subject: [WikiEN-l] recipees

body:
The big return of recipees.

Many months ago, and several times already, it has been discussed
whether en:wikipedia should contain recipees. There was no obvious
majority between "a recipee should be kept" or "a recipee should be
deleted".

However, a sort of consensus has been found that some recipees of high
cultural value could be kept and other moved to wikibooks. It was also
rather a consensus that small articles could be kept here, and link the
the recipee on wikibooks.

Some users are now not only trying to have these small articles deleted,
but even eventually speedy deleted.

When that happen, first the consensus previously made is broken ; which
I consider quite wrong.

And second, which is much much much more relevant is that access to
information is damaged.

I wrote a note on the pump about that, but got no answer whatsoever. I
would like to discuss it though.

------

Here is what I wrote

There is something bugging me in the transwiki system.

Here is an example.

     * A user create a recipee
     * Later, someone list it on vfd, some suggest it be transwikied to
wikibooks, while other try to keep it in the encyclopedia. Nevertheless,
the article is transwikies, but a stub kept, WITH a link to wikibooks,
as it was agreed upon a few months ago.
     * Later, someone finds the stub and list it on vfd (or even
suggests it for speedy deletion). In spite of those initially supporting
keeping recipee, and in spite of the consensus, the stub is deleted. The
link to the recipee subsequently disappear. Those deleting it do not
particularly attempt to keep the link active somewhere, so, it is likely
that all traces of the initial recipee is deleted.
     * This is called a forced consensus :-)

Now... here is what is bugging me. In deleting not only the content, but
also the link to the wikibooks article and references to it, I consider
there is a big loss of information. Other answer me it is not a loss at
all since the information is kept... well stored somewhere else.

Except... that... wikipedia is FAR MORE known than wikibooks. Actually,
I still am waiting to see big articles on wikibooks. I still wait to see
google search leading me to wikibooks. I suspect that for many people,
Wikipedia could become the everyday encyclopedia, and at least for some
of us, the everyday encyclopedia should contain recipees. When the
recipees are deleted entirely, the reader coming to Wikipedia and typing
a recipee name... will get ... nothing. Not the recipee, nor the link to
a recipee. He will not even get a more generalist article where the link
to wikibooks could be. He will get just nothing at all.

Information *may* exist somewhere, but it is "hidden". The link has been
broken. The network does not exist.

And I think the network should exist. Our goal is to GIVE access to
information to readers. Not only to CREATE information. We must create
the information, organise it, categorize it, link it, and make it
accessible. Each time we delete information links from one project to
another, we may not hurt the content itself, but we reduce the
networkability (does that word exist ? If not, here it is) : we limit
access to information. We hid it.

When information exists, but can not be found easily by readers, then we
have failed. Imho. SweetLittleFluffyThing 23:59, 7 Oct 2004 (UTC)

-------

Meanwhile, in case the redirect article is deleted, I will restore it as
it was agreed last spring.

anthere


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
Talking about recipees....

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook%3ASpecial_brownies

should not it be really and seriously deleted ?


list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Like where?
>
> Note that the hard drives seized were not in the US---they were in the
> UK.  So having backup UK servers wouldn't help us in such a case.
>
> -Mark

Yes, but the UK is not a good example. When the UK can gain something
from the EU the are Europeans. But many times the act like the are part
of the USA.  The UK is even part of the ECHELON network.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON

--
[[w:nl:gebruiker:walter]]


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Is the Voter's Guide legal?

body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Anything NPOV is perfectly fine.  As a 501(c)(3) we can't engage in
>certain types of political advocacy as an organization.
>
So are we a 501(c)(3) yet?

--Michael Snow


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>
> >Anything NPOV is perfectly fine.  As a 501(c)(3) we can't engage in
> >certain types of political advocacy as an organization.
> >
> So are we a 501(c)(3) yet?

No - we are still waiting for the IRS to make that determination. The amount of
time they are taking is very unreasonable, IMO.

-- mav

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
David Friedland a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>
>> Talking about recipees....
>>
>> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook%3ASpecial_brownies
>>
>> should not it be really and seriously deleted ?
>
>
> Ah, but Anthere, the marijuana brownie holds a special place in the
> hearts of the subculture of non-legal cookery, that is to say foods made
> with controlled substances (cuisine ill?gale?). You can even buy them in
> certain parts of the US.
>
> - Davi
> d

I know that.

I just discussed this on irc, and I was told it would just be censorship
to do so.
I suggested adding a tag on it, so at least those countries where this
type of articles will be possibly illegal, can avoid in the future, any
local hosting of such articles, or mostly, any publication in books or
CD distributed in the country.

I do not think it was well received.

If I may dare a comparison, many of you agreed to have image tagging
precisely to have the ability to avoid publication of anything which
might be problematic. For instance, a country might wish to avoid to
publish fair use images because this might be legally problematic.

In France, it is illegal to give someone the idea to eat or smoke (or
whatever) an illegal substance. An article suggesting to purchase an
illegal substance to put it in food, might be illegal (it is called
"incitation ? l'usage"). Possibly not. Possibly yes.

So, I suggested that in a similar way to fair use image, we could add a
tag so as to identify these potentially problematic articles.
Just as it may make sense to remind at the top of the article that in
some country, the use of some of the ingredients are illegal.

Now, I understand quite well that in other countries, it is legal and
just all right. But it is not so everywhere. Such a cookbook would not
be okay in France.

I will only say


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New User Types

body:
Adi Eyal wrote:
> I need to add a new user type to my local wiki, in addition to the
> existing sysop, developer etc. Can anyone point me to any resource which
> suggests what needs to be changed?
>
> In particular, I want a particular user type to only be able to access
> a  subset of special pages. MediaWiki already restricts normal users
> from accessing some special pages but I want to restrict my new user
> from accessing any of the specialpages and user pages except a few
> special pages that I will specify. Is there any easy way to do this or
> do I have to go through all the existing SpecialPages and check for
> access rights?
>
> Adi

Hello,

As of version 1.3, you will have to hack the code a lot to implement new
user status.

For 1.4, I am currently writing a new user rights management using
groups and actions being assigned to groups. It's not commited yet as
it's too buggy (only a simple showcases got commited).

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Textbook-l] How to upload C programs?

body:
(moving to wikitech-l)
Is this related to the recent file-type restrictions?  Do we have
other code files in the database?

+sj+

On Fri, 8 Oct 2004 02:40:07 +0000 (UTC), Matthew Wilson
<matt at overlook.homelinux.net> wrote:
> I'm working on a distributed operating systems textbook here:
>
>    http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/ComputerScience:Distributed_Systems
>
> There's lots of example code samples in the text.  The code samples are
> getting longer and longer, and I'd like to make them available for
> download, but I can't tell how.  I tried the Special:Upload page, but I
> kept getting the message ".c is not a valid image type" or something
> similar.
>
> Any ideas?  I posted this to the staff lounge last week but got no
> responses.
>
> Matt
>
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


subject: [WikiEN-l] recipees

body:
We Need More Recipe Content.

Recipes are both extremely useful and popular.

I would be glad to see article-titles in the encyclopedia for all of
the standard joy-of-cooking style recipes, with links pointing to a
wikibooks cookbook.  Or perhaps these individual encyclopedia articles
should redirect to a single overview article, effectively a cookbook
table of contents (with some discussion / explanation for each class
of recipes) with links to specific subtopics (on wikipedia) and
recipes (on wikibooks).

Links to, and discussion of, recipe variations or elaborate details
could be left to wikibooks alone.

--Sj

On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 22:17:07 +0200, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The big return of recipees.
>
> Many months ago, and several times already, it has been discussed
> whether en:wikipedia should contain recipees. There was no obvious
> majority between "a recipee should be kept" or "a recipee should be
> deleted".


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 19:05:17 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
> I'd say a fairly high percentage of our articles on drugs have something
> that at least one government will find objectionable, so we'd have to
> tag pretty much all of them.

This might not be a terrible idea.  It should be as easy as possible to provide
various views of the encyclopedia which are inoffensive, in turn, to
a) governments,  b) children,  c) the pious, etc.  Giving reusers the
ability to
choose a limited subset of encyclopedia content is not censorship (though
one might argue that it makes targeted censorship easier).  I can think of
a few cases in which I would find it appropriate to remove "a fairly high
percentage of our articles on drugs," among other things, from a particular
snapshot or CD.

+sj+


from_name: Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> >Anything NPOV is perfectly fine.  As a 501(c)(3) we can't engage in
> >certain types of political advocacy as an organization.
> >
> So are we a 501(c)(3) yet?

We have applied, but clearly we should act as if we already are, I
think, in terms of not engaging in political advocacy.  This isn't a
big issue for us, of course, because neutrality is such a big deal.

--Jimbo


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Syriac vs Aramaic

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> Hi all.
>
> Just a short question:
>
> Why is it that we have a Wikipedia for the ancient, dead language
> Aramaic http://arc.wikipedia.org/ - no content currently, but none for
> its modern descendent Syriac (or "Neo-Aramaic"), spoken by millions,
> which according to the ISO code would be at http://syr.wikipedia.org/
> ?

There's no particular pattern to the creation of inactive wikis. To save
server resources, inactive wikis, with no edits, should be deleted. It
was my intention to delete inactive wikis when I wrote the automatic
wiki creation script, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

If you want a Syriac wiki, I suggest you find some Syriac speakers to
write it, instead of troubling this list with speculation and linguistic
trivia.

-- Tim Starling


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

>Michael Snow wrote:
>> >Anything NPOV is perfectly fine. As a 501(c)(3) we can't engage in
>> >certain types of political advocacy as an organization.
>> >
>> So are we a 501(c)(3) yet?
>
>We have applied, but clearly we should act as if we already are, I
>think, in terms of not engaging in political advocacy.  This isn't a
>big issue for us, of course, because neutrality is such a big deal.
>
I wasn't worried about the political advocacy aspect, just wondering
about our status with the IRS. Achieving it will make a big difference
in making us eligible for grants, along with the tax deductibility
aspects in the US. Because of the latter, though, I would be careful
about "acting as if we are already" (in this sense, not the political
advocacy sense) lest we mislead our donors about our status.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Open Mapping

body:
On Oct 8, 2004, at 4:49 PM, Delirium wrote:

> Stirling Newberry wrote:
>
>> Using Grass and a postgres SQL database, it would be possible to
>> create an open mapping repository. Since a large fraction of all wiki
>> entries are locations, this would allow maps to be made for most of
>> them, perhaps even by a bot process eventually.
>>
>> Is there any such project in process? Is there any interest if there
>> isn't such a project?
>
> The last time I looked at it, the maps Grass produced looked _really_
> bad, along the lines of the quality of maps I could view on my Apple
> ][ in the mid-1980s.  Simple color schemes, no shading, lots of
> aliasing, etc.  There are a few such auto-generated maps in Wikipedia,
> and they generally look pretty bad too---much worse than the maps we
> have from other sources, including some Wikipedian-created maps.
>
> Has this gotten any better?  Ideally I'd love such a solution, but
> it'd have to produce results that looked reasonably good.
>
> -Mark
>

The quality of inputs equals the quality of outputs - grass is
perfectly capable of serving good maps from material that is good
quality. It isn't the tool to produce many of those rasterizations, but
there are other tools that can, which don't need to be used in
wikipedia. Nor is it necessary to be committed to one GIS server.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Sysop SQL Queries

body:
Sysop SQL Queries - what about them? They have been unavailable for over
half a year, but since a few weeks the page where they could be filled in is
there again. However, filling in a query does not give out the intended
result; it used to be the fund raising text with nothing else, now it is a
"The database is currently not available" (or something similar; I am
back-translating the Dutch text).

Are they supposed to be working, not working or working only part-time (and
in the latter case, what part of the time)? If not working, is the intention
to get them working again in the near future, some time or never? What is
the current situation regarding the attempts to avoid queries that take too
long?

Andre Engels


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
Ugh.  What a HORRIBLE idea!

RickK

Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 19:05:17 -0400, Delirium wrote:
>
> I'd say a fairly high percentage of our articles on drugs have something
> that at least one government will find objectionable, so we'd have to
> tag pretty much all of them.

This might not be a terrible idea. It should be as easy as possible to provide
various views of the encyclopedia which are inoffensive, in turn, to
a) governments, b) children, c) the pious, etc. Giving reusers the
ability to
choose a limited subset of encyclopedia content is not censorship (though
one might argue that it makes targeted censorship easier). I can think of
a few cases in which I would find it appropriate to remove "a fairly high
percentage of our articles on drugs," among other things, from a particular
snapshot or CD.

+sj+
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
vote.yahoo.com - Register online to vote today!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
Aren't most recipes copyrighted?

RickK

Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
I agree that recipies should be included in the main wikipedia -
providing they are not stupid and do actually work. I would love to
give a shot at cooking things (Delia Smith gets on my tits) and
anything to help me learn to cook would be great.

This may lead to edit wars with people fiddling each others recipies,
so this will have to be watched.

Mabye a wikirecipies site?

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 03:35:51 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 19:05:17 -0400, Delirium wrote:
> >
> > I'd say a fairly high percentage of our articles on drugs have something
> > that at least one government will find objectionable, so we'd have to
> > tag pretty much all of them.
>
> This might not be a terrible idea. It should be as easy as possible to provide
> various views of the encyclopedia which are inoffensive, in turn, to
> a) governments, b) children, c) the pious, etc. Giving reusers the
> ability to
> choose a limited subset of encyclopedia content is not censorship (though
> one might argue that it makes targeted censorship easier). I can think of
> a few cases in which I would find it appropriate to remove "a fairly high
> percentage of our articles on drugs," among other things, from a particular
> snapshot or CD.
>
> +sj+
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
> mat.larsen at gmail.com
> 07739 785 249
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.


from_name: Matthew Larsen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 15, Issue 9

body:
This of course coming from people who have never made a film / TV
program. I get really angry when people use images from my films and
dont tell me about it. I release trailers, and if they want any screen
grabs they can get them from those.

On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 12:31:33 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
>
> >The dissenting High Court judges thought that the majority was
> >deliberately misinterpreting the law to achieve a victory for common sense.
> >
> I can sympathize with his outrage. ;-)
>
> >More generally, it seems to me that there is a tendancy round here to
> >assume laws are written the same way as programming language definitions.
> >>From my layperson's perspective, that seems to be quite wrong - there's a
> >lot of fudging and playing around with ambiguities to get the "right"
> >outcome, and screw the pedantry.
> >
> We've often heard it said that ignorance of the law is no excuse.  It
> works both ways.  It neither excuses a wrongful act, nor a failure to
> take a rightful benefit.
>
> >So my gut feeling is that the common sense aspect of using film stills to
> >illustrate an encyclopedia article makes it very, very unlikely we'll
> >ever get challenged on it, and that if we ever were we'd be highly
> >likely to win any court case.
> >
> >
> Absolutely.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
I agree that recipies should be included in the main wikipedia -
providing they are not stupid and do actually work. I would love to
give a shot at cooking things (Delia Smith gets on my tits) and
anything to help me learn to cook would be great.

This may lead to edit wars with people fiddling each others recipies,
so this will have to be watched.

Mabye a wikirecipies site?

On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 03:35:51 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 19:05:17 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> >
> > I'd say a fairly high percentage of our articles on drugs have something
> > that at least one government will find objectionable, so we'd have to
> > tag pretty much all of them.
>
> This might not be a terrible idea.  It should be as easy as possible to provide
> various views of the encyclopedia which are inoffensive, in turn, to
> a) governments,  b) children,  c) the pious, etc.  Giving reusers the
> ability to
> choose a limited subset of encyclopedia content is not censorship (though
> one might argue that it makes targeted censorship easier).  I can think of
> a few cases in which I would find it appropriate to remove "a fairly high
> percentage of our articles on drugs," among other things, from a particular
> snapshot or CD.
>
> +sj+
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Matthew Larsen
   > mat.larsen at gmail.com
   > 07739 785 249


from_name: Andrew Fuller

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Patch] MySQL root username other than "root"

body:
I noticed that mediawiki has the MySQL root account name hardcoded in,
even though many database installations use a different username as the
administrator as a bit of added security, or for convenience, or whatever.
I've created a simple patch that gives the installer an extra field for
'root username', defaulted to "root". It applies cleanly to versions >=
1.3.3

http://qartis.com/root_username.patch

- Andrew Fuller


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Yeah, so you get angry, but you don't explain why it makes any
difference when the person using the still chooses something other than
what you want him to use.  This is not a matter of copyright anymore.
Any two shots would have the same amount of material.

Ec

Matthew Larsen wrote:

>This of course coming from people who have never made a film / TV
>program. I get really angry when people use images from my films and
>dont tell me about it. I release trailers, and if they want any screen
>grabs they can get them from those.
>
>On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 12:31:33 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Robert Graham Merkel wrote:
>>
>>
>>>The dissenting High Court judges thought that the majority was
>>>deliberately misinterpreting the law to achieve a victory for common sense.
>>>
>>>
>>I can sympathize with his outrage. ;-)
>>
>>
>>>More generally, it seems to me that there is a tendancy round here to
>>>assume laws are written the same way as programming language definitions.
>>>>From my layperson's perspective, that seems to be quite wrong - there's a
>>>lot of fudging and playing around with ambiguities to get the "right"
>>>outcome, and screw the pedantry.
>>>
>>>
>>We've often heard it said that ignorance of the law is no excuse.  It
>>works both ways.  It neither excuses a wrongful act, nor a failure to
>>take a rightful benefit.
>>
>>
>>>So my gut feeling is that the common sense aspect of using film stills to
>>>illustrate an encyclopedia article makes it very, very unlikely we'll
>>>ever get challenged on it, and that if we ever were we'd be highly
>>>likely to win any court case.
>>>
>>>
>>Absolutely.
>>
>>


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 11:51:31 -0700 (PDT), Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Aren't most recipes copyrighted?

No.  They cannot be.  To *some extent* the text description of a
recipe can be, but that is limited by the fact that two sets of
instructions to do the same thing are necessarily similar; there is
little scope for artistic expression.

The facts and steps in instructional material cannot be copyrighted.
They MAY be patented (rare in recipes) or trade secret, but not
copyright.

-Matt (User:Morven)


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Linking from Wikipedia to Wiktionary

body:
I fail to understand what the argument is about.

Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> There is an acrimonious discussion on nl:wikipedia. This has to do
> with some people who consider wiktionary to be external to wikipedia
> and, they consider the information that a dictionary supplies to be of
> no additional value to wikipedia.

I would disagree with them about that.

> I want to diffuse this situation and I need the help from the
> developpers for that. The content of other wikipedia's can be found by
> clicking on the left hand side under "in other languages". I would
> like a method that allows us to link to the wiktionary article  in
> that general area.

A link in the article should accomplish that more easily.

> *This will remove any standard references to wiktionary from the
> wikipedia article itself.

Why would you want to do that?

> *The content of a sister article in another wikipedia should
> (theoretically) not add information to a wikipedia article as, it
> should only present the information in another language. As the
> referal to other wikipedia's is an established fact, the inclusion in
> that space of wiktionary information should not be a problem as
> wiktionary DOES add relevant information to the wikipedia article
> (translations, etymology, pronounciation etc)

The reality is that the sister article is written by a separate group of
people without reference to what is written in your chosen language.
There's no rule to say that they must have the same information in all
cases.  Controversial subjects especially are affected by the attitudes
of the separate groups of participants.

> * Technically, the link requires a parameter as some wiktionaries do
> not have first character capitalisation.

> The link from Wiktionary to Wikipedia is not a problem; here it is
> accepted that encyclopedic information should find its way in
> Wikipedia. The fact that dictionary information has no place in
> Wikipedia is also an established and respected fact.

But there is some overlap.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI

references:
<BD8BD2DA.7C34%fredbaud@ctelco.net>	<BD8C2ED3.2BDC3%cunctator@kband.com>
	<9f02ca4c0410090951226f517a@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

>On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 11:47:31 -0400, The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 10/8/04 7:15 AM, "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I don't think we actually have good reason. The FBI is after a whole
>>>different thing from what we do.
>>>
>>>
>>Considering that Wikipedia is a large, open globally accessible database of
>>information, just like Indymedia, it is unreasonable to surmise that the FBI
>>is after a whole different thing from what we do.
>>
>>
>Indeed, and don't forget that the Chinese Wikipedia regularly suffers
>out-right blocks by the Chinese government, so it's not like our
>content is uncontroversial. I know comparing the US authorities to the
>Chinese might seem a little excessive, but with recent
>"anti-terrorist" legislation, etc, I suspect it is closer to a matter
>of degree than to a complete difference in nature.
>
I don't trust ANY government.

>As for other people pointing out that no location is safe from such
>warrants, I guess the best you can do is keep shifting around, so that
>the content is safe somewhere at every step. Not that we necessarily
>need do this for Wikipedia, but it is indeed an interesting question
>to think through...
>
The irony is that the net was originally designed to avoid having
military communications disrupted in the event that a key installation
were knocked out.  Maybe we need to learn from the military.  Guerilla
tactics are important when defending one's country against overwhelming
force.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
Interesting point.  As I understand it recipes are the most copyvioed
form of writing.  The basic ideas of what makes recipes work are of
course beyond copyright, but the specifics present big problems because
your aunt may have passed on a favorite recipe that she took from a
copyright cookbook to your mom, and for you to take and publish that
recipe could be a breach of copyright.  But if the original cookbook was
reprinting a traditional recipe maybe it may not be copyright after all
no matter what the book's general copyright notice says.

In practical terms, unless there has been an exact copy from a copyright
source, the presumption should be that a specific recipe is in the
public domain.  A wholesale copying of everything in a book should still
be discouraged.

That being said, the same rules about copyright should apply to
Wikibooks as to Wikipedia, so it does not have a bearing on deciding
which project should have the recipe.

Ec

Rick wrote:

>Aren't most recipes copyrighted?
>
>RickK
>
>Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
>I agree that recipies should be included in the main wikipedia -
>providing they are not stupid and do actually work. I would love to
>give a shot at cooking things (Delia Smith gets on my tits) and
>anything to help me learn to cook would be great.
>
>This may lead to edit wars with people fiddling each others recipies,
>so this will have to be watched.
>
>Mabye a wikirecipies site?
>
>
>On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 03:35:51 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 19:05:17 -0400, Delirium wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'd say a fairly high percentage of our articles on drugs have something
>>>that at least one government will find objectionable, so we'd have to
>>>tag pretty much all of them.
>>>
>>>
>>This might not be a terrible idea. It should be as easy as possible to provide
>>various views of the encyclopedia which are inoffensive, in turn, to
>>a) governments, b) children, c) the pious, etc. Giving reusers the
>>ability to
>>choose a limited subset of encyclopedia content is not censorship (though
>>one might argue that it makes targeted censorship easier). I can think of
>>a few cases in which I would find it appropriate to remove "a fairly high
>>percentage of our articles on drugs," among other things, from a particular
>>snapshot or CD.
>>
>>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipes

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

> But recipes, well, there's an awful lot of them. And I can just
> imagine the NPOV fights on them. (Chile with or without beans?
> Chocolate chip cookies with nuts? White or dark meat chicken? Does a
> dash of cumin improve the dish?) And they're not something that most
> people would think to go to an encyclopedia about.

This argument is pure speculation.  Can you give examples of where it in
fact has happened?  Any recipe can easily accomodate notes about hoe it
can be varied.

> Not every good thing should go into the Wikipedia. If it tries to do
> everything, it only serves to obsure the things it genuinely does well
> with. The fact that wikibooks is not as successful as the English
> encyclopedia does not negate it. It means that more work needs to be
> done. Should we kill the foreign language encyclopedias for their
> failure to do as well as the English one too, and just have all the
> foreign language articles in one main encyclopedia?

Wikipedia is better known because it's easier to see an elephant than a
mouse.  Nobody is arguing in favour of doing everything, so that's
another irrelevant argument.

> Yes, our recipe coverage on wikibooks is not great. Perhaps if the
> people fighting over whether we should move them to the encyclopedia
> were to go and add some recipes, though, it would do better.

The fight is not over whether recipes should be moved TO the
encyclopedia, but whether they should be moved FROM it.  In the event
that the move was made it also was about whether a redirect should be
retained.

Ec


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Linking from Wikipedia to Wiktionary

body:
Hoi,
There is an acrimonious discussion on nl:wikipedia. This has to do with
some people who consider wiktionary to be external to wikipedia and,
they consider the information that a dictionary supplies to be of no
additional value to wikipedia.

I want to diffuse this situation and I need the help from the
developpers for that. The content of other wikipedia's can be found by
clicking on the left hand side under "in other languages". I would like
a method that allows us to link to the wiktionary article  in that
general area.

*This will remove any standard references to wiktionary from the
wikipedia article itself.
*The content of a sister article in another wikipedia should
(theoretically) not add information to a wikipedia article as, it should
only present the information in another language. As the referal to
other wikipedia's is an established fact, the inclusion in that space of
wiktionary information should not be a problem as wiktionary DOES add
relevant information to the wikipedia article (translations, etymology,
pronounciation etc)
* Technically, the link requires a parameter as some wiktionaries do not
have first character capitalisation.

The link from Wiktionary to Wikipedia is not a problem; here it is
accepted that encyclopedic information should find its way in Wikipedia.
The fact that dictionary information has no place in Wikipedia is also
an established and respected fact.

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>> I want to diffuse this situation and I need the help from the
>>> developpers for that. The content of other wikipedia's can be found
>>> by clicking on the left hand side under "in other languages". I
>>> would like a method that allows us to link to the wiktionary
>>> article  in that general area.
>>
>> A link in the article should accomplish that more easily.
>
> This link is what these people do not want and the existing link is
> what they object to. They say it is "advertizing an external website"
> and "as the people have no use for dictionary data, we can do without".

Sounds like an extreme view to me!

>> Why would you want to do that?
>
> *This will remove any standard references to wiktionary from the
> wikipedia article itself.
> I do not care where there is a link from a wikipedia article to a
> wiktionary articel *as long as this link is there* !!! I do NOT want
> to remove the links from wikipedia to wiktionary. I am of the opinion
> that both Wikipedia and Wiktionary are sister projects and complement
> each other.

We may disagree about HOW the Wikiweb is structured, but we do agree
that these interwiki relationships should exist.  A sister site is part
of the family.  You make it sound like they are a little kid who wants
to keep himself hidden in his own room. :-)

>>> * Technically, the link requires a parameter as some wiktionaries do
>>> not have first character capitalisation.
>>
>> There is the additional reason that for all kinds of reason the
>> titles of the article is not the name of the subject, disambiguation
>> is one.
>
This is a technical issue which should in time be solvable.

Ec


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
Sj  wrote:
> (moving to wikitech-l)
> Is this related to the recent file-type restrictions?  Do we have
> other code files in the database?

Yes, that would be the extra-restrictive settings imposed due to those
text/plain bugs and what-not.

> Matthew Wilson wrote:
> > There's lots of example code samples in the text.  The code samples are
> > getting longer and longer, and I'd like to make them available for
> > download, but I can't tell how.  I tried the Special:Upload page, but I
> > kept getting the message ".c is not a valid image type" or something
> > similar.

One rather odd workaround that occurs to me would be to put each
example on a seperate wiki-page (with *no* wiki-markup), and then link
to them as .../wiki.phtml?title=XXX&action=raw - which produces the
raw source of the page with MIME type "text/x-wiki". Certainly my
Mozilla then says that it doesn't recognise this filetype, and gives
me the option of saving it straight to file.

Which leads me to wonder: would IE attempt to display, and then detect
potentially dangerous code in, documents with that type? If so, this
is also a (rather long-winded) way round the actual intent of the
restriction (if I understand that intent correctly). I'm booted into
Linux atm, so I can't check.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipes

body:
I think this is a classic example of feature bloat.

Yes, recipes are neat.

Yes, a Wikicookbook is neat.

But recipes, well, there's an awful lot of them. And I can just imagine
the NPOV fights on them. (Chile with or without beans? Chocolate chip
cookies with nuts? White or dark meat chicken? Does a dash of cumin
improve the dish?) And they're not something that most people would
think to go to an encyclopedia about.

Not every good thing should go into the Wikipedia. If it tries to do
everything, it only serves to obsure the things it genuinely does well
with. The fact that wikibooks is not as successful as the English
encyclopedia does not negate it. It means that more work needs to be
done. Should we kill the foreign language encyclopedias for their
failure to do as well as the English one too, and just have all the
foreign language articles in one main encyclopedia?

Yes, our recipe coverage on wikibooks is not great. Perhaps if the
people fighting over whether we should move them to the encyclopedia
were to go and add some recipes, though, it would do better.

-Snowspinner

On Oct 9, 2004, at 1:51 PM, Rick wrote:

> Aren't most recipes copyrighted?
>
> RickK
>
> Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree that recipies should be included in the main wikipedia -
> providing they are not stupid and do actually work. I would love to
> give a shot at cooking things (Delia Smith gets on my tits) and
> anything to help me learn to cook would be great.
>
> This may lead to edit wars with people fiddling each others recipies,
> so this will have to be watched.
>
> Mabye a wikirecipies site?
>
>
>
>
> On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 03:35:51 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 19:05:17 -0400, Delirium wrote:
>>>
>>> I'd say a fairly high percentage of our articles on drugs have
>>> something
>>> that at least one government will find objectionable, so we'd have to
>>> tag pretty much all of them.
>>
>> This might not be a terrible idea. It should be as easy as possible
>> to provide
>> various views of the encyclopedia which are inoffensive, in turn, to
>> a) governments, b) children, c) the pious, etc. Giving reusers the
>> ability to
>> choose a limited subset of encyclopedia content is not censorship
>> (though
>> one might argue that it makes targeted censorship easier). I can
>> think of
>> a few cases in which I would find it appropriate to remove "a fairly
>> high
>> percentage of our articles on drugs," among other things, from a
>> particular
>> snapshot or CD.
>>
>> +sj+
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>
> --
> Matthew Larsen
>> mat.larsen at gmail.com
>> 07739 785 249
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Address AutoComplete - You start. We finish.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees

body:
The specifics of the TEXT may be copyright, but the specifics of the
RECIPE cannot be.  Quantities, procedures, processes, operations --
all the domain of patent, not copyright.

So unless you are copying the EXACT WORDS in that cookbook your Aunt
read in this example, no copyright infringement takes place.

-Matt

On Sat, 09 Oct 2004 13:59:37 -0700, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Interesting point.  As I understand it recipes are the most copyvioed
> form of writing.  The basic ideas of what makes recipes work are of
> course beyond copyright, but the specifics present big problems because
> your aunt may have passed on a favorite recipe that she took from a
> copyright cookbook to your mom, and for you to take and publish that
> recipe could be a breach of copyright.  But if the original cookbook was
> reprinting a traditional recipe maybe it may not be copyright after all
> no matter what the book's general copyright notice says.
>
> In practical terms, unless there has been an exact copy from a copyright
> source, the presumption should be that a specific recipe is in the
> public domain.  A wholesale copying of everything in a book should still
> be discouraged.
>
> That being said, the same rules about copyright should apply to
> Wikibooks as to Wikipedia, so it does not have a bearing on deciding
> which project should have the recipe.
>
> Ec
>
>
>
> Rick wrote:
>
> >Aren't most recipes copyrighted?
> >
> >RickK
> >
> >Matthew Larsen <mat.larsen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >I agree that recipies should be included in the main wikipedia -
> >providing they are not stupid and do actually work. I would love to
> >give a shot at cooking things (Delia Smith gets on my tits) and
> >anything to help me learn to cook would be great.
> >
> >This may lead to edit wars with people fiddling each others recipies,
> >so this will have to be watched.
> >
> >Mabye a wikirecipies site?
> >
> >
> >On Sat, 9 Oct 2004 03:35:51 -0400, Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 19:05:17 -0400, Delirium wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I'd say a fairly high percentage of our articles on drugs have something
> >>>that at least one government will find objectionable, so we'd have to
> >>>tag pretty much all of them.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>This might not be a terrible idea. It should be as easy as possible to provide
> >>various views of the encyclopedia which are inoffensive, in turn, to
> >>a) governments, b) children, c) the pious, etc. Giving reusers the
> >>ability to
> >>choose a limited subset of encyclopedia content is not censorship (though
> >>one might argue that it makes targeted censorship easier). I can think of
> >>a few cases in which I would find it appropriate to remove "a fairly high
> >>percentage of our articles on drugs," among other things, from a particular
> >>snapshot or CD.
> >>
> >>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipes

body:
My opinion:

Recipes are not per se encyclopedic.  However, certain (reasonably
well known) *dishes* are encyclopedic, and part of a good article on
an encyclopedic dish is a recipe, which should be carefully chosen to
be representative / traditional.  E.g. there should be a Wikipedia
article on [[Coq au vin]], and that should probably include a
traditional recipe for making it.

Recipes in general, though, should go in some form of WikiCookbook,
probably to be hosted at Wikibooks.

-Matt (User:Morven)


from_name: Daniel P.B.Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 15, Issue 12

body:
On Oct 9, 2004, at 3:50 PM, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 2
> Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 16:46:22 -0700
> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Message-ID: <416726CE.4020701 at telus.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Talking about recipees....
>>
>> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook%3ASpecial_brownies
>>
>> should not it be really and seriously deleted ?
>
> On a cultural level I would keep it.
>
> On a culinary level I would consider it as a brownie variant.  The
> strong taste of the chocolate will likely overwhelm the taste of the
> added herb.

There is a good article in Wikipedia on the original recipe from the
Alice B. Toklas cookbook:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_B._Toklas_brownie. I've now added a
link to the Wikibooks recipe.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Open Mapping

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> Right now I'm taking an Internet-based GIS class.

You probably know more about this than I do, so this is quite possibly a
naive question.  Is it possible to leverage any of the existing
internet-based GIS stuff for our purposes?  The Open GIS Consortium has
a number of protocols that seem to do things similar to what we want,
with software already built to do it --- the most relevant seems to be
the Web Map Server (WMS), which worked pretty nicely the last time I
played around with one.  Basically generates raster-image views of an
internal GIS-based map.  There's also a Web Feature Server (WFS) if you
want feature-type information rather than rasterized renderings to be
served.

-Mark


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI

body:
On Fri, 08 Oct 2004 11:47:31 -0400, The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
> On 10/8/04 7:15 AM, "Fred Bauder" <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > I don't think we actually have good reason. The FBI is after a whole
> > different thing from what we do.

> Considering that Wikipedia is a large, open globally accessible database of
> information, just like Indymedia, it is unreasonable to surmise that the FBI
> is after a whole different thing from what we do.

Indeed, and don't forget that the Chinese Wikipedia regularly suffers
out-right blocks by the Chinese government, so it's not like our
content is uncontroversial. I know comparing the US authorities to the
Chinese might seem a little excessive, but with recent
"anti-terrorist" legislation, etc, I suspect it is closer to a matter
of degree than to a complete difference in nature.

As for other people pointing out that no location is safe from such
warrants, I guess the best you can do is keep shifting around, so that
the content is safe somewhere at every step. Not that we necessarily
need do this for Wikipedia, but it is indeed an interesting question
to think through...

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Indymedia and FBI


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Loosing more of our best contributors

body:
We have lost so many of our early and best contributors to
Wikipedia, because our system of arbitration and mediation
is flawed and useless.  Ever since Larry Sanger left, even
the worst trolls have been welcomed here with open arms,
while many good and productive users have been bogged down
with vindicative arbitration proceedings, which only rarely
produce results.

The result is that many of our best contributors, including
Larry, are no longer with us, and Adam Carr is now gone.
Evry loss like this is a huge blow to the project.

Adam writes:
I have decided to scale back substantially my involvement
in the Wikipedia project, since I no longer believe it is
capable in its present form of achieving its objectives. I
have removed from my watchlist about 300 articles relating
to historical and political subjects outside Australia. I
will no longer edit any such articles or respond to
requests to edit them or comment on them. My edits will be
confined to Australian topics, ancient history and gay
topics. When and if Wikipedia adopts a structure that
protects serious editors and prevents fools and fanatics
from sabotaging their work I will return to editing in
other areas. I will be posting a longer piece giving my
views on Wikipedia soon.
Adam 14:22, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC

--- end quote ---

This is precisely why I was asking people to consider
making Wikipedia a feeder for a more stable, formally
reviewed Wikipedia, such as Nupedia.  Without the promise
of a stable place for our reviewed articles, all of our
work is for nothing.  No matter how well written an article
is, and no matter what the consensus is, all it takes is
one or two committed people with free time on their hands
to damage and destory entire articles.

If we want our work to endure, we need more stability and
sensibility, and soon.

Robert (RK)

_______________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
http://vote.yahoo.com


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Robert wrote:

>
>Adam writes:
>[...] When and if Wikipedia adopts a structure that
>protects serious editors and prevents fools and fanatics
>from sabotaging their work I will return to editing in
>other areas. I will be posting a longer piece giving my
>views on Wikipedia soon.
>Adam 14:22, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC
>
Just to put things in perspective, this is the same Adam Carr
who's been known to call other editors idiots and morons just for
preferring a different picture in an article. Not everybody is cut
out to be a wiki editor; it's good to be knowledgeable, but a lot
of people just can't handle it when their additions are touched
by others, and they get into fight after fight over it.

Stan


from_name: Jens Ropers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: "Fair use" of frame grabs from movies, TV

body:
On 9 Oct 2004, at 13:09, Matthew Larsen wrote:

> This of course coming from people who have never made a film / TV
> program. I get really angry when people use images from my films and
> dont tell me about it. I release trailers, and if they want any screen
> grabs they can get them from those.

Well, excuse my frankness, but you can get angry all you want -- it
still doesn't lend any merit to your position.
In trying to exercise control over perfectly legitimate fair use,
you're getting angry over a perceived "right" you just don't have.

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> I fail to understand what the argument is about.
>
> Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>> There is an acrimonious discussion on nl:wikipedia. This has to do
>> with some people who consider wiktionary to be external to wikipedia
>> and, they consider the information that a dictionary supplies to be
>> of no additional value to wikipedia.
>
>
> I would disagree with them about that.

But it is the argument. And like you, I disagree.

>
>> I want to diffuse this situation and I need the help from the
>> developpers for that. The content of other wikipedia's can be found
>> by clicking on the left hand side under "in other languages". I would
>> like a method that allows us to link to the wiktionary article  in
>> that general area.
>
>
> A link in the article should accomplish that more easily.

This link is what these people do not want and the existing link is what
they object to. They say it is "advertizing an external website" and "as
the people have no use for dictionary data, we can do without".

>
>> *This will remove any standard references to wiktionary from the
>> wikipedia article itself.
>
>
> Why would you want to do that?

I do not care where there is a link from a wikipedia article to a
wiktionary articel *as long as this link is there* !!! I do NOT want to
remove the links from wikipedia to wiktionary. I am of the opinion that
both Wikipedia and Wiktionary are sister projects and complement each other.

>> *The content of a sister article in another wikipedia should
>> (theoretically) not add information to a wikipedia article as, it
>> should only present the information in another language. As the
>> referal to other wikipedia's is an established fact, the inclusion in
>> that space of wiktionary information should not be a problem as
>> wiktionary DOES add relevant information to the wikipedia article
>> (translations, etymology, pronounciation etc)
>
>
> The reality is that the sister article is written by a separate group
> of people without reference to what is written in your chosen
> language.  There's no rule to say that they must have the same
> information in all cases.  Controversial subjects especially are
> affected by the attitudes of the separate groups of participants.

You are right, that is why it is theoretically; in the real world
wikipedia articles have sometimes contrasting information in different
languages.

>> * Technically, the link requires a parameter as some wiktionaries do
>> not have first character capitalisation.
>
There is the additional reason that for all kinds of reason the titles
of the article is not the name of the subject, disambiguation is one.

>> The link from Wiktionary to Wikipedia is not a problem; here it is
>> accepted that encyclopedic information should find its way in
>> Wikipedia. The fact that dictionary information has no place in
>> Wikipedia is also an established and respected fact.
>
>
> But there is some overlap.
>
> Ec


from_name: David Friedland

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipes

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
>> But recipes, well, there's an awful lot of them. And I can just
>> imagine the NPOV fights on them. (Chile with or without beans?
>> Chocolate chip cookies with nuts? White or dark meat chicken? Does a
>> dash of cumin improve the dish?) And they're not something that most
>> people would think to go to an encyclopedia about.
>
> This argument is pure speculation.  Can you give examples of where it in
> fact has happened?  Any recipe can easily accomodate notes about hoe it
> can be varied.

See [[Talk:Paella]] for an example. The recipe itself was moved to
Wikibooks because there was too much argument about what could and
couldn't go into paella. The current [[Paella]] article discusses the
kinds of ingredients that can go in paella and who thinks what about
those different ingredients. It also discusses the traditional cooking
method and other related info, but there is no recipe. The recipe on
Wikibooks is linked to.

Hopefully, after reading the [[Paella]] article, the reader would
understand the issues around the ingredients and upon encountering a
recipe for paella, would be able to identify what kind of paella it was.
To include recipes for all the different types of paella and the minute
variations in choices and quantities of ingredients, not to mention
cooking times would frankly be a waste a space. The exact quantity of
rice that goes into a paella for 4 is not really encyclopedic.

Let the encyclopedia discuss the dish; let the WikiBooks Cookbook
provide the recipes.

- David


body:
One of the major factors in Adam's decision to leave, so far as I can
tell, was the edit warring that took place over articles related to
Lyndon LaRouche.

As I am currently enmeshed in attempts to informally mediate these
articles, I will note a couple of things.

1) Adam absolutely refused any negotiation with anyone who was
pro-LaRouche, insisting that the articles expose LaRouche as a
crackpot.
2) Adam declared that if mediation did not work within a few days, he
would resume his revert wars.
3) Adam frequently made personal attacks.

Adam is clearly a smart guy. But he did not and does not respect NPOV,
and was unwilling to let the LaRouche articles present both sides of
the debate in a way that let the reader decide.

With all due respect, if that is how he approaches Wikipedia, it is
better that he not edit.

-Snowspinner

On Oct 9, 2004, at 11:59 PM, Robert wrote:

> We have lost so many of our early and best contributors to
> Wikipedia, because our system of arbitration and mediation
> is flawed and useless.  Ever since Larry Sanger left, even
> the worst trolls have been welcomed here with open arms,
> while many good and productive users have been bogged down
> with vindicative arbitration proceedings, which only rarely
> produce results.
>
> The result is that many of our best contributors, including
> Larry, are no longer with us, and Adam Carr is now gone.
> Evry loss like this is a huge blow to the project.
>
> Adam writes:
> I have decided to scale back substantially my involvement
> in the Wikipedia project, since I no longer believe it is
> capable in its present form of achieving its objectives. I
> have removed from my watchlist about 300 articles relating
> to historical and political subjects outside Australia. I
> will no longer edit any such articles or respond to
> requests to edit them or comment on them. My edits will be
> confined to Australian topics, ancient history and gay
> topics. When and if Wikipedia adopts a structure that
> protects serious editors and prevents fools and fanatics
> from sabotaging their work I will return to editing in
> other areas. I will be posting a longer piece giving my
> views on Wikipedia soon.
> Adam 14:22, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC
>
> --- end quote ---
>
> This is precisely why I was asking people to consider
> making Wikipedia a feeder for a more stable, formally
> reviewed Wikipedia, such as Nupedia.  Without the promise
> of a stable place for our reviewed articles, all of our
> work is for nothing.  No matter how well written an article
> is, and no matter what the consensus is, all it takes is
> one or two committed people with free time on their hands
> to damage and destory entire articles.
>
> If we want our work to endure, we need more stability and
> sensibility, and soon.
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Declare Yourself - Register online to vote today!
> http://vote.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Formal request: Wikinews project

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>The details of the proposed policies can be worked out on the live site as
>they currently are on the Wikimedia Commons. The question right now is if
>there is a rough consensus to start a Wikimedia project whose goal is
>* to provide summaries of external news sources
>* to do original, neutral reporting around the world.
>
>If there are no serious objections, I'd like to start ASAP.
>
>I believe this project has the potential to be as relevant as Wikipedia,
>if not more so.  I'd love it if we could prove to the world that, using
>wiki principles, we can create a neutral, reliable news source for
>everyone.
>
>
Given that on en: at least, Current Events is fairly mediocre in
quality, is there a need for an entirely separate site?  Why not work to
make [[en:Current Events]] a truly good summary of current news, and
once that happens, expand to original reporting?

-Mark


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] enotif v1.2 for MediaWiki 1.3.5 released (patch and
 complete tar.gz file available)

body:
I re-applied my patch for email notifications to the current MediaWiki
1.3.5 stable release version.

Please refer to the page
http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=454 on which you can
always find the links to
- diff against 1.3.5
- URL http://www.tgries.de/mw/enotif/mw1.3.5_incl_enotif1.2.tgz for a
complete tar.gz (MediaWiki 1.3.5 including enotif 1.2)
- Link to up-to-date documentation http://meta.wikipedia.org/Enotif

Tom


from_name: Frank v Waveren

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fw: List of fake universities

body:
On Thu, Oct 07, 2004 at 09:16:37PM +0200, Jens Ropers wrote:
> The X-AntiAbuse email header fields are an indicator that they might be
> spammers.

Not at all, lots of ISPs mailservers add them to all mail to make sure
abuse reports end up in the right place.

--
Frank v Waveren                                      Fingerprint: 9106 FD0D
fvw@[var.cx|stack.nl] ICQ#10074100                      D6D9 3E7D FAF0 92D1
Public key: hkp://wwwkeys.pgp.net/8D54EB90              3931 90D6 8D54 EB90


from_name: Anthere

body:
Daniel P.B.Smith a ?crit:
>
> On Oct 9, 2004, at 3:50 PM,
> wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Fri, 08 Oct 2004 16:46:22 -0700
>> From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipees
>> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>> Message-ID: <416726CE.4020701 at telus.net>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>> Anthere wrote:
>>
>>> Talking about recipees....
>>>
>>> http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook%3ASpecial_brownies
>>>
>>> should not it be really and seriously deleted ?
>>
>>
>> On a cultural level I would keep it.
>>
>> On a culinary level I would consider it as a brownie variant.  The
>> strong taste of the chocolate will likely overwhelm the taste of the
>> added herb.
>
>
> There is a good article in Wikipedia on the original recipe from the
> Alice B. Toklas cookbook:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_B._Toklas_brownie. I've now added a
> link to the Wikibooks recipe.

I guess I will not support most of the non-french-speaking wikimedia
projects to ever be published under wikimedia responsability. Nor
support any servers in France aside from squids.

Ant


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: recipes

body:
I wrote a little quick proposal here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recipes/Proposal

Please comment there.

I also announced it here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28policy%29#transwiki

There has been enough discussion over the months, and enough deletion. I
hope we can fix a couple of things at least. This is not perfect for
everyone, but I hope we can agree on this path.

Anthere

Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
>> But recipes, well, there's an awful lot of them. And I can just
>> imagine the NPOV fights on them. (Chile with or without beans?
>> Chocolate chip cookies with nuts? White or dark meat chicken? Does a
>> dash of cumin improve the dish?) And they're not something that most
>> people would think to go to an encyclopedia about.
>
>
> This argument is pure speculation.  Can you give examples of where it in
> fact has happened?  Any recipe can easily accomodate notes about hoe it
> can be varied.
>
>> Not every good thing should go into the Wikipedia. If it tries to do
>> everything, it only serves to obsure the things it genuinely does well
>> with. The fact that wikibooks is not as successful as the English
>> encyclopedia does not negate it. It means that more work needs to be
>> done. Should we kill the foreign language encyclopedias for their
>> failure to do as well as the English one too, and just have all the
>> foreign language articles in one main encyclopedia?
>
>
> Wikipedia is better known because it's easier to see an elephant than a
> mouse.  Nobody is arguing in favour of doing everything, so that's
> another irrelevant argument.
>
>> Yes, our recipe coverage on wikibooks is not great. Perhaps if the
>> people fighting over whether we should move them to the encyclopedia
>> were to go and add some recipes, though, it would do better.
>
>
> The fight is not over whether recipes should be moved TO the
> encyclopedia, but whether they should be moved FROM it.  In the event
> that the move was made it also was about whether a redirect should be
> retained.
> Ec


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Robert wrote:
>
>> Adam writes:
>> [...] When and if Wikipedia adopts a structure that
>> protects serious editors and prevents fools and fanatics
>> from sabotaging their work I will return to editing in
>> other areas. I will be posting a longer piece giving my
>> views on Wikipedia soon. Adam 14:22, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC
>
> Just to put things in perspective, this is the same Adam Carr
> who's been known to call other editors idiots and morons just for
> preferring a different picture in an article. Not everybody is cut
> out to be a wiki editor; it's good to be knowledgeable, but a lot
> of people just can't handle it when their additions are touched
> by others, and they get into fight after fight over it.

Some of us take on too much, and participation in controversial can be a
considerable drain on time and emotion.  Adam appears to have realized
that.  Limiting himself to the stated topics may make him more productive.

Ec


body:
Angela wrote:

>On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 00:45:46 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Given that on en: at least, Current Events is fairly mediocre in
>>quality, is there a need for an entirely separate site?  Why not work to
>>make [[en:Current Events]] a truly good summary of current news, and
>>once that happens, expand to original reporting?
>>
>>
>
>Current Events is getting an awful lot of hits for something
>supposedly "mediocre". After Hurricane Ivan and the Main Page, it was
>the most visited page last month. [[Current events]] is also the most
>edited page on the English Wikipedia. Of the 20 most edited pages
>across all Wikimedia projects, the current events page, and its
>equivalent in other languages, shows up four times. This demonstrates
>a huge interest in not only reading the page, but also in
>collaborating in its creation. I believe this level of interest
>demonstrates that Wikinews will be a success.
>
>
"Mediocre" wasn't a judgment on its popularity, but on its quality.  If
you look at it, news coverage is spotty at best.  The big stories are
covered, which I'd imagine contributes to the popularity (as 95% of
people are looking for the top 3% of stories).  But its breadth is not
very good at all, and that could certainly be much expanded without a
separate site.  It's also not very much edited, really.  The stat that
it's one of the 20 most edited pages is simply because it's a long
on-going catalog of current events.  But each day's current events are
edited by a small handful of people, and they generally cover only what
that handful of people happen to think is important.  There's certainly
not a group of even 20 people editing the page on a daily basis.

-Mark


body:
On 10 Oct 2004, at 02:47, Frank v Waveren wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 07, 2004 at 09:16:37PM +0200, Jens Ropers wrote:
>> The X-AntiAbuse email header fields are an indicator that they might
>> be
>> spammers.
>
> Not at all, lots of ISPs mailservers add them to all mail to make sure
> abuse reports end up in the right place.
>
> --
> Frank v Waveren                                      Fingerprint: 9106
> FD0D
> fvw@[var.cx|stack.nl]

Err... have you looked at the CONTENT of the said fields?

You're right in that an email with such headers *might* still be legit.
Typically, ISPs add such headers not to all emails that get sent via
them, but only where the user does "suspicious" things, such as sending
from one domain but "writing on the envelope" that the email originated
from somewhere else.

This is something that people may do for legitimate reasons (e.g. when
I send mails via an MTA (email server) I sometimes run on my iBook, I
sometimes "write on the envelope" that they are from ropersonline.com.
Now, I own ropersonline.com. I receive the respective replies sent to
ropersonline.com. So I'm not really impersonating someone else. No harm
done. But imagine I were to send an email to somebody and without your
consent were to "write on the envelope" that it came from you. That's
abuse (which I'm sure you wouldn't like) and that's precisely what
spammers do. Which is why some ISPs have introduced the use of headers
such as "X-Authentication-Warning" or "X-AntiAbuse" (etc).

In the case at hand, there were three headers of interest:

X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - canada3.dnshotel.com <-- indicates the
individual box the mail was sent from (dnshotel prolly is a dyndns, so
I'd wager our man uses cable/DSL)
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - mail.utm.utoronto.ca <-- indicates the
domain the mail was sent from. Interestingly, this is not on the same
domain as the above. Suspicious...
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - vancouveruniversity.edu <-- this
is the "envelope" email address (domain part) -- where the email
"pretends" to come from. The way email currently works, basically
anybody with halfway adaequate knowledge and/or software can put any
address in there--which is one of the reasons you and me and just about
every netizen have been getting so much spam lately.

Now our man prolly owns the vancouveruniversity.edu domain, so his
"fake" envelope address is comparable to what I occasionally do (see
above).
However, he also seems to use utoronto.ca network resources. Now
utoronto.ca is the University of Toronto -- a bona fide university.
I've just found they don't like abuse: http://www.enough.utoronto.ca/.
It's a fair guess that they will like a diploma mill running their
business using utoronto.ca network resources even less. Interesting.
Didn't see that before. I'll forward the email in question to
enough at utoronto.ca. I wouldn't be surprised if vancouveruniversity.edu
was run by a utoronto.ca student on a get-rich-quick spree...

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 15, Issue 14

body:
Robin Shannon wrote:

>G'day y'all,
>
>The current ACOTW (Aussie colaboration of the week) is victor chang.
>Now victor chang was murdered and because he was famous (in Australia)
>had a public funeral, at which his daugter made a funeral speech which
>was reprinted in the Sydney Morning Herald. Now this all happened in
>1991, which makes it impossible to link to the SMH article containing
>the speech (because only paying subscribers can view the archives), so
>i would like to put a link in the wikipedia article on victor to a
>copy of the speech on wikisource. But i dont know if public speeches
>are pd, or if US or AU copyright law applies. Does anyone know the
>answer, or know someone who might know?
>
Most public speeches are copyright.  I believe that US courts have
decided that there is a subsisting copyright in Martin Luther King's "I
have a dream" speech.  In the absence of an agreement to the contrary
the daughter rather than the newspaper would own the copyright.

For determining whether something IS copyright the law where the author
had the closest connection would apply, but the courts where the
infringement took place would have jurisdiction.

Ec


body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Robert wrote:
>
>>
>> Adam writes:
>> [...] When and if Wikipedia adopts a structure that
>> protects serious editors and prevents fools and fanatics
>> from sabotaging their work I will return to editing in
>> other areas. I will be posting a longer piece giving my
>> views on Wikipedia soon. Adam 14:22, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC
>>
> Just to put things in perspective, this is the same Adam Carr
> who's been known to call other editors idiots and morons just for
> preferring a different picture in an article. Not everybody is cut
> out to be a wiki editor; it's good to be knowledgeable, but a lot
> of people just can't handle it when their additions are touched
> by others, and they get into fight after fight over it.

To add additional perspective, he's also single-handedly written some of
our best, in-depth wiki articles, as well as forged consensus on some
difficult topics, such as [[Anti-Zionism]].  Much of his frustration
seems to stem from the fact that, even after such difficult consensus is
forged, the wiki method means that any random POV pusher can come in and
mangle the article, which has happened on [[Anti-Zionism]] on numerous
occasions.  Unless a group of knowledgeable people are willing to waste
their time baby-sitting an article, which usually amounts to revert-wars
(since rarely are the additions even remotely helpful), the articles go
rapidly downhill, wasting the effort of the people who painstakingly put
together a quality article on a contentious subject.

I'd have to say I agree with that criticism.  I've wasted some time
myself on some of these contentious subjects, only to come back a few
months later and find an abysmally horrid article in its place.  Now I
could start over again and try to hammer that article back into a
reasonable state, or I could just revert to my 3-month-old version, or I
could give up and say, "fine, the crappy article can stay".  And,
increasingly, a lot of people are taking the third option.

-Mark


body:
Follow-up:
I have not sent that email to enough at utoronto.ca as I've noticed that
Jeff Bonham, the original RECIPIENT of the said email is a user @
utoronto.ca. Now, I'm a bit nonplussed. I thought that X-AntiAbuse:
Original Domain indicated the SENDER domain?

'''Can anyone shed some light on this?'''

Many thanks,

-- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
     www.ropersonline.com

On 10 Oct 2004, at 04:31, Jens Ropers wrote:

> On 10 Oct 2004, at 02:47, Frank v Waveren wrote:
>> On Thu, Oct 07, 2004 at 09:16:37PM +0200, Jens Ropers wrote:
>>> The X-AntiAbuse email header fields are an indicator that they might
>>> be
>>> spammers.
>>
>> Not at all, lots of ISPs mailservers add them to all mail to make sure
>> abuse reports end up in the right place.
>>
>> --
>> Frank v Waveren                                      Fingerprint:
>> 9106 FD0D
>> fvw@[var.cx|stack.nl]
>
> Err... have you looked at the CONTENT of the said fields?
>
> You're right in that an email with such headers *might* still be legit.
> Typically, ISPs add such headers not to all emails that get sent via
> them, but only where the user does "suspicious" things, such as
> sending from one domain but "writing on the envelope" that the email
> originated from somewhere else.
>
> This is something that people may do for legitimate reasons (e.g. when
> I send mails via an MTA (email server) I sometimes run on my iBook, I
> sometimes "write on the envelope" that they are from ropersonline.com.
> Now, I own ropersonline.com. I receive the respective replies sent to
> ropersonline.com. So I'm not really impersonating someone else. No
> harm done. But imagine I were to send an email to somebody and without
> your consent were to "write on the envelope" that it came from you.
> That's abuse (which I'm sure you wouldn't like) and that's precisely
> what spammers do. Which is why some ISPs have introduced the use of
> headers such as "X-Authentication-Warning" or "X-AntiAbuse" (etc).
>
> In the case at hand, there were three headers of interest:
>
> X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - canada3.dnshotel.com <-- indicates the
> individual box the mail was sent from (dnshotel prolly is a dyndns, so
> I'd wager our man uses cable/DSL)
> X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - mail.utm.utoronto.ca <-- indicates the
> domain the mail was sent from. Interestingly, this is not on the same
> domain as the above. Suspicious...
> X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - vancouveruniversity.edu <-- this
> is the "envelope" email address (domain part) -- where the email
> "pretends" to come from. The way email currently works, basically
> anybody with halfway adaequate knowledge and/or software can put any
> address in there--which is one of the reasons you and me and just
> about every netizen have been getting so much spam lately.
>
> Now our man prolly owns the vancouveruniversity.edu domain, so his
> "fake" envelope address is comparable to what I occasionally do (see
> above).
> However, he also seems to use utoronto.ca network resources. Now
> utoronto.ca is the University of Toronto -- a bona fide university.
> I've just found they don't like abuse: http://www.enough.utoronto.ca/.
> It's a fair guess that they will like a diploma mill running their
> business using utoronto.ca network resources even less. Interesting.
> Didn't see that before. I'll forward the email in question to
> enough at utoronto.ca. I wouldn't be surprised if vancouveruniversity.edu
> was run by a utoronto.ca student on a get-rich-quick spree...
>
> -- ropers [[en:User:Ropers]]
>     www.ropersonline.com
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
I hereby formally request the creation of Wikinews, in all major Wikimedia
languages, under the domain

        wikinews.org

which I have registered and pointed to Wikimedia's nameservers.

The current Wikinews proposal ist at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews

According to that proposal, we can immediately start working on Wikinews
as soon as the site is set up. Some software changes will be useful in the
long term, but are not immediately needed.

The details of the proposed policies can be worked out on the live site as
they currently are on the Wikimedia Commons. The question right now is if
there is a rough consensus to start a Wikimedia project whose goal is
* to provide summaries of external news sources
* to do original, neutral reporting around the world.

If there are no serious objections, I'd like to start ASAP.

I believe this project has the potential to be as relevant as Wikipedia,
if not more so.  I'd love it if we could prove to the world that, using
wiki principles, we can create a neutral, reliable news source for
everyone.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The real story, Was (Loosing more of our best
	contributors)

body:
I was present, and to a certain extent responsible for Adam Carr's retreat
from Wikipedia. Here is the precipitating incident. It occured during
editing of [[Great Purge]]. I have been actively editing this article,
mostly puting reams of information into the article about how bad it was and
how unjustified. I was being regularly reverted and was happy to see Adam
Carr come along and from a similar perspective to mine added to the article.

[[User:Ruy Lopez]] inserted the following paragraph with the comment, "(The
Moscow Trials - other theories)":

"Some who think the trials were inherently fair, such as Molotov, concede
that some of the confessions contain unlikely statements. Molotov said there
may have been several reasons or motives that this can be attributed to -
one being if the handful who made doubtful confessions were trying to
undermine the Soviet Union and its government, then making dubious
statements within the confession would cast doubts on their trial. Molotov
postulated a defendant could invent a story that he collaborated with
foreign agents and party members to undermine the government, and then those
members would come under suspicion despite doing nothing, while the false
foreign collaboration charge would be believed as well. Thus, the Soviet
government was also the victim of false confessions. Nonetheless, he said
the evidence of mostly out-of-power Communist officials conspiring to make a
power grab during a moment of weakness in the upcoming war was there."

This paragraph, in the context of the article, follows a long explanation
that there was little or no ground for the purges.

Adam removed it, with the comment, "(this is now progessing towards being a
respectable article and this ridiculous stalinoid rubbish will not be
allowed)" [[User:Everyking]] put it back in with the comment, "(rv, i think
it's quite useful to include this pov in the article, don't see why it
wouldn't be). Adam then reverted with the comment, "(because it is a
pathetic attempt to drag absurd red herrings into a factual account of what
happened, and should not be tolerated by serious editors)".

I then reverted, modifying it somewhat with the comment, "(modify and
restore Stalinist perspective)":

"Some contemporary supporters of Stalin who think the trials were inherently
fair cite the statements of Molotov who while conceding that some of the
confessions contain unlikely statements, said there may have been several
reasons or motives that this can be attributed to - one being if the handful
who made doubtful confessions were trying to undermine the Soviet Union and
its government, then making dubious statements within the confession would
cast doubts on their trial.  Molotov postulated a defendant could invent a
story that he collaborated with foreign agents and party members to
undermine the government, and then those members would come under suspicion
despite doing nothing, while the false foreign collaboration charge would be
believed as well.  Thus, the Soviet government was in his view the victim of
false confessions.  Nonetheless, he said the evidence of mostly out-of-power
Communist officials conspiring to make a power grab during a moment of
weakness in the upcoming war was there."

(This is not his original version, I added the attributing, "Some
contemporary supporters of Stalin....)

At this point Adam Carr went into a huff, making the comments: "(well if
apparently sensible editors think it is acceptable to include complete
rubbish like this in a serious historical article I am withdrawing from
it.)" and "(as a parting expression of my disgust, i am returning the
article to the crap state it was in before i began attempting to rescue
it.)"

He then left notes on my and Everyking's talk pages and replaced his own
pages with the note Robert references.

Fred

> From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2004 21:59:18 -0700 (PDT)
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Loosing more of our best contributors
>
> Adam Carr is now gone.
> Evry loss like this is a huge blow to the project.
>
> Adam writes:
> I have decided to scale back substantially my involvement
> in the Wikipedia project, since I no longer believe it is
> capable in its present form of achieving its objectives. I
> have removed from my watchlist about 300 articles relating
> to historical and political subjects outside Australia. I
> will no longer edit any such articles or respond to
> requests to edit them or comment on them. My edits will be
> confined to Australian topics, ancient history and gay
> topics. When and if Wikipedia adopts a structure that
> protects serious editors and prevents fools and fanatics
> from sabotaging their work I will return to editing in
> other areas. I will be posting a longer piece giving my
> views on Wikipedia soon.
> Adam 14:22, 8 Oct 2004 (UTC


body:
In the case [[Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Lyndon LaRouche]] which
principly involved the editing activities of [[User:Herschelkrustofsky]] who
had initiated the case, the Arbitration Committee severely restricted
Herschelkrustofsky's and others editing of Wikipedia articles in relation to
references to Lyndon LaRouche. What we did not agree on was restrictions of
the [[Lyndon LaRouche]] article itself where after arbitration the trouble
continued.

Whether we failed in some way is hard to say, we simply did not come to
complete agreement. We did agree to ban Adam Carr for one day for making
personal attacks which did not go down well with some.

Fred

> From: "Charles Matthews" <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 09:04:36 +0100
> To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Loosing more of our best contributors
>
> Phil Sandifer wrote
>
>
>> One of the major factors in Adam's decision to leave, so far as I can
>> tell, was the edit warring that took place over articles related to
>> Lyndon LaRouche.
>
> I can't comment on that.  I found in my contact with Adam that he was
> abrupt, brusque etc.. I was surprised to find a page dealing with the
> Australian Left and its history protected, when I had reason to want to edit
> it.
>
> Clearly a fine WP editor, though.  So I'm glad that he has _not_ left, as
> Robert misleadingly implies.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


body:
That was exactly what Adam Carr became upset about. Inclusion of a point of
view he felt should have been excluded. See the edit history of [[Great
Purge]].

Fred

> From: Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Rebecca <misfitgirl at gmail.com>, English Wikipedia
> <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 20:52:08 +1000
> To: wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Loosing more of our best contributors
>
> It's all well and good to say that all viewpoints are welcome, and
> indeed this is true.


from_name: Angela

body:
On Sun, 10 Oct 2004 00:45:46 -0400, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Given that on en: at least, Current Events is fairly mediocre in
> quality, is there a need for an entirely separate site?  Why not work to
> make [[en:Current Events]] a truly good summary of current news, and
> once that happens, expand to original reporting?

Current Events is getting an awful lot of hits for something
supposedly "mediocre". After Hurricane Ivan and the Main Page, it was
the most visited page last month. [[Current events]] is also the most
edited page on the English Wikipedia. Of the 20 most edited pages
across all Wikimedia projects, the current events page, and its
equivalent in other languages, shows up four times. This demonstrates
a huge interest in not only reading the page, but also in
collaborating in its creation. I believe this level of interest
demonstrates that Wikinews will be a success.

Wikipedia does not allow original research, and it will never be the
ideal venue for in-depth news reporting. A news report simply is not
the same as an encyclopedia article. It does, of course, feed into
Wikipedia though, and having a free, neutral, news resource will be of
great value to Wikipedia's topical articles, and to the current events
pages.

I strongly support the creation of this project.

Angela.


body:
Turning articles in the area of communist history over to the tender mercies
of 172 is not a solution. It's not a matter of experience, although newbie
POV warriors are pretty bad too. It is a fact, that in practice, a
determined (and experienced) POV pusher can get their way just by wearing
down any opposition.

Robert, who started this thread, is another major offender.

Fred

> From: zen19725 at zen.co.uk (phil hunt)
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 13:09:57 +0100
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Loosing more of our best contributors
>
> So, what is the fix for this problem?
>
> Probably a number of systems will have to be part of the fix,
> including a formal peer review system. But one simple measure might
> be to label some articles (those where edit wars and NPOV problems
> are common) as "contentious articles", and make it that only
> wikipedians of some standing (accounts that have existed for >1
> month, with > a number of edits) can edit them.


body:
Is it proposed that Wikinews would allow original reporting? If so, how
would we deal with libel risks?

Fred

> From: Angela <beesley at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Angela <beesley at gmail.com>, Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 07:29:01 +0100
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Formal request: Wikinews project
>
> Wikipedia does not allow original research, and it will never be the
> ideal venue for in-depth news reporting. A news report simply is not
> the same as an encyclopedia article. It does, of course, feed into
> Wikipedia though, and having a free, neutral, news resource will be of
> great value to Wikipedia's topical articles, and to the current events
> pages.
>
> I strongly support the creation of this project.
>
> Angela.


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Complete Latex Files in WikiTeX ?

body:
> That means that it is necessary to create pictures of arbitrary tex/latex
> content, and as well to be able to deliver all Pages (in PDF) and the whole
> Latex Code.

     It appears as though you have a pure TeX environment in
mind, sans HTML; would hyper-linking  then  be  accomplished
externally?

     Best, Peter

--
Peter Danenberg                                           .
wikisophia.org                                           ..:


from_name: Charles Matthews

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote

> One of the major factors in Adam's decision to leave, so far as I can
> tell, was the edit warring that took place over articles related to
> Lyndon LaRouche.

I can't comment on that.  I found in my contact with Adam that he was
abrupt, brusque etc.. I was surprised to find a page dealing with the
Australian Left and its history protected, when I had reason to want to edit
it.

Clearly a fine WP editor, though.  So I'm glad that he has _not_ left, as
Robert misleadingly implies.

Charles


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Loosing more of our best contributors
>Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 04:37:10 -0400

>To add additional perspective, he's also single-handedly written some of
>our best, in-depth wiki articles, as well as forged consensus on some
>difficult topics, such as [[Anti-Zionism]].  Much of his frustration seems
>to stem from the fact that, even after such difficult consensus is forged,
>the wiki method means that any random POV pusher can come in and mangle the
>article, which has happened on [[Anti-Zionism]] on numerous occasions.
>Unless a group of knowledgeable people are willing to waste their time
>baby-sitting an article, which usually amounts to revert-wars (since rarely
>are the additions even remotely helpful), the articles go rapidly downhill,
>wasting the effort of the people who painstakingly put together a quality
>article on a contentious subject.
>
>I'd have to say I agree with that criticism.  I've wasted some time myself
>on some of these contentious subjects, only to come back a few months later
>and find an abysmally horrid article in its place.  Now I could start over
>again and try to hammer that article back into a reasonable state, or I
>could just revert to my 3-month-old version, or I could give up and say,
>"fine, the crappy article can stay".  And, increasingly, a lot of people
>are taking the third option.

Exactly.  As my watchilist grows I find myself spending no time actually
creating content, and all my time monitoring existing articles with
painfully reached NPOV, as each new POV warrior discovers Wikipedia and
decides to add a few "relevant" comments promoting his/her POV, which in
turn prompts other to insert their own POV, etc.  Or, as I've more recently
been experiencing, the replace the article entirely with their own POV
version.  In the latter case, if they don't ultimately get their way, they
often create new articles with their own POV under similar titles, or highly
POV titles, as a back-door to getting their way.  If these articles are
eventually discovered, they are often listed for VfD or re-direct, a process
which usually takes further weeks of negotiation.  In the end, we're either
left with wikijunk, or a mass of overlapping articles, or (in the best case)
the POV warriors eventually abandon their quest, having wasted many
person-days of individual editors times which could have been far more
profitably spent creating new content.

Jay.

_________________________________________________________________
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first two months FREE*.


body:
>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Loosing more of our best contributors
>Date: Sun, 10 Oct 2004 04:09:55 -0700

>Some of us take on too much, and participation in controversial can be a
>considerable drain on time and emotion.  Adam appears to have realized
>that.  Limiting himself to the stated topics may make him more productive.

And thus do Wikipedia articles on un-controversial topics generally achieve
a reasonably high standard, while Wikipedia articles on controversial topics
degenerate into Wikigarbage in a ruthless Darwinian "survival of the most
strident POV pushers" battle.

_________________________________________________________________
Take advantage of powerful junk e-mail filters built on patented Microsoft?
SmartScreen Technology.
http://join.msn.com/?pgmarket=en-ca&page=byoa/prem&xAPID=1994&DI=1034&SU=http://hotmail.com/enca&HL=Market_MSNIS_Taglines
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first two months FREE*.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Open Mapping

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> You probably know more about this than I do, so this is quite possibly a
> naive question.  Is it possible to leverage any of the existing
> internet-based GIS stuff for our purposes?

I don't see why not (and you gave some good free examples). At its most basic
level it is a matter of requests going to a spatial server and the spatial
server sending vector or raster data to the client (using vector data requies
JavaScript while using raster data only requires a web browser; but vector is
more bandwidth-friendly).

Lat/long could be fed to such a spatial server along with some default values
for extent and projection to obtain a basic map. There are a *great* many
similar websites that do this on the Internet. If you have used MapQuest, then
you have used such a system.

The real issue are data; Only the U.S. has very comprehensive public domin
spatial data. A separate WikiGIS/WikiMaps project (we own the .com and .org for
both names) would probably be needed to improve those data and create data for
the rest of the world (also serve the result to all Wikimedia projects as a
part of Wikimedia Commons). *That* would be fairly unique and difficult to do,
since I'm not aware of any such similar project based on the Internet.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

PS - the whole idea of copyrights on spatial data seem to be absurd to me; how
could anybody claim to *own* any exact digital reproduction of the street
network for Paris or the exact location and shape of the Zaire River? And yet
this type of thing is *very* common in the GIS world (but I also think it is
absurd for people to copyright *natural* DNA sequences and patent their
*natural* products ; I guess I'm weird that way). Argh!

_______________________________
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http://vote.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The "months later" effect

body:
> From: Delirium <delirium at hackish.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Loosing more of our best contributors
>

> I'd have to say I agree with that criticism.  I've wasted some time
> myself on some of these contentious subjects, only to come back a few
> months later and find an abysmally horrid article in its place.  Now I
> could start over again and try to hammer that article back into a
> reasonable state, or I could just revert to my 3-month-old version, or
> I
> could give up and say, "fine, the crappy article can stay".  And,
> increasingly, a lot of people are taking the third option.
>
> -Mark

I can relate to that. Even with non-contentious articles. I call it the
"months later" effect. One of the delusions of Wikipedia is that when
one has done good work, and an article receives no comments or further
edits, that the article has somehow been accepted or approved. In most
cases, I suspect, it just hasn't been noticed.

There's one article which I really, really liked a few months ago.
Factual, vigorous, lively, and the collaborative product of many
contributors.  In the meantime, a new editor appeared and, _while in
fact remaining within the bounds of good behavior_, reshaped it to his
personal vision by extremely assertive editing of the article,
monitoring it, and challenging any other edits that don't fit his point
of view (which of course he regards as "neutral"). There's nothing
actually wrong with the new article but _I just don't like it_.

One of the big problems with "hammering out consensus" in _any_
organization is the arrival of newcomers who did not take part in
forming that consensus. I've seen it almost every place that I've
worked. Someone will propose something that seems outrageous, and
someone will pipe up and say, "But we spent all that time on it and we
all _agreed_..." and, on analysis, it turns out that it was quite a
while ago and many of the "all" are no longer there, the procedure had
remained in place only because nobody challenged it... and the hard
work of building consensus starts all over again with a different cast
of characters.

But in a company, the arrival of newcomers is infrequent, structured,
and the newcomers undergo some kind of formal or informal process of
becoming oriented.

There's also a regression-to-the-mean-like effect. When an article is
relatively undeveloped, and a random newcomer wanders in and decides to
"edit this page," the chances of improvement are high. Not only because
the average quality of the editors is higher than the quality of the
page, but also because theor motivation is likely to be relatively
pure. The main reason for wanting to edit a _low-quality_ page is that
one actually knows something about the subject.

But when an article is of high quality, the people who have knowledge
in the topic area are likely to leave it alone. The people who are most
likely to edit it are people who want to push a point of view, or
people who know much less than they think they know. The result is that
the better an article is, the greater the chances that random edits
will lower its quality.

I think there needs to be some mechanism in place so that when an
article becomes generally regarded as good, Version 1.0 or whatever, it
can be sort of locked in place. Perhaps it could be stamped with a
version number, and any attempts to edit [[GoodArticle]] are
automatically redirected to [[GoodArticle/Version1.1]]. Within a
discussion forum, when and only when there is general consensus that
[[GoodArticle/Version1.1]] is better than [[GoodArticle]], a sysop or
suitably-authorized-panjandrum can move it to [[GoodArticle]].

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/