only blocked for three days. I was helping out! I know that I am not the only one who this has happened to. The wiki would do far better if they would come up with a more lax blocking policy. —unsigned by Sir James Paul 03:19, 18 March 2007.

Moved from the page "Crazy Blocking Policies at Wiktionary". —{admin} Pathoschild 03:03:14, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I have never seen you sucessfully "help out" en.wiktionary.org. In fact, the damage you do often is not noticed right away (meaning you aren't blocked soon enough) causing considerable cleanup efforts, every time you visit. You claim to be trying to help, yet are unable to read even basic guidelines, or follow any rules at all? --Connel MacKenzie 04:39, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Connel, probably James' behaviour was far from perfect, but I find it particulary hard to assume good faith in your issuing of this threat warning for this. MaxSem 20:17, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Normal Wiktionary procedure (not having over a thousand sysops) is to block violently disruptive vandals/block evaders/persistent disruptors like "Sir James Paul". I actually gave him a warning, having taken the bait, feeling the troll, as it were. I gave him every benefit of the doubt, being as encouraging as possible. You'll note that he is not complaining about me blocking him (much to my surprise.) His trolling here, is a good example of his continued refusal to play by the rules. He could have e-mailed any number of Wiktionary admins, or taken a variety of other outlets. Sorry, but he psychodrama is best played out somewhere other than en.wiktionary.org. --Connel MacKenzie 03:17, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

All the blocks have to do with is bad reverts. Nothing that had to do with behavior. What I am blocked for now is adding a internal link to a header:) I am blocked for a week. No offense but I find that to be a little odd. The admins there are powerhungry, at least most of them are. I have not seen anythings like it:) Peace:) --James, La gloria è a dio 21:54, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I'd say the week long block has something to do with you being warned no less than 3 times (and closer to 10 times), to take some time to familiarize yourself with the project, our guidelines and our formats. You completely disregard the advice given and went charging ahead doing whatever you felt like doing, most of which had to be corrected by other members of the community. By the time Connel snapped at you about your signature, you had gone well beyond exhausing the community's patience. Then, you come back a few months later, showing the same disregard for the community and the project.. what kind of welcome did you expect? --Versageek 22:38, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't think this block was out of line. While some administrators can be rather curt with a block comment when frustrated, SJP was not certainly blocked without warning, nor without cause. He was disruptive, despite attempts by various community members to educate and warn him. Wiktionary's policies may be less formal than Wikipedia, but we have neither the need nor the support for that much detail, most of the time, and it's still a small enough community that common sense and community attention usually do the job well enough. --Dvortygirl 23:48, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I tried to pick a task that I thought I would not break any policies and guidlines if I did it. I was wrong. Listen, I am not trying to troll the place or disrupt it. Take a look at my edits at en.wikipedia and that is clear. --James, La gloria è a dio 00:21, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

That is blatantly false. --Connel MacKenzie 03:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

A spamblock question

Some of you may be aware of the passionate debate at Talk: Spam blacklist over touregypt.net. It appears that the debate over this website is dying down now, & I assumed that the dispute would be settled similar to how we resolve these disputes on en.wikipedia. However, it appears that I am wrong. So how can I expect this dispute to be settled? Will this website be removed from the spamblock blacklist if I have made persuasive arguments, yet the last few editors who object to my opinions still repeat their objections? -- Llywrch 23:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree if there is no good reason, it would be for all to remove a link. The point is how we reach the consensus a particular link is harmless (not spammed). If you feel the discussion wheeling, you would like to move to Requests for comments from the talk to dig up the issue. --Aphaia 09:34, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Note that this discussion has a bit of background at the request for admin/bureaucrat help archives (Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat/Archives/2007/03), where I moved the thread since it seemed to be complete and shifted here. I would expect the admin who goes through and clears out the requests to either tag it with {{done}} or {{notdone}} and also give a brief explanation, given the contentious and lengthy nature of the debate already. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:38, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Flcelloguy, now I'm confused. I proposed the exact same resolution you have above on the Requests for help page -- however, Aphaia stated that this is not how conflicts on Meta are resolved. I am trying to find a way to resolve this outside of Meta, but I am concerned that if I succeed in one venue events in the other will cancel that success. -- Llywrch 00:17, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I took the requests Flcelloguy means as the requests on Talk:Spam blacklist. It is helpful to refer to relevant discussions, if exists, as "see also" or somewhat, and if there is a lengthy debate already, it is nice to keep the explanation on that page as brief as possible, avoid having multiple lengthy discussions here and there. --Aphaia 04:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I still don't see the difference between Flcelloguy's proposal & mine, Aphaia. However, too many electrons have been expended in this discussion, so I'll just assume that I was not clear in what I suggested (now archived at the link Flcelloguy has provided). -- Llywrch 20:04, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

This discussion is now moot: Eagle 101 has removed this website from the Spam blacklist. I believe this section can be archived. Thanks! -- Llywrch 23:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Protection

Could someone unprotect Eliminating index.php from the url and/or its talk page? Both have been protect for MONTHS, in the latter case, almost an entire YEAR. 68.39.174.238 22:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Done, although for future reference Meta:Requests for help from a sysop or bureaucrat is probably more appropriate. Thanks! Flcelloguy (A note?) 23:41, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

duplicated IP addresses

Hi I am a frequent visitor to this site, but have never edited a page. On visiting today I found a message that says I have edited a page in an unhelpful way. This was certainly not me and from what I could glean from the information underneath it is possible that two or more people can share an IP address. Is this true? If not I cannot explain why my IP address is being used to edit wikipedia. 80.41.80.207 20:35, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Well I don't see where exactly your IP was warned, but you probably have a shared IP (depends on your internet provider) and that's why there were previous warnings on your user talk page. Since you're not the same person as the one who had vandalized under your IP address, just ignore them for now. Nishkid64 20:56, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! (This is 80.41.80.207 but at his work address) 82.198.250.9 13:21, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Romani (Gypsy language) Wikipedia ABUSE

Basically, a small number of users--chief among them Desiphral--appear to be using wikipedia for language planning. The problem is illustrated at length on this discussion page. Basically, there exist no verifiable and credible sources (if indeed any exist that are not derived from the wikipedia entries of Desiphral) for the language being written in the Devanagari script.

But if you go to the Romani Wikipedia you will see that the script features as prominently (if not more) as the latin script. In fact the search box within the Romani wikipedia appears to allow only devanagari characters to be typed. Again... there is no proof or indication that there is any active use of devanagari by speakers/users of Romani, other than Desiphral and one or two enthusiastic up-takers that joined him on the Romani wikipedia since then.

I would suggest that the devanagari script has no more place on the Romani wikipedia, than cyrillic does in the French wikipedia.

If this is not the appropriate place to raise this complaint, please direct me to the correct page. Thank you in advance! --74.12.162.88 17:06, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Anyobody? Anything? --74.12.141.73 06:08, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

• Travelling North Germany, I met a person with "indic physiognomy". We got into a conversation in perfect German, as from his side. Interrupted by his cell phone, he talked in a language unknown to me, took notes in devanagari, or a very similar looking script. Asked, which language he had been using, he responded, he was a Gypsy currently living nearby since many years, and had been using a Romani dialect. Romani speakers were to be found everywhere between Scandinavia and South of the Himalaya, he said.
  If this person was not, by accident, Desiphral, you have 1 other specimen of a Romani speaker using devanagari in 1 instance, however rare these may be. Oh, btw. he was not aware of the linguistic denominations of Romani, but suggested/assumed some relations to (a) indic language(s) of Western India, which he gave me the impression to know, too. --Purodha Blissenbach 09:56, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Renaming some pages

Hello! I believe that in an effort to help improve the accessability of Meta, we should address an issue which to me is very concering: the page names of the discussion fora. According to Meta:Index, the four primary fora are:

• Babel, which is Meta-related discussion (you'd think it would be about languages)
• Metapub, which is about Wikimedia (you'd think it would be about Meta)
• Talk:ProposalPolicy, which is not only tangential to the conventional format of names, but it doesn't even make clear what it is about (proposed policies? what kind of policies? Meta policies? Wikimedia Foundation policies?)
• Babylon, which is about languages (but I thought Babel was about languages)

This is a big problem, especially since Meta is supposed to be easily usable by all members of Wikimedia Projects. To address this issue, I propose the following:

• Renaming Meta:Babel to Meta:Village pump (in line with other projects) or Meta:Discussion about Meta.
• Renaming Metapub to Wikimedia discussion.
• Renaming Babylon to Language discussion.

Unless someone clarifies what ProposalPolicy is about, I have no idea what could be done with it. I am open to alternative name suggestions. Any thoughts? —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 03:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

ProposalPolicy has only been edited twice ([9]), both having to do with its creation; nothing has ever been discussed there, so it should probably just be deleted. I support the rest of this proposal, good idea. --Rory096 03:47, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think there is anything glaringly inaccessible about these naming conventions, but if you think it would help, go for it! 24.218.204.54 20:32, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I think it's a good idea, but we would have to ensure that the different languages (i.e. the translations of this page) are in line as well, to prevent further confusion for multilingual users Gaillimh 20:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Babylon was once renamed into a more generic but language specific name, but the people didn't like it and someone renamed it again. Therefore I would ask the proposer to withdraw this part of his proposal for preventing further confusion.Meta:Babel has been known in this name for years and I have never heard anyone complained. I am afraid confusion after renaming instead. As for Metapub it makes a sense for French, Italian, Dutch ... many Wikipedians who named their discussion place somewhere to drink. On the contrary I have been complained they couldn't understand what "Village Pump" means; It is a sort of esoteric name for non involving people. I would friendly recommend the proposer to improve his own project. --Aphaia 14:29, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I haven't thought of that! That's a good point. I still think the names can be confusing for potential Meta contributors -- perhaps we'll work something out. Anyways, whether you like it or not, I am not going away. I am a newcomer (please don't bite) and with success I will become a more-informed regular. Anyways, as a compromise, I decided to only improve the Meta:Index pages because those could stand to be improved. —Signed, your friendly neighborhood MessedRocker. 14:52, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

• I got here, but was likely acually looking for Babylon, which I'll now inspect as to see, if indeed there is information about multilingualism, and the "Babel" Templates of various Wikimedia projects. --Purodha Blissenbach 10:03, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

MediaWiki:Sitenotice

What the bloody hell? Cbrown1023 talk 19:36, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

This new policy might explain :P Majorly _{(o rly?)} 20:33, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

But it did not even last 5 minutes :-( 134.76.10.66 22:59, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Renaming of ga-wiki

Hi! I was wondering if we might change the name of the Irish Wikipedia from Vicipéid to Uacípéid or something similar, as there is no "v" (or "w", for that matter) in the Irish language. I can understand the difficulty in creating a new word, but it seems odd that the word would contain characters not present in the language's alphabet Gaillimh 20:38, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

You should discus it localy and then ask the devs to rename it. MaxSem 20:40, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Will do! Thank you for pointing me in the right direction! Gaillimh 20:44, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Appendix namespace

Brought from Metapub

At Spanish language Wikipedia, community took a decission to have an appendix (anexo in Spanish) namespace for including contents such as tables and lists that are not encyclopedic articles per se, but that does complement an encyclopedia.

The idea came from a suggestion in the proposal of Wikilists, that instead of a separate project, a new namespace should be used instead. Also, in the original proposal for Portal namespace at German language Wikipedia (see Special namespaces for portals and lists) the idea was that the new namespace would also content lists and related material. Contents in this new namespace would be subject to all Wikipedia policies including free contents, neutral point of view, ban of original research, etc., except that contents would not be articles, so a simple list of links might be appropiate.

Fact is that, after a post in the local pub^(here), an informal consultation^(here), and a formal poll^(here), the community decide to: Adopt a definition of Encyclopedic support contents as official policy^(here), and to create a new namespace Anexo (appendix) for placing this kind of content.

Is there any other Wikipedia or another Wikimedia project that would benefit from this new namespace?

— Chlewey 13:08, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

PS. Request for the new namespace is reported as Bug 9304, at Bugzilla.

• Just my opinion: I have always been a bit unhappy about "Portal:" pages, and "List of ..." pages (and a "Main page") sharing a namespace with articles, the names of which are normal words, proper names, or titles of something. Also, I'd sometimes like additional material like image galleries presented in a better form, e.g. including comments in the project language, than the often/usually dump-like collections on commons:. This is valid for all (5) Wikipedias, where I contribute regularly.
  Thus, I am a supporter of such an additional namespace everywhere. --Purodha Blissenbach 10:18, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
• I support such proposal for all Wikimedia portals. Moreover, there should be an automatic link from the main namespace to the corresponding Appendix page (perhaps conditional, if it exists), so that the existence of Appendices becomes obvious for the reader. --AtonX 07:47, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Bugzilla and minor requests

Brought from Metapub

Currently Bugzilla is the correct place to ask Developers to perform some tasks, but this include at least three different kind of tasks:

1. To solve bugs (incorrect or inconvenient behavior of software). This changes will usually help the whole MediaWiki community.
2. To request development of new features, such as having categories be listed in a natural order to each language, instead of machine order (e.g. Bug 164). This changes will usually help the whole MediaWiki community.
3. To request minor changes in the Wikimedia projects, that just need shell access, such as adding a new namespace, allowing subpages in them, etc.. This changes usually affect only one or few Wikimedia projects, and many times are changes that the requester knows how to implement, as they are included in any MediaWiki manual, but, for security reasons, neither local sysops or bureaucrats are allowed to perform. (Administrators of non-Wikimedia wikis would not need bugzilla for this)

Some how, this last implementation, which is an administrative task rather than something needing developement, seems out of place in the Bugzilla system.

At some point I saw a discussion about new MediaWiki releases would allow bureaucrats to manage local namespaces (without shell access), however this seems not to have been implemented or released into Wikimedia implementations.

So, my proposal is that:

1. that kind of requests, that just need shell access but not actual development, would be moved from bugzilla to some other place, such as this meta-wiki. (compare Requests for bot status)
2. if namespaces can be managed without shell access, but just not open to local bureaucrats in Wikimedia projects, at least allow Steweards for this task.

— Chlewey 13:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

WaffenSS on the Korean Wikipedia

I hope I'm posting this at the right place. ... Nilfanion 16:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I moved the discussion to Metapub#WaffenSS on the Korean Wikipedia. Thanks. --Aphaia 18:09, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

User:COIBot

This bot makes uncontroversial edits to its own userspace. It floods recent changes significally, and botmaster's request for bot flag at RFP and WM:RFH did not receive any input for several days. I'll flag it soon if there will be no objections. MaxSem 15:34, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Please flag this bot as it is severely impacting viewing recent changes. Naconkantari 04:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Done. MaxSem 05:18, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

More than one Wikipedias

Do I have to sign up for a new account for each wikipedia that I intend to become a member of? Because I'm wanting to edit 3 wikipedias (English, Chinese, Classical Chinese) and my English account doesn't seem to work on the other ones. Please reply on http://zh-classical.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:LaRoseNoir-CC --LaRoseNoir-CC 18:37, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Currently you have to, while the single sign-on is planed to be introduced. Stay in tune, thanks. --Aphaia 05:16, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Access denied by ACL to xxx.wikimedia.org

Nearly since 4 weeks, access to some pages of wikimedia (e.g. meta.wikimedia.org) has been denied by

Forbidden

You were denied access because:

Access denied by access control list.

Since 1 or 2 weeks, I cannot access most of all pages from wikimedia. Affected are help pages, pictures (e.g. if I call http://de.wikipedia.org) and even the software download site.

I invoke the pages through our enterprise proxy (IP should be 217.5.231.249).

In the beginning I thought it was a temporary problem caused by some actions on wikimedia. But when I'm working at home, all pages are reachable.

I took a look at the 'blocked IP list', but I cannot find the ip of our enterprise proxy.

I did not edit any page (definitely not intentionally, no vandalism). I'm looking only for help and inspiration for our enterprise wikis and my private wiki.

I also cannot believe that any of my colleagues (most of them are software developers and windows/unix adminstrators too) has carried out vandalism intentionally.

What is the reason for 'access denied'? What can I do to unblock access?

It seems that it is not Wikimedia blocking your enterprise proxy but rather your enterprise proxy blocking Wikimedia.

— Chlewey 18:18, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Stewards by activity

Is there something like this? If no, I think I can generate such thing - VasilievVV 14:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe there is and I would find such statistics interesting if you could provide them. Cbrown1023 talk 20:00, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have done something like. See User:VVVBot/M:AA - VasilievVV 13:53, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

•  Support; good job, Vasiliev. Slade ♠ 21:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Polling is evil → Polling has its problems

Greetings, I moved the "Polling is evil" essay to a new title, "Polling can be problematic" and edited it correspondingly six days ago. At that time I proposed an alternate title, "Polling has its problems" which another editor expressed sounded better. I extensively explained the logic for this move and responded to inquiries about it. The page sat for six days at the "Polling can be problematic" title. Today prior to joining any discussion about the move User:Radiant! moved the page back to "Polling is evil" and undid my edits. Afterwards we engaged in a bit of an edit/page move war with my moving the page in correspondance to User:Hillgentleman's preference to the title "Polling has its problems" and the page was subsequently put into full protection. I admit that edit warring is wrong but I was not appreciative of my edits being undone prior to any discussion and responded accordingly. It would be better if this matter could be settled and this protection lifted. Being that I am not very familiar with how Meta works I am wondering what would be the best way to address this dispute? Thanks. Netscott 14:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

• First off, the edits were made without any discussion (let alone consensus). There's nothing special about "six days"; during those six days there was no discussion at all on the talk page, just a few explanations and one user adding a one-liner response. Ironically Scott kept up move warring even after the page was protected.
• Second, "polling is evil" is a long-standing meme on Wikipedia. Not everybody agrees with the vision of the page, and hence there is also a page that says the opposite. What we have here is a user who does not like this oft-referenced page and is attempting to substantially change the angle, in essence changing the meaning of whomever references it.
• Third, this is an unfortunate spillover from a forest fire on enwiki. Netscott is engaged in a lengthy campaign to remove all language discouraging voting from Wikipedia, generally through edit warring. This has resulted in several page protections, most recently here. Radiant! 15:17, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Well I'll let folks decide if this "forest fire" is the result of one user... personally the old adage that "it takes two to tango" is applicable here in my view. I'd rather not cruft up this page with discussion trying to resolve this dispute if this is not the place to have such a discussion. Is there anyone a bit more exprienced here on meta that knows if this Is this the best place for this or not? Netscott 15:30, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

• Yep, and as in tango there are two different roles: one to make unilateral changes to policy to match his opinion, and one to revert to the long-standing consensus version. Radiant! 15:45, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

A stupid question: why it was moved from Votes are evil in the first place? MaxSem 15:35, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

As I recall because 'polling' is the more frequently used term, and because some people were wikilawyering that they weren't voting, they were simply holding a binding poll with results determined by strict supermajority. Radiant! 15:45, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I suppose just like myself folks thought that title didn't make sense and boldly moved it accordingly. One must admit that there is a greater and more universally propagandistic sound to "Polling/Voting is evil" as opposed to "Votes are evil". Maybe it should be moved back while a resolution for this dispute is worked out? Netscott 15:46, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

• "greater and more universally propagandistic"? Wow, way to soapbox dude! Radiant! 15:57, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

• Who can deny that "X is evil" is a propagandistic slogan like any other? Netscott 16:15, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

"Polling has its problems"? That's terrible. If we can't use the word "evil" for some reason, just style it "Polling considered harmful" per convention. Jkelly 17:43, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Well "Pollling considered harmful" certainly moves away from the previous propagandistic title which is good. That title does seem oxymoronic though given the level of polling on many given matters that occurs on Wikipedia... from policy to guidlines, to RfAs to RfBs to ArbCom elections to XfDs, etc. ? It just comes across as non-sensical. Netscott 17:56, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Personally I don't think both moves good. As for "Polling is evil", I understand Radiant!'s argument but it lessened the sense comparing with the original one (Polls are evil), which was a good pair with Poles are evil. I don't agree with Lifeisunfair, who argued (Polls are evil moved to Polling is evil: This is less ambiguous, and it allows us to use the splendid shortcut WM:PIE.). I see the latter part no good reason, and it is rather anglocentric. I prefer to retrieve the original title, Polls are evil. --Aphaia 03:40, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Absolutely agree. MaxSem 04:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that "Polls are evil" is a better title than "Polling is evil" particularly as it corresponds so well to the tongue-in-cheek Poles are evil essay. The essay was originally about humor and a funny take on voting and over time has "hardened" to become something not so humorous... I prefer a good laugh. Netscott 17:27, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

• Let me clarify myself. In the above quote I only meant 'Polling has its problems is better than Nescott's title, which I cannot recall, at that time.
• What is Evil? I have left a message on the mover's talk page, describing my take of a definition. And in that sense, since Polling involves condensing (and almost certainly also destroying) a large amount of information into a single booleans, it is evil.-Hillgentleman 12:06, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikines in serbian upload

Wikinews in serbian language does not have its own upload space like en wikinews does. Where can I aks for creation of our own upload space (commons have no logos lack some other things we need). --Milant ^Talk 07:42, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikinews is basically demanded to use Commons from its creation. To activate your own uploader for Fair Use images, you need to first establish your own Licensing policy (see also Translation requests/Licensing policy).--Aphaia 07:52, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

VVVBot

Please, give my bot a flag. It will do some useful things, like collecting stewards statistics and fixing double redirects. - VasilievVV 18:03, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Go Requests for bot status please. If you would like to run your bot on meta, I ask you not to leave your bot page empty. No bot with sufficient information (operator etc) are not welcome. --Aphaia 04:36, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Bot page created. Can I my bot get a flag on meta now? - VasilievVV 08:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Bot status granted. MaxSem 14:07, 24 April 2007 (UTC)