body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:
> This is probably an artifact of my very Conservative
> Christian/"Children should be seen and not heard" upbringing where
> people in authority often say "please" in order to sound nice but
> you are still expected to comply as if it were a request (unless the
> please is highly qualified - weird, I know).

I think this is very common and easy to understand.  Particularly in
the context of a page that says 'policy' and particularly when other
lines nearby describe(d) it as policy.

I'd probably like it best if it said something like "It is generally
considered courteous to let people who have worked on the page know
that it might be deleted, either by putting a note on their talk page
or by putting a note on the page itself that says something like
this..."

That makes it clear that it's just a request, and it also explains the
reason for the request (courtesy to others).

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Search function on de:fr:nl:sv:es:pl:

body:
On Wed, 20 Aug 2003, Brion Vibber wrote:

> > > when these kind of important and critical changes are made
> > > by people from the other side of the Ocean, without consulting the
> > > hardworking people on this side of the Atlantic, people can
> > > become very upset. I can't feel anything of a community-feeling in
> > this way of acting.
> > > Jeroen (Dutch Wikipedian)
>
> Jeroen, if you have a better way to keep the server up and running at
> decent speed, I *beg* you to share it with the development team.

My first intuition would be that a gain can well be made in the area of
checking the existence and size of linked-to pages when reading a page,
probably at the cost of making changing pages slower. Problem is that I
don't know what is currently done (this has been proposed before, so maybe
it has been wholly or partly implemented already) nor what exactly MySQL
can and cannot do and in what speed (in particular, performing a binary
search on a table that it knows to be ordered).

Andre Engels


list: textbook-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> Having read more RMS philosophy, I'm now prepared to reply to this:
> Dream on.  It would be great to fix the GNU FDL, but it'll never happen;
> RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity.

Can you direct me to a specific url where I can learn more about why
RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity?

--Jimbo


subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
Toby Bartels wrote:
> * This material is licensed to the Wikimedia Foundation
>   for relicensing under any licence that the Wikimedia Foundation
>   may deem appropriate in the future.

If we did something similar to this, I suspect this should be worded
differently, if for no other reason than to spare me the accusation
that I'm trying to pull a scam.  :-)

I'd prefer something like:

* This material is licensed to the Wikimedia Foundation for
relicensing under any license that the Wikimedia Foundation may deem
appropriate in the future, so long as that licensed is declared to be
both free and copyleft by the FSF.

This eliminates the possibility of an accusation that I'm up to no
good.

Oh, well, actually it doesn't.  No matter what I do, I'm sure someone
will say that it's all a big scam.  :-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Sanford Forte

subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
> Sanford Forte wrote:
>
> >If a school district, or a private printer, want to
> >satisfy the general frameworks required by a
> >specific state, *all* of the material should be
> >able to clear, *without* hassles.
>
> How is mixing and matching incompatible licenses in the same book making
> things easier? All this does is make it a bigger hassle for the school
> districts; now instead of adhering to the terms of one license, they have
to
> adhere to the terms of more than one and possibly many.
-----------------
That was my point (obviously, I didn't express it well).

> >For maximum impact, *every* basic curriculum taken
> >on by WP should have *all* materials available as
> >non-GNU-limited...even if that means starting from
> >scratch with some modules for which there is already
> >GNU-limited content available.
>
> What is so limiting about the GNU FDL? It was specifically written for
> textbooks and manuals.
--------------
The combinations  and permutations that come out of all these licensing
'possibilities' are confusing (to me, anyway...and I imagine these issues
might also confuse naive (unfaniliar with the deep vagaries of open source
licensing) users who want to deploy these materials).

In short, what I'm trying to say, is that if a school district, or a private
printer, want to take the first WP pilot (let's say it's in history), they
should be able to do that wihout having to worry about copyright issues,
period. (and that includes being able to use all the modules [if that's the
way it's done], no matter the license.  If my worries about that, relative
to this project, are unfounded, great. And, thanks for hanging in there and
hashing this out; it's confusing.

One thing: I would love to see a simple (a few paragraphs) explanation -
written for the layperson (I'm one of those) of what the advantages and
limitations are of using (for starters) material from the pilot, given the
license(s) deployed in that project.

> >I can just see a sales representative form Prentice Hall
> >(all the way up to the CEO of that company's textbook
> >division) wining and dining textbook committee people
> >from various states and bringing stuff like this up just
> >before srucial votes are cast to accept or not accept
> >certain books for district consideration.
>
> And they would not do the same for any other copyleft textbook?
--------
Sure. However, to the degree that the licensing *doesn't* permit seamless
use, and *understanding of issues created by incompatible lecenses in the
body of material being considered* by the users, to that degree the argument
against using this stuff will be that much stronger. Again, if what I've
just brought up is a non-issue, based on how the pilot will play out, great.
(I'm still trying to decipher all of this licensing mumbo-jumbo ;)

>
> >Also, I can see the 'copyright police', prompted by
> >commercial publishers, trying to intimidate privae
> >and home schools into doing certain things with
> >GNU-limited material. This industry knows how to
> >use 'dirty'tricks to get its way.
>
> Since the text is free, then how are they going to do that? We already
plan to
> work with the GNU people to fix the parts of the license we don't like.
----------------
Great, that helps clear up the issue for me.

Sanford

>
> -- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Textbook-l mailing list
> Textbook-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/textbook-l


subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
> They'll bring up all kinds of nonsense about copyleft.
> But if we must, especially at first, present a GNU book, then that's OK --
_________
If that would solve the problem, great. It's so important to get the first
project (pilot) done in a way that is 'simple' to understand by all
concerned.

Sanford


subject: [Textbook-l] textbook licensing

body:
Again, I must admit, the various licensing combinations and permutations
brought out by Karl, Toby, Mav, Jimbo, and others are mind-bending (for me
anyway). Rather than go on about this any further, and save time/bandwidth,
I would appreciate any pointers (links, etc.) to the best descriptions of
the differences between open source licenses. Send me anything you deem
valuable.

Also, I trust that when the pilot finally gets off the ground, that folks
here will have done their level best to see that the finished books are able
to be taken up by schools and used without requiring the intervention of
copyright attorneys. That's the bottom line. The public education sector is
laden with so much bureaucracy, and rules, that any potential problem
becomes magnified - often to the point of paralysis. In sum, that's what we
want to avoid; I trust the folks in the project are sensitive to that.
Thanks again for your efforts, and dedication to making this project happen.

Sanford


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Magnus Manske

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia on a cheap computer (was Re:	Wikipedia
	v. Britannica)

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Well, except for the herculean effort of making 1.0 in the first
> place, of course. ;-)

OK, I hacked a sifter test version, to be worshiped at

http://test.wikipedia.org/w/magnus/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page

It uses the test database. Process works like this:
1. Find a broken link. (Just hit Random page, you'll likely end up on a
page with broken links)
2. Click on the broken link. A split screen (yes:frames...) will appear.
Bottom has the en.wikipedia page with that topic, Top has a "Submit
this!" link.
3. Click on the "Submit this!" link. The article will be imported
directly from the en database. It will show as "imported" on Recent Changes.

Things to do:
* User management (has probably been done with the whitelist thingy).
* Import images. That means the script will have to parse the article
for images, I guess :-(

Comments?

Magnus


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Software Patents: Help Us Win in the
	Europarl!]

body:
While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I'm not really comfortable with
Wikipedia per se taking part in a political act just because I (and
presumably a majority of wikipedians) happen to agree with it.

Suppose the next political protest we're asked to participate in is
pro-war?  Or anti-war?  Or whatever.  Taking sides is something that
all of us have a moral responsibility to do as individuals, but
Wikipedia the encyclopedia is outside politics.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] i hate copyright laws

in_reply_to:
<3F43C8D1.9010704@telus.net>;
	from saintonge@telus.net on Wed, Aug 20, 2003 at 12:15:29PM -0700

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >There is a quote from the Swedish Academy's announcement of the Nobel
> >Prize for Steinbeck.  There is a quote from Battle Hymn of The
> >Republic by Julia Ward Howe, explaining the title of the book.
> >There's a quote of Woody Guthrie's reaction to the film version of the
> >book.

> "Battle Hymn of the Republic" was published in 1862, and is thus in the
> public domain anyway.

Oops.  I knew it was a Civil War song, so I feel silly.  Well, the
other two are good examples anyway.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Software Patents: Help Us Win in
	the	Europarl!]

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I'm not really comfortable with
> Wikipedia per se taking part in a political act just because I (and
> presumably a majority of wikipedians) happen to agree with it.

Heck, our server goes down regularly anyway. Maybe we'll participate
unintentionally. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikien-l

from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of line harassment from EntmootsOfTrolls

body:
Sigh. I didn't want to have to come here again, but now I
have no choice. For months, EntmootsOfTrolls has been
harassing me and writing hateful comments on my personal
User page.  In the past week this person has gone off the
deep end.

No matter what articles I write on (Marvel comics, Supreme
Power, Norman Corwin, Cathechism, Scientific
Classification, Zionism, Biology, Israel) he keeps on
ranting about me, Zionism and racism.  He does this on my
own User page every few hours, which he keeps trying to
turn into a one-man campaign to ban me.  After weeks of his
abuse, I can be silent about this no longer.

Consider the following: EntmootsOftrolls denies that he can
be anti-Semitic, while simultaneously baiting me about the
book of Leviticus.

http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Zionism_and_racism&diff=1281977&oldid=1281892
"Also, I cannot be anti-Semitic, since, if I was, I would
have to say that *any* attention paid to Jews is unhealthy.
I am not sure you are a Jew anyway, RK. How much of
Leviticus do you follow? ;-) [[User:EntmootsOfTrolls|EofT]]

If that isn't classical Jew-baiting, no such thing exists.

Further, if I recall correctly, we had already agreed that
when sometimes starts talking about the "Zionization of
Wikipedia" or the "Zionpedia" then they are being
anti-Semitic.  So consider this:

"I offer User talk:EntmootsOfTrolls/on applying Sharia to
RK as an alternative to the Zionization of Wikipedia. Take
it as you will. EofT 17:12, 21 Aug 2003"

Not only is this anti-Semitic, but certain extremist
interpretations of Sharia (Islamic law) allows for Jews to
put to death for insults to Muslims.  EntmootsOfTrools
knows that I am aware of this facet of Sharia. So not only
is this Jew-baiting, but EntmootsOfTrolls is using a veiled
reference to something terrible as his idea of a joke. This
is another reason why I believe that this man may be
obsessed with me, in an unhealthy way.

Either we agree that this kind of thing is prohibited and
we ban this person, or we agree that it is permitted. If
the latter, I will regretfully have to leave Wikipedia, as
I cannot cooperate in good conscience with people if they
approve of such writings.  I would never countenance saying
the equivalent things to Muslims, Christians or atheists,
and it is equally wrong here.

With deep concerns,

Robert ("RK")

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Richard Grevers

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Chronicle scheme

body:
At the moment we run a Current events page which covers an entire month. We
also have a page for each date which covers significant historical events,
with greater depth for recent events.
However, neither of these systems has the capacity to allow in depth
coverage of happenings.
At present the current events page has 10-20 stories per day, and even at
that rate the page is rather large. Which really limits it to the sort of
stories that are goign to make world news headlines bulletins, and not the
sort of place I feel is appropriate to add a smaller story such as, for
example, the New Zealand Govt. enacting a major revamp of its Trade Mark
laws.
(Of course not all news stories are tied to a significant date, but a large
proportion are).

So why don't we start a page for each actual day, for example
20th_August_2003 (please, no flame wars over the date format at this
stage!). At up to 30kb each these allow plenty of capacity for headlines of
news stories from all over the world, and the only links we would need on
the home page would be "Today" "This Week" and "This Month".

It would also allow for more sensible linking of dates in articles -
instead of linking [[August_20|20th August]] [[2003]] or (whatever it is)
we could have a single link to that day's page.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


body:
Robert wrote:
> Either we agree that this kind of thing is prohibited and
> we ban this person, or we agree that it is permitted.

There's a third option -- we agree that this kind of thing is
prohibited, and we tell this guy to knock it off.  He's never been
given an official warning, to the best of my knowledge, although I'm
sure people will remind me if I've forgotten.

Could he be persuaded to email me to chat about it?

--Jimbo


from_name: Karl Wick

subject: [Textbook-l] RE: wikiversity licensing

body:
Please show me ANY evidence that RMS and the FSF will be
flexible about changing their licensing terms how we want
them.

Otherwise lets get new modules released in some way that is
*not* exclusively GNU FDL.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Steve Vertigum

body:
It takes two to tango, Robert.  Even if your dancing
in the mud.

On a second note -- On Zionism and racism I
-S-

--- Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sigh. I didn't want to have to come here again, but
> now I
> have no choice. For months, EntmootsOfTrolls has
> been
> harassing me and writing hateful comments on my
> personal
> User page.  In the past week this person has gone
> off the
> deep end.
>
> No matter what articles I write on (Marvel comics,
> Supreme
> Power, Norman Corwin, Cathechism, Scientific
> Classification, Zionism, Biology, Israel) he keeps
> on
> ranting about me, Zionism and racism.  He does this
> on my
> own User page every few hours, which he keeps trying
> to
> turn into a one-man campaign to ban me.  After weeks
> of his
> abuse, I can be silent about this no longer.
>
> Consider the following: EntmootsOftrolls denies that
> he can
> be anti-Semitic, while simultaneously baiting me
> about the
> book of Leviticus.
>
>
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Talk:Zionism_and_racism&diff=1281977&oldid=1281892
> "Also, I cannot be anti-Semitic, since, if I was, I
> would
> have to say that *any* attention paid to Jews is
> unhealthy.
> I am not sure you are a Jew anyway, RK. How much of
> Leviticus do you follow? ;-)
> [[User:EntmootsOfTrolls|EofT]]
>
> If that isn't classical Jew-baiting, no such thing
> exists.
>
> Further, if I recall correctly, we had already
> agreed that
> when sometimes starts talking about the "Zionization
> of
> Wikipedia" or the "Zionpedia" then they are being
> anti-Semitic.  So consider this:
>
>
> "I offer User talk:EntmootsOfTrolls/on applying
> Sharia to
> RK as an alternative to the Zionization of
> Wikipedia. Take
> it as you will. EofT 17:12, 21 Aug 2003"
>
>
> Not only is this anti-Semitic, but certain extremist
> interpretations of Sharia (Islamic law) allows for
> Jews to
> put to death for insults to Muslims.
> EntmootsOfTrools
> knows that I am aware of this facet of Sharia. So
> not only
> is this Jew-baiting, but EntmootsOfTrolls is using a
> veiled
> reference to something terrible as his idea of a
> joke. This
> is another reason why I believe that this man may be
> obsessed with me, in an unhealthy way.
>
> Either we agree that this kind of thing is
> prohibited and
> we ban this person, or we agree that it is
> permitted. If
> the latter, I will regretfully have to leave
> Wikipedia, as
> I cannot cooperate in good conscience with people if
> they
> approve of such writings.  I would never countenance
> saying
> the equivalent things to Muslims, Christians or
> atheists,
> and it is equally wrong here.
>
>
> With deep concerns,
>
> Robert ("RK")
>
>
> __________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site
> design software
> http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] PayPal is set up

body:
donation at wikipedia.org is the correct email address to use.

I think that's all you need to know.

Tomorrow I will set up a web page on wikimedia.org (the foundation
website) with a variety of buttons and what-not to use, but there's no
reason you can't get started now if you like.  At least initially, all
funds will go towards the new server(s) that I'm shopping for -- the
more you give, the more you get.  :-)

Also, I'm talking to a few different merchant account processors, so
that we can get our own merchant account and save on fees.  But via
PayPal, we can accept money already via credit card, and in U.S.,
Canadian, Euros, Pounds Sterling, and Yen.

Although it isn't as full global as I would like, Paypal is available
to people in the United States and 38 countries, including:

    * Anguilla
    * Argentina
    * Australia
    * Austria
    * Belgium
    * Brazil
    * Canada
    * Chile
    * China
    * Costa Rica
    * Denmark
    * Dominican Republic
    * Finland
    * France
    * Germany
    * Greece
    * Hong Kong
    * Iceland
    * India
    * Ireland
    * Israel
    * Italy
    * Jamaica
    * Japan
    * Luxembourg
    * Mexico
    * Netherlands
    * New Zealand
    * Norway
    * Portugal
    * Singapore
    * South Korea
    * Spain
    * Sweden
    * Switzerland
    * Taiwan
    * United Kingdom


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Chronicle scheme

body:
On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 20:33:54 -0400, Vicki Rosenzweig <vr at redbird.org> gave
utterance to the following:

> At 12:06 PM 8/21/03 +1200, Richard Grevers wrote:
>> At the moment we run a Current events page which covers an entire month.
>> We also have a page for each date which covers significant historical
>> events, with greater depth for recent events.
>> However, neither of these systems has the capacity to allow in depth
>> coverage of happenings.
>> At present the current events page has 10-20 stories per day, and even
>> at that rate the page is rather large. Which really limits it to the
>> sort of stories that are goign to make world news headlines bulletins,
>> and not the sort of place I feel is appropriate to add a smaller story
>> such as, for example, the New Zealand Govt. enacting a major revamp of
>> its Trade Mark laws.
>> (Of course not all news stories are tied to a significant date, but a
>> large proportion are).
>>
>> So why don't we start a page for each actual day, for example
>> 20th_August_2003 (please, no flame wars over the date format at this
>> stage!). At up to 30kb each these allow plenty of capacity for headlines
>> of news stories from all over the world, and the only links we would
>> need on the home page would be "Today" "This Week" and "This Month".
>
> I'd like to keep the quick-summary style current events entries.

I'm not saying that this should replace, just be in addition to.
Are the monthly current-events pages generated automatically, or by hand?
Each day on the monthly summary could link to the detail day page with
[[20th_August_2003|more stories]]
>
>> It would also allow for more sensible linking of dates in articles -
>> instead of linking [[August_20|20th August]] [[2003]] or (whatever it
>> is) we could have a single link to that day's page.
>
> Much of the time, what's important in those links is the year: that
> someone was born in
> (for example) 1877 tells us something about the times in which that
> person grew up.

But still, the year pages are about the easiest to access in W. and there's
no reason not to have both linked somewhere int he article.

--
Richard Grevers
Between two evils always pick the one you haven't tried


body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Of course not. Wikipedia should take part because software patents could
> have direct effects on the project. They threaten free software (like
> MediaWiki) in general, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone claimed to
> have a patent on "websites which are editable by visitors" (of course
> formulated much more eloquently).

Well, lots of things could possibly affect us.  War, changes to the
U.S. tax laws, proposed 'hate speech' laws in the U.S. and Europe, the
list is endless.

> > Taking sides is something that
> > all of us have a moral responsibility to do as individuals, but
> > Wikipedia the encyclopedia is outside politics.
>
> Sorry, but that sounds a bit naive to me.

Maybe, but that's what's so charming about me, isn't it?  ;-)

Seriously, though, I think it's naive to think that we can start down
a path of using Wikipedia for political purposes and not set some very
bad precedent for the future, bad *internal* precedent, leading to
huge amounts of internal dissent.  As if we don't have enough already.

--Jimbo


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Software Patents: Help Us Win
	in	the	Europarl!]

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I'm not really comfortable with
>> Wikipedia per se taking part in a political act just because I (and
>> presumably a majority of wikipedians) happen to agree with it.
>
>
> Of course not. Wikipedia should take part because software patents
> could have direct effects on the project. They threaten free software
> (like MediaWiki) in general, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone
> claimed to have a patent on "websites which are editable by visitors"
> (of course formulated much more eloquently).

On this issue I think free Wiki's may actually be the first to utilize
the concept, which would make it not a problem for us.

In any case, starting to take political stands gets a bit murky.
Perhaps since we're a GFDL encyclopedia, some of us see copyrights as
being detrimental to our work, since we cannot freely integrate material
from copyrighted sources.  But should we therefore lobby for the
abolition of copyrights?  Some would say yes, but many would say no.  I
think we should basically stay out of all these political disputes as
much as possible, and let the individual contributors make whatever
personal political stands they want to.  Having Wikipedia make official
stands is only going to alienate contributors who disagree with those
stands.  I would think people who support software patents are still
welcome to write articles on Wikipedia, but if Wikipedia starts taking
such stands they may feel unwelcome here.

-Mark


from_name: Kurt Jansson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Link-checking optimizations (was Re: Search function
	on de:fr:nl:sv:es:pl:)

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> * for recentchanges, history etc use some sort of join to get check
> existence of users' talk pages during the main query

Don't know about others, but I have never used the links to the users'
talks pages on recent changes. I think they are useless, because you
won't go there before seeing the diff. I'd be happy about a rc without
the links to users' talk pages, because they only clutter up the page.

Do others find them useful?

Kurt


subject: [WikiEN-l] /ban pages

body:
I'm sending this just to wikien-l rather than wikipedia-l, but it's
sort of a close call.  It's just that I think (but correct me if I'm
wrong) that the custom of /ban pages is primarily an en: custom, not
followed elsewhere.

I'm generally opposed to the making of /ban pages as places to discuss
why a person should or should not be banned, and I hope that the
custom will soon fall out of favor.  The reason is that I think it
tends to make problems worse instead of better.

It puts people on the defensive, it is a personal attack on them, and
it raises the 'stakes' in disputes in such a way that peaceful
resolution is less likely rather than more likely.

If you need a place to catalog evidence, I'd recommend doing it
privately, on a file on your own computer.  When you've got a ton of
goods on someone, email it to me privately if you like.  Public
accusations tend to hurt feelings and leave permanent problems.  I do
respect confidences, so if you want to complain about something, hey,
I'm here.  It's what I do.

Publicly, it'd be fine to post that same evidence right on the
person's user_talk page, but phrased as kindly as you can possibly
stand.

For some jerks, it won't matter if you make a ban page or be nice to
them or what.  They'll just be jerks.  That's fine, just leave me a
nice clean paper trail of how everyone was nice and kind and this jerk
kept exploding or doing POV things.  Then a ban is uncontroversial.

But for some people, the ones who just didn't know how our culture
works, or the ones who are difficult personalities but willing to try
to keep themselves under control, I think a kinder approach will be a
lot more effective.

As an example of something that I really didn't like to see, someone
set up a page the other day where other people could vote on banning
someone.  Well, that's just going to anger them more, and anyhow, we
don't vote on bans anyway.  We never have, and if we were going to do
that, we'd have to have a huge discussion over the best way to do it,
etc.  There's a huge mess of thorns there.

In short, I'm asking (and this is a 'please' in the sense of a genuine
request, not a veiled command!) that we discontinue this practice.

--Jimbo


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Calif recall candidates --

body:
Delirium wrote:
> >In that case can we do the same for the Canterbury Regional
> >Council elections?
> [...]
> Given that the California recall election was covered on the front page
> of several European newspapers, I'd say there's some empirical evidence

The true "empirical evidence" for Wikipedia would be the access log.
The obvious plan is only to print the most visited articles.  But some
times the most visited articles can be obscure topics that draw
visitors through Google just because they aren't covered anywhere else
on the web.  People who google for, say, "Seattle" or "Paris" will
find thousands of other websites.

One of the most visited pages on susning.nu is the name of a Swedish
governmental agency that changed its name a couple of years ago.
People are googling for the old name and get a hit nowhere else than
on susning.nu, where they can learn that the agency has changed its
name and a link to its current website.  This page serves its purpose,
but doesn't really fit in the classic definition of an encyclopedia.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se/


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] PayPal is set up

body:
Sweet!

Jimbo wrote:
>Tomorrow I will set up a web page on wikimedia.org
>(the foundation website) with a variety of buttons
>and what-not to use, but there's no reason you can't
>get started now if you like.

Since we don't yet own Wikimedia.com, you might want
to consider hosting the foundation's website at
wikimediafoundation.org since I also bought the .com
for that. This might be better from an organizational
point of view too; Wikimedia.org could be a portal
page (as it is now) to the various Wikimedia projects
and the foundation's website. Also, IMO, wikimedia.org
should be the future home of meta (via a subdomain as
it is now) and the mailing lists (also via a subdomain
as they are now).

Wikimediafoundation.org/.com currently are forwarded
to wikimedia.org but you can change that via the
information I sent you a month ago (you never did
indicate that you received the user names and
passwords to access all the Wikimedia domain names I
hold; I'll resend this information to you again if you
lost my first email).

Also, you mentioned that you bought wikiquote.org/.com
; could you forward those domain names to
http://quote.wikipedia.org ? Moving isn't a priority
but forwarding is since we want to advertise
Wikiquote's existence with our next press release.

>At least initially, all funds will go towards the new

>server(s) that I'm shopping for -- the more you give,

>the more you get.  :-)

I agree that that is a priority; we can think about
hiring a php/mysql optimization expert as soon as our
hardware needs are met.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
On Thu, 21 Aug 2003, Kurt Jansson wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> > * for recentchanges, history etc use some sort of join to get check
> > existence of users' talk pages during the main query
>
> Don't know about others, but I have never used the links to the users'
> talks pages on recent changes. I think they are useless, because you
> won't go there before seeing the diff. I'd be happy about a rc without
> the links to users' talk pages, because they only clutter up the page.
>
> Do others find them useful?

Yes, I find them useful, and would not want to miss them. However,
if the gain in speed is significant, I could live with the link being
always shown as existing, and getting to a "(There is currently no text
in this page)" (although then preferably with an adapted text for the
specific case) when clicking on it sometimes.

Andre Engels


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: Software Patents: Help Us Win in the Europarl!

body:
Alex756 wrote:
>If Wikipedia was to start to do any lobbying for
>legislation, a strict policy would need to be
>implemented so that any such activities don't
>jeapardize its proposed 501(c)(3) tax exemption.

Isn't the Free Software Foundation a 501(c)(3)? They
do /a lot/ of lobbying.

--mav

__________________________________
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The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo.
http://search.yahoo.com


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia on a cheap computer (was
	Re:	Wikipediav. Britannica)

body:
 "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> http://test.wikipedia.org/w/magnus/wiki.phtml?title=Main_Page

Hmm. Interesting. Couple bugs, though...(Chokes on formulas, and when I
tried doing the submit for [[Celtic mythology]], it showed fine, but put the
talk page as the article.)

Aside from that... I like the concept, could be a good way of doing it.

-- Jake


from_name: Alex R.

body:
If Wikipedia was to start to do any lobbying for legislation,
a strict policy would need to be implemented so that any such
activities don't jeapardize its proposed 501(c)(3) tax exemption.
Alex756
From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
> While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I'm not really comfortable with
> Wikipedia per se taking part in a political act just because I (and
> presumably a majority of wikipedians) happen to agree with it.
>
> Suppose the next political protest we're asked to participate in is
> pro-war?  Or anti-war?  Or whatever.  Taking sides is something that
> all of us have a moral responsibility to do as individuals, but
> Wikipedia the encyclopedia is outside politics.
>


from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] /ban pages

body:
At 01:25 PM 8/21/2003, you wrote:
>In short, I'm asking (and this is a 'please' in the sense of a genuine
>request, not a veiled command!) that we discontinue this practice.
>
>--Jimbo

Hah! The terrible dictator Jimbo once again uses his vast powers to force
us into submission!!! ;)

Seriously though, I support the ending of the /ban pages practice. I think
that /ban pages should be reserved for when a user has been banned already,
not for when they've just been "nominated" for a ban. Perhaps if we had a
page, [[Wikipedia:Nominations for banning]], that would help things along,
then, if a ban is successful, the appropriate portion of that page could be
copied to the /ban page.

I know that Jimbo requested that the evidence be gathered silently and
privately, but realistically, I don't think that is appropriate. First of
all, how is someone else to know that a user is being investigated for
banning? If user A is gathering information on user B, it is possible that
user C would have relevant experience, but not know to give it.

Second of all, in the interest of transparency, I think that every stage of
something as serious as banning (which is more serious than page deletion,
which we all agree should be fully transparent) should be open and fully
available for perusal.

There is also the possibility that it's time to revamp the banning process.
While Jimbo certainly does an excellent job, we can't ask him to be the
final word on banning forever. Perhaps we need a convention on a new method
of banning?

In any event, I agree with Jimbo that we should stop using /ban pages just
to store information on why we think people should be banned.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [Textbook-l] RE: wikiversity licensing

body:
--- Karl Wick <karlwick at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Please show me ANY evidence that RMS and the FSF
> will be
> flexible about changing their licensing terms how we
> want
> them.
>
> Otherwise lets get new modules released in some way
> that is
> *not* exclusively GNU FDL.

AFAICT, The FSF has no discression over how we use the
licence unless they sue us. And if we , for example,
switch wikipedia to the Creative Commons, then nothing
bad can happen without lawsuit for something like
which licence's text was there, which is extremely
unlikely IMO. But many wikipedians think it is
unethical to not follow the GNU FDL.

Here's my impression of how the license works. Things
submitted to Wikipedia (and wikibooks) are still owned
by the people who submit them, Wikipedia is just
licensed to use it under the GNU FDL. If all authors
of a particular page (including anons) agree to
relicense the page under, say, the Creative Commons
Share-Alike, the page may be relicenced. But that
would be stupid and pointless. However, it would be
very useful in wikibooks, as a textbook module might,
for example, use some creative-commons sharealike
licenced things. I'm not sure, but I think that we can
even say "Above this line was licenced under the GNU
FDL, below this line is licenced under the Creative
Commons Sharealike."
LDan

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
At 12:03 PM 8/21/2003, you wrote:
>Sigh. I didn't want to have to come here again, but now I
>have no choice. For months, EntmootsOfTrolls has been
>harassing me and writing hateful comments on my personal
>User page.  In the past week this person has gone off the
>deep end.

While I agree that EoT's comments are past the bounds of good taste, I
think that there is, perhaps, another explanation.

EoT may have something personal aganst RK, and might thus be better
described as anti-RK than anti-semitic and RK-baiting, rather than jew-baiting.

I'm not suggesting that it's OK that EoT is doing this, it's not, and he
should be asked to stop (or banned if he's asked and doesn't stop). I just
think that it's important that we realize that there may well be an
alternative explanation. Given EoT's history of trolling RK (as opposed to
any other Jewish Wikipedians), I think that my suggestion is likely the case.

Lastly, I'd just like to point out that given EoT's user name, it's not
/terribly/ surprising that he's engaging in active trolling.

-----
Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipeda 1.0  Paper Plus

body:
Jimmy-
> Rick wrote:
>> How does giving someone special "approver" ranking jibe with the
>> supposed equality of Wiki?

> Well, Rick, I'm appreciative of your concerns.  But I wonder what
> ideas you might offer for a viable methodology for selecting
> particular revisions of articles for a 1.0 release?

See the thread "Do we really need a Sifter project?"
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2003-July/011072.html
on Wikipedia-L for a process which does not require special privileges
other than for the final approval (similar to the deletion process).

Regards,

Erik


body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>Alex756 wrote:
>
>
>>If Wikipedia was to start to do any lobbying for
>>legislation, a strict policy would need to be
>>implemented so that any such activities don't
>>jeapardize its proposed 501(c)(3) tax exemption.
>>
>>
>
>Isn't the Free Software Foundation a 501(c)(3)? They
>do /a lot/ of lobbying.
>
>
Yeah, but they seem to manage to stay on the right side of the line (or
at least the tax attorneys haven't said otherwise, yet).  Even closer to
the line are the 501(c)(3) environmentalist groups, like the Sierra Club
(indeed, these groups are often referred to as 'environmental
lobbyists').  IANAL, so take this with a grain of salt, but I've done a
bit of reading on the subject, and my understanding is;
 -- 501(c)(3) groups can't do overt political lobbying.  That is, they
cannot advocate for or against a particular candidate, party, or piece
of legislation.  There is some sort of an exemption for "self-defense"
-- if there were legislation introduced to ban Free Software, for
example, the FSF might be able to lobby against that specific piece of
legislation without jeopardizing its status.
 -- What they *can* do is essentially lobbying construed as promoting
their educational focus.  For example, the FSF's focus is to promote
free software, so it can ask people in general terms to support within
the political system legislation amenable to its purposes.  The Sierra
Club, similarly, can ask people to support environmental legislation,
and even lay out what sorts of legislation it thinks might be helpful.
 -- This is all easier if it's kept a small part.  If lobbying takes up
80% of the organization's budget, it may start getting problematic.  If
it takes up 5% of the budget, it'd be much less of a problem.

Something really cloes to the grey line are "scorecards" some
organizations make listing which politicians voted in accordance with
their issues.  They claim these are merely informational, but some claim
that they're explicit lobbying, saying in essence "vote against these
people: [people with low scores]; vote for these people: [people with
high scores]".  So far the courts seem to say that as long as they don't
explicitly actually say "please vote against Tom DeLay in the next
election," and instead are just listing factual information about him,
it's okay.

In any case, I don't think we really want to get embroiled in all this.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] /ban pages

body:
--- Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com>
wrote:
> Seriously though, I support the ending of the /ban
> pages practice. I think
> that /ban pages should be reserved for when a user
> has been banned already,
> not for when they've just been "nominated" for a
> ban. Perhaps if we had a
> page, [[Wikipedia:Nominations for banning]], that
> would help things along,
> then, if a ban is successful, the appropriate
> portion of that page could be
> copied to the /ban page.

I disagree with they should be used at all within the
user namespace -- either the user is still present and
this is an invasion of their "area"- - - or its just
going to be copied for cases pending (which is where
this whole thing came from.)

If there is problem usercase to be solved, I think
these be on meta as something like [[Case user:Name]].
This is best done by a neutral party, who can then
take specific complaints and list them.

So I say no /ban pages period -- so that nobody gets
in the habit.  If a username has been banned, then
their userpage itself has the ban notice or a link to
a page on meta with all the details.

-S-

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

>Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote in
>news:20030821130355.B456 at joey.bomis.com:
>
>
>
>>donation at wikipedia.org is the correct email
>>address to use.
>>
>>
>
>
>PayPal is popular but you need a credit card. Those are not very popular in
>Europe. Expensive, unsucre and not very usefull. Most transactions are done
>by bank tranfer and a debet card.
>
>
A few points:
-- Paypal does not require a credit card.  You can make direct bank
transfers as well.
-- Credit cards are not expensive -- they are entirely free.  I
certainly don't pay anything at all for any of mine (and you don't pay
interest if you pay your bills on time either).  They're essentially the
same as a debit card, but more secure (if there's a dispute with a
dishonest merchant, you don't pay until the dispute is resolved, while
with a debit card they already have your money, and you don't get it
back until the dispute is resolved -- also by law in the US at least,
the consumer is only responsible for up to $50 of credit card fraud).
-- In the US at least, most debit cards work through the credit card
system as well.  They're treated as debit, but you can use them in a
credit card reader just fine.

>In the euro-zone you can make a bank transfer from one account to a other
>account in the euro-zone for the same price like a local transfer. That is
>almost always free.
>
>Whit PayPal there are transcation costs and change from currency costs.
>
>A Wikimedia euro bankaccount in euro-zone state can be usefull for
>donations from Europe. No need for a credit card, easy to do, no loss of
>mony; 1 euro donation = 1 euro for Wikimedia. Not 1 euro - x%
>
>
On the other hand, the expenses are all currently in the US, so the
currency will have to be converted at some point to US$.  This would
also require a resident of Europe to handle the bank account and to
periodically mail checks to Jimbo (or bank transfer the funds to a US
account, which probably isn't free).

-Mark


from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
Sanford Forte wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>They'll bring up all kinds of nonsense about copyleft.
>>But if we must, especially at first, present a GNU book, then that's OK --

>If that would solve the problem, great. It's so important to get the first
>project (pilot) done in a way that is 'simple' to understand by all
>concerned.

I'm strongly sympathetic to Karl's concerns that
contributions to wikibooks should automatically go under the GNU FDL.
But I have no objection if the pilot project, for whatever reason,
ends up being distributed (as a finished material) under the GNU FDL.
The important thing is that the wiki source be as open as possible;
if every finished text from now until whenever
ends up having to go under the GNU licence
(because it uses a module covered only under the GNU licence),
then that's OK with me if that's how it ends up.

But Karl's OChem text doesn't have to use the GNU FDL,
so if someday his text is printed up, then that may be freer.

-- Toby


subject: [Textbook-l] RE: wikiversity licensing

body:
LittleDan wrote:

>AFAICT, The FSF has no discression over how we use the
>licence unless they sue us. And if we , for example,
>switch wikipedia to the Creative Commons, then nothing
>bad can happen without lawsuit for something like
>which licence's text was there, which is extremely
>unlikely IMO. But many wikipedians think it is
>unethical to not follow the GNU FDL.

Any individual Wikipedia contributor could sue us,
if we relicense their work under a CC licence without their authorisation.
Such a lawsuit might not get far in a legal sense --
what's the basis for damages, financially speaking? --
but it would generate terrible publicity.
Why terrible publicity.  Because it's unethical!
I don't think that contributions should automatically go under the FDL,
since I have objections to the FDL (the nonfree options)
and using a single licence is problematic anyway (for later users).
But if there are people that contributed to Wikipedia
only because it used the GNU FDL specifically and nothing else,
then relicensing their material -- even if we got away with it in practice --
would be a violation of their trust.

>Here's my impression of how the license works. Things
>submitted to Wikipedia (and wikibooks) are still owned
>by the people who submit them, Wikipedia is just
>licensed to use it under the GNU FDL. If all authors
>of a particular page (including anons) agree to
>relicense the page under, say, the Creative Commons
>Share-Alike, the page may be relicenced.

True; and in specific situations, we may want to look into that.
For example, if you want to use any page that I substantially wrote,
my global permissions statement <http://math.ucr.edu/~toby/copyright/>
may allow you to take sentences, paragraphs, sections,
even entire articles in a few cases, to use as you will.

>But that
>would be stupid and pointless. However, it would be
>very useful in wikibooks, as a textbook module might,
>for example, use some creative-commons sharealike
>licenced things. I'm not sure, but I think that we can
>even say "Above this line was licenced under the GNU
>FDL, below this line is licenced under the Creative
>Commons Sharealike."

Combining the two sides of the line is tricky here;
for the FDL, they'd have to be an "aggregate",
which a single module is unlikely to be.
But we could do such a thing from module to module.
Still, a printed book might have trouble using both types of modules;
some automated checking of this sort of thing would be helpful.
Of course, we may never have any CC modules -- that remains to be seen.
If not, there'll never be any conflicts within Wikimedia;
the benefit of not automatically classifying modules as GNU FDL
would then be to potential users of our material /other/ than Wikimedia.

-- Toby


from_name: Wouter Vanden Hove

subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
Op do 21-08-2003, om 14:28 Toby Bartels wrote:

> So if the printed version is entirely GNU FDL, then that's OK,

Yes, the GNU FDL is perfect for large printed textbooks, I wouldn't even
mind using the invariant sections to promote the Wikimedia projects and
invite everyone to join and help out.

> but even a GNU printed book is much freer than anything from Prentice-Hall.
Oops, wrong example.
Prentice-Hall is the publisher of the Bruce Perens' Open Source Books
These books are under Open Publication License 1.0 with no options
taken. http://perens.com/Books/

Wouter
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
Till Westermayer wrote:

>>-- Paypal does not require a credit card.  You can make direct
>>bank transfers as well.
>>
>>
>
>Without creating a PayPal account (which I didn't want at the moment) I
>wasn't able to make sure if this applies to free PayPal accounts and to
>bank accounts outside the US. Could you please give some more
>information on this?
>
>
I was unable to find any more information by logging in either.  The
"add a checking account" section doesn't specifically say anything about
it being a US checking account, but since it knows I'm from the US it
may be displaying the "US version" of the page to me.  Perhaps a
euro-zone Wikipedian with a paypal account could investigate?

>But credit cards just are not that common in the Euro zone -- I guess
>you're not familiar with money transfer systems here. E.g., a lot of
>operations in Germany is made via Online Banking systems at the moment,
>and there is also the Maestro EC debit card system used in many
>countries of the eurozone.
>
>
Yeah, I'm not too familiar with them.  I do recall that many places in
Belgium did accept credit cards last time I visited, particularly
restaurants (Diner's Club seems particularly popular there, while it's
rather unpopular in the US, but I saw plenty of MasterCard, Visa, and
American Express signs in restaurant and shop windows as well).  Oddly
it was my *debit* card that wouldn't work (the US and European debit
card networks must not be interconnected).

What is the usual procedure in the Euro-zone for ordering stuff online,
e.g. from amazon.de?  Do you enter a debit number with PIN, or do a bank
transfer?

>>On the other hand, the expenses are all currently in the US, so
>>the currency will have to be converted at some point to US$.  This
>>would also require a resident of Europe to handle the bank account
>>and to periodically mail checks to Jimbo (or bank transfer the
>>funds to a US account, which probably isn't free).
>>
>>
>
>It depends on the number of euro zone Wikipedians and the amount of
>money that'll be founded by them, if this is a good idea or not.
>
>
Yeah, if there's a lot of donations from euro-zone Wikipedians, a bulk
currency conversion may get us a better rate than converting each
transaction to US$, so this might be something to consider.  It may
complicate the legal situation though -- is Wikipedia, as a US
soon-to-be-501(c)(3) corporation, allowed to have euro-zone bank
accounts?  If not, we could have a euro-zone individual create a bank
account to collect money in the name of Wikipedia, and then transfer it
to the US foundation, but that may (or may not) be complicated legally
(on that matter I have no knowledge).

-Mark


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] i hate copyright laws

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>>>There is a quote from the Swedish Academy's announcement of the Nobel
>>>Prize for Steinbeck.  There is a quote from Battle Hymn of The
>>>Republic by Julia Ward Howe, explaining the title of the book.
>>>There's a quote of Woody Guthrie's reaction to the film version of the
>>>book.
>>>
>>"Battle Hymn of the Republic" was published in 1862, and is thus in the
>>public domain anyway.
>>
>Oops.  I knew it was a Civil War song, so I feel silly.  Well, the
>other two are good examples anyway.
>
No need to feel silly.  It's an all too frequent mistake that any of us
can make.  Unfortunately, it's the kind of situation that restricts
intellectual discourse through copyright paranoia.  This specific
example was easy to check, but others are far more difficult.  The
citizen who believes himself to be "law-abiding" has a bad habit of
failing to give himself the benefit of the doubt, or is too willing to
abide by laws that don't exist.  The prosperous ones do not stand on
such ceremony.  I often wonder whether we are being too compliant in our
copyright attitudes.

I was just reading today about the NTP v. RIM case over patent
infringement, and getting more irritated about these companies that
accumulate IP rights of one sort or another with no intention of
producing anything.  Their sole purpose in life is to collect royalties
from unwitting violators.  I would propose that IP law have a
"Use-it-or-lose-it" element.  Perhaps a bit like what happens when a
prospector stakes a mineral claim to a piece of land; here at least, he
is required to begin developing that mineral claim within a certain time
or lose it.

Sorry, but copyrights are such an easy subjec for me to rant about.

Ray


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

>Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote in
>news:20030821130355.B456 at joey.bomis.com:
>
>  >
>>donation at wikipedia.org is the correct email
>>address to use.
>>    >>
>
>
>PayPal is popular but you need a credit card. Those
are not very popular in
>Europe. Expensive, unsucre and not very usefull. Most
transactions are done
>by bank tranfer and a debet card.
>  >
A few points:
-- Paypal does not require a credit card.  You can
make direct bank
transfers as well.
-- Credit cards are not expensive -- they are entirely
free.  I
certainly don't pay anything at all for any of mine
(and you don't pay
interest if you pay your bills on time either).
They're essentially the
same as a debit card, but more secure (if there's a
dispute with a
dishonest merchant, you don't pay until the dispute is
resolved, while
with a debit card they already have your money, and
you don't get it
back until the dispute is resolved -- also by law in
the US at least,
the consumer is only responsible for up to $50 of
credit card fraud).
-- In the US at least, most debit cards work through
the credit card
system as well.  They're treated as debit, but you can
use them in a
credit card reader just fine.

---------

This is just the perfect example that customs are
different and that some have no awareness of that.

France is the country were credit cards are the most
used. Because we worked on the little electronic
device for security, and I think our cards are amongst
the most secure cards in the world.

Basically every adult has a credit card. Only very
young people and people with bank problems do not. I
got mine at 16. It is very very common system of
paiement. And very very few people use debit card.
That is just not customary, unless you are in the
situation  indicated above. I got a debit card at 14.

This has a price, mind you. About 250 FF a year...that
is ... well...say 40 euros a year. I think I pay 7
euros per months for 2 cards and account support.

Not exactly free. I could go to the movie with that.

>In the euro-zone you can make a bank transfer from
one account to a other
>account in the euro-zone for the same price like a
local transfer. That is
>almost always free.
>
>Whit PayPal there are transcation costs and change
from currency costs.
>
>A Wikimedia euro bankaccount in euro-zone state can
be usefull for
>donations from Europe. No need for a credit card,
easy to do, no loss of
>mony; 1 euro donation = 1 euro for Wikimedia. Not 1
euro - x%
>  >
On the other hand, the expenses are all currently in
the US, so the
currency will have to be converted at some point to
US$.  This would
also require a resident of Europe to handle the bank
account and to
periodically mail checks to Jimbo (or bank transfer
the funds to a US
account, which probably isn't free).

-Mark

I have never heard of paypal in france. I saw it on
american web sites. I doubt french would do donations
by that way, but who knows ? I think a bank account in
euros would not be a uninteresting choice.

Another cultural difference : French have heard a lot
that internet paiement are unsure and that they could
be cheated. For this reason, electronic sales are
still very low. Very. Another reason for which french
would probably not easily consider an electronic
donation.

But well....

__________________________________
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Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


body:
I've looked over their site, They say that are
"is dedicated to promoting computer users' right
 to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. "
That is perfectly acceptable. Promoting rights is not the same
thing as lobbying for the change of legislation.
Certainly if Wikipedia wanted to say a certain type of legislation
is a good thing (an endorcement) that is o.k., but lobbying
is strictly limited for tax exempt organizations).
Alex756

From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Isn't the Free Software Foundation a 501(c)(3)? They
> do /a lot/ of lobbying.
>
> --mav


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Kurt Jansson wrote:
>
>>Of course not. Wikipedia should take part because software patents could
>>have direct effects on the project. They threaten free software (like
>>MediaWiki) in general, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone claimed to
>>have a patent on "websites which are editable by visitors" (of course
>>formulated much more eloquently).
>>
>Well, lots of things could possibly affect us.  War, changes to the
>U.S. tax laws, proposed 'hate speech' laws in the U.S. and Europe, the
>list is endless.
>
I read the proposal for Wikipedia support, and I treated it as some kind
of borderline spam.  I am very concerned about IP laws and how they
might affect the open nature of our projects.  What I saw was a
reference to a proposed European law, and one individual's
interpretation of what it '''might''' mean.  Even if we were to
seriously consider some kind of support, I for one would want a lot more
concrete information about the matter than one person's amateur
interpretation.  Anything else would not be prudent.

>>>Taking sides is something that
>>>all of us have a moral responsibility to do as individuals, but
>>>Wikipedia the encyclopedia is outside politics.
>>>
>>Sorry, but that sounds a bit naive to me.
>>
>
>Maybe, but that's what's so charming about me, isn't it?  ;-)
>
>Seriously, though, I think it's naive to think that we can start down
>a path of using Wikipedia for political purposes and not set some very
>bad precedent for the future, bad *internal* precedent, leading to
>huge amounts of internal dissent.  As if we don't have enough already.
>
There is a difference between taking sides as individuals and as a
collective.  As individuals we accept the consequences for ourselves; as
a collective we accept those consequences on behalf of others.  I agree
with Jimbo's interpretation.  If we are at any time to take a political
stand on this sort of thing it must be fully discussed beforehand, and
it must have an immediate connection to the vital interests of
Wikimedia.  Prudence and due dilligence are important preconditions.

Ec


subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Having read more RMS philosophy, I'm now prepared to reply to this:
>>Dream on.  It would be great to fix the GNU FDL, but it'll never happen;
>>RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity.

>Can you direct me to a specific url where I can learn more about why
>RMS believes that Invariant Sections are an absolute necessity?

I'm relying mostly on discussions in the Debian legal list,
so use this Google URL (really long!):
<http://www.google.com/search?as_q=&num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=invariant+sections&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=lists.debian.org&safe=images>
to find threads to look at and search for Stallman as author.

More specifically, see this thread:
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200305/threads.html#00240>
and look at the posts written by Richard Stallman.

Here is a short one that sums up the basic reason:
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200305/msg00546.html>
which is that RMS wants documentation written by the GNU Project
to always contain his philosophical essays on the need for free software.
Even if some proprietary jerk (^_^) edits the documentation later on,
still they can't remove his essays!  (But they /can/ add their own.)

The best evidence that he won't budge
is that this argument with certain principal Debian players
has been going on a long time, and they really want the FDL to change.
Throughout the long debates, RMS hasn't budged an inch.
That's why I don't think that we would do any better.

Of course, we're not so much asking for the Invariant Sections to go
as we are asking for the GNU FDL to allow relicensing under CC BY-SA.
But CC BY-SA doesn't recognise Invariant Sections,
so that would allow the Invariant Sections to be removed in two steps.
RMS would see that in a second, as I'm sure you'll agree!

BTW, if in these discussions you see talk of "license incompatibility",
note that this is incompatibility between the FDL and the GPL,
not incompatibility with other free text licences like the CC licences.
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2003/debian-legal-200306/threads.html#00138>
has more on this, but it doesn't really address non-GNU licences.

Incidentally, I've given a recent reference,
but Debian (or certain Debian people) and RMS
have been arguing about this for some time now:
<http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2001/debian-legal-200111/threads.html#00006>
is an early debate.

-- Toby


subject: [Textbook-l] wikiversity licensing

body:
Wouter Vanden Hove wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>So if the printed version is entirely GNU FDL, then that's OK,

>Yes, the GNU FDL is perfect for large printed textbooks, I wouldn't even
>mind using the invariant sections to promote the Wikimedia projects and
>invite everyone to join and help out.

I certainly would object, since Invariant Sections are not free. ^_^

>>but even a GNU printed book is much freer than anything from Prentice-Hall.

>Oops, wrong example.
>Prentice-Hall is the publisher of the Bruce Perens' Open Source Books
>These books are under Open Publication License 1.0 with no options
>taken. http://perens.com/Books/

Sorry, Prentice-Hall!
So then presumably /they/ wouldn't level such an objection at us
(or if they did, then we'd have the perfect response -_^).

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
just an opinion

I agree with Kat it may not be a very good idea to ask
for money in a press release. We want people to hear
about us, to come to see us, to be impress by our
work.

And then, they might touch their pocket

You've got to show them something for them to give
money. => To see the site and the result

The little paypal stuff, isnot that a sort of a logo
you put somewhere in a corner ? And people click on it
to give money in some way ?

Well then, let's not speak about money in the press
release. Let's give people the desire to come and see
us instead. Then, when they are on the site, and are
impressed, they will click on that stuff sitting in a
corner, and make gift.

Mav, I hate to tell you that, but...just as holidays
times are different (but we work more every day :-)),
cultures toward money are different.

American people are very relax with money issues. In
other places, this is not so. Er...asking money in a
press release...I think...is...POV

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
I'm sure Jimmy will be happy to accept an international money order sent
through the mail, for those unable or unwilling to use whatever electronic
payment options are set up so far.

Is there an address for such?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipeda 1.0  Paper Plus

body:
Jimmy-
> In order to make it convenient for people to follow the kind of
> process that you describe, would you advocate some minor software
> changes, i.e. a simple button-click for people to nominate things to
> the 'candidates' page?

More or less. Whatever software scheme is used should be reasonably
generic to be applicable to similar situations. For example, Votes for
deletion, Votes for undeletion and Requests for adminship are all pages
that work according to the same "express dissent within given timeframe or
[x] happens" model. It would be most useful to have some generic voting
queue module instead of a hack that is adjusted specifically to the
sifting process.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Angela

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Link-checking optimizations (was Re: Search function on
	de:fr:nl:sv:es:pl:)

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:
> Don't know about others, but I have never used the
links to the users'
> talks pages on recent changes. I think they are
useless, because you
> won't go there before seeing the diff. I'd be happy
about a rc without
> the links to users' talk pages, because they only
clutter up the page.
> Do others find them useful?

As someone who likes welcoming the newbies, I find
these links very useful. Since sysops can no query the
datebase, this is the only way of finding new users. A
red link to a user talk page shows that there is a
user who has not yet been welcomed.

Angela.

__________________________________________________
Yahoo! Plus - For a better Internet experience
http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/yplus/yoffer.html


from_name: Manning Bartlett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Porting Wikipedia to DotNetNuke

body:
Hi Guys, I'm sure some of you remember me from the early days. Sadly 'real life' has kicked in and I really don't have time for the 'pedia anymore. I miss it a lot.

I do however have a business proposition to throw out into the ring. I am interested in getting an estimate of the cost of porting something equivalent to the Phase III 'pedia into the DotNetNuke (DNN) framework. (In $US or Euros please.)

Some of you may remember that I am professionally involved in meta-data management, and I believe that the combination of the best of DNN with the functionality of Wikipedia might be an ideal solution to the challenges of corporate meta-data management, particularly as DNN is making serious inroads into the corporate intranet world.

I am not interested in a "pure" clone of the current Wikipedia software, the most notable change would be the introduction of user classes including "reader", "limited scope editor" (able to edit pages within a custom-defined subject area), "global editor" (similar to the standard user of the 'pedia now), and "admin (just like the 'pedian admin, rights to delete, rename pages, etc). All user classes would be able to edit in the Talk: namespace. The Wiki Namespace would need to be renamed (as it's not going to really be a Wiki anymore).

If you're interested, send me a private email, although feel free to discuss the general notion of the idea on the list if you desire. If your estimate runs into the $000's then it's out of my budget (I have no financial backing for this and I'm funding it out of my own pocket).

However, by posting to this list I acknowledge that I am throwing the idea into the public domain, so feel free to investigate it on your own.  (If you end up making a million dollars off of my idea, I'm going to expect a REALLY nice dinner at a VERY fancy restaurant some time.)

Best regards to all of the old faces, and a big hello to the new ones.

Manning Bartlett

PS - I'm flying all over the world at the moment for work and so my responses to your email might be erratic. My apologies in advance.
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Link-checking optimizations

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Kurt Jansson wrote:
>
>> Don't know about others, but I have never used the links to the users'
>> talks pages on recent changes. I think they are useless, because you
>> won't go there before seeing the diff. I'd be happy about a rc without
>> the links to users' talk pages, because they only clutter up the page.
>>
>> Do others find them useful?
>
> They're currently the only way to get to the talk pages for anonymous IP
> users other than constructing a URL manually.

I think the link would make more sense on the Special:Contributions page.

Kurt


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
I mean no offense, but it seems like people really don't know much about
PayPal... I use it almost exclusively for my banking... someone made a
comment about 'free' PayPal accounts and limits thereon- there's no other
kind. And I have no credit cards, but have a full PayPal account (and a
PayPal debit card).

And there's no conversion that has to occur to send Euros to Wikimedia. When
you send money, you can choose which currency it's sent in (though if your
account only uses Euros (which currencies are used in your account is
strictly up to your control), it'll be sent in Euros). If the Wikimedia
account is set to accept Euros, it'll add to its Euro balance (if you accept
multiple currencies, you have separate balances in each, but can transfer
between them at any time with no charge), otherwise it'll automatically be
converted to dollars.

Someone mentioned the Maestro system- it's worth noting that's MasterCard's
debit system. There's a large degree of interoperability there.

Just some notes.

--Jake


subject: [Wikipedia-l] [Fwd: Software Patents: Help Us Win inthe	Europarl!]

body:
Wikipedia is and should remain very much an impartial forum. Impartiality
goes down the drain when you take sides in political things like this. I
sympathize, but I think Wikipedia should stay above this sort of thing.

--Jake


body:
Kurt-
> Jimmy Wales wrote:

>> While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I'm not really comfortable with
>> Wikipedia per se taking part in a political act just because I (and
>> presumably a majority of wikipedians) happen to agree with it.

> Of course not. Wikipedia should take part because software patents could
> have direct effects on the project. They threaten free software (like
> MediaWiki) in general, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone claimed to
> have a patent on "websites which are editable by visitors" (of course
> formulated much more eloquently).

The MediaWiki developer team can take a position against software patents
(on the software page at SourceForge, for example), but I think Wikipedia/
Wikimedia should try to maintain neutrality on all controversial issues in
the interest of credibility.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] TeX hash?

body:
Hello guys,
looking at the TeX rendering code on CVS, I see that each math fragment is
identified with its MD5 hash, similar to images.
But then, I find that this is only the "input hash". The code SELECTs for
an "output hash", and this is used on the html page to retrieve the
rendered math as a PNG image.

How the output hash is computed? Maybe it's there in the code, but I don't
find it. If I could compute the hash offline, I could include TeX math
into the static version, the same way as images: just download them :-)

Ciao,
Alfio


subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
Yes,
The address of record for Wikipedia Foundation Inc. (I don't post
it here for fear of it creating lots of junk mail for Jimmy). You can
find it on the Wikimedia page, just click on the external link that
mentions the Corporate Charter of Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
That is a matter of public record (I am sure he is already getting
mail, mailing list companies routinely cull state incorporation
sites for new mailing addresses).
Alex756

From: "Brion Vibber" <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>

> I'm sure Jimmy will be happy to accept an international money order sent
> through the mail, for those unable or unwilling to use whatever electronic
> payment options are set up so far.
>
> Is there an address for such?
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>


body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I'm not really comfortable with
> Wikipedia per se taking part in a political act just because I (and
> presumably a majority of wikipedians) happen to agree with it.

Of course not. Wikipedia should take part because software patents could
have direct effects on the project. They threaten free software (like
MediaWiki) in general, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone claimed to
have a patent on "websites which are editable by visitors" (of course
formulated much more eloquently).

> Taking sides is something that
> all of us have a moral responsibility to do as individuals, but
> Wikipedia the encyclopedia is outside politics.

Sorry, but that sounds a bit naive to me.

Kurt


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote in
news:20030821130355.B456 at joey.bomis.com:

> donation at wikipedia.org is the correct email
> address to use.

PayPal is popular but you need a credit card. Those are not very popular in
Europe. Expensive, unsucre and not very usefull. Most transactions are done
by bank tranfer and a debet card.

In the euro-zone you can make a bank transfer from one account to a other
account in the euro-zone for the same price like a local transfer. That is
almost always free.

Whit PayPal there are transcation costs and change from currency costs.

A Wikimedia euro bankaccount in euro-zone state can be usefull for
donations from Europe. No need for a credit card, easy to do, no loss of
mony; 1 euro donation = 1 euro for Wikimedia. Not 1 euro - x%

--
Contact: walter AT wikipedia.be
Ook een artikeltje schrijven? WikipediaNL, de vrije GNU/FDL encyclopedie
http://www.wikipedia.be


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

body:
On Thu, Aug 21, 2003 at 10:20:27AM -0700, Jimmy Wales wrote:
> While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I'm not really comfortable with
> Wikipedia per se taking part in a political act just because I (and
> presumably a majority of wikipedians) happen to agree with it.
>
> Suppose the next political protest we're asked to participate in is
> pro-war?  Or anti-war?  Or whatever.  Taking sides is something that
> all of us have a moral responsibility to do as individuals, but
> Wikipedia the encyclopedia is outside politics.

Well, software patents may be dangerous to Wikipedia as a project.
We could have become target of legal action by Unisys, or Fraunhofer,
or somebody else with weird patent. Maybe they'll patent wiki ?
Or hyperlinks ?


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Donations

body:
on 8/21/03 9:11 PM, Merritt L. Perkins at mlperkins3 at juno.com wrote:

> Please pardon my ignorance (stupidity). You are seeking donations for
> servers.
> I have only a vague idea of what a server looks like, how big it is, what
> it does.

A Server is just a computer a little bigger than your personal computer.

> 1. What would the servers do for you?

Please see http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server

> 2. How long would it take to get and install them?

They have to go shopping and buy them then it takes a week or so to install
them (The Wikipedia software has to be moved and tested)

> 3. How much money do you need?

Previous discussions on the list talked about $3,000

> Merritt L. Perkins


from_name: Till Westermayer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi,

>>PayPal is popular but you need a credit card. Those are not very
>>popular in Europe. Expensive, unsucre and not very usefull. Most
>>transactions are done by bank tranfer and a debet card.

>A few points:
>-- Paypal does not require a credit card.  You can make direct
>bank transfers as well.

Without creating a PayPal account (which I didn't want at the moment) I
wasn't able to make sure if this applies to free PayPal accounts and to
bank accounts outside the US. Could you please give some more
information on this?

>-- Credit cards are not expensive -- they are entirely free.  I
>certainly don't pay anything at all for any of mine (and you don't
>pay interest if you pay your bills on time either).  They're
>essentially the same as a debit card, but more secure (if there's
>a dispute with a dishonest merchant, you don't pay until the
>dispute is resolved, while with a debit card they already have
>your money, and you don't get it back until the dispute is
>resolved -- also by law in the US at least, the consumer is only
>responsible for up to $50 of credit card fraud). -- In the US at
>least, most debit cards work through the credit card system as
>well.  They're treated as debit, but you can use them in a credit
>card reader just fine.

But credit cards just are not that common in the Euro zone -- I guess
you're not familiar with money transfer systems here. E.g., a lot of
operations in Germany is made via Online Banking systems at the moment,
and there is also the Maestro EC debit card system used in many
countries of the eurozone.

>>In the euro-zone you can make a bank transfer from one account to
>>a other account in the euro-zone for the same price like a local
>>transfer. That is almost always free.

I think that'll be possible starting in 2004? At the moment, it's not
really true.

>>A Wikimedia euro bankaccount in euro-zone state can be usefull
>>for donations from Europe. No need for a credit card, easy to do,
>>no loss of mony; 1 euro donation = 1 euro for Wikimedia. Not 1
>>euro - x%

>On the other hand, the expenses are all currently in the US, so
>the currency will have to be converted at some point to US$.  This
>would also require a resident of Europe to handle the bank account
>and to periodically mail checks to Jimbo (or bank transfer the
>funds to a US account, which probably isn't free).

It depends on the number of euro zone Wikipedians and the amount of
money that'll be founded by them, if this is a good idea or not.
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


body:
Op do 21-08-2003, om 20:02 schreef Alex R.:
> If Wikipedia was to start to do any lobbying for legislation,
> a strict policy would need to be implemented so that any such
> activities don't jeapardize its proposed 501(c)(3) tax exemption.

Since when does an act of Free Speech joepardize a not-for-profit
organisation?

> From: "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com>
> > While I'm sympathetic to the cause, I'm not really comfortable with
> > Wikipedia per se taking part in a political act just because I (and
> > presumably a majority of wikipedians) happen to agree with it.

I understand that. There are a lot of causes that need attention and
that are worth fighting for. But most of them have no direct relation
with Wikipedia / free software / open content.

> > Suppose the next political protest we're asked to participate in is
> > pro-war?  Or anti-war?  Or whatever.

There is a war going on: the battle between openness and closedness.
As a social movement, we are stronger if we stand together.

> Taking sides is something that
> > all of us have a moral responsibility to do as individuals,

I strongly disagree with that. Organisations & companies are continually
taking sides, eg lobbyists, the Catholic Church,... And they have in
general more power to social reform than they are willing to admit.
Saying that decisions for creating a better world is up to the
individual, and only the individual, is choosing for the status-quo.

Of course Wikipedia's situation is very different because of its very
loose structure, and decision-making.

This is an action of protest, of making things known to the outside
world. But it's not exactly a black and white situation either: or the
webpage down, or nothing. A middle way is to show a big red protest-box,
leaving all the rest the same.

>
> but
> > Wikipedia the encyclopedia is outside politics.

What if Microsoft had some patents on some Encarta features?
Let's not forget: frames & stylesheets are already patented. If you are
little and unimportant there is no need to fear such patents.
If Wikipedia is going to be big and disruptive, would the current
establishment use the legal system to stop it? Maybe or maybe not.

Op do 21-08-2003, om 22:13 schreef Erik Moeller:
> The MediaWiki developer team can take a position against software patents
> (on the software page at SourceForge, for example),

Where no one of the audience you want to reach is gonna read it. Only the already converted.
Very efficient.

> Wikimedia should try to maintain neutrality on all controversial issues in
> the interest of credibility.

In the articles, yes.
Do Free Speech advocates need to shup up on controversial issues in the interest of credibility?
Patentibility of software is controversial *because we achieved to make it so*!

Wikipedia has credibility to win or to loose with this action.
Let's not confuse neutrality with indifference.

Wouter Vanden Hove

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from_name: Merritt L. Perkins

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Donations

body:
Please pardon my ignorance (stupidity). You are seeking donations for
servers.
I have only a vague idea of what a server looks like, how big it is, what
it does.
1. What would the servers do for you?
2. How long would it take to get and install them?
3. How much money do you need?
Merritt L. Perkins


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
Gustav Foseid wrote:
> Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:
>>donation at wikipedia.org is the correct email address to use.
>
> I would certainly feel a bit more comfortable giving money to
> donation at wikipedia.org og donation at wikimedia.org than some address at
> public.gmane.org.

If you're reading the mailing lists through the gmane newsgroup gateway,
beware that it corrupts its copy of postings by obscuring things it
thinks are e-mail addresses.

The address given in the above e-mail is in fact
'd o n a t i o n at-sign w i k i p e d i a dot o r g'.
There is no public.gmane.org involved.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . till we *) . . .

Hi Delirium,

>>Without creating a PayPal account (which I didn't want at the
>>moment) I wasn't able to make sure if this applies to free PayPal
>>accounts and to bank accounts outside the US. Could you please
>>give some more information on this?

>I was unable to find any more information by logging in either.
>The "add a checking account" section doesn't specifically say
>anything about it being a US checking account, but since it knows
>I'm from the US it may be displaying the "US version" of the page
>to me.  Perhaps a euro-zone Wikipedian with a paypal account could
>investigate?

Any euro-zone PayPal Wikipedian who can say something on this?

>>But credit cards just are not that common in the Euro zone -- I
>>guess you're not familiar with money transfer systems here. E.g.,
>>a lot of operations in Germany is made via Online Banking systems
>>at the moment, and there is also the Maestro EC debit card system
>>used in many countries of the eurozone.

>Yeah, I'm not too familiar with them.  I do recall that many
>places in Belgium did accept credit cards last time I visited,
>particularly restaurants (Diner's Club seems particularly popular
>there, while it's rather unpopular in the US, but I saw plenty of
>MasterCard, Visa, and American Express signs in restaurant and
>shop windows as well).  Oddly it was my *debit* card that wouldn't
>work (the US and European debit card networks must not be
>interconnected).

Maybe I should be more precise next time: a lot of shops and restaurants
accept credit cards, but they are not that common in the sense that most
people only use them for business transactions and travel, but not in
daily-use. Most people own a bank-issued debit card ("EC" card).

>What is the usual procedure in the Euro-zone for ordering stuff
>online, e.g. from amazon.de?  Do you enter a debit number with
>PIN, or do a bank transfer?

I do bank transfer, that is, amazon.de has an option that it can
withdraw (is that the term?) money from my bank account, I use this.
IIRC, this direct bank account transfer system was made part of
amazon.de because credit card shopping is not so common in Germany,
especially (like Erik Zachte said for the Netherlands, IIRC), because
many don't believe in internet security.

If paypal includes a possibility to pay with such a system, that would
be a good thing.

PINs together with EC (debit) cards are only used at ATMs, and in shops
(with small card-readers-cum-numeric-keyboard).

HTH,
 __ .
 / / / /                            ... Till Westermayer - till we *)
. .
  . mailto:till at tillwe.de . www.westermayer.de/till/ . icq 320393072
  . Habsburgerstr. 82 . 79104 Freiburg . 0761 55697152 . 0160 96619179
  . . . . .


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Votes for deletion and due process

body:
Jimbo wrote:
>I'd probably like it best if it said something like
>"It is generally considered courteous to let people
>who have worked on the page know that it might
>be deleted, either by putting a note on their talk
>page or by putting a note on the page itself that
>says something like this..."

Done. The text on the policy page now says;

<blockquote>
When you list a page on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion that you think will be
listed for the entire 7 days -- i.e., a page that won't be deleted
immediately -- it is generally considered courteous to let people who have
worked on or read the page know that it might be deleted. The suggested way
to do this is to place the following or similar notice above the page's
content:
....
</blockquote>

--mav


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
In the Netherlands many people have credit cards, but most people only
use them occasionally (travel, dinner, new TV) and most people are
hesitant to use them on the web. Debit cards are much more popular; we
also use chip cards which are preloaded from a bank account and used
like a purse, no online transactions involved.

I do use my credit card for Paypal, Amazon and the like, but not without
some concern. Web transactions are often secure these days, but
occasionally a large firm is hacked and a whole customer database is
compromised.

By far the most common method of asynchronous payment is by direct bank
transfer, no checks involved, no costs whatsoever, no paper work either,
most people do this electronically (they do trust the proprietary bank
software, which they believe is less easy to hack). For many people
Paypal would mean an investment in time, which might weigh heavier than
the financial investment.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
International Money Orders are pretty expensive, I've done that once or
twice.

How about this: I can add money to my Paypal account for free through a
bank transfer (credit card is only needed for registration). All thas is
needed is the Paypal bank account number and an customer account
specific acces code. I'll copy Paypals explanation below.

This is business as usual for Europeans who as said before are used to
electronic bank transfers.

So maybe we could open a Wikimedia Paypal account in several countries.
Electronic transfer to a US Paypal account would be uneconomical due to
high bank fees.

Erik Zachte

---------------------------------------------
To add funds to your PayPal account, you will need to go to your bank to
complete a bank transfer from your bank account to your PayPal account
using the information provided below. Be sure to include your Bank
Transfer ID, which is used to direct the funds into your PayPal account.

Transfer funds to the following account:

Name on Account:  PayPal Inc
PayPal's Account Number:  266566472
Bank:  Bank of America, N.A.
Amsterdam, Netherlands

Important Note: In addition to the information above, be sure to also
include Your Bank Transfer ID on your bank transfer form.

(a 13 char alphanum code is shown here)

On your bank transfer form, specify the amount you would like to
transfer to your PayPal account. Your transfer must be a minimum of 1
Euro.

Your deposit must be in Euros. If your deposit is not in Euros, the bank
will convert the funds to Euros prior to transferring the funds to
PayPal. If you have a Euro balance, your funds will be added to that
balance. Otherwise, your funds will be converted to the currency of your
primary balance. To calculate converted currency amounts, use the
Currency Converter.

It typically takes 3-4 business days after you initiate the transfer for
the funds to appear in your PayPal account. After your funds have been
successfully transferred to your PayPal account, your Sending Limit will
be increased by the amount of the transfer


from_name: Gustav Foseid

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

body:
Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:

> donation at wikipedia.org is the correct email address to use.

I would certainly feel a bit more comfortable giving money to
donation at wikipedia.org og donation at wikimedia.org than some address at
public.gmane.org.

--
Gustav Foseid


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

in_reply_to:
<dvi1xve9nbp.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no>;
	from gustavf@pvv.ntnu.no on Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 09:13:46AM +0200

body:
Yes, but I don't understand what you're saying.  Maybe if you
are reading through gmane they are mangling the address somehow?

The correct address is: donation -at- wikipedia.org.

I will be adding donation -at- wikipediafoundation.org as soon as
I have access to that, probably later today (thanks, mav!).

Gustav Foseid wrote:
> Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> writes:
>
> > donation at wikipedia.org is the correct email address to use.
>
> I would certainly feel a bit more comfortable giving money to
> donation at wikipedia.org og donation at wikimedia.org than some address at
> public.gmane.org.
>
> --
> Gustav Foseid
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: PayPal is set up

in_reply_to:
<dvivfsq87i5.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no>;
	from gustavf@pvv.ntnu.no on Fri, Aug 22, 2003 at 09:40:50AM +0200

references:
<20030821130355.B456@joey.bomis.com>
	<dvi1xve9nbp.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no> <3F45C6CE.2020006@pobox.com>
	<dvivfsq87i5.fsf@proto.pvv.ntnu.no>

body:
Gustav Foseid wrote:
> Thai said, I think a more localized way of doing donations should be
> considered for Europe and perhaps Asia.

I agree with you, although I do note that Paypal claims to work
perfectly fine in most (not all) European and Asian countries.

If there are other services in Europe or Asia that (a) are popular
and easier to use for people there, and (b) easy for me to set up,
then please let me know.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipeda 1.0  Paper Plus

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> The arguments Erik gave for an "in-wikipedia" solution were:
> * no separate brand to the Wikipedia brand, no separate community
> - I don't see that happening.

But, do you agree that it is desirable, to whatever extent we can
achieve it?

> * feedback from all Wikipedians, not just those specializing in the
> discipline in question -- besides being complete and accurate, articles
> also must be reasonably well written and easy to understand
> - Changes will still happen on wikipedia. Also, I propose that noone is
> restricted to certain topics; anyone can approve any article ;-) as long
> as s/he can be trusted to use common sense in what s/he is able to judge

I agree with that.  We learned from Nupedia that excessive a priori
formalization is a killer.  Better to start from a very open point of
view, and then upon review, if our end product is starting to be bad
in some way, make adjustments based on what we've learned.

> * simple, easy to use and completely open
> - same as sifter, except that I would not let anons approve articles...

I would tend to agree with this.  The main things to remember here is
that 'anon' is a misnomer (though one that we are stuck with because
we all say it) because not-logged-in is *less* anonymous than
logged-in.  :-)

Having people logged-in allows for the development of reputation,
which is a great incentive for doing a good job.

Before other people like Erik explained this to me again, I was still
thinking of having an appointed class like sysops, with appointment
being open and easy, to have quality control.  But on further
reflection, it seems like quality control can be had in other ways
that don't force us to have a separate class of users.

Of course, if we start in on a process and the end result starts to
look problematic, we'll have to bite the bullet and make a change.

> Now to my "pro-sifter" list:
> * fully capsuled, like a language wikipedia, with its own images etc.
> Avoids problems of an "internal" solution, like:
>    - Approve some version, which gets moved to "old" eventually
>    - That "approved" article uses "xyz.jpg"
>    - Someone replaced "xyz.jpg" with a goatse.cz image

That's obviously a benefit, but doesn't point to a need for a separate
project, per se, but a need for making sure that the 'version' being
approved is the *entire* article, including text and images.  This
does complicate things a little bit.

> * going to sifter.wikipedia.org (or whatever) means you're sure to get
> only approved stuff, while going to www.wikipedia.org is for those who
> write, and/or need complete and up-to-the-minute coverage

Well, the exact url where people may browse 1.0 could be anything.
In my private thinking about it, I've been thinking of it as
www.wikipedia.org/1.0/wiki/

But the exact url where someone could view what has been approved so
far is not really important.

> * user access is much easier to manage on a separate project

Maybe, maybe not.  Depends on implementation.

> * sifter Recent Changes shows you only what was imported, while
> wikipedia Recent Changes shows you what was written. Imagine the
> clutter, otherwise.

I think having a separate RC (or Recent Approvals) is vitally
important, but again I'm not sure it's really relevant for a
question of 'separate project' or 'added features to existing
project'.

> * sifter yould reside on another server (we'll have another one soon,
> right?), with its own database etc., thus reducing/spreading load on
> wikipedia itself

Maybe!  But this could complicate some things.

> * software is basically written, just needs a few more tweaks

Well, that's a huge plus of course, because rough consensus and
running code makes the world go around.

After reading all this and writing all this, I'm not sure that
"internal" versus "separate project" is really a useful concept.  I
guess I'm for an 'internal' project, but with most of the features
that you've identified.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> So maybe we could open a Wikimedia Paypal account in several countries.
> Electronic transfer to a US Paypal account would be uneconomical due to
> high bank fees.

I'm perfectly willing to do that, if that's the right thing to do, but
my reading of the Paypal website doesn't suggest that I really need to
do it.  Is there something that I'm not understanding?

I think you can send me Euros, Pound sterling, Canadian dollars, Yen,
U.S. dollars, and it'll be just fine.  There's certainly some slippage
when they convert the currencies, but until I see how that works out
in practice, i.e. what rates they use for conversion, I can't really
judge how expensive that will be.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> For many people Paypal would mean an investment in time, which might
> weigh heavier than the financial investment.

Well, I certainly agree with that.  I don't see any reason not to
expand what we can accept as broadly as possible, and to keep it as
easy for everyone as possible.  It's a shame to miss out on support
because someone, quite legitimately, doesn't feel like signing up for
yet another web thingy.

What are some options for me, then, that would be sensible?

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] paypal

body:
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
3911 Harrisburg St., NE
St. Petersburg, FL 33703

And yes, I already get plenty of junk mail.  :-(

Alex R. wrote:

> Yes,
> The address of record for Wikipedia Foundation Inc. (I don't post
> it here for fear of it creating lots of junk mail for Jimmy). You can
> find it on the Wikimedia page, just click on the external link that
> mentions the Corporate Charter of Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
> That is a matter of public record (I am sure he is already getting
> mail, mailing list companies routinely cull state incorporation
> sites for new mailing addresses).
> Alex756
>
> From: "Brion Vibber" <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>
>
> > I'm sure Jimmy will be happy to accept an international money order sent
> > through the mail, for those unable or unwilling to use whatever electronic
> > payment options are set up so far.
> >
> > Is there an address for such?
> >
> > -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l