subject: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> * If you contribute to the wiki without creating an account, your edits
>> are publicly identified with your network location instead of a name.
>
> Is this information made known to an anonymous contributor before they
> actually make the edit?

Doesn't seem to be anything explicit about it on the edit page, at least
on en.wikipedia. Nor is there an obvious link to the privacy policy
(finally out of draft, I hear).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> * If you contribute to the wiki without creating an account, your edits
>> are publicly identified with your network location instead of a name.
>
> Is this information made known to an anonymous contributor before they
> actually make the edit?

Doesn't seem to be anything explicit about it on the edit page, at least
on en.wikipedia. Nor is there an obvious link to the privacy policy
(finally out of draft, I hear).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> * If you contribute to the wiki without creating an account, your edits
>> are publicly identified with your network location instead of a name.
>
> Is this information made known to an anonymous contributor before they
> actually make the edit?

Doesn't seem to be anything explicit about it on the edit page, at least
on en.wikipedia. Nor is there an obvious link to the privacy policy
(finally out of draft, I hear).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> * If you contribute to the wiki without creating an account, your edits
>> are publicly identified with your network location instead of a name.
>
> Is this information made known to an anonymous contributor before they
> actually make the edit?

Doesn't seem to be anything explicit about it on the edit page, at least
on en.wikipedia. Nor is there an obvious link to the privacy policy
(finally out of draft, I hear).

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: A Gibraltarian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
Hi Mark a Yanito WP sounds great. I'll play around with the Gib article on
my own and see what I come up with. :o)

>From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!
>Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 02:14:25 -0700
>
>Hi,
>
>What do you think of a Yanito WP?
>
>Mark
>
>On 21/10/05, A Gibraltarian <a_gibraltarian at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Re: creation of other language WP's as far as I am concerned if somebody
> > want to take the trouble why should anyone object?
> >
> > If someone wants to create one in Klingon, Ancient Greek or Aramaic let
>them
> > get on with it. If you don't know the language or object for political
> > reasons then stick to other language WP's.
> >
> > Gibraltarian
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE!
> > http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>--
>SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
>QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
>POSSIT MATERIARI
>ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[Foundation-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New
	Partnership

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> I think that not only should the revenue relationship be disclosed on
>> the page, it should be prominently highlighted as a _feature_.  You can
>> use the Answers.com 1-Click tool, if you like, and if you do, it brings
>> in revenue to support Wikipedia.
>>
> This somehow seems similar to the abandoned idea to highlight Amazon
> referrer links for ISBNs, who also would bring revenue to the Wikimedia
> Foundation if people wanted to use them, but which ran into considerable
> opposition...

Yes, but I think mostly because Amazon is under a boycott by RMS for
their patent policies.

--Jimbo


list: wikien-l

from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mailing list breakages

body:
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Hash: SHA256

Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> They're broken.  The in-reply-to header determines threading in email,
>> going back as far as RFC 822.
>>
>> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html
>
>
> I know, but for some reason whatever email client some people are using,
> they aren't changing the in-reply-to header correctly. Thunderbird takes
> an intelligent guess at how to thread it, by using the email subject.
>
> What is even more annoying is when people hit reply to an existing
> email, and start a completely new discussion (and it is then threaded in
> reply to an existing topic). I can't win, can I? :)
>

In addition, it seems that email clients ignore the in-reply-to header,
the references: headers, and so on and so forth.

Oh, and I keep getting tab characters in the subject line.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Mailing list breakages

body:
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Jtkiefer wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>> Chris Jenkinson wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> They're broken.  The in-reply-to header determines threading in email,
>>>> going back as far as RFC 822.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html
>>>>
>>>
>>> I know, but for some reason whatever email client some people are using,
>>> they aren't changing the in-reply-to header correctly. Thunderbird takes
>>> an intelligent guess at how to thread it, by using the email subject.
>>>
>>> What is even more annoying is when people hit reply to an existing
>>> email, and start a completely new discussion (and it is then threaded in
>>> reply to an existing topic). I can't win, can I? :)
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> In addition, it seems that email clients ignore the in-reply-to header,
>> the references: headers, and so on and so forth.
>>
>> Oh, and I keep getting tab characters in the subject line.
>>
>>
> So it isn't an issue of the mailing lists stripping them? since we seem
> to be having the same issue at helpdesk-l of the reply-to headers being
> stripped.
>

It's a completely different header. You need to set heldesk-l to "reply
to list" and *not* strip existing Reply-To headers.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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from_name: Han Dao

subject: [WikiEN-l] harrassment of users spreading?

body:
Jeez...I wonder why this troll hate you.

On 10/22/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> One problem is that we don't give someone something which they then
> loose if they start acting out. We have no experience points invested
> in our character as one might have in a MUD, usually no special
> powers or privileges to loose. This is complicated by no requirement
> to create an account, no confirmation of accounts or of identity. So
> access to any ip is sufficient to come aboard and edit without limit,
> and to return to the subject, be as nasty as you might want to be.
>
> Fred
>
> On Oct 22, 2005, at 9:52 AM, Tom Cadden wrote:
>
> > Maybe I didn't notice it before but since my Skyring
> > 'experience' a number of other users have approached
> > me to say they have having the same experience.
> >
> > Among the things happening are a NUMBER of users are
> > eperiencing:
> >
> > * PERSONALLY targeted attacks on individual members by
> > another individual (a different individual in each
> > case), who follows the user around adding abuse to
> > talk pages. (Another user has just emailed me and said
> > that has been happening to them too. Someone else said
> > they had experienced it a few weeks ago.)
> >
> > * users who standby and the moment an individual is
> > criticised, jump in to add in venomous attacks of
> > their own that are unconnected to the current dispute.
> >
> >
> > * users spamming other users with smears about someone
> > on Wikipedia.
> >
> > * off-Wikipedia public attacks, some of them
> > libellous, many of them offensive and distressing, on
> > Wikipedians.
> >
> > * One abuser, Skyring, even accused another Wikipedian
> > of physically stalking his house!!! (She obviously
> > didn't, but was shocked at the claim, which was in a
> > longer personal attack he launched on her.)
> >
> > Two people in the last 24 hours, having witnessed
> > Skyring's antics against me, have emailed me to say
> > that they too are being targeted others. Both said
> > that they are on the brink of quitting WP altogether
> > because of the unending cycle of abuse they are
> > getting from an individual (a different individual in
> > each case).
> >
> > I can't help wondering if Skyring's antics (which are
> > proving difficult to stop - he has now started again
> > creating phoney sockpuppet 'users' to sneak back in
> > attacks under the guise of innocent edit summaries)
> > has inspired others to act in a similar way.
> >
> > Simply deleting attacks doesn't solve the problem if
> > merely the fact of editing an article opens one up to
> > the attack to start off with. The offence will have
> > been caused by the time the attack is deleted. And
> > with some users spreading attacks like confetti, not
> > every attack is spotted if it is in the talk page of a
> > little read page. Offensive attacks also remain in the
> > archives for anyone to read.
> >
> > This problem could destroy Wikipedia, by driving away
> > genuine users and having WP swamped by abusive trolls
> > stalking individuals throughout the database. The
> > danger is that genuine users who may themselves not be
> > a victim of this problem may see such stalked attacks
> > appearing all over the place and decide 'I don't want
> > that to happen to me' and so leave. One already left
> > two months ago, having emailed me to ask "what is
> > happening here? It is disgusting."
> >
> > What strategy do we have for dealing with what seems
> > like a growing problem?
> >
> > Thom
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________________________________
> > How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
> > snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: SJ

subject: [Foundation-l] Entering the US : privacy and visa issues

body:
I've heard people complain variously that  a) the US requires European
airlines to share private data about passengers for security
screening,  b) the US stores passenger name records centrally, "for an
indefinite period of time",  and  c) the visa process is prohibitive,
and can't be trusted to let people into the country.  In response to
each:

a) True; also true in Canada.  Canada and the EU this month signed an
agreement to share passenger info (including phone #s and credit card
#s), similar to, if somewhat more limited than, the one signed with
the US last year:
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8D0JK80E.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down&chan=db

b)  Not at present.  The US CAPPS/"Secure Flight" program, which would
involve centrally storing information about passengers from all
airlines, had its "testing phase" first postponed and then suspended
indefinitely, following criticism from many government and private
groups.  It also had its technology budget cut last week.
  http://www.epic.org/privacy/airtravel/secureflight.html
  http://www.compliancepipeline.com/171202490
  http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051018-075400-1017r

Both the US and Canada (see a, above) store some passenger information
for 3.5 years.

c)  Sometimes time consuming, but fairly reliable.  I wrote/spoke to
three people who run regular international conferences in the US.  Two
independently pointed me to the office of the local Senator.  Sure
enough, Senator Kennedy has an active and competent immigration group.
The woman in charge spent 10 minutes asking about Wikimania's subject,
history, timing, and international scope; and offered good advice on
how to prepare visa applications.
   She suggested that for this kind of conference, venue, and
audience[1], there should not be extensive visa trouble[2].  She added
that she was there to help with the trouble, including cutting through
red tape and salvaging visa rejections ("if an application is
rejected, call me immediately and we'll work to get it overturned").
You can see a summary of the advice here:
     http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Boston/Visas

[1]  With the caveat that she wanted to look at more information and
give a better-detailed answer next week.
[2]  What she could say for certain : Attendees from a few countries
(Iran, Libya) will have a difficult time getting a visa, and will need
particularly strong supporting documents and local connections.  Those
from other countries (China, Colombia, India, other parts of the
Middle East) will usually have to wait for over a month and should
apply well in advance.   Other difficult cases will be single young
men residing in non-visa-waiver countries, out of school and
unemployed, with few family ties or financial resources; these will
need extra support from our end (in the US).  All of this should apply
in Canada as well, to some degree.

++SJ


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Entering the US : privacy and visa issues

body:
I should add that US immigration is still often amazingly annoying,
sometimes with no reason -- even though you can get through it in the
end.  I dislike it immensely; my Chilean half-brother has to suffer it
every time he comes to visit;  and we all hope this is a passing
thing...

On 10/22/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've heard people complain variously that  a) the US requires European
> airlines to share private data about passengers for security
> screening,  b) the US stores passenger name records centrally, "for an
> indefinite period of time",  and  c) the visa process is prohibitive,
> and can't be trusted to let people into the country.  In response to
> each:
>
> a) True; also true in Canada.  Canada and the EU this month signed an
> agreement to share passenger info (including phone #s and credit card
> #s), similar to, if somewhat more limited than, the one signed with
> the US last year:
> http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8D0JK80E.htm?campaign_id=apn_home_down&chan=db
>
> b)  Not at present.  The US CAPPS/"Secure Flight" program, which would
> involve centrally storing information about passengers from all
> airlines, had its "testing phase" first postponed and then suspended
> indefinitely, following criticism from many government and private
> groups.  It also had its technology budget cut last week.
>   http://www.epic.org/privacy/airtravel/secureflight.html
>   http://www.compliancepipeline.com/171202490
>   http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?StoryID=20051018-075400-1017r
>
> Both the US and Canada (see a, above) store some passenger information
> for 3.5 years.
>
> c)  Sometimes time consuming, but fairly reliable.  I wrote/spoke to
> three people who run regular international conferences in the US.  Two
> independently pointed me to the office of the local Senator.  Sure
> enough, Senator Kennedy has an active and competent immigration group.
> The woman in charge spent 10 minutes asking about Wikimania's subject,
> history, timing, and international scope; and offered good advice on
> how to prepare visa applications.
>    She suggested that for this kind of conference, venue, and
> audience[1], there should not be extensive visa trouble[2].  She added
> that she was there to help with the trouble, including cutting through
> red tape and salvaging visa rejections ("if an application is
> rejected, call me immediately and we'll work to get it overturned").
> You can see a summary of the advice here:
>      http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Boston/Visas
>
> [1]  With the caveat that she wanted to look at more information and
> give a better-detailed answer next week.
> [2]  What she could say for certain : Attendees from a few countries
> (Iran, Libya) will have a difficult time getting a visa, and will need
> particularly strong supporting documents and local connections.  Those
> from other countries (China, Colombia, India, other parts of the
> Middle East) will usually have to wait for over a month and should
> apply well in advance.   Other difficult cases will be single young
> men residing in non-visa-waiver countries, out of school and
> unemployed, with few family ties or financial resources; these will
> need extra support from our end (in the US).  All of this should apply
> in Canada as well, to some degree.
>
> ++SJ
>

--
++SJ


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy on breaches of bans

body:
On 10/22/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Peter has to have accounts with isps to get on, doesn't he? I don't
> think he's hanging around the public library.
>

way back he mentioned useing wireless acess at a local cafe.

--
geni


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] What Readers Say on Inclusion

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>On 10/22/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>> I'm not sure I agree with the statement that anyone using Wikipedia for
>>self-promotion should be shunned, but besides that I don't think that's the
>>reason most of this information gets added. If I didn't know it would be
>>deleted, I would have added information to Wikipedia about many of my
>>favorite indie bands. I wouldn't do this to promote them, but I'd do it for
>>the same reason I add information about anything else - I think it's
>>information that someone else might be interested in.
>> I really don't see how it promotes the band to write an article on [[Willy
>>on Wheels Garage Band]] anyway. No one is going to come across that article
>>unless they search for "Willy on Wheels Garage Band".
>> Perhaps this is even more clear with regard to the articles that I'd write
>>about more often if I knew that they wouldn't be deleted - software
>>programs. I'd love it if Wikipedia had an article on every single P2P
>>software program out there: big or small, good or bad, open source or
>>proprietary. I'm not doing it because I want to promote the software. In
>>fact, I think it's as important to have an NPOV article about software that
>>sucks so that I can read it and know not to bother downloading the crap.
>>Maybe that stuff doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Maybe I should argue for
>>freshwikimeat.com <http://freshwikimeat.com>. But it has nothing to do with
>>self-promotion or any other type of promotion.
>>
>It may not be effective promotion, but it's about the intent, not the
>effect. Besides, any such article about a regular unremarkable band is
>eating server resources. One wouldn't be a problem, but if you allow
>one why not the other and soon we've got a whole bunch of them.
>Keeping such bands would set a bad precedent.
>
The server space argument is not convincing when you consider that
probably far more server space is used trying to get rid of one than in
maintaining a useless stub in an out-of-the-way corner.  In large
computer programmes, I'm sure that many random code bits are kept
because it is not a cost effective way of employing developer time to be
hunting them all down.

Ec

Ec


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it was rather presumptious of the board to "announce" this
> without consulting editors first. The board may have "signed up" to a
> trial of this, but *we* haven't, and I think the board may well have a
> hard time stopping editors removing this advertisting from the site.

And how exactly is this advertising? Simply saying something is so does not
make it so.

We need to aggressively develop many more partnerships like this due to our
massively increasing costs. The entire budget for this year was about $700,000
with 70+% of that going to new hardware purchases. The year before the entire
budget was less than $200,000.

Depending on just how exponential our growth continues to be, we will need to
purchase 2 million to 4 million dollars worth of hardware just to keep up next
year. Increase those figures by about 30% to arrive at a budget that *only*
covers our very basic operating costs. If we don't keep up, then the sites go
down.

We also have a much larger goal than just keeping the websites up; to
distribute our content to the people who most need it. Money generated from
partnerships like the one we are going to test with Answers.com are needed to
help make that happen.

We have been small enough so far that we haven't really needed to form these
type of partnerships. That is no longer the case.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual redirect

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> It doesn't say "English Wikipedia".
>
> Thus, the _new_ policy proposed by Geritt should be in line with this
> quote which we have to follow because it came from above.

The http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/* and http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/*
URL spaces are permanently reserved for maintaining past links to
English Wikipedia, which is currently living at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*.

Since they are permanently reserved for existing past links, no new use
of that space is possible.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Questionable fair use claims: a case study

body:
On 20 Oct 2005, at 17:34, uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
>
> I don't care much about this particular image, but I see this as a
> bellwether for the broader issue of dealing with the thousands of
> images we have where there is a doubtful fair use claim being made by
> the uploader.  The process for handling such images is unclear, at
> least to me, with the IFD, PUI, and CV (copyright violations) pages
> having overlapping purpose and conflicting processes.  Any of these
> processes are cumbersome, with notification required to the uploader
> and ongoing monitoring to shepherd the image through the process.  And
> all of these processes are heavily biased towards inclusion.
> Decisions
> to keep fair use images are being made by admins who don't understand
> fair use and don't appreciate the stakes.

It appears that the admin (who is closing most of ifd at the moment)
has decided that PUI is where all images should end up. It is therefore
now almost impossible to get anything deleted. I listed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Haley-Paige.jpg on ifd after it had
already been tagged as fair use disputed. It has a big copyright
notice on the bottom of the image from http://www.newsensations.com/,
a porn image link reseller, and its labelled as "promo". And it didnt
get deleted; its now on PUI. "Possibly unfree" whats the point of this.
It is unfree, no question, so why is it here. Whats the point of this
process?

I havent been closing ifd as I often list images there, and it seems bad
form to list and delete, but I might have to change this policy.

Justinc


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Stockholm Challenge Award 2006

body:
I am ok to participate a little bit if someone begins a page somewhere !

Jakob Voss wrote:
> Hi!
>
> Looks like Wikipedia could fit into the education section. The ceremony
> for the price is in the Stockholm City hall where also the Nobel banket
> takes place - this is our direction, isn't it? Anyone willing to sketch
> a description of Wikimedia projects that includes ICT,
> life-long-learning, education and all these buzzwords?
>
> Greetings,
> Jakob
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
> The Stockholm Challenge Award 2006 is open for entries
>
> <http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/news_right.asp?IdNr=150>THE STOCKHOLM
> CHALLENGE AWARD 2006 invites excellent ICT projects from all over the
> world to compete for the prestigious Challenge trophies. The Challenge
> is searching for the best initiatives that accelerate the use of
> information technology for the social and economic benefit of citizens
> and communities. The objective is to help local entrepreneurs, who work
> to close the digital divide, by bringing in research communities,
> development organisations and strong corporate initiatives.
>
> THE AWARDS WILL BE HANDED OUT IN SIX CATEGORIES
> <http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/show_facts.asp?IdNr=9>in the City Hall
> - on May 11, 2006. Special focus will be on projects in countries and
> regions with the greatest needs. There will also be an international
> Challenge conference in Stockholm on issues related to the role of ICTs
> in global development work.
>
> *THE AWARD IS OPEN FOR ENTRIES until December 31st 2005*. The
> application form
> <http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/omtavling_index.html>is easily
> accessible on the home page.
>
> The Stockholm Challenge is headquartered at the IT University
> <http://www.it-univ.se/?lang=en>- a joint initiative by KTH
> <http://www.kth.se/eng/> (The Royal Institute of Technology) and
> Stockholm University <http://www.su.se/english> . It is managed by a
> consortium that also includes the City of Stockholm, Ericsson and Sida,
> the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.
>
> For more information, please contact:
> Project Manager
> Ulla Skid?n
> ulla.skiden at stockholmchallenge.se
> <mailto:ulla.skiden at stockholmchallenge.se>
> Telephone: + 46 8 7904469
> Cell: +46 70 678 72 82
>
> www.stockholmchallenge.se <http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/>
>
>
> *Rules for participation in the Stockholm Challenge Award 2006
> <http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/show_facts.asp?IdNr=3>*
>
> These are the basic rules for the participation in the Stockholm
> Challenge Award. All competing projects must:
>
> 1. Include ICT
> Illustrate how ICT is used to create new or better traditional services
> and/or products, which are beneficial for human and social development.
>
> 2. Be implemented
> All competing projects must be up and running. They should be
> implemented/piloted since no less than three months. The Stockholm
> Challenge Award does not accept drafted concepts and ideas only. The
> jury will only evaluate and compare projects that can show measurable
> outcomes and impact.
>
> 3. Be linked to and/or supported by an established private or public
> organisation.
>
> 4. Be verifiable, i.e. able to present credible references.
>
> 5. Be free from religious, political or other personal beliefs.
>
> /*To be noted:*/
>
> /*Projects that have won one of the Challenge categories in previous
> years cannot enter the competition again.*/
>
> /*All applications must be in English*/
>
> *Evaluation criteria
> <http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/show_facts.asp?IdNr=4>*
>
> Innovation, creativity and the convergence of ICT with many different
> disciplines are some of the qualities that are looked for in the
> competing projects. The jury, a group of international senior experts,
> base their evaluation on the following criteria, most of which all
> Challenge projects should meet:
>
> _Innovation_
> Competing projects should illustrate new and innovative ways of using
> ICT to improve the living and economical conditions especially of those
> with great needs.
>
> _Convergence_
> The addition of ICT as a tool to traditional development work can
> improve and widen the scope of the project impact. Projects should show
> successful convergences of different disciplines and sectors.
>
> _Inclusion_
> It is favourable for the competing projects to show that they bring
> individuals, groups and local organisations into larger communities ?
> national and global - such as medical, government, educational and
> cultural networks, as well business environments.
>
> _Equal Opportunity_
> It is important that the initiatives counteract inequality related to
> the likes of gender, origin, age, physical and/or mental disabilities.
>
> _Sustainability_
> An important factor is sustainability. Not only economic sustainability,
> i.e. how long the project will last and bring benefits to its users.
> Sustainability also includes the contribution of the project to a
> sustainable society and environment at large.
>
> *Opportunities <http://www.stockholmchallenge.se/show_facts.asp?IdNr=2>*
>
> To enter a project in the Stockholm Challenge Award is not only to
> participate in a prestigious international ICT competition - it is also
> a way to join networks of some of the best ICT entrepreneurs and
> pioneers in the world. Testimonials from many of the projects, which
> have competed in their respective categories over the years, say that it
> is the inspiration, the new ideas, contacts and partners that are the
> greatest rewards for a Challenger.
>
> The Stockholm Challenge represents excellent marketing through the
> exposure to media, and to private and public organizations that are
> involved in ICT work and implementations. It gives promotional
> opportunities for entrepreneurs, universities, cities, cities and
> regions. The Stockholm Challenge Final Events include a Best Practice
> Exhibition and a Conference. It is a meeting place for some the world's
> most successful IT entrepreneurs.
>
> Winners and finalists of the Stockholm Challenge are global role models
> for cities, companies, organisations, schools and others who are
> involved in adapting and spreading the use of ICT.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 10/3/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:

> Philip Sandifer wrote:
>
> >
> > Which doesn't prove anything, I'll be the first to admit. But I think
> > this is an important thing we haven't been asking - what do readers
> > think.
>
> It's an interesting point-counterpoint issue, because although Wikipedia
> is about providing what the readers want, many readers aren't at all
> concerned with the overall health of the project-- they are only
> concerned with whether it helps with their homework, or Livejournal
> debate or whatever.
>
> I think most deletionists who are upset about people writing articles
> about themselves get upset because after putting in all this work to
> improve the project, someone coming in and writing an article about his
> band is seen as an appropriation of the work of others. Wikipedia is
> popular because of the work people put in to improve it, and that means
> that anyone using it to do self-promotion is to be (rightfully) shunned.
> Yes, the information about your garage band might be true, but that
> doesn't mean it's okay for you to use Wikipedia as your own personal
> vehicle to superstardom. We only want contributions from people who want
> to improve the encyclopedia; not people who want to use it to advance
> their own interests.

 I'm not sure I agree with the statement that anyone using Wikipedia for
self-promotion should be shunned, but besides that I don't think that's the
reason most of this information gets added. If I didn't know it would be
deleted, I would have added information to Wikipedia about many of my
favorite indie bands. I wouldn't do this to promote them, but I'd do it for
the same reason I add information about anything else - I think it's
information that someone else might be interested in.
 I really don't see how it promotes the band to write an article on [[Willy
on Wheels Garage Band]] anyway. No one is going to come across that article
unless they search for "Willy on Wheels Garage Band".
 Perhaps this is even more clear with regard to the articles that I'd write
about more often if I knew that they wouldn't be deleted - software
programs. I'd love it if Wikipedia had an article on every single P2P
software program out there: big or small, good or bad, open source or
proprietary. I'm not doing it because I want to promote the software. In
fact, I think it's as important to have an NPOV article about software that
sucks so that I can read it and know not to bother downloading the crap.
Maybe that stuff doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Maybe I should argue for
freshwikimeat.com <http://freshwikimeat.com>. But it has nothing to do with
self-promotion or any other type of promotion.

 Now, the average reader doesn't care about this problem because they are
> only interested in th quality of the articles they are actually
> searching for. Does that mean notability has nothing to do with quality?
> No, I don't think so. But it doesn't mean it does, either.
>
> - Ryan


from_name: Tom Cadden

body:
Maybe I didn't notice it before but since my Skyring
'experience' a number of other users have approached
me to say they have having the same experience.

Among the things happening are a NUMBER of users are
eperiencing:

* PERSONALLY targeted attacks on individual members by
another individual (a different individual in each
case), who follows the user around adding abuse to
talk pages. (Another user has just emailed me and said
that has been happening to them too. Someone else said
they had experienced it a few weeks ago.)

* users who standby and the moment an individual is
criticised, jump in to add in venomous attacks of
their own that are unconnected to the current dispute.

* users spamming other users with smears about someone
on Wikipedia.

* off-Wikipedia public attacks, some of them
libellous, many of them offensive and distressing, on
Wikipedians.

* One abuser, Skyring, even accused another Wikipedian
of physically stalking his house!!! (She obviously
didn't, but was shocked at the claim, which was in a
longer personal attack he launched on her.)

Two people in the last 24 hours, having witnessed
Skyring's antics against me, have emailed me to say
that they too are being targeted others. Both said
that they are on the brink of quitting WP altogether
because of the unending cycle of abuse they are
getting from an individual (a different individual in
each case).

I can't help wondering if Skyring's antics (which are
proving difficult to stop - he has now started again
creating phoney sockpuppet 'users' to sneak back in
attacks under the guise of innocent edit summaries)
has inspired others to act in a similar way.

Simply deleting attacks doesn't solve the problem if
merely the fact of editing an article opens one up to
the attack to start off with. The offence will have
been caused by the time the attack is deleted. And
with some users spreading attacks like confetti, not
every attack is spotted if it is in the talk page of a
little read page. Offensive attacks also remain in the
archives for anyone to read.

This problem could destroy Wikipedia, by driving away
genuine users and having WP swamped by abusive trolls
stalking individuals throughout the database. The
danger is that genuine users who may themselves not be
a victim of this problem may see such stalked attacks
appearing all over the place and decide 'I don't want
that to happen to me' and so leave. One already left
two months ago, having emailed me to ask "what is
happening here? It is disgusting."

What strategy do we have for dealing with what seems
like a growing problem?

Thom

___________________________________________________________
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: dumps failing for en.wp

body:
On Fri, 21 Oct 2005, Brion Vibber wrote:

> I am interested in details of failure reports with importDump.php; the
> prior memory leaks with 1.5 prereleases should be fixed as of 1.5.0 but
> there might be intermittent or specific problems. Unfortunately
> importDump is relatively slow because it works page-by-page (mwdumper
> does faster bulk imports, assuming a blank slate empty database to start
> with) so it takes a while to test or confirm failures. :)

Test of importDump.php with the it: current page xml
(20051012_pages_current.xml.7z) went OK.

No apparent memory leaks, memory usage hovered around 17-18 MB.

Alfio


body:
On 10/22/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> It appears that the admin (who is closing most of ifd at the moment)
> has decided that PUI is where all images should end up. It is therefore
> now almost impossible to get anything deleted. I listed
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Haley-Paige.jpg on ifd after it had
> already been tagged as fair use disputed. It has a big copyright
> notice on the bottom of the image from http://www.newsensations.com/,
> a porn image link reseller, and its labelled as "promo". And it didnt
> get deleted; its now on PUI. "Possibly unfree" whats the point of this.
> It is unfree, no question, so why is it here. Whats the point of this
> process?

It has been deleted.

--
geni


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual redirect

body:
What exactly do you mean by "permanently reserved"?

Is there some sort of binding legal document which says this? Or is it
just a matter of "We could very well change it but we just don wanna"?

Mark

On 22/10/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > It doesn't say "English Wikipedia".
> >
> > Thus, the _new_ policy proposed by Geritt should be in line with this
> > quote which we have to follow because it came from above.
>
> The http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/* and http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/*
> URL spaces are permanently reserved for maintaining past links to
> English Wikipedia, which is currently living at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/*.
>
> Since they are permanently reserved for existing past links, no new use
> of that space is possible.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy on breaches of bans

body:
A complication is that he travels a lot (he denies it,
and then lists the places he visits a few paragraphs
later! He is that scale of nutter). He also somehow
managed to use a Finnish IP at one stage. People
looking at the edits were convinced that either it was
him or he had an identical (equally paranoid) twin
brother! He seems to be quite skilled at finding some
way to get on. He also has used IPs and user accounts,
jumping between the two. When all his attempts to put
in attacks using IPs were reverted (great work, BTW,
everyone) he created a new user account and sneaked in
a change under an edit summary marked 'fixing link'.

Skyring also posts personal abuse of Wikipedians on
his   own site. Here are three examples:

(1)

Mackensen's user page was then vandalised. The use of
the term "AULDBITCH" is clearly a reference to the
letter. I am sure that David can check on the source
of this vandalism and I am equally sure that he will
find nothing to link it to me. In fact, judging by
this extremely interesting series of edits I suggest
that it will turn out to be Duffy.

(2)

Jim Duffy (sic), whose wikiname is jtdirl, I've
mentioned before, and here is the result of his
discovery that somebody else had popped their head up
to say the same things I was saying. He was roundly
condemned for his attitude and his illegal block of an
innocent editor, but failed to see anything improper
in his conduct. I particularly liked his comment that
I travelled extensively and could present myself at
sites around the world pretending to be somebody else.
Good heavens! If only I had the time when travelling.
It's all I can do to keep up with LiveJournal and
BookCrossing.

(3)

People are saying all sorts of nasty things about me,
really sinking the boot into me. Their complaint? That
I'm attacking them! I'm not sure that they can see the
lack of moral depth to their position. Another person,
a young lady who may or may not have dyslexia, thinks
that when I cast an eye over her edits and correct her
spelling, I'm stalking and harrassing her. She just
quoted an extract from this very LiveJournal blog as
evidence against me. Huh? Who's doing the stalking?

So as you call see, Skyring (real name Pete - his name
and address, BTW, is on record) is a thoroughly nice
chap. lol

Thom Cadden
jtdirl

--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 10/22/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net>
> wrote:
> > Peter has to have accounts with isps to get on,
> doesn't he? I don't
> > think he's hanging around the public library.
> >
>
> way back he mentioned useing wireless acess at a
> local cafe.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

___________________________________________________________
How much free photo storage do you get? Store your holiday
snaps for FREE with Yahoo! Photos http://uk.photos.yahoo.com


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Privacy concerns

body:
On 10/22/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> I would also like to propose that any person with access to server logs
> (which include IP addresses), including people with access to the
> checkuser tool, should sign a legal agreement of some sort with the
> Wikimedia Foundation concerning non-disclosure of this information.

I'd expressed a concern in the IRC discussion today related to this idea.

Such a policy might put us in a very awkward position of having to
take action against a valued volunteer who has made a mistake and
violated his NDA, or suffer greatly increased liability from the
violated through the sustainable claim that advertisement of the use
of NDA is misleading because there was no enforcement.


body:
On 10/22/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/22/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I'm not sure I agree with the statement that anyone using Wikipedia for
> > self-promotion should be shunned, but besides that I don't think that's
> the
> > reason most of this information gets added. If I didn't know it would be
> > deleted, I would have added information to Wikipedia about many of my
> > favorite indie bands. I wouldn't do this to promote them, but I'd do it
> for
> > the same reason I add information about anything else - I think it's
> > information that someone else might be interested in.
> > I really don't see how it promotes the band to write an article on
> [[Willy
> > on Wheels Garage Band]] anyway. No one is going to come across that
> article
> > unless they search for "Willy on Wheels Garage Band".
> > Perhaps this is even more clear with regard to the articles that I'd
> write
> > about more often if I knew that they wouldn't be deleted - software
> > programs. I'd love it if Wikipedia had an article on every single P2P
> > software program out there: big or small, good or bad, open source or
> > proprietary. I'm not doing it because I want to promote the software. In
> > fact, I think it's as important to have an NPOV article about software
> that
> > sucks so that I can read it and know not to bother downloading the crap.
> > Maybe that stuff doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Maybe I should argue
> for
> > freshwikimeat.com <http://freshwikimeat.com> <http://freshwikimeat.com>.
> But it has nothing to do with
> > self-promotion or any other type of promotion.
> >
> > Now, the average reader doesn't care about this problem because they are
> > > only interested in th quality of the articles they are actually
> > > searching for. Does that mean notability has nothing to do with
> quality?
> > > No, I don't think so. But it doesn't mean it does, either.
> > >
> > > - Ryan
> > _______________________________________________
>
> It may not be effective promotion, but it's about the intent, not the
> effect. Besides, any such article about a regular unremarkable band is
> eating server resources. One wouldn't be a problem, but if you allow
> one why not the other and soon we've got a whole bunch of them.
> Keeping such bands would set a bad precedent.
>
> --Mgm

 I think you're wrong about the intent of most contributors, though. And if
keeping one article on an unremarkable band would set a precedent, and bring
more articles on bands, I see that as a good precedent, not a bad one.

One wouldn't be a problem, and neither would ten thousand. We've got
thousands of articles on unremarkable cities, and I don't see a problem with
that either.
 Anthony


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
On 10/22/05, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> Jakob Voss wrote:
> > Hi!
> >
> > Looks like Wikipedia could fit into the education section. The ceremony
> > for the price is in the Stockholm City hall where also the Nobel banket
> > takes place - this is our direction, isn't it? Anyone willing to sketch
> > a description of Wikimedia projects that includes ICT,
> > life-long-learning, education and all these buzzwords?
> >
> > Greetings,
> > Jakob
> >
[snip]

> I am ok to participate a little bit if someone begins a page somewhere !
>

I've set up a basic introduction at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Challenge_Award_2006_Proposal

At the moment, it's got tons of quotes from an earlier paper I wrote -
these are good but you may feel the proposal needs more balance (I
certainly do..)

Cormac


from_name: Delirium

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>And how exactly is this advertising? Simply saying something is so does not
>make it so.
>
>
Promoting a company or product in return for payment is advertising,
pretty much by definition...

-Mark


from_name: Michael P Hopcroft

body:
JAY JG wrote:
>>
>
> Actually, we're trying to build an *encyclopedia* that anyone can
> edit; it astonishes me that people keep forgetting this.
If I'm not talking out of turn, that may be the heart of the problem. An
encyclopedia is, by definition, an overview of reliable, verifiable
information that can be of use in doing groundwork for research on a
topic. the fatc that anyone can edit any article, or create an article,
means that the purpose of the exercise was already defeated at the
beginning.

Wikipedia is many things, many of them good, but by definition it
*cannot* be a true encyclopedia.


body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Promoting a company or product in return for payment is advertising,
> pretty much by definition...

A link to a tool is not advertising. It is a link to a tool.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


body:
--- Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/22/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > Promoting a company or product in return for payment is advertising,
> > > pretty much by definition...
> >
> > A link to a tool is not advertising. It is a link to a tool.
> >
> > -- mav
>
> No, it's a paid link (or sponsored as Google might call it) to a tool,
> and a tool that could be used to snoop on people too.

Explain, exactly, how this snooping would occur?

We can't expect reader donations to carry us indefinitely. We need to diversify
our income sources. Partnerships like this, along with other funding strategies
such as grants, are needed to ensure we stay in the black.

BTW, do you have a few extra million dollars laying around to pay for servers
next year? And what about the special projects we would like to fund but can't?

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rambot city articles vs. other topics

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

> The Rambot articles shouldn't be compared to other topic classes that
> contain articles on "non-notable" topics.
>
> Taken as a group, the Rambot articles are _reasonably_ comprehensive
> (they include virtually every U. S. city, not just a minuscule
> percentage of them); uniform in style, content, and quality; and
> derive from good (though uncited) sources.

If these other topic classes had "non-notable" articles added in one
comprehensive swoop by a bot, would that make them okay? Why is that
different from adding the exact same articles piecemeal over a long
period of time, if the end result is the same? Wikipedia's a work in
progress, I don't think we should condemn or permit articles based on
the current state of other articles in the same general subject area.
The holes will eventually get filled in, and the rest of the articles in
the "unfinished" topic class can be excluded from Version 1.0 until then
if it's a problem having them around.


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

body:
Hi all,

We had a rather large discussion today on privacy and its application on
Wikipedia (specifically anonymous editing and the checkuser tool which
is the subject of much debate at the moment).

I am curious to whether the Wikimedia Foundation's privacy policy is
compatible with EU legislation on privacy (which is tightly regulated),
and whether it is obliged to be, as the Foundation hosts servers in the
European Union (which are presumably subject to EU law).

I would also like to propose that any person with access to server logs
(which include IP addresses), including people with access to the
checkuser tool, should sign a legal agreement of some sort with the
Wikimedia Foundation concerning non-disclosure of this information.

I am unsure whether or not an IP address qualifies as "personal
information" under EU law and I have contacted the UK Information
Commissioner's Office asking them for their opinion.

Thoughts on the legal agreement proposal, and answers to the question of
legal obligations are much appreciated.

Chris


subject: [WikiEN-l] Privacy concerns


subject: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Privacy concerns


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Link formatting suggestion

body:
Afaik you can only do it when you've hovered on the link by doing

a { color: #000000; text-decoration: none; }
a: hover { color: #0000FF; text-decoration: underline; }

I don't think you can assign properties to a based on a div:hover
pseudoelement

Personally I do this:

a { text-decoration: none; }
a: hover { text-decoration: hover; }

it makes pages a lot cleaner

On 10/22/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>
> > Perhaps you should choose (or design) a skin that doesn't highlight
> > wikilinks unless you glide your cursor over them.
>
> Well this gave me an idea.
>
> As far as I understand CSS, it would be possible to make links entirely
> invisible (i.e. indistinguishable from normal text) unless the mouse
> cursor is somewhere within the article content box.
>
> In other words: Imagine the article is just text, no links. As you
> finish reading the section you were looking for, you want to know if
> there is any further information, so you move your mouse into the text
> and all links go blue and underlined.
>
> Just an idea.
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
On 22/10/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Yes, but I think mostly because Amazon is under a boycott by RMS for
> their patent policies.

Reading back through posts from that time, most the objections seem to
be about the "slippery slope" - a quite understandable view. It's also
notable that the income from the Amazon was pathetic - it would be
nice if there was some assurance that this 1-Click business might
actually be worthwhile before we try it.

I also note that the recent posts on the wiki are against this idea.
The legal issues are very far from clear, and it's also apparent that
there is opposition to this.

I think it was rather presumptious of the board to "announce" this
without consulting editors first. The board may have "signed up" to a
trial of this, but *we* haven't, and I think the board may well have a
hard time stopping editors removing this advertisting from the site.

Dan


body:
On 10/22/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/22/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I think you're wrong about the intent of most contributors, though. And
> if
> > keeping one article on an unremarkable band would set a precedent, and
> bring
> > more articles on bands, I see that as a good precedent, not a bad one.
> >
> > One wouldn't be a problem, and neither would ten thousand. We've got
> > thousands of articles on unremarkable cities, and I don't see a problem
> with
> > that either.
> > Anthony
>
> Even crap need mentaining we just don't have the rescources to mentian
> a million articles millionth rate bands.
>
> --
> geni

 Who's going to create these million articles on garage bands? With 100,000
new garage band fans creating them we'll have no problem maintaining a
million articles on garage bands. I think realistically it'll be at least a
couple orders of magnitude smaller in both figures, but as long as we don't
allow automated creation of these articles the resources to maintain the
articles will scale right along with the creation of them.
 Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> * If you contribute to the wiki without creating an account, your edits
> are publicly identified with your network location instead of a name.

Is this information made known to an anonymous contributor before they
actually make the edit?

Chris


subject: [Foundation-l] Privacy concerns


body:
On 22/10/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> For some reason I can't post to the foundation-l list...  Feel free to
> forward this there if you want.
>
> On 10/22/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 22/10/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > > Yes, but I think mostly because Amazon is under a boycott by RMS for
> > > their patent policies.
> >
> > Reading back through posts from that time, most the objections seem to
> > be about the "slippery slope" - a quite understandable view. It's also
> > notable that the income from the Amazon was pathetic - it would be
> > nice if there was some assurance that this 1-Click business might
> > actually be worthwhile before we try it.
>
>
> They *are* doing a 6 month trial first.  I think the revenue would be a lot
> better from this.  I say this as someone who is running a mirror of
> Wikipedia with google ads on it.
>
> > I also note that the recent posts on the wiki are against this idea.
> > The legal issues are very far from clear, and it's also apparent that
> > there is opposition to this.
>
>
> As one of the people most skeptical of this under that legal issues thread,
> I'd say it's pretty indisputable that it's legal.  The only real question is
> whether or not there are tax consequences.
>
> > I think it was rather presumptious of the board to "announce" this
> > without consulting editors first. The board may have "signed up" to a
> > trial of this, but *we* haven't, and I think the board may well have a
> > hard time stopping editors removing this advertisting from the site.
>
>
> Answers Corporation is a public company, and there's some evidence that this
> deal might have affected the price of the stock.  Part of the agreement was
> probably to keep the conversations confidential until a deal was made.
>
> In any case, I believe that this is exactly the type of decision the board
> should be making on its own.  If you don't like what the board is doing, by
> all means tell them, and then elect new members at the next election if they
> don't do a better job.  But in my opinion the board needs the autonomy to
> make these decisions on its own.


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: So what do we do about this?

body:
>From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>
>Keith Old wrote:
> > The world is changing. Blogs are becoming more widely read while the
> > mainstream media is losing its audience although obviously it is still
>more
> > popular and will remain so.
> >
> > My point remains. There are some credible bloggers and not so credible
> > bloggers. We should be careful in the credibility and reliability of all
>the
> > sources and be aware of ensuring that our references are reliable and
> > provide a balanced view of the topic. We owe that to our readers.
> >
>
>According to NPOV, all we need to do is make up some kind of reference
>template for blogs, which says "this is a blog and in no way are we
>responsible for it's content" - which lets the readers decide for
>themselves.

No, instead we need to cite only credible sources, a category into which
blogs almost never fall.

Jay.


body:
On 10/22/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/23/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Who's going to create these million articles on garage bands? With
> 100,000
> > new garage band fans creating them we'll have no problem maintaining a
> > million articles on garage bands. I think realistically it'll be at
> least a
> > couple orders of magnitude smaller in both figures, but as long as we
> don't
> > allow automated creation of these articles the resources to maintain the
> > articles will scale right along with the creation of them.
> > Anthony
>
> You assume that the people who create these articles:
> a)stick around
> b)know all the wikimarkup and stuff
>
>
> --
> geni

I assume that a good portion of them will, yes. I think this is what happens
when you treat contributors with gratitude and a helping hand rather than
accusing them of self-promotion and deleting their contributions.

I make the assumption that most contributors, even those that happen to be
interested in garage bands, are acting in good faith. I make the assumption
that if you give people the tools and the freedom to create good articles
they're going to do so. Maybe you think that's a crazy idea, but if so I
find it hard to understand why you believe in the crazy idea of building a
website that anyone can edit.

Anthony


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

body:
> One wouldn't be a problem, and neither would ten thousand. We've got
> thousands of articles on unremarkable cities, and I don't see a
> problem with
> that either.
>  Anthony

The Rambot articles shouldn't be compared to other topic classes that
contain articles on "non-notable" topics.

Taken as a group, the Rambot articles are _reasonably_ comprehensive
(they include virtually every U. S. city, not just a minuscule
percentage of them); uniform in style, content, and quality; and
derive from good (though uncited) sources.

--
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: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual redirect

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> What exactly do you mean by "permanently reserved"?
>
> Is there some sort of binding legal document which says this? Or is it
> just a matter of "We could very well change it but we just don wanna"?

Our responsibility to our users requires us to continue to forward past
URLs. Any site that actually gives a crap about being a useful
information resource on the web will make a similar commitment to do
this. (Sadly, many sites are bad at this, and enjoy damaging every link
to their resources every year or two.)

I personally promised on this list that we would maintain permanent URL
compatibility when we switched English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org;
such compatibility is a firm requirement for changes to our site layout.

The only reason there exists a "www.wikipedia" is that English Wikipedia
used to be there, because it was once the only one. Now it's been moved,
and the old URLs forward transparently. Inventing new unreliable URLs to
go there and breaking our historical compatibility guarantees is not
only a violent attack upon the site's goals, it's a useless solution in
search of a problem.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Dori

body:
On 10/22/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > Promoting a company or product in return for payment is advertising,
> > pretty much by definition...
>
> A link to a tool is not advertising. It is a link to a tool.
>
> -- mav

No, it's a paid link (or sponsored as Google might call it) to a tool,
and a tool that could be used to snoop on people too.

Dori


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> What in the world sort of servers are we buying that cost a few million
> dollars?  Who is "we" who would like to fund these special projects?

In case you haven't noticed our traffic growth has been strongly exponential.
Just look at this graph:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?&range=3y&size=large&compare_sites=answers.com+about.com+britannica.com+reference.com&y=p&url=wikipedia.org#top

You obviously have no idea what our budgetary needs are.

> Not all of us are onboard with the "Wikipedia: the bigger and more
> corporate the better" strategy.

Oh please.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
>From: Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org>
>
>I make the assumption that most contributors, even those that happen to be
>interested in garage bands, are acting in good faith. I make the assumption
>that if you give people the tools and the freedom to create good articles
>they're going to do so. Maybe you think that's a crazy idea, but if so I
>find it hard to understand why you believe in the crazy idea of building a
>website that anyone can edit.

Actually, we're trying to build an *encyclopedia* that anyone can edit; it
astonishes me that people keep forgetting this.

Jay.


body:
--- Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> What do you mean how? They track usage. I don't trust a company that's
> out to make money to not abuse their position. Even if they're well
> intentioned now, they could be bought off.

Every website can and often do track usage. Even we log that stuff.

> "Diversify our income source" sounds horrible to me. That's not what's
> important.

Excuse me? What do you base that on? Are you at all involved in Wikimedia
finance? Lemme check. No.

> What projects? If we can't fund them, we can't. Do partnerships mean
> that we'll be able to fund every project?

Perhaps you should visit the foundation wiki or even the donation page:
"Imagine a world in which every person has free access
to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."

> If we put in advertising
> (flash, popups, selling user tracking), and changed the license to be
> restrictive I'm sure we could get in more money and fund more
> projects. Does that mean that's the direction we should head?

Strawman. Nobody is proposing that.

> Do we even know how much money we'll be getting out of this? Have we
> exhausted all other possibilities? Whatever happened to the Google
> donation? Has the board gone to all possible sources before going to
> advertising deals?

This is not an advertising deal. It is one of many partnerships we will need to
enter to help keep everything running.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual redirect

body:
Well, the proposal at hand is still compatible with the old format of links.

Sure, under it, http://www.wikipedia.com/Taplop would not redirect to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taplop, but upon arriving at
http://wikipedia.com... there would be a list of links, among which
the http://en.wiki... would be featured promptly with a label such as
"English article about Taplop".

So, rather than just breaking compatability entirely, it is a sort of
compromise.

Mark

On 22/10/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > What exactly do you mean by "permanently reserved"?
> >
> > Is there some sort of binding legal document which says this? Or is it
> > just a matter of "We could very well change it but we just don wanna"?
>
> Our responsibility to our users requires us to continue to forward past
> URLs. Any site that actually gives a crap about being a useful
> information resource on the web will make a similar commitment to do
> this. (Sadly, many sites are bad at this, and enjoy damaging every link
> to their resources every year or two.)
>
> I personally promised on this list that we would maintain permanent URL
> compatibility when we switched English Wikipedia to en.wikipedia.org;
> such compatibility is a firm requirement for changes to our site layout.
>
> The only reason there exists a "www.wikipedia" is that English Wikipedia
> used to be there, because it was once the only one. Now it's been moved,
> and the old URLs forward transparently. Inventing new unreliable URLs to
> go there and breaking our historical compatibility guarantees is not
> only a violent attack upon the site's goals, it's a useless solution in
> search of a problem.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
>

--
If you would like a gmail invite, please send me an e-mail.
Si ud. querr?a que le enviara una invitaci?n para juntar gmail, favor
de env?eme un mensaje.
Si vous voudriez que je vous envoie une invitation ? joindre gmail,
envoyez-moi s.v.p un message.
Se vce. gostaria que eu lhe enviasse um convite para juntar gmail,
favor de envie-me uma mensagem.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Mark Williamson's fonts

body:
I think that we're quite off-topic... especially given that the
original topic was a bit off-topic as well ;p

Mark

--
If you would like a gmail invite, please send me an e-mail.
Si ud. querr?a que le enviara una invitaci?n para juntar gmail, favor
de env?eme un mensaje.
Si vous voudriez que je vous envoie une invitation ? joindre gmail,
envoyez-moi s.v.p un message.
Se vce. gostaria que eu lhe enviasse um convite para juntar gmail,
favor de envie-me uma mensagem.


body:
On 10/22/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Dori <slowpoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/22/05, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > > --- Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > > > Promoting a company or product in return for payment is advertising,
> > > > pretty much by definition...
> > >
> > > A link to a tool is not advertising. It is a link to a tool.
> > >
> > > -- mav
> >
> > No, it's a paid link (or sponsored as Google might call it) to a tool,
> > and a tool that could be used to snoop on people too.
>
> Explain, exactly, how this snooping would occur?

What do you mean how? They track usage. I don't trust a company that's
out to make money to not abuse their position. Even if they're well
intentioned now, they could be bought off.

>
> We can't expect reader donations to carry us indefinitely. We need to diversify
> our income sources. Partnerships like this, along with other funding strategies
> such as grants, are needed to ensure we stay in the black.

"Diversify our income source" sounds horrible to me. That's not what's
important.

>
> BTW, do you have a few extra million dollars laying around to pay for servers
> next year?

Sure, but only if you put in some articles saying how great I am and
ban anyone saying otherwise.

> And what about the special projects we would like to fund but can't?

What projects? If we can't fund them, we can't. Do partnerships mean
that we'll be able to fund every project? If we put in advertising
(flash, popups, selling user tracking), and changed the license to be
restrictive I'm sure we could get in more money and fund more
projects. Does that mean that's the direction we should head?

Do we even know how much money we'll be getting out of this? Have we
exhausted all other possibilities? Whatever happened to the Google
donation? Has the board gone to all possible sources before going to
advertising deals?

--
Dori


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 10/22/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >From: Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org>
> >
> >I make the assumption that most contributors, even those that happen to
> be
> >interested in garage bands, are acting in good faith. I make the
> assumption
> >that if you give people the tools and the freedom to create good articles
> >they're going to do so. Maybe you think that's a crazy idea, but if so I
> >find it hard to understand why you believe in the crazy idea of building
> a
> >website that anyone can edit.
>
> Actually, we're trying to build an *encyclopedia* that anyone can edit; it
> astonishes me that people keep forgetting this.
>
> Jay.

Are you saying that Wikipedia isn't a website? I'm fully aware that
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, but that doesn't change the fact that it's
also a wiki, which is a website that anyone can edit.

We can argue about whether or not Wikipedia would have succeeded had it not
been a website if you want, but the comment I was making was that the crazy
idea - of a website that anyone could edit - actually worked.

Anthony


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Georgian fonts

body:
I've been mildly irritated because I couldn't get _every single
language_ on the main wikipedia.org page to display properly using
properly-licenced free fonts. This situation now appears to be in the
process of being fixed.

According to http://aiet.qartuli.net/docs/georgian_on_linux_en.php,
three free-as-in-freedom fonts for the Georgian Mkhedruli alphabet are
now available, courtesy of the commercial Georgian font vendor BPG
Info-Tech. The page is not explicit about the licence, but states:

"The leading font vendor of professional Georgian typefaces BPG
Info-Tech was kind enough to provide us with the special GNU Linux
versions of some of its Georgian fonts, which can be downloaded from
this site (see the links below). The provided fonts are licensed for
free distribution by individuals and by companies independently, or
along with any GNU Linux System or other open-source software, as well
for free use of the typefaces for commercial and noncommercial needs."

This might concievably of use to the Georgian Wikipedia community, as
well as to script-system enthusiasts.

-- Neil


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Privacy concerns

body:
As far as I understand, the servers in Europe are only there to
improve the access to the main databases in Florida. They aren't
actually meant to store such information.

--Mgm

On 10/22/05, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We had a rather large discussion today on privacy and its application on
> Wikipedia (specifically anonymous editing and the checkuser tool which
> is the subject of much debate at the moment).
>
> I am curious to whether the Wikimedia Foundation's privacy policy is
> compatible with EU legislation on privacy (which is tightly regulated),
> and whether it is obliged to be, as the Foundation hosts servers in the
> European Union (which are presumably subject to EU law).
>
> I would also like to propose that any person with access to server logs
> (which include IP addresses), including people with access to the
> checkuser tool, should sign a legal agreement of some sort with the
> Wikimedia Foundation concerning non-disclosure of this information.
>
> I am unsure whether or not an IP address qualifies as "personal
> information" under EU law and I have contacted the UK Information
> Commissioner's Office asking them for their opinion.
>
> Thoughts on the legal agreement proposal, and answers to the question of
> legal obligations are much appreciated.
>
> Chris
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 10/22/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>  I'm not sure I agree with the statement that anyone using Wikipedia for
> self-promotion should be shunned, but besides that I don't think that's the
> reason most of this information gets added. If I didn't know it would be
> deleted, I would have added information to Wikipedia about many of my
> favorite indie bands. I wouldn't do this to promote them, but I'd do it for
> the same reason I add information about anything else - I think it's
> information that someone else might be interested in.
>  I really don't see how it promotes the band to write an article on [[Willy
> on Wheels Garage Band]] anyway. No one is going to come across that article
> unless they search for "Willy on Wheels Garage Band".
>  Perhaps this is even more clear with regard to the articles that I'd write
> about more often if I knew that they wouldn't be deleted - software
> programs. I'd love it if Wikipedia had an article on every single P2P
> software program out there: big or small, good or bad, open source or
> proprietary. I'm not doing it because I want to promote the software. In
> fact, I think it's as important to have an NPOV article about software that
> sucks so that I can read it and know not to bother downloading the crap.
> Maybe that stuff doesn't belong in an encyclopedia. Maybe I should argue for
> freshwikimeat.com <http://freshwikimeat.com>. But it has nothing to do with
> self-promotion or any other type of promotion.
>
>  Now, the average reader doesn't care about this problem because they are
> > only interested in th quality of the articles they are actually
> > searching for. Does that mean notability has nothing to do with quality?
> > No, I don't think so. But it doesn't mean it does, either.
> >
> > - Ryan
> _______________________________________________

It may not be effective promotion, but it's about the intent, not the
effect. Besides, any such article about a regular unremarkable band is
eating server resources. One wouldn't be a problem, but if you allow
one why not the other and soon we've got a whole bunch of them.
Keeping such bands would set a bad precedent.

--Mgm


from_name: Alphax

subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual redirect

body:
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Hash: SHA256

Andre Engels wrote:
> 2005/10/22, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>:
>
>
>>Here's my idea - it would require a bit of work though:
>>
>>1) If article exists on en:, auto-generate a multilingual disambiguation
>>page using the interwiki links in the article.
>>
>>2) If the article doesn't exist on en:,
>>2a) auto-generate a list of links to possible articles in Wikipedias
>>with > x,000 articles (where x depends on how well the software works).
>>Make no guarantee about the existance of the target article.
>>2b) scan the Wikipedias with > x,000 articles, pull out all interwiki
>>links if one is found (stripping duplicates if it exists under the same
>>name in multiple lanuages) and generate a disambiguation page.
>>
>>This way, we both guarantee that all existing links work (to the same
>>extent as when we move pages and create redirects, or turn things into
>>disambiguation pages), while at the same time creating a multilingual
>>portal.
>
>
> Why use the Interwiki-links? Just check all languages for an article
> with that exact name. On http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun, I want a
> link to [[de:Sun Microsystems]] (which is the page [[de:Sun]]
> redirects to), and not one to [[de:Sonne]] (which is the page
> [[en:Sun]] has an interwiki to).
>

What about [[Taxi]] or any other words which have entered into English
from another language?

You could even do interwiki links AND top Wikipedia checking. Or even
any disambiguation pages linked off the interwikis.

Clearly, having "www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article" redirect exclusively to
en: is a bad thing.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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from_name: Yongho Kim

subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual redirect

body:
There is a misassesment of the situation on the part of users wanting
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article to be an interwiki disambiguation. You
think that www subdomain would be an ''official'' wikipedia URL that
somehow rests symbolically above any of the de, en, es or other
language subdomains - hence, your refusal to accept the ''official''
subdomain to be subordinated to the english portion of wikipedia.

But www is not an official URL anymore. www is an archival URL! This
is because nowhere in wikipedia.org does the MediaWiki software
produce links in the form of www.wikipedia.org, but they will always
be langdomain.wikipedia.org Search for it. www is a cruft from the
english+deutsch dual wikipedia era, and serves those few hundred
(thousand?) links made to WP in that specific period of time (if I
read correctly the discussion so far) NO ONE links to www today,
because simply there isn't a way to get to that address. Type it, and
it hard-forwards you to the en. domain - the browser will not let you
copy+paste the www URL to your web editor.

If you really wanted an interlanguage disambig, (is this really
needed, or is this just a filler-up for the imaginedly existing www
official subdomain? ), then the best solution would be creating
another subdomain for that purpose - of course, the ideological
problem remains - should the menu for that MediaWiki installation be
in english? how can it be multilingual? But I think such attempt is
unnecessary.

----

On a separate note, IF the idea of pushing for interlanguage www
subdomains came forward, I would strongly advice against "intelligent"
language pickers based on predefiner browser settings, IP geography,
OS regional settings or otherwise - a large population of internet
users are not monolingual, and we link specific language versions of
wikipedia (using del.icio.us for example) for a specific purpose.
(Different content! Different audience!)

Yongho


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimedia in the media [Sept. 25 -- October 15 2005]

body:
SJ (2.718281828 at gmail.com) [051019 15:55]:

> Worth a revisit: Nick Carr publishes David Gerard's eloquent response
> to his last Wikipedia posting, in full; and concurs.
>   http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2005/10/more_on_wikiped.php

Wikipedia's critics appear to be shocked when someone familiar with
Wikipedia openly admits it's far from perfect ... I do hope the point I
made here - that Britannica is brilliant and doomed, and if we have a good
encyclopedia in ten years it's going to be Wikipedia in some form -
propagates.

> Wikipedia makes Foolish watchlist:
>   http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2005/commentary05100505.htm

I wrote in about this one too - stressing that Wikipedia itself is run by a
nonprofit, though there are lots of mirrors with Google ads making more or
less of a buck.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy on breaches of bans

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Fred Bauder wrote:
> I think we should block the range, making it clear who (real name,  etc)
> is responsible and let Australia sort it out.
>

Gee, thanks Fred. How about we block every ISP in the US and let the
rest of the US "sort it out" with regards to Willy on Wheels/MARMOT/etc?
I understand that there are a few vandals who we actually do have the
real name and address of, who have been spreading libel and making legal
threats against our editors.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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body:
On 10/22/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > One wouldn't be a problem, and neither would ten thousand. We've got
> > thousands of articles on unremarkable cities, and I don't see a
> > problem with
> > that either.
> > Anthony
>
> The Rambot articles shouldn't be compared to other topic classes that
> contain articles on "non-notable" topics.
>
> Taken as a group, the Rambot articles are _reasonably_ comprehensive
> (they include virtually every U. S. city, not just a minuscule
> percentage of them); uniform in style, content, and quality; and
> derive from good (though uncited) sources.

If anything I think that only makes my point stronger. If we have the
resources to maintain an article on virtually every U.S. city, then surely
we have the resources to maintain an article on a tiny fraction of the
garage bands in the world.

Comparing Rambot articles to other topic classes is perfectly fine as long
as you limit your comparison to the proper aspects. Frankly, I think the
uniformity in style, content, and quality is a bad thing, but that wasn't
related to the thread I was making the comparison in.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy on breaches of bans

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Mark Gallagher wrote:
>
> G'day Fred,
>
>> I think we should block the range, making it clear who (real name,
>> etc) is responsible and let Australia sort it out.
>
>
> Gee, that's a good idea!  Why not just block Telstra[0]?  I mean, it's
> only the biggest ISP in the country ...
>
>
> [0] I think it's Telstra ...
>

Yep, and they own about 90% of the infrastructure as well. Agile owns
about the other 10% (if that).

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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from_name: Delirium

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>BTW, do you have a few extra million dollars laying around to pay for servers
>next year? And what about the special projects we would like to fund but can't?
>
>
What in the world sort of servers are we buying that cost a few million
dollars?  Who is "we" who would like to fund these special projects?

Not all of us are onboard with the "Wikipedia: the bigger and more
corporate the better" strategy.

-Mark


from_name: John Platt

references:
<dja8g3$147$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<849f98ed0510210224m5f93cc14q@mail.gmail.com>
	<djai46$uua$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 10/21/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Do you happen to have that ZIPped? I'm working on Windows here, and I
> wouldn't have a clue how to get into a Debian package even if it weren't
> likely to get me ejected from here with maximal force :-)
>
> Having grown up with Red Hat I've always extracted deb packages with ar
then untarred them (tar -xvzf). Even in Windows I tend to use the djgpp
packages, though Cigwyn probably has ar and tar. In fact, I caught myself
doing that with Knoppix the other day and of course Knoppix does have the
apt package to install software.


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy on breaches of bans

body:
G'day Fred,

> I think we should block the range, making it clear who (real name,
> etc) is responsible and let Australia sort it out.

Gee, that's a good idea!  Why not just block Telstra[0]?  I mean, it's
only the biggest ISP in the country ...

[0] I think it's Telstra ...

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.12.4/146 - Release Date: 21/10/2005


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 10/22/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> >
> >Keith Old wrote:
> > > The world is changing. Blogs are becoming more widely read while the
> > > mainstream media is losing its audience although obviously it is still
> >more
> > > popular and will remain so.
> > >
> > > My point remains. There are some credible bloggers and not so credible
> > > bloggers. We should be careful in the credibility and reliability of all
> >the
> > > sources and be aware of ensuring that our references are reliable and
> > > provide a balanced view of the topic. We owe that to our readers.
> > >
> >
> >According to NPOV, all we need to do is make up some kind of reference
> >template for blogs, which says "this is a blog and in no way are we
> >responsible for it's content" - which lets the readers decide for
> >themselves.
>
> No, instead we need to cite only credible sources, a category into which
> blogs almost never fall.

If part of the article is the social impact of the topic, including
blogs as cited references is sometimes completely valid regardless of
whether we know they're reliable or not.  In this case, Alphax is
correct, but in most others, you are.  I don't think we need a special
template for when we do cite blogs, but I would always label them
clearly for what they are.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy on breaches of bans

body:
G'day Anthony,

> On 10/21/05, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> We can't block his IP-range, if understand it he's editing from
>> 203.xxx and 141.xxx. That's 1/128th of the entire internet
>> (approximately)!
>
> How is he able to do this? Is there a particular ISP which uses these
> IPs, or is he going from multiple IPs, or what? Can the ISP be
> contacted? That'd be the first step. Failing that, I'd actually

It's probably time to start contacting ISPs, yeah.

> suggest trying to get some sort of injunction through the legal
> system (Australia, I suppose, and one of the other editors claims to
> actually have known the person). "Don't touch Wikipedia again, or

Well, via USENET.  I mean, I haven't actually sat down and had coffee
and joked about the electoral roll with him.  But I s'pose it's possible
one day; this is a small city, after all.

<snip />

--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Anti-Virus.
Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.12.4/146 - Release Date: 21/10/2005


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search broke for roughly 20 minutes

body:
Hello,

I broke the search page ( LuceneSearch.php ) for roughly 20 minutes
tonight. Everything is fine now thanks to zwitter.

Details: we got a context hack on live site. Of course the cvs version
doesn't know about that hack and was indeed incorrect.
When I grabbed the lastest cvs version and synced it, the search page
got disabled (php error showing). Zwitter added yet another hack and i
finally merged my changes :)

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


body:
On 10/22/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA256
>
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > On 10/22/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> >
> >>>One wouldn't be a problem, and neither would ten thousand. We've got
> >>>thousands of articles on unremarkable cities, and I don't see a
> >>>problem with
> >>>that either.
> >>>Anthony
> >>
> >>The Rambot articles shouldn't be compared to other topic classes that
> >>contain articles on "non-notable" topics.
> >>
> >>Taken as a group, the Rambot articles are _reasonably_ comprehensive
> >>(they include virtually every U. S. city, not just a minuscule
> >>percentage of them); uniform in style, content, and quality; and
> >>derive from good (though uncited) sources.
> >
> >
> >
> > If anything I think that only makes my point stronger. If we have the
> > resources to maintain an article on virtually every U.S. city, then
> surely
> > we have the resources to maintain an article on a tiny fraction of the
> > garage bands in the world.
> >
>
> Except that we actually have data that the subjects of the Rambot
> articles existed (censuses and the like). We have no way of verifying
> the existence of many garage bands.

I don't know why this agument keeps coming up because there's pretty much no
one who's arguing that we should keep articles on unverifiable garage bands.
The disagreement is over what to do with verifiable articles on garage
bands.

I have two or three reasons for deleting things: violates [[WP:NOT]]
> (eg. dicdef, spam, advertisment), violates [[WP:NOR]] (eg. lacks
> references, terminal POV problems), or is a CSD. Lately I've tried to
> work out where "article makes no claim of notability" and "article is
> unverifiable" - I think NOR covers these, but there's probably some
> overlap with WP:NOT as well.
>
> > Comparing Rambot articles to other topic classes is perfectly fine as
> long
> > as you limit your comparison to the proper aspects. Frankly, I think the
> > uniformity in style, content, and quality is a bad thing, but that
> wasn't
> > related to the thread I was making the comparison in.
>
> I don't. Uniformity in articles in a certain topic area is a Good Thing,
> because it lets readers (and editors) know what the article /should/ be
> like. We have the Manual of Style so that articles are presented in a
> logical manner; David Gerard has made much better arguments than I ever
> could about why we need a uniform and concise writing style.

Take a look at the unedited Rambot articles then take a look at the ones
which have been heavily edited. Now tell me which you think the articles
*should* be like.

I think the whole style, content and scope debate is best summed up as:
> articles in Wikipedia should be Sane, Safe and Consensual.
>
> - --
> Alphax | /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred | \ / ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613 | X Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up | / \


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Policy on breaches of bans

body:
On 10/22/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> > We can't block his IP-range, if understand it he's editing from
> > 203.xxx and 141.xxx. That's 1/128th of the entire internet
> > (approximately)! Anyway, we really shouldn't permablock any IPs. As
> > for dealing with this user, what else can we do? I mean, he is in
> > essence banned for ever (I doubt he'd give up for an entire year,
> > just to come back and be a nice, productive member of the wikipedia
> > community). What can we do except to revert and block his socks?
>
> Maybe Telstra would consider switching him to a static IP address, if we
> asked really nicely. They might have to hack their administrative system
> a bit to do it without billing him for it, but they do have the
> technical ability to assign IP addresses to customers. Usually it costs
> $10/month extra. Maybe they can bill the Foundation instead, and give
> him Internet access for free.
>

That wouldn't work if he is using an internet caf? as geni said he
might be doing. Also, it feels very, very wrong that the Foundation
should have to shell out cash for this.

--gkhan


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2006 will take place in Boston, USA.

body:
Dear all,

after a very tight vote within the jury, Boston has been chosen to
host Wikimania 2006, the second International Wikimedia Conference.

All information about the location can be found at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2006/Boston

We wish to thank all participants for the work they have put into
their bids, and especially the supporters of Toronto whose city made
it to the shortlist. Results of the vote were 5 for Boston to 4 for
Toronto, and one abstention.

Definite dates and agenda to be confirmed shortly.

Best,

Delphine

PS. Sorry for the post in English to other lists, thank you for
translating it if needed.
PS. D?sol?e pour l'annonce en anglais. Bitte die Nachricht auf
Englisch vergeben. Disculpe per la notizia en inglese. ;-)
--
~notafish


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimania 2006 will take place in Boston, USA.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikimania 2006 will take place in Boston, USA.