from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
On 9/18/06, Kim van der Linde <kim at kimvdlinde.com> wrote:
>
>
> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> > It is going to be a lot easier for WP to improve
> > article content, in areas where it actually has some welcome
> > competition, than it is going to be for those rivals to import into
> > their site the necessary redirects and so on, to give the
> > navigational smooth ride.
>
> Why should only Wikipedia be able to do that?

The advantage of numbers.  If I'm looking for information on a random
historical figure mentioned in a book I'm reading and I can't find it,
I can search Google for alternate names, then add the appropriate
redirect to Wikipedia.  I can't add redirects to Britannica.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Christoph Seydl

subject: [Foundation-l] Verifiability: Constitution?

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Andre Engels wrote:
> Can you provide such a reference too for all the other parts of the
> definition of 'bucket'? And if not, should we delete that? And if you
> can, should we delete it nevertheless until you have done so?

Historian did quite a lot of research on buckets back to ancient times.
There are probably industrial norms on buckets. If the policy says it
should be deleted, it should. If the policy says it must not deleted,
don't delete it.

> The motivation will certainly increase, yes. Nobody wants to add
> material to Wikipedia that will be removed again. But it also means
> that we are going to delete more if the rule is added than in the
> whole of Wikipedia until now. Use [[Special:Randompage]]. The chance
> that it's sourced is small. The change that if it is sourced, it is
> specified what comes from which source is even smaller. You might as
> well go and delete pages at random.

True. This fact supports my assumption that the pillar verifiability.
And if it is a pillar, a strong enforcement of verifiability is
obviously not wanted by most editors.

> How do you define critical material?

It's a question of stipulation. Example: If the collective opinion is
that hard facts (e.g. numbers, percentages) may not be sourced, unless
they are disputed, as a rule, it's not critical.

> Why? Can't this rule be left to the separate projects?

Yes, but then it is not pillar anymore, if verifiability can mean
anything between restrictive and laissez-faire. Then an official
statement at meta that verifiability is optional to any project would be
appropriate.

/Chris
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFDn+6Wd9v/DFhszsRAh94AJ4jpPTGNMlwAwNqP0irzzv3gf+vhgCffZUm
rpeworN1CU17oBnk3wd64Xo=
=+gps
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ragib Hasan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Change of namespace: who to contact?

body:
I am a bureaucrat in Bengali wikipedia. We need to change the spelling
of our Wikipedia namespace, from ?????????? to ??????????. I am a bit
confused as to who should be able to do this. I've posted this message
at meta wiki, a week ago, but haven't got a reply yet. Messages to
several developers were also not replied (I might have posted to wrong
contact pages).

Anyway, I'd appreciate if someone can explain the proper procedure to me.

Thanks

Ragib

--
Ragib Hasan
PhD Student
Dept of Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
201 N Goodwin Avenue
Urbana IL 61801

Website:
http://www.ragibhasan.com
http://netfiles.uiuc.edu/rhasan/www


list: wikien-l

from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Grandmother copyrighted anonymous works

body:
>
> > This is not work for hire; it's not any sort of contract arrangement. It's
> > just a kind pro giving away services. I'm not any sort of lawyer, but it
> > sure seems to be that, in handing the camera back to the owner and walking
> > away, the photo-taker is almost literally handing away any rights to the
> > photo.
> >
> From a practical standpoint, this is certainly true.  From a legal
> standpoint this is much less clear.
>

Argh... Again, the Berne convention covers anonymous authors. You are deemed to
represent him and empowered to make good on his rights (?r?put? r?presenter
l'auteur et fond? ? faire valoir ses droits?).

IANAL but case closed. Right?

Daniel


subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]] are destroying Wikipedia

body:
> No thank you I'd rather not adopt a system within which calculus
> doesn't really work (it appears that the intuitionist version of
> standard reals may not even allow a working version of algebra).

[[constructivist analysis]]

HTH
Dan


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger's first post to Citizendium-l

body:
On 9/18/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> "I have a suggestion from someone very high up in the Creative Commons
> organization that we should dual-license (CC and GFDL), which I simply
> hadn't thought of.  I'm inclined to think it's a good idea."
>
> I'd like to know how that would be compatible with working from
> Wikipedia content.

Technically I think it would only be fine in the terms of content
which has been multi-licensed by contributors. Unfortunately I suspect
most of the content is not licensed as such (personally I have thought
we should require multi-licensing on all new contributions for quite
awhile, but nothing has seemed to move in that direction in a
systematic, across-the-board sense).

Non-technically speaking, it is clearly within the intent of the GFDL,
if not the letter-and-word. But strictly speaking, our use of our own
content is not within the letter-and-word of the GFDL, mainly because
the letter-and-word of the GFDL does not really lend itself to things
like Wikis.

(I think the intent and basic mechanisms of the GFDL are great. I
think the implementation is poor. I suspect that anything which
implemented the GFDL as poorly as Wikipedia does would not hold up
strongly in court.)

Depending on how they mean "dual-use", I think that it would be
feasible for Wikipedia to use their content, though.

FF


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 9/18/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 18 Sep 2006, at 16:49, Death Phoenix wrote:
>
> > I voted for three people who I felt would be the best and most-
> > qualified:
> > there is one who I think is the most qualified, and two who are
> > about equal.
> > I wonder if I am doing my first choice user a disservice by voting
> > for the
> > other two, and instead just vote for the one who I think is the clear
> > frontrunner.
>
> Have a look at [[Single_Transferable_Vote]]. It avoids this problem.
>

Yes, it does, but if it's not in this particular election, then it's useless
to me in the context of my vote in this election. ;-)

DP


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Sep 18, 2006, at 7:23 AM, David Gerard wrote:

>
> Perhaps [[Wikipedia:Usable sources]] can be created as a parallel
> guideline with a view to replacing the one that's gone pathological.

I've sworn off of policy pages, as I said, but for those who are
interested, I created this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Phil_Sandifer/Craft_of_Research

It's a summary of the relevant portions of _The Craft of Research_,
with a few tweaks to better suit Wikipedia's needs. (For instance,
the fact that given the choice between a print and a web-based
version of a NYT article, we'd prefer the web one because we can link
to it.)

Anyone who wants to import it over to the Wikipedia namespace and
make a sensible guideline out of it is encouraged.

-Phil


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] Verifiability: Constitution? Question for Jimbo!

body:
2006/9/18, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:

> If there are NO sources for an article, that tends to be a sign of
> deletability on en:wp. But that is mostly applied to popular culture
> things, where evidence of third-party verifiability may be needed to
> establish that anyone even cares.

Then you have a lot of deletable articles... I picked random article
20 times. 15 of them did not have references, 4 did (the one skipped
did not have references, but did have a 'bibliography' section, so I
was not sure where to put it).

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 18/09/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> Well, YOU are the one who said it was 'a sign of deletability', not
> me. And if you want to apply it different from pathologically or not
> at all, it is you who are to come with a different approach. Either
> you apply it or you don't. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
> Sure, you can make rules as to when to apply it and when not. But then
> you have to state the rules.

I suppose the problem is I'm assuming editors who are not insane robots.

- d.


from_name: Kim van der Linde

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
David Alexander Russell wrote:

> (especially since any decent stuff that it produces will be re-merged
> into Wikipedia, perhaps even by a bot)

Interesting idea. Suppose that some evolutionary biology experts write
the citizendium entry on say evolution. I am pretty sure, it will be
substantially different from our version (which has substantial sections
just to deal with the continued stream of creationist POV-pushers). I
can see how a bot driven replacement of the content is just going to
result in either revert wars with the bot, or if that is blocked,
editors that are going to leave the article alone (open for anyone to
edit). But suppose, it gets accepted as a proper version. At wikipedia,
everybody can edit it, so it is free game again for regular editors as
well as POV-pushers. The latter have to be kept in check, either by
editors reverting, or by full protecting the article. The latter is more
likely, because as soon as citizendium updates their page, it gets
replaced at Wikipedia by the bot, taking away any incentive to improve
the content. So, as this is taking away the incentive for Wikipedia
editors to improve the article, I suspect that there will be never a bot
that is going to do this. Consequently, the articles at both sides will
remain different, and than quality differences start to play a role. As
soon as citizendium is perceived as qualitatively better and more
stable, people will start looking there and at wikipedia second.

Kim

--
http://www.kimvdlinde.com


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] I've Kicked the Process Habit

body:
On 9/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Quite a number of our policies were created by consensus.
>
>
> And almost all of our processes are quick hacks someone thought would
> be a good idea at the time, and they're usually modified by putting
> hacks on hacks on hacks, building into a rococo fractal mosaic of
> prescriptions.
>
> People see something quickly assembled out of gaffer tape and string
> and assume it's an immaculate stainless steel construction of well
> thought-out design. Then they follow it rigidly and unthinkingly.
>

My experience of managing policy suggests otherwise. You just need a
few people who are prepared to try and kill any changes to policy.
Anything that can get through that as well as any special interest
groups tends to be fairly solid.

> Look at your response to Phil's posts in this thread. You're zooming
> in on utterly insignificant details as if to completely ignore the
> point.
>

Perhaps but it was somewhat nicer than the full version.

Phil was attacking something he didn't know about. He doesn't block
vandals so he is unlikely to know what the process is thus he produced
an attack based on ignorance.

So what about other admin areas?

Deletion? other than a brief spell on the 14th not much and a total of
less than 100 a year.

going back to that spell on the 14th something odd about it. Now the
process is that you gave a reason for deletion normally something
cryptic like A8 or CSD A8 or orphan fair use. I suspect even the
"common sense" group would think that was something that should be
done. However if we look at Phil's deletion log what do we see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&limit=50&offset=0&type=delete&user=Phil+Sandifer&page=

Well perhaps it is the protection policy he is having problems with
but with only 21 protections/unprotections this year (including a
rather non standard use on [[Talk:2004 U.S. presidential election
controversy and irregularities]]) I doubt that is to big a burden.

Copyright then. Copyright is the ultimate policy/process nightmare
which in theory requires you to know and understand ~200 different
legal systems (in practice US plus the oddities of a few others is
enough most of the time and even that can be simplified by taking
images yourself). But other than a brief burst of zeal of deleting
userboxes based on what we is probably best described as an
interesting interpretation of policy I haven't seen much involvement
in that area on en (could be active on commons I don't follow that too
closely).

So that's the admin process areas out of the way.

Now one of the things process does is allow people to work together
who really don't get on. So lets see how Phil does in that area. 3
RFCs and only 1% more support than sam spade in the arbcom elations
suggest certain issues in this area. Perhaps he isn't the best
candidate for avoiding process.

There is a time for IARs as and admin but it is important to know why
the rules are and why they exist. Phil does not. That was why I
requested his resignation as an admin.

If you wish to take that approach as an editor it is useful to be very
good at getting on with people and the evidence suggests that Phil is
no Linuxbeak.

Has it ever occurred to you that the people saying "outside process"
are doing so in order to avoid have to launch direct attacks on
people's actions?

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 9/18/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/18/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >since en.wikipedia isn't just big in
> > voteing power but in everything else (articles publicity effects on
> > other projects donations recived representation at the meta level) as
> > well.
>
>
> Any figures, facts etc. to support this assumption?

I to a degree follow news articles mentioning wikipedia. While other
languages are increasing acknowledged en tends to still receive the
focus of the article. Effects on other projects can be seen in the
number of translations from en and through the way the policy of many
tends to be draw from en (see .ru and the whole WP:V thing). When I
last saw figures most donations came from the US and the foundation
was far more concerned with getting a donation notice on en than the
other members of the big 8. Look at the make up of the various coms
for evidence of the last.

--
geni


body:
On 18/09/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/18/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/18/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > >since en.wikipedia isn't just big in
> > > voteing power but in everything else (articles publicity effects on
> > > other projects donations recived representation at the meta level) as
> > > well.

> > Any figures, facts etc. to support this assumption?

> I to a degree follow news articles mentioning wikipedia. While other
> languages are increasing acknowledged en tends to still receive the
> focus of the article. Effects on other projects can be seen in the
> number of translations from en and through the way the policy of many
> tends to be draw from en (see .ru and the whole WP:V thing). When I
> last saw figures most donations came from the US and the foundation
> was far more concerned with getting a donation notice on en than the
> other members of the big 8. Look at the make up of the various coms
> for evidence of the last.

I get press enquiries from non-English-speaking countries asking about
"Wikipedia" and clearly meaning only en:wp. I often have to go to some
effort to find a local editor to talk to them about their local
Wikipedia. (It seems they usually use en: because it's much bigger and
hence more useful to readers.)

It may not be ideal that it's the biggest in mindshare and income as
well as edits, but pretending that it isn't doesn't make it so.

- d.


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
"David Gerard"

> At least
> with "expert" qualifications the idiots will be expert idiots, and any
> good academic has way too much experience dealing with those.

Yeah, it's kind of touching how people outside assume academia is a kind of haven of good behaviour. It's a haven, but not for that particularly.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


body:
2006/9/18, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
> On 18/09/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2006/9/18, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>
> > > If there are NO sources for an article, that tends to be a sign of
> > > deletability on en:wp. But that is mostly applied to popular culture
> > > things, where evidence of third-party verifiability may be needed to
> > > establish that anyone even cares.
>
> > Then you have a lot of deletable articles... I picked random article
> > 20 times. 15 of them did not have references, 4 did (the one skipped
> > did not have references, but did have a 'bibliography' section, so I
> > was not sure where to put it).
>
>
> It's usually applied to new ones. I save the {{unreferenced}} tag for
> articles with no sources, bibliography, links etc whatsoever.
>
> Your assumption is that anything to do with verifiability *must* be
> applied pathologically or not at all.

Well, YOU are the one who said it was 'a sign of deletability', not
me. And if you want to apply it different from pathologically or not
at all, it is you who are to come with a different approach. Either
you apply it or you don't. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Sure, you can make rules as to when to apply it and when not. But then
you have to state the rules.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] Expert AfD close (Re: Citizendium)

body:
> Or instead, we could try to keep up with growth by implementing some more
> advanced soft controls of our own.

I know I've seen some people stating on their userpages something to the effect
that if you can produce verification that you are an expert in a field, they
will kill an AfD on an article in that field on your word that it is notable.

I'm curious if anyone takes them up on this?

Dan


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 9/18/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>since en.wikipedia isn't just big in
> voteing power but in everything else (articles publicity effects on
> other projects donations recived representation at the meta level) as
> well.

Any figures, facts etc. to support this assumption?

Delphine
(curious)
--
~notafish


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

subject: [Foundation-l] Some news from the German Wikisource

body:
Hello

On 9/17/06, Frank Schulenburg <frank.schulenburg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello all,
>
> since the beginning of 2006 the German Wikisource is evolving in a very
> positive way and I would like to share some news with you.
>

Thanks for this interesting report, Frank. I think this kind of report is
very useful to see how the different project are developping.

g.

--
Guillaume Paumier
Disciplus Simplex
http://fr.wikipedia.org : Resistance is futile ? You will be assimilated.


body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I agree with Andre. The rules [[w:en:Verifiability]] are very strict.
Who is deviant (better word than pathological)? The people who try to
enforce the established rules or the people who ignore them? In a big
community, it doesn't work to refer just to common sense because common
sense is POV. Everyone defines common sense differently.

If you are not satisfied with the rules, try to change them. If there
are no rules how to deal with the daily conflicts, try to establish
legitimate rules.

/Chris

Andre Engels wrote:
> Well, YOU are the one who said it was 'a sign of deletability', not
> me. And if you want to apply it different from pathologically or not
> at all, it is you who are to come with a different approach. Either
> you apply it or you don't. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
> Sure, you can make rules as to when to apply it and when not. But then
> you have to state the rules.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFDpztWd9v/DFhszsRAsa8AJ9fInwtRzb4ETNSpw3FzeR7dZruoQCfZHXN
YO3ZMXa8fZTupc8oPqz9Vbg=
=546E
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
On Sep 18, 2006, at 9:28 AM, geni wrote:

> Perhaps but it was somewhat nicer than the full version.

Geni, this may be news to you, but I'm a semi-active editor in all
fields. I have a job and a life, and I don't have time to get
involved with gaping idiocy that arises when one tries to edit
Wikipedia on a regular basis. To say that I haven't made a lot of use
of my admin powers of late misses the larger point - the paralyzing
force of process has driven me away from virtually all aspects of the
site. A combination of the absurd idiocy that is the CVU and a small
mob of process droids who were disinclined to expend any time
actually thinking about an enormously subtle sourcing issue brought
me to the point where, as I saw it, the sane options were to just
give up or to just go back to editing in the way that worked quite
nicely two years ago when I got my adminship. I picked option two.

Is the concept that enormous gunk of process that you appear to be so
aware of might wear me down over the course of the last year or so
that hard for you to understand? Or, for that matter, that offensive
that you had to launch into such a bizarre attempt to smear me,
including trying to re-air year old dirty laundry like when I blocked
[[User:The Recycling Troll]], a user who turned out to be a
sockpuppet the one person who was vocally complaining about that block?

What are you trying to accomplish here?

-Phil


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>
>
>>Dear Jimbo:
>>
>>I challenge you to find me a reference/citation for:
>>
>>''When walking on the major street towards increasing soi numbers, all
>>the even-numbered sois are on the right side and the odd-numbered ones
>>on the left side of the street. If for instance a new soi is added
>>between soi 7 and soi 9 it will get the number soi 7/1, the next one soi
>>7/2 etc. It is also possible that soi 20 is far away from soi 21 if
>>there are more sois on one side of the street than on the other.''
>>
>>From the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soi
>>
>>Not everything can be referenced, or a reference is almost impossible to
>>provide. But what stands there is the truth, so should we delete this
>>just because it is unreferenced?
>>
>>
>>
>In theory, there is probably a reference and legal basis for this kind
>of thing in Bangkok city hall, but unless we are challenging the way
>that the Bangkok city fathers are numbering streets it would be an
>incredible waste of time to track it down.  I am willing, on a
>provisional basis, to accept the observations of someone who has lived
>in that city.  If I doubted the facts I could always go to Bangkok to
>verify the facts by walking the streets.  The information is right there
>for everybody to see.
>
>
>
Thank you EC that is exactly how I feel about this and these kind of
things. Unfortunately the tendency seems to be to rigouresly edit out
these kind of unverified statements. At least that is the impression I
get from statements like the one Jimbo made.

Waerth


list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-20

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Template infinite loop... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 412 of 429 tests (96.04%) FAILED!


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Development in Africa

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Anthere wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>1.2. Identification of big media group (make a list).
>>>>Contact and proposition of articles. Language focus: english, french,
>>>>arab, portuguese.
>>>>Of course, include them in the list of press release.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I take it that you want to engage the media in the countries themselves,
>>>this is more effectively done by local people. They will be able to do
>>>so effectively when they know themselves empowered to do so. This means
>>>that local chapters may be really relevant here. They are because they
>>>can handle money and they provide a front to the people who do things on
>>>the ground. If you want to stimulate local languages, learn how it is
>>>done by others, what is done in Neapolitan is one good example but there
>>>are more like it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Can you explain more about what is done in Neapolitan language ?
>>
>>
>>
>The Neapolitan language is a language that is considered by many to be
>inferior. People are not educated in it, while the Neapolitans are a
>proud people many sadly do not take pride in their own language. In
>order to promote the Neapolitan language, everything is done to
>stimulate the recognition of the Neapolitan language. Stubs are created
>to create a tapestry of articles that are linked. Translation tools are
>used to generate content. There is a newsletter in Neapolitan to people
>who are interested. People living as far afield as the USA and Australia
>are contacted when they show their interest in the Neapolitan language.
>There have been articles in the press about the project. Neapolitan
>traditions are covered, local interest is sought.
>
>As the Italian chapter now has a coordinator for the regional languages,
>it will be interesting to see how the chapter will be able to facilitate
>projects like the Neapolitan wikipedia.. I know for instance that the
>Neapolitan project would love to have a Neapolitan dictionary to scan
>and OCR as well as support for scanning original Neapolitan literature
>(most of is it in the public domain).
>
>
>>>>1.3. Identification of specialized press (make a list)
>>>>Focus: Linux fanatics :-) Contact and proposition of articles
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I think the Linux fanatics are overrated, they have many of the concepts
>>>right, they have the fanatism wrong. We should reach out to everyone we
>>>do not want to be associated and identified with a fanatic fringe. I
>>>understand and appreciate the wink, but some of these people are fringe
>>>and are more of a burden than of a help.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Frankly... I have seen most languages start thanks to developers
>>participation. And remember quite well that for a rather long time, the
>>only articles we got were only in tech journals. This is something we
>>should rely on.
>>
>>
>>
>It may be true that many of our "languages" (you mean Wikipedia ?) were
>started by developers, but since then many other projects have started
>and many of these projects have not been started by developers. Many of
>these projects are doing well. When you consider the press coverage we
>are getting, you will find that we are now have traction in the main
>press. The effect of publications like the one in Nature, the
>Seigenthaler interview on CNN proved extremely valuable. This is where
>our current relevant exposure comes from. A slashdot article does no
>longer generate a slashdot effect.
>
>I am not suggesting that we should cold shoulder the computer press.
>They are relevant to a large part of the wiki community. What I am
>saying is that the Linux fanatics are not and have never been that
>important. The people who became involved in our projects have been too
>level headed to call them fanatics.
>
>
>
>>>>1.4. Identification of major NGO working on education and woman groups.
>>>>Contact. Provide them with a bit of "advertisment".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>When you want to get NGO's to work on our projects, you do not only want
>>>to inform them, you also want to engage them. It means that a
>>>substantial amount of time will be involved. The time frame in which
>>>they operate is quite different, they work with budget cycles,
>>>deadlines. NGO's are often really enthusiastic but for them wikis and
>>>their methodology are new; they have to be initiated in the wiki way. It
>>>takes time and perseverance.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Correct
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>1.5. Contact of all major universities.
>>>>propose them teleconference (if they are equipped) or irl presentation
>>>>(if that fit well with a formal conference or a trip)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I have not done that systematically yet, but it is extremely likely that
>>>I will get many more contacts in universities soon.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>ok
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>2. Favor production of content in languages already developped
>>>>Cases such as RAFT or Wiki voices. If necessary, find money and someone
>>>>to help coordinating this to ensure success.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>It is helpful if there is a place where these things are coordinated. A
>>>language subcommittee of the SPC could do many of these things.. It is
>>>just for this subcommittee to be allowed to start. Finding money is not
>>>that hard. It just needs a plan that needs implementation. Approving
>>>plans for funding and incorporation in the WMF would be a step towards
>>>the notion of "donations, putting your money where your mouth is"
>>>(details on Meta).
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Right now, the problem seems to be that nobody is willing to take time
>>doing plans. Doing plans is not as funny as writing articles.
>>For example, I suggested a long time ago we should build up a list of
>>african media contacts to send press releases to. I started doing that a
>>long time ago for Algeria and Marocco (press releases sent there never
>>raised any attention though). But a much more extensive list needs to be
>>set up and used. But no list has ever been made as far as I know. Saying
>>"it needs a plan" is good, that does not make it happen. Approving plans
>>is good as well, but needs a plan in the first place.
>>
>>I am unsure how to approach this.
>>
>>
>>
>There is a plan what a language subcommittee can do. It has been
>published on Meta. There are people who are willing to execute that
>plan. The only thing that is needed is to have a mandate to do this for
>the Wikimedia Foundation as well. We are doing many of the things
>mentioned anyway because it benefits the WiktionaryZ project and we do
>not mind that the benefit is more than just WiktionaryZ; that is what
>makes it so sweet to do.
>
>
>>>>3. Favor production of content in local languages
>>>>
>>>>* Help Beta Wiki
>>>>* Contact local NGOs for help in translation interface
>>>>* Identification (now) of major languages (according to read/write
>>>>coverage)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>There is agreement between Brion and Nikerabbit that Beta Wiki will be
>>>hosted on a more convenient place. This is an extremely important thing
>>>and I am grateful to Brion to help out on this one.
>>>
>>>Translating the User Interface only for our projects is a missed
>>>opportunity. MediaWiki is extremely powerful software. When the
>>>localisation is also seen as an opportunity to have this great tool
>>>available, it becomes something that has relevance to an organisation
>>>for itself. This is an extremely powerful argument. It also underlines
>>>why the localisation in a wikipedia is not such a great idea; it's scope
>>>is only that project and there is no added benefit.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Here, I appear to have lost you on the way... can you re-explain ?
>>
>>
>>
>When an NGO helps with the localisation of MediaWiki, only to have a
>Wikipedia benefit, is a nice effort but a missed opportunity. MediaWiki
>can be used for other projects including projects of the NGO itself and
>the partners they asked to do the localisation for them. This way
>MediaWiki becomes a tool for these organisations as well and this in
>turn makes the investment in the localisation more valuable. This means
>that MediaWiki should be seen as a valuable commodity in it's own right,
>a commodity we should more actively promote.
>
>
>>>>Here are some thougts. Are they others ?
>>>>Who feel like helping take care of some of those points ?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>It is important to be enthusiastic about what we do and it is as
>>>important to have a good understanding what the WMF does and what it's
>>>projects are. It is however also really relevant to tell that the WMF is
>>>part of a growing ecosphere with many other projects like Wikitravel,
>>>Yellowiki, Wikia being part of it. This shows that the wikiway is not
>>>only the Wikipedia way.
>>>
>>>I have been taking care of some of these points because it helps
>>>WiktionaryZ. For WiktionaryZ it is relevant that we are part of this
>>>whole wiki thing. The strength of what we do is achieved in the many
>>>different things we do, try and achieve. We would be better served if we
>>>cooperated more and bickered less.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>indeed
>>
>>I went back to the meta page on the topic. They are hopelessly outdated.
>>
>>Well, my first move will be to contact back this BBC journalist as well
>>as the journalist from IT & Telecom Digest. One step at a time.
>>
>>
>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>     GerardM
>>>
>>>http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/afrophonewikis/ - Yahoo group on
>>>supporting African language
>>>http://www.kasahorow.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page - Wiki for a
>>>project plan for supporting Ghanaian languages
>>>http://wiktionaryz.org - Pre alpha project to do lexicology, terminology
>>>and ontology has both language and country portals
>>>http://nike.users.idler.fi/dev/index.php?title=ISO-639-3/gil
>>>
>>>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
When the lexicons are completed, I'll start translation runs in Neopolitian.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Development in Africa


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article surveys again

body:
Back in mid-November, I did a survey of 100 randomly-selected
articles, and re-checked them in February and May:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carnildo/The_100.  At the end of
August, I finished the fourth check of those articles.  The seven
deleted articles are still deleted, and the three redirects are still
redirects.

Over the past three months, 997 edits were made to articles on the
list, giving a mean of 10.72 edits per article.  This rate is about in
line with the past two checks: slightly higher than the February-May
rate, and slightly lower than November-February rate.

More articles were edited in the May-August period than the
February-May period, with only 13 articles un-edited during that
period, and no article unchanged since November.  This seems to
reflect an increase in automated and semi-automated editing, though,
as many of the edits were done by bots or AutoWikiBrowser.

More articles are being heavily edited, with 22 in the 10+ edits range
for 79% of all edits.  Five articles were edited 50 or more times,
with [[Midfielder]] (147 edits) taking the title of "most edited" from
[[Lawrenceville School]] (69 edits).  Large numbers of edits does not
always equate to quality: the second-most-edited article, [[List of
Barney & Friends stage shows]], was deleted via AfD.  On the other
hand, [[Midfielder]] and [[Canadian Forces Air Command]] showed
significant improvement during this time period.

Overall quality is almost entirely unchanged: two stubs were moved to
higher categories, with [[Criterion Theatre]] going to "good", while
[[Angus (Scottish Parliament constituency)]] went to "low".  Most
other articles gained a sentence or less.

One article lost a great deal of ground in terms of quality:
[[Internet Haganah]] had sources removed and a highly-POV,
potentially-libelous criticism section was added.  Since I did the
August check, someone's liberally added {{unreferenced}} and {{fact}}
tags to the section, but no other changes have been made.

Sourcing of articles declined slightly: one article gained sourcing,
while another had all sources removed, for a net loss of one source.
On the positive side, two articles gained inline references.  The
number of references cited for [[General Semantics]] is unchanged, at
27.

The image situation continues to improve, but slowly.  The ratio of
free to non-free images improved to 2.4:1, with the addition of eight
free images and two non-free images, and the removal of three
incorrectly-tagged free images and one non-free images.  The number of
problem images has also risen, with the addition of two "by
permission" images, one unsourced image, and one image with a dubious
PD claim.

The number of warning tags on articles has increased to six, with the
addition of {{cite}}, {{expandsection}}, {{disambig-cleanup}}, and
{{unreferenced-section}} tags.  The two {{unreferenced}} tags from the
previous check are still there.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: . Unforgettableid

subject: [WikiEN-l] Would you like one of your videos posted on Wikipedia?

body:
To: info at forbidden-places.be

Hello,

My name is Jason and I am a volunteer editor for Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia anyone can edit. I saw your SAFEA chemical factory urban
exploration video at
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7772963855357017766 on Google
Video and enjoyed it very much. (The train video sounds interesting
too but it seems you want to keep it private.) We at Wikipedia are
considering using your video to illustrate our articles
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_exploration (English)
and
- http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_urbaine (French).

Since Wikipedia's video system is new, the upload process is not as
easy as Google Video's. However, we will help you through the process
step-by-step, and you will get free promotion for your website and for
the hobby of urban exploration. As well, you will be helping Wikipedia
by helping us to find out how to optimize our video upload process and
make it easier for non-Wikipedians to upload videos.

We are wondering: Are you interested?

Please use the "Reply to All" button if you reply.

Regards,
Jason
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Unforgettableid


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
Kim van der Linde wrote

> To be honest, if (BIG IF) Citizendium is going to work and produces
> higher quality stuff at a sufficient fast rate, it will only need a
> study or two showing that Citizendium is higher quality/more reliable
> than Wikipedia to flip everything around. If Wikipedia has to rely on
> Citizendium for better quality GFDL texts than that they can produce
> themselves, it effectively proves that Wikipedia cannot do what it wants
> with its current editing paradigm.

Frankly, I doubt it proves that. Everyone who argues solely in terms of 'star' content and ignores the infrastructural things makes a big if typical mistake. It is going to be a lot easier for WP to improve article content, in areas where it actually has some welcome competition, than it is going to be for those rivals to import into their site the necessary redirects and so on, to give the navigational smooth ride. (I think scholars out there are aware that in general Europeans before 1500 have far too many names; I know which site I put my money on to have the variants.)

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


from_name: David Alexander Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Maybe I might be considered evil, but I have no familiarity with a
sizeable number of the candidates, so I just identified the candidates I
knew I definitely did NOT want (there were three) and voted for everyone
else. That was a much more effective way of contributing to the outcome
I wanted (ie to stop my three un-preferred candidates from winning) than
arbitrarily picking a particular candidate (or candidates).

Cynical
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3rc2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFDsJDg8fvtQYQevcRAkeMAJ9CZZQLQWi0GbWlLkxvbgPjbxuoMQCeOpEH
vUGPvCPwX6w1RbNN8KlPfoc=
=R2tT
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Foundation-l] Development in Africa

body:
Sabine Cretella wrote:

>>>
>>>
>>>
>>When the lexicons are completed, I'll start translation runs in Neopolitian.
>>
>>
>>
>Jeff, that will take some time - I am trying to get Carmine involved -
>if things depend only on me ... well: I cannot give any deadline.
>
>I hope that other small wikipedias take up the possibility and start to
>create their contents as well.
>
>Thank you!!!
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Sabine
>
>

Sabine,

That's ok. I have plenty to work on for now. Cherokee, Dine, Chickasaw,
Bantu and Kaswahili, Uto-Aztecan.
Take your time. When you are ready, I am here for you.

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] Development in Africa


body:
"David Gerard" wrote

> And almost all of our processes are quick hacks someone thought would
> be a good idea at the time, and they're usually modified by putting
> hacks on hacks on hacks, building into a rococo fractal mosaic of
> prescriptions.

Which is a pretty good description of how evolution works, on a conventional model. _Especially_ the bit that the thing designed for one issue gets commandeered and adapted for another.

I think we can take comfort from the way the conventional model of evolution also has this to say: it's smarter than you. (No, I don't mean David G, I mean this is a more effective problem solving attack than a priori plans.)

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.ntlworld.com
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software
Visit www.ntlworld.com/security for more information


body:
On 18/09/06, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "David Gerard" wrote

> > And almost all of our processes are quick hacks someone thought would
> > be a good idea at the time, and they're usually modified by putting
> > hacks on hacks on hacks, building into a rococo fractal mosaic of
> > prescriptions.

> Which is a pretty good description of how evolution works, on a conventional model. _Especially_ the bit that the thing designed for one issue gets commandeered and adapted for another.
> I think we can take comfort from the way the conventional model of evolution also has this to say: it's smarter than you. (No, I don't mean David G, I mean this is a more effective problem solving attack than a priori plans.)

The analogy to evolution is remarkably appropriate in that the only
"aim" evolution has is reproduction and spreading. Our swathes of
process certainly do this, c.f. [[m:instruction creep]].

Whether this is what we actually want them to do in order to write an
encyclopedia is another matter entirely.

(Kudzu was invented to supply similes for process.)

- d.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Would you like one of your videos posted on
	Wikipedia?

body:
On 9/18/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> . Unforgettableid wrote:
...
> > you will get free promotion for your website and for
> > the hobby of urban exploration.
...
> I'm not sure if its a good idea to promise 'free promotion' in a
> permission request, since (s)he would get is an external link in the
> media info page, which only Wikipedia /editors/ will ever see.

All the videos they posted to Google Video have a watermark in the
corner pointing to www.forbidden-places.be ; that should provide free
promotion.

Personally, I would prefer it if the video's author shortened the
watermark; such a watermark need not last for more than five or ten
seconds. I believe all watermarks are annoying and detract from video.

--[[User:Unforgettableid]]


body:
David Gerard wrote:

>On 18/09/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Thank you EC that is exactly how I feel about this and these kind of
>>things. Unfortunately the tendency seems to be to rigouresly edit out
>>these kind of unverified statements. At least that is the impression I
>>get from statements like the one Jimbo made.
>>
>>
>
>
>On en:wp, the guideline is "don't put a {{fact}} tag on something
>unless you actually think it's likely to be wrong." The only case
>where we need to really be hard-arsed about citations is on living
>biographies.
>
>
>- d.
>
And again a statement that makes sense. Unforunately most wikipedians
just see a rule, or a statement by jimbo and will be hard arsed about it
in unfortunately. We will see where this ship ends up ......

Waerth


subject: [WikiEN-l] Template cruft (was: Libertarian spam)

body:
On 18/09/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not sure we need a New Policy every time someone does something stupid.

I am quite certain we don't.

    Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity. When I was CTO
of a web design firm, I noticed in staff meetings that we only ever
talked about process when we were avoiding talking about people. "We
need a process to ensure that the client does not get half-finished
design sketches" is code for "Greg fucked up." The problem, of course,
is that much of this process nevertheless gets put in place, meaning
that an organization slowly forms around avoiding the dumbest
behaviors of its mediocre employees, resulting in layers of gunk that
keep its best employees from doing interesting work, because they too
have to sign "The Form Designed to Keep You From Doing The Stupid
Thing That One Guy Did Three Years Ago".

?Wikis, Grafitti, and Process, Clay Shirky, 2003-08-26

You can't cure stupidity or malice with instructions.

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Instruction_creep

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template cruft

body:
I agree with Jimbo that this thread has become about something more
important to us than Libertarian politics; this is not to say that I am
not critical of that lot, but  I can save that for another day.

Akash Mehta wrote:

>Articles generally don't need to be in more than two sidebars anyway;
>sidebars are good but they shouldn't be over used. And if there is a
>decent reason to remove all these templates I can write an app in VB
>to run through all the articles and remove the template (with human
>operation, of course) but there needs to be justification as changes
>can't be easily reverted en masse (yet), except by one of our busy
>sysops.
>
I speak as a long-time Wikipedian who is more interested in content than
pretty presentation.  I had a hand in helping develop the early versions
of taxoboxes, and descriptive boxes for battles.  To some extent the use
of charts and tables is essential for organizing data.  But when we
reach a point that changing the content of these charts and boxes is a
mysterious process for the average user, or when it is only with great
difficulty that one even finds what page to edit, then we have to
consider the possibility that we have gotten away from the essential
principal that this is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit.

When we speak of Wikipedia as a site that anyone can edit that means
more to me than permission.  That permission is hollow if a person lacks
the techniques to do it.  In the earliest time we took pride in the fact
that wiki-markup was so simple that anyone could understand it; the
essentials could be put on a single page that did not even need to be
scrolled.  Someone could edit without having to learn html.  Can we
still honestly say that a retired professor in the arts and humanities
is still able to contribute from his vast experience?  His familiarity
with his subject may be unquestionable, but his expertise preceeded the
cyber-age and did not depend on familiarity with computer languages.

We have many very competent technogeeks, but what produces aesthetic
orgasms for them is a disincentive for many of the rest of us, or for
many who just never bother.  The templates that enhance the tecnogeek
mindset and make his life easier have quite the opposite effect on others.

Akash's proposal to replace templates merits support.

Ec


from_name: Kim Bruning

subject: [Foundation-l] Sanger's first post to Citizendium-l

in_reply_to:
<450E410E.9080406@wolfmountaingroup.com>;
	from jmerkey@wolfmountaingroup.com on Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at
	12:47:42AM -0600

references:
<8e253f560609172239v316642cagfce4aef6af3234a7@mail.gmail.com>
	<450E33D0.3020205@wolfmountaingroup.com>
	<450E410E.9080406@wolfmountaingroup.com>

body:
On Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at 12:47:42AM -0600, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
> Brion,
>
> Hope things are going well, Please delete my last post on this thread
> from the archives if possible. Kat and I have taken the discussions off
> list. I was
> attempting to just respond to Kat OFFLIST and for some reason this
> posting ended up on the list.
>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/010065.html

While the post might be removable from the archives, it's still in many people's
mailboxes. You might want to be more careful posting to a public list in
future.

sincerely,
	Kim Bruning

--
[Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72


body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>On 9/17/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Andre Engels wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>2006/9/17, Christoph Seydl <Christoph.Seydl at students.jku.at>:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>Jimbo Wales says: "I can NOT emphasize this enough.    There seems to be
>>>>a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative
>>>>'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs
>>>>a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be
>>>>sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of
>>>>negative information about living persons.    I think a fair number of
>>>>people need to be kicked out of the project just for being lousy
>>>>writers. (This is not a policy statement, just a statement of attitude
>>>>and frustration.)"
>>>>(http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046433.html)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>Dear Jimbo:
>>
>>I challenge you to find me a reference/citation for:
>>
>>''When walking on the major street towards increasing soi numbers, all
>>the even-numbered sois are on the right side and the odd-numbered ones
>>on the left side of the street. If for instance a new soi is added
>>between soi 7 and soi 9 it will get the number soi 7/1, the next one soi
>>7/2 etc. It is also possible that soi 20 is far away from soi 21 if
>>there are more sois on one side of the street than on the other.''
>>
>> From the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soi
>>
>>
>
>Is this sufficient?
>http://www.frommers.com/destinations/bangkok/0071024195.html
>
>
>
Interesting thanks.

Waerth


list: commons-l

from_name: bawolff

subject:
[Commons-l] Fwd: Californian photographers who'd like to go to the
	Oscars?

body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: bawolff <bawolff+wn at gmail.com>
Date: Sep 18, 2006 5:28 PM
Subject: FWD: Californian photographers who'd like to go to the Oscars?
To: Wikinews mailing list <wikinews-l at wikimedia.org>,
Wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org, Commons-l at wikimedia.org

I saw this on the water cooler (Wikinews Village pump equivelent) and
thought it might be a good idea to post to lists.

Are you interested in red carpet photography, or reporting on the Academy
> Awards? I'm trying to get one reporter for Wikinews, and one photographer
> for Wikimedia Commons/Wikinews/Wikipedia into the whole red carpet/backstage
> stuff. Press credentials for the Oscars are being released '''now''', so we
> need to act fast.
>
> I'm looking for someone that is clearly reliable, if not skilled with the
> camera. Being an entertainment buff with a good memory for famous faces is a
> big plus (so you don't miss stars, and shoot photos of random people), and
> living in or around California, particularly in or around Los Angeles are
> also big pluses. The photographer is my main concern, the reporter is less
> critical
>
> Post your reply info and a sample <nowiki><gallery></nowiki> of four
> photos, at least one has to be of a human, and at least one has to have been
> taken in natural light, and at least one photo has to have been taken in
> artificial light. Submit your interest or questions to
> [[n:en:user:zanimum/Oscars]].
>
> This message is being cross-posted to Commons, Wikinews, Wikipedia.  --
> [[User:Zanimum|Zanimum]] 20:33, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Forwarded to mail lists by user:Bawolff
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20060918/2cd7f0a2/attachment.htm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
On 18/09/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> I think this may actually be a strength of Wikipedia---expert idiots, in
> my experience, are the most likely to be offended that they aren't being
> given proper deference as experts, and so avoid Wikipedia.  (Of course,
> not all---or even most---experts who avoid Wikipedia are idiots, but the
> credential-waving type do consistently avoid it.)
> What's more, expert idiots are the hardest to deal with.

shhhh! you'll give the game away!

>  Non-expert
> idiots usually know they're outmatched when someone who is familiar with
> the relevant literature shows up with citations, so can usually be
> chased off, or forcibly chased off if necessary.  Pretty much the only
> place this doesn't happen is in areas where multiple fields are laying
> claim, in which case it's disagreement over the definition of "expert"
> that's the problem in the first place (and Citizendium has no magic
> solution to resolving that one).

There's pathological cases, like the WMC arbitration case, where a
pile of faith-based science advocates tried to get a leading climate
scientist voted off the wiki. Thankfully it didn't alienate WMC
utterly from Wikipedia.

> If Citizendium on the other hand encourages the credentialist idiots to
> show up, then that's a whole new level of problems.  As you point out,
> anyone in academia has to deal with those sort on a regular basis, but
> that's unfortunate, unavoidable, and my job---I'm not going to put up
> with that crap in a volunteer job if I have an alternate way of
> accomplishing my volunteer goals!

*ahem* I hope Citizendium succeeds admirably.

- d.


body:
On 9/18/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> Delphine M?nard wrote:
> > We've seen that the "Foundation" doing anything invariably leads to
> > mild or fierce accusations of "the Foundation" wanting to take over,
> > rule and what not. Well, maybe if *we* the community, proposed the
> > organisation (the Foundation) with a comprehensive way to go about
> > this, showing that *we* the community, have understood what's at stake
> > on an organisational level, things could change for the better.
>
> One of the most worrying trends I have seen is a tendency for people to
> think of "the Foundation" as being completely apart from "the
> Community".  That way lies madness, I think.

The funny thing is that I am one of those people who think that the
Foundation *is* apart from the community.

I am, however, a strong advocate of both "The Foundation"
(organisation with roots in the very real world) trying to understand
"the community" and "the community" (a large body of volunteers who
work towards a same goal of free knowledge for all in somewhat virtual
environment) trying to understand "The Foundation", in order to work
together efficiently. Trying is actually not the right word, we need
to succeed, or we'll stall.

Acknowledging differences is the best way of using them to build
synergy. Ignoring them builds gaps and traps rather than bridges.

Delphine
PS. We might phrase it a tad differently, but I have a tendancy to
believe that we agree, here, though.
--
~notafish


body:
On 9/18/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
>
> There may be rights issues as well. It's not as simple
> as just uploading a video, unfortunately. Some content
> I have shot is only available for non-commercial use
> because it was shot in Royal Parks, so this cannot be
> released under a free licence so cannot be included
> in Wikipedia.

Why would that be? Can a tree, a river, or a building be copyrighted?
You claim that there "may" be rights issues but you have not cited any
American law which back up your claim.

Recently, a lot of [[Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt]] has been spread
regarding these issues: Popular Photography magazine discussed them
recently. In reality, a building, a park, or such _cannot_ be
trademarked.

Cheers,
[[User:Unforgettableid]]


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Inline rendering of SVG images into PNG
 on	MediaWiki 1.7.1

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:

>>This is the most unprofessional and community hostile notice I have ever
>>seen - if I read this right is says:
>>
>>"...eat our stuff, bugs and all, and you are on your own if you need
>>help, we don't care..."
>>
>>:-)
>>
>>
>>
>>>Many project websites link to this document in their sections on how
>>>to get help. That's fine, it's the use we intended ? but if you are a
>>>webmaster creating such a link for your project page, please display
>>>prominently near the link notice that /we are not a help desk for your
>>>project!/
>>>
>>>We have learned the hard way that without such a notice, we will
>>>repeatedly be pestered by idiots who think having published this
>>>document makes it our job to solve all the world's technical problems.
>>>
>>>If you're reading this document because you need help, and you walk
>>>away with the impression you can get it directly from the authors,
>>>/you/ are one of the idiots in question. Don't ask /us/ questions.
>>>We'll just ignore you. We are here to show you how to get help from
>>>people who actually know about the software or hardware you're dealing
>>>with, but 99% of the time that will not be us. Unless you know for
>>>/certain/ that one of the authors is an expert on what you're dealing
>>>with, leave us alone and everybody will be happier.
>>>
>>>
>
>
>That's from the http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#disclaimer page; In other words, the people who wrote how to ask better technical questions are simply saying "don't then proceed to ask us (the how-to-ask-questions-people) those technical questions; rather, ask it of the appropriate mailing list (or whatever) for the software in question". Which is what you've done ;-)  I.e. It's not the MediaWiki people refusing to help you.
>
>All the best,
>Nick.
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
OK.   We should not be referring to our community members as "idiots".
This is way out of line.   The general tone raises some hairs on the
back of my neck, but when it got to the term "idiot" I think this
creates needless friction.   I certainly understand why the developers
would not want to deal with trivial issues and I agree with this.  I
also understand this was an off list posting, but Brion did refer to it
as reference.

Jeff


body:
On 9/18/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
> In English law, if you go into a Royal Park to film you
> have to obey their terms and conditions - no commercial
> use without permission.
>
> Similarly, it is illegal to film on British Rail property
> without consent, which is often refused or charged
> for. The Railways are covered by their own bylaws.
>
> Here's a link for more info:
> http://www.sirimo.co.uk/ukpr.php/2004/11/19/
> uk_photographers_rights_guide

OK, point taken. However, it seems to me the UK has stricter copyright
laws than other countries. For example, in the UK, modern
skillfully-made photos of two-hundred-year-old paintings are
automatically copyrighted to the author. On the other hand, I do not
know of any other country with such strict laws regarding old
paintings. Likewise, I assume France, where is not as strict regarding
filming.

Cheers,
Jason


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category intersection

body:
> Yeah, but then surely you'd have to take the union of a potentially
> large number of tables to display a single-category view, which I
> suspect is going to remain a more common request than a
> category-intersection view.  Isn't that going to give you a
> substantial performance hit for large categories?

I'm not sure where you get this idea that each intersection would be a
separate table. Obviously it wouldn't, it would still be one single
database table, containing everything. And this single table can be
queried for a single category, which (assuming proper indexes are in
place) would not be any less efficient than it already is currently.

> (And incidentally, pages that are only in a single category will have
> to remain in their own table.  You can't get that from intersection
> tables.)

I admit I forgot about pages that are in a single category, but they can
still be placed in the same table (just NULL the second category column
for those).

> More to the point: if you're maintaining many tables in parallel like
> this, you need that many more DB calls.

Nope. See above.

Timwi


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Would you like one of your videos posted
	on	Wikipedia?

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>To the best of my knowledge, the United States does not possess any
>"royal parks". Given Stephen appears to live in the UK, a country
>which does have royal parks, it seems reasonable to assume he shot the
>videos there. In which case, the question of what  American laws apply
>to the filming seems a bit less relevant.
>
>
While the person filming has to worry about the law regarding filming,
anyone redistributing the films in the United States does not---it is
not necessarily illegal to redistribute illegally filmed video.  This
came up a while ago on Commons with World Cup photographs: The stadiums
prohibited photography, but given that photographs were taken and
uploaded under the GFDL, Wikimedia is violating no law by continuing to
host them.  The original photographer likely violated the prohibition,
but that's a separate matter, not enforceable through copyright, and so
not really our problem.

-Mark


body:
On 9/18/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 18/09/06, User:Unforgettableid <unforgettableid at gmail.com> wrote:
...
> > Recently, a lot of [[Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt]] has been spread
> > regarding these issues: Popular Photography magazine discussed them
> > recently. In reality, a building, a park, or such _cannot_ be
> > trademarked.
>
> To the best of my knowledge, the United States does not possess any
> "royal parks". Given Stephen appears to live in the UK, a country
> which does have royal parks, it seems reasonable to assume he shot the
> videos there. In which case, the question of what  American laws apply
> to the filming seems a bit less relevant.
>
> If you are going to complain about people spreading "fear, uncertainty
> and doubt" about legal issues, it may be useful to spend some time
> considering
>
> a) that different jurisdictions have different laws;
> b) that moving to one jurisdiction does not magically invalidate any
> implicit or explicit contract you made in another; and
> c) that "trademarked" and "copyrighted" are Not The Same Thing At All.
>
Andrew, points taken.

Also, Stephen, I did not mean any personal attacks against you. I apologize.


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
On 9/17/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Andre Engels wrote:
>
> >2006/9/17, Christoph Seydl <Christoph.Seydl at students.jku.at>:
> >
> >
> >>Jimbo Wales says: "I can NOT emphasize this enough.    There seems to be
> >>a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative
> >>'I heard it somewhere' pseudo information is to be tagged with a 'needs
> >>a cite' tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be
> >>sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of
> >>negative information about living persons.    I think a fair number of
> >>people need to be kicked out of the project just for being lousy
> >>writers. (This is not a policy statement, just a statement of attitude
> >>and frustration.)"
> >>(http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046433.html)
> >>
> >>
> Dear Jimbo:
>
> I challenge you to find me a reference/citation for:
>
> ''When walking on the major street towards increasing soi numbers, all
> the even-numbered sois are on the right side and the odd-numbered ones
> on the left side of the street. If for instance a new soi is added
> between soi 7 and soi 9 it will get the number soi 7/1, the next one soi
> 7/2 etc. It is also possible that soi 20 is far away from soi 21 if
> there are more sois on one side of the street than on the other.''
>
>  From the article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soi

Is this sufficient?
http://www.frommers.com/destinations/bangkok/0071024195.html

> Not everything can be referenced, or a reference is almost impossible to
> provide. But what stands there is the truth, so should we delete this
> just because it is unreferenced?

I agree that over-referenceing can be a problem. This case of Soi
numbering might fall right between "needs" and "doesn't need it."

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


from_name: Stephen Streater

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Board Elections

body:
On 18 Sep 2006, at 16:49, Death Phoenix wrote:

> I voted for three people who I felt would be the best and most-
> qualified:
> there is one who I think is the most qualified, and two who are
> about equal.
> I wonder if I am doing my first choice user a disservice by voting
> for the
> other two, and instead just vote for the one who I think is the clear
> frontrunner.

Have a look at [[Single_Transferable_Vote]]. It avoids this problem.


from_name: geni

body:
On 9/18/06, Arne Klempert <klempert at gmail.com> wrote:

> May I ask you in which languages these articles are? Probably not in
> the same language I usually read.

Dunno does google take news from things writen in not-english?

> Let's put the donation notice on all projects and see what happens.
>
> -- Arne

They were when I saw the figures

anyway of the big 10 .Ja .it .pt .de .pl .sv and .es don't currently
have donation notices. The other in the 100,000 club (.ru) doesn't
either.
--
geni


from_name: Luiz Augusto

body:
On 9/18/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/18/06, Arne Klempert <klempert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > May I ask you in which languages these articles are? Probably not in
> > the same language I usually read.
>
> Dunno does google take news from things writen in not-english?
>
> > Let's put the donation notice on all projects and see what happens.
> >
> > -- Arne
>
> They were when I saw the figures
>
> anyway of the big 10 .Ja .it .pt .de .pl .sv and .es don't currently
> have donation notices. The other in the 100,000 club (.ru) doesn't
> either.
> --
> geni

Another projetcs uses Mediawiki:sitenotice and Mediawiki:annonotice only if
it is REALLY necessary. The Portuguese Wikipedia community dislike to get a
warn every second to make donations (in any case, majority of editors in
Portuguese wikis are from Brazil and credit cart is a dispensable object in
that contry and mail donations is so very expensive).


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

I don't wish Citizendium any ill (the more the merrier), but I think the
whole reason that Wikipedia has so much more content than (for example)
Encarta is that everyone is encouraged to contribute on the basis of the
quality of their contributions rather than the quality of their
'credentials' (most of which are probably more than a decade old). In
other words, people (including experts) who write quality stuff on
Wikipedia are very welcome, while people who write rubbish are not.

Unless Citizendium is suggesting that it would seek out and welcome
people who write rubbish just because they claim to be 'experts' (surely
a recipe for disaster) I don't really see how it will attract anyone on
the basis of its content (especially since any decent stuff that it
produces will be re-merged into Wikipedia, perhaps even by a bot) - all
it will do is attract people who want to give themselves a sense of
importance by telling 'less expert' people what to do. An expert-focused
wiki is a good idea, but since 'experts' are given more control than
'non-experts' then it seems likely that no 'non-experts' will be
interested. At which point Citizendium basically becomes Nupedia without
the peer review process.

Cynical
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3rc2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFDtmug8fvtQYQevcRAje6AKCPKiat9enlDE7ZicAiDXQVoI6y0QCeOkWu
ojHAysPigjXIJjdiuK4e5sM=
=7ikc
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
> Brad Patrick wrote:
> > From my perspective, what happens in the office to keep
> > the servers running, bills paid, and all of the rest of the stuff that
> > never touches the online space (much less in other languages and
> > projects) could not be more separate than the day-to-day goings on of
> > the projects.

I am afraid I don't get what you mean here.

Delphine
(English as a second language. ;-) )

--
~notafish


from_name: Michael Bimmler

body:
On 9/18/06, Kim Bruning <kim at bruning.xs4all.nl> wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at 12:47:42AM -0600, Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> > Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
> >
> > Brion,
> >
> > Hope things are going well, Please delete my last post on this thread
> > from the archives if possible. Kat and I have taken the discussions off
> > list. I was
> > attempting to just respond to Kat OFFLIST and for some reason this
> > posting ended up on the list.
> >
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2006-September/010065.html
>
> While the post might be removable from the archives, it's still in many people's
> mailboxes. You might want to be more careful posting to a public list in
> future.
>
Not only that, it might also be in mail archives (e.g. Gmane), and
search engine caches (Google)...
Michael
> sincerely,
>         Kim Bruning
>
> --
> [Non-pgp mail clients may show pgp-signature as attachment]
> gpg (www.gnupg.org) Fingerprint for key  FEF9DD72
> 5ED6 E215 73EE AD84 E03A  01C5 94AC 7B0E FEF9 DD72
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [WikiEN-l] Libertarian spam

body:
Articles generally don't need to be in more than two sidebars anyway;
sidebars are good but they shouldn't be over used. And if there is a
decent reason to remove all these templates I can write an app in VB
to run through all the articles and remove the template (with human
operation, of course) but there needs to be justification as changes
can't be easily reverted en masse (yet), except by one of our busy
sysops.

On 9/18/06, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> Sunday, September 17, 2006, 10:15:33 PM, Delirium wrote:
>
> D> stvrtg wrote:
> >> As everyone knows, Libertarianism is just the kind of wishy-washy
> >> non-philosophy that poses the greatest threat of giving birth to some new
> >> quasi-intellectual incarnation of tacky backwater-class totalitarianism
> >> disguised as futuristic and innovative societal reform.
> >>
>
> D> I'm sorry, but POV warriors aren't welcome on the Wikipedia project.
>
> D> I do think sidebars should be generally used much less frequently than
> D> they are, but some sort of feverish political crusade isn't the right
> D> way to do it.
>
> I say that sidebars should be used only on the articles actually listed
> in that sidebar. Putting a generic template in a specific topic is not very
> helpful for navigation, it would be better to try making some more specific
> templates or simply let it without any templates.
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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 9/18/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/18/06, Luiz Augusto <lugusto at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Another projetcs uses Mediawiki:sitenotice and Mediawiki:annonotice only
> if
> > it is REALLY necessary. The Portuguese Wikipedia community dislike to
> get a
> > warn every second to make donations (in any case, majority of editors in
> > Portuguese wikis are from Brazil and credit cart is a dispensable object
> in
> > that contry and mail donations is so very expensive).
>
> Taking that approach on en will get you de-admined.
>

I really love to edit only in Portuguese wikis and in interlang (commons,
meta, betawikiv) wikis... Thanks for pointing a good reason to never try to
advance my English language skills =)

Serious, is more interesting to announce a local vote. Any reason to no more
try to organize donations campaigns? This type of donnation alert is
relevant to show in annonnoitce and sitenotice, not a ad eternum and
stressing warn.

I any case, I resigned my sysop privilegies in Portuguese Wikipedia some
months ago =P


from_name: Kelly Martin

body:
On 9/18/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> The board is "strategy", not "operation".

Well put.

Kelly


subject: [WikiEN-l] Citizendium

body:
On 9/18/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 17/09/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> > If I had to guess, one response would be: the opportunity for a genuine
> > expert to work hand in hand with other genuine experts, without the
> > social difficulty of having to interact with the general public, some of
> > whom are quite noticeably stupid and annoying.
> > We try, as a community, to be welcoming and respectful of experts.  We
> > have good people in the community who try to help experts deal with the
> > trolls, vandals, and general nonsense that is likely to come up from
> > time to time.  But we can also all easily admit that sometimes it does
> > not go perfectly, and that genuine experts end up leaving rather than
> > wasting time arguing with idiots.
>
>
> Yeah. On Wikipedia, dealing with people you consider to be noisy
> useless idiots is not optional. You can't refuse to suffer fools. If
> Larry can get a live project going that doesn't do that, I think it'll
> lure a lot of contributors - some from Wikipedia, but also many who
> won't go near Wikipedia because there's no cure for stupid. At least
> with "expert" qualifications the idiots will be expert idiots, and any
> good academic has way too much experience dealing with those.

This is a good articulation for why one should not summarily dismiss
this project as "yet another bad creation."

The same way Netnanny makes the raw Internet safe for kids,
Citizendium could be making the raw Wikipedia safe for academics. :)
OTOH, anyone who's used parental filters knows exactly how good, or
not good, they are.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


body:
On 9/18/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> When I sit at my desk all day, it is not to edit EN:WP or anything
> else.  It is to respond to Real World questions, problems, financial
> issues, etc.  It is also to deal with "meta"-ish things that are across
> all projects.  I am perfectly fine with the notion that a content
> Wikimedian can edit to their heart's content without any idea "the
> Foundation" (Brad, Danny, Brion, Mark, Tim) + zillions of volunteers are
> working to keep their site up and running well.  We need not be in their
> face reminding them of "the Foundation."  But if they care about the
> future, policy, administration, or any of the rest of that stuff, we
> need to be able to talk to them and have them understand what WMF does.
> Before that, though, they are likely to come in contact with admins and
> the cognoscenti of their project first.

Thank you, much clearer.

> I think I was agreeing with you.

Yep, completely.

Delphine
--
~notafish


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Create new article - module ?

body:
Do we really want to be discouraging newbies from creating (or. at the
least. suggesting the creation of) new articles? I say we suggest
everyone head to AfC, have AfC get its act together and find some
people familiar with policy to join and help take care of AfCs and
then look for articles that look promising.

On 9/18/06, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Me too :) Just type the name and get offered the chance to "Do it
> > yourself"
> > :) Nevertheless, it's not that obvious for newcomers...
> >
> That may have its advantages... A newbie will have to delve a short distance
> in to our guidelines to figure it out, and that could make them realise that
> wikipedia is not the place for the article they wish to add. If it is, then
> they will go ahead and write it.(in theory anyway, I don't know if it
> actually works like that). --Michael Billington
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Arne Klempert

body:
On 9/18/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > since en.wikipedia isn't just big in
> > > voteing power but in everything else (articles publicity effects on
> > > other projects donations recived representation at the meta level)
> > > as well.
> >
> > Any figures, facts etc. to support this assumption?
>
> I to a degree follow news articles mentioning wikipedia. While
> other languages are increasing acknowledged en tends to still
> receive the focus of the article.

May I ask you in which languages these articles are? Probably not in
the same language I usually read.

> When I last saw figures most donations came from the US and
> the foundation was far more concerned with getting a donation
> notice on en than the other members of the big 8.

Let's put the donation notice on all projects and see what happens.

-- Arne


body:
On 9/18/06, Forbidden Places <postmaster at forbidden-places.be> wrote:
> Hi Jason,
> No problem, as long as the videos are not edited.
We will not edit the video. Other people will be able to edit the
video in the future once it is posted on Wikipedia, but we at
Wikipedia have no plans to. It would be nice if you remove the ad for
your website in the corner of your video though... :-)

> What do I have to do?

1. We need to know who made the video and the music.

(We need to know who owns the copyright on the video and the music to
ensure there will be no issues. We would ask for the full names (or
Internet nicknames) and email addresses of these people.)

2. You would need to agree to license the videos under an open-content
license. My recommended way to do this is to state in an email that
you "dual-license the videos under the current GNU Free Documentation
License and Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 2.5 and
any later version". All copyright holders, including for the video and
the music, would need to agree to this. This basically means that
anyone will be able to copy the video from Wikipedia, remix it or do
other things with it, and post it on other sites, as long as they
mention who created the video. Licensing is a necessary step for
Wikipedia. If you don't understand these terms, or want different
terms, please do "Reply to All" again and tell us. The people on the
wikien-l at wikipedia.org mailing list can then help you with licensing.

3. Ogg Theora re-encoding.

We would need to encode your video in Ogg Theora format, the video
codec we use at Wikipedia (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Media#Video ). We may be able
to re-encode the high-resolution video you have at
http://www.forbidden-places.be/videos.php for you, but to get the best
quality, you would want to do the Ogg encoding yourself from the
original film in your video-editing program. Our maximum video file
size is 20 MB.

> I'd love to get a link from wiki (en) from the urban exploration page, would
> that be possible?

Sorry, Wikipedia is not a web directory. :-( We link to
infiltration.org but we are unable to link to all the smaller urbex
sites.

What do you think of the above 3 steps?

Cheers,
Jason


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject:
[Foundation-l] Citizendium, a new venture,
	will "fork" off from online encyclopedia Wikipedia

body:
On 18/09/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > That's entirely normal in the course of events, and only one of many such
> > projects; Wikipedia has an open-content license precisely to allow these sorts
> > of projects.
>
> Yes. Though we're notably lacking in forks that are actively edited;
> Wikinfo is the only one I know of. Other than that it's pretty much
> static mirror sites with Google ads.

There's that fork of es.wp...

> And more open content is good for everyone.

Always true.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Change language name...

body:
Can please somebody change the name of the Aromanian language ( http://roa-rup.wikipedia.org ) as it appears in Wikipedia's interlanguage links from "Arm?neashti" to the correct spelling form "Arm?neshce" ?

  Also I wanna ask, how can this Wikipedia be transferred to rup.wikipedia.org , the correct Wikipedia adress as per ISO 639-2 Alpha 3?( http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/englangn.html ) When it was created there was no ISO code for this language, but one was created. It is anyway a small Wikipedia so there should be no problem in movin articles.

  Thanks

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] meta pages about Foundation structure (in a sense)...

body:
One idea struck me just now when I saw transcom (eeh, it is not
precise, but transsubcom is too long, not?) page on meta.

If we really would like to involve the community, not regarding
languages, into Foundation activities, may it make a sense for us not
to have multilingual website as the official one, but also
multilingual descriptions aiming to the internal information on meta
in most cases, for example, each committee's description?

Some language have their own page about Election Officials. It is a
new mode of this year. It may make a sense to have descriptions of
other Officials in those languages too?

<negative thought>
Since only English speaking people can be involved into the deepest
level at the end, such multilingualized pages may work simply as red
herrings even at best ...
</negative thought>

Thoughts?
--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vox populi, vox dei *


from_name: Daniel Arnold

body:
Am Montag, 18. September 2006 15:19 schrieb Christoph Seydl:
> I agree with Andre. The rules [[w:en:Verifiability]] are very strict.

Quite some people already have highlighted that Verifiability and "no original
research" are two sides of the same medal.

This means in especially: "Look outside not inside if you write articles."
[Jimbo said something like this somewhere TM]. This means an article about
Wikipedia necessarily primarily needs to be based on external views. Raw data
like size, transfer data and such are something different.

Interestingly the question of Verifiability and "no original research" is
strictly correlated with the flame proof eternal debate on "relevance
criterias". There's an easy answer to it:
* If an article with serious flaws is that much important for the authors that
they need to write long complains defending its serious flaws they probably
better invest the time improving the article.
* If they're unable improving it, the article is obviously not really
important enough for its authors and thatfor lacks general relevance and thus
does not fit into Wikipedia.

You will quickly notice that topics like "politics", "physics", "religion" are
important enough that you can draw from a large body of publications and that
there will be at any given time people that can and do improve such articles
if there is a serious flaw with them. The more narrow the topic is the harder
is it for the author writing something useful about it. For example an
article about "Joshi" is way harder but there were people that managed it
writing something really encylopedic about it.

Another metric is:
* If a discussion thread about an article is more than 10 times longer than
the article itself then there is something wrong with the style of that
particular debate.

> Who is deviant (better word than pathological)? The people who try to
> enforce the established rules or the people who ignore them? In a big
> community, it doesn't work to refer just to common sense because common
> sense is POV. Everyone defines common sense differently.

Well enforcing of policies in a bureaucracy way like: "There is something
wrong but I don't say what" does help nobody. I suppose everyone can sign
that. Constructive critics is the key but if someone does not listen to
constructive critics, well then we don't need further patience like a buddha
and should just execute what we consider necessary in that case without any
further debate.

> If you are not satisfied with the rules, try to change them. If there
> are no rules how to deal with the daily conflicts, try to establish
> legitimate rules.

Well the best rules are rules nobody needs to write down. Do we need a
detailed written down policy on separating article and discussion? No. Our
interface inherits that policy already. Just look at other wikis and you see
that this key policy is not for granted.

So please let us not write tons of detailed policies down; just the key
principles and brainstorm what we want to achieve in detail (synonym to
policy) and then how to make certain policies an obvious corollary of the
user interface structure so that you don't need to remind people about it
again and again.

Cheers, Arnomane


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
When some people have highlighted that in their opinion veriability and
no original research are two sides to the same coin, it does not equate
that everyone agrees with that. Not everyone does. When people make the
effort to write an article for Wikipedia, it does not make them POV
warriors; constantly on the lookout what is happening to their article.
This invalidates your argument that they will "defend" their article in
the first place. There are many people who have been disgusted by the
policies about (in their opinion) nitwits who claim that an article is
not "good" but do not argue WHY it is not good. The notion that
something is not good because there are no sources provided is in and of
itself not a conceptual argument, it is a formalistic argument.

On the topic of politics, the Hungarians know all too well that
politicians lie. What proof is in the fact that something was said
publicly. It is public knowledge that the voting machines are not
reliable and politicians are still elected this way. The same is true
with religion, every religion believes in their truth and consequently
what an other religion says is an affront. The points that prove any
point of view in this have sources, it is just what you want to
believe.. in a similar vain, research has indicated that commercial
healthcare result in a higher death rate but as this is not a fact that
is acceptable this fact is ignored.

When the talk page is long, the facts and probably the sources are biased.

Constructive criticism.. I would love a definition for that.. is that
not the criticism that says "you are on the right track but see the way
of your errors" .. basically replacing one POV with another ..

When you think that things are self evident, think again.. The only
point you may have is that there are loads of crackpots posting their
ideas. The overwhelming mass of them is why you come up with these
rationalisations.. They help you sometimes, but they are as likely to
prove you wrong.

Thanks,
    GerardM

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5354972.stm

Daniel Arnold wrote:
> Am Montag, 18. September 2006 15:19 schrieb Christoph Seydl:
>
>> I agree with Andre. The rules [[w:en:Verifiability]] are very strict.
>>
>
> Quite some people already have highlighted that Verifiability and "no original
> research" are two sides of the same medal.
>
> This means in especially: "Look outside not inside if you write articles."
> [Jimbo said something like this somewhere TM]. This means an article about
> Wikipedia necessarily primarily needs to be based on external views. Raw data
> like size, transfer data and such are something different.
>
> Interestingly the question of Verifiability and "no original research" is
> strictly correlated with the flame proof eternal debate on "relevance
> criterias". There's an easy answer to it:
> * If an article with serious flaws is that much important for the authors that
> they need to write long complains defending its serious flaws they probably
> better invest the time improving the article.
> * If they're unable improving it, the article is obviously not really
> important enough for its authors and thatfor lacks general relevance and thus
> does not fit into Wikipedia.
>
> You will quickly notice that topics like "politics", "physics", "religion" are
> important enough that you can draw from a large body of publications and that
> there will be at any given time people that can and do improve such articles
> if there is a serious flaw with them. The more narrow the topic is the harder
> is it for the author writing something useful about it. For example an
> article about "Joshi" is way harder but there were people that managed it
> writing something really encylopedic about it.
>
> Another metric is:
> * If a discussion thread about an article is more than 10 times longer than
> the article itself then there is something wrong with the style of that
> particular debate.
>
>
>> Who is deviant (better word than pathological)? The people who try to
>> enforce the established rules or the people who ignore them? In a big
>> community, it doesn't work to refer just to common sense because common
>> sense is POV. Everyone defines common sense differently.
>>
>
> Well enforcing of policies in a bureaucracy way like: "There is something
> wrong but I don't say what" does help nobody. I suppose everyone can sign
> that. Constructive critics is the key but if someone does not listen to
> constructive critics, well then we don't need further patience like a buddha
> and should just execute what we consider necessary in that case without any
> further debate.
>
>
>> If you are not satisfied with the rules, try to change them. If there
>> are no rules how to deal with the daily conflicts, try to establish
>> legitimate rules.
>>
>
> Well the best rules are rules nobody needs to write down. Do we need a
> detailed written down policy on separating article and discussion? No. Our
> interface inherits that policy already. Just look at other wikis and you see
> that this key policy is not for granted.
>
> So please let us not write tons of detailed policies down; just the key
> principles and brainstorm what we want to achieve in detail (synonym to
> policy) and then how to make certain policies an obvious corollary of the
> user interface structure so that you don't need to remind people about it
> again and again.
>
> Cheers, Arnomane
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Change language name... interwiki for roa-rup.wikipedia.org: Arm�neashce not Arm�neashti! HELP

body:
Small mistake, Arm?neashti should be changed to Arm?neashce not Arm?neshce as I said in my previous message (Arm?neashce not Arm?neshce). I forgot an "a".

"ro.wiki" <wikipediaromana at yahoo.it> ha scritto:   Can please somebody change the name of the Aromanian language ( http://roa-rup.wikipedia.org ) as it appears in Wikipedia's interlanguage links from "Arm?neashti" to the correct spelling form "Arm?neshce" ?

Also I wanna ask, how can this Wikipedia be transferred to rup.wikipedia.org , the correct Wikipedia adress as per ISO 639-2 Alpha 3?( http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/englangn.html ) When it was created there was no ISO code for this language, but one was created. It is anyway a small Wikipedia so there should be no problem in movin articles.

Thanks

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

 __________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Poco spazio e tanto spam? Yahoo! Mail ti protegge dallo spam e ti da tanto spazio gratuito per i tuoi file e i messaggi
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]] are destroying Wikipedia

body:
> From: Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com>
>
>
> On Sep 18, 2006, at 10:00 AM, Carl Peterson wrote:
>> Perhaps the slogan should be "verified truth" or "verifiable
>> truth." This
>> puts them both on an equal plane and requires both.
>
> I was thinking of something like "truth is ensured by verifiability,"
> actually.
>
> -Phil

Verifiable sources do not ensure truth. (It's not clear to me that
there's any way to ensure truth... you know, observer A says it's a
wave, observer B says it's a particle... blind men... elephant... etc.)

What verifiable sources do is to enable the reader to _make a
judgement_ of the probable truth of the fact.

That's why it's much more important to have _a_ source, _any_ source,
than to have a reliable source. As long as there's some kind of
source _the reader can judge its reliability._ Of course, the better
the source, the more readers will judge that the fact is probably
accurate, so the more reliable the source, the better.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Memcached layer for revision text extraction

body:
With the start of the school season, the request rate and thus load have gone
way up in the last few weeks. A few more Apache boxen are being planned for, but
we also have some optimization to do in storage access patterns.

On Domas's urging I've added a cache for extracted revision text using
memcached. This can reduce both the load on the external storage servers as well
as the time spent decompressing and extracting individual items from a bulk
storage blob.

According to live profiling data on en.wikipedia and de.wikipedia, the time
spent in Revision::getRevisionText has dropped from the 40s to the 10s in
percentage, with a corresponding increase in memcached::get from about 8% to
about 18%. That's a drop of about 200ms per average profiled request in realtime
during the US-daytime-Europe-evening rush.

Hopefully it keeps up and doesn't cause any other problems; I've set it to cache
for an hour, but this could be reduced or increased as necessary.

The setting is $wgRevisionCacheExpiry and is available in 1.8 on SVN trunk,
disabled by default. To be useful, it requires the main $wgMemc cache to be set
up, and you should have a fair amount of external storage in use or else it
might just be slower to make all those memcached queries. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 249 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20060918/528d583b/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 9/18/06, User:Unforgettableid <unforgettableid at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/18/06, Stephen Streater <sbstreater at mac.com> wrote:
> >
> > There may be rights issues as well. It's not as simple
> > as just uploading a video, unfortunately. Some content
> > I have shot is only available for non-commercial use
> > because it was shot in Royal Parks, so this cannot be
> > released under a free licence so cannot be included
> > in Wikipedia.
>
> Why would that be? Can a tree, a river, or a building be copyrighted?
> You claim that there "may" be rights issues but you have not cited any
> American law which back up your claim.

I suspect that the issues here are not copyright nor trademark law but
contract law.  The contract a film-maker must sign in order to be
allowed to film in a certain place may restrict the film-maker's
ability to issue the work under a free license.

-Matt