from_name: ScottL

subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
   As long as that last bit about still being able to use other codes if
the standard does not supply one.  The only point I was making (and I
think it came from a misunderstanding of your position) is that what
code you use for a language has no place at all (even a little) in a
discussion about the merit of having a wikipedia in that language.

   If the standard CAN be followed then yes obviously that is good.  If
the standard does not allow for the language but our other policies
would otherwise accept it, then we need to do something different, but
it is not a reason to disallow a language.

SKL

Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Hoi,
> Please explain what the arguments are NOT to accept a standard that is
> the only viable way of making sure that other people understand what
> language we are using. Please explain what alternative exists given the
> all too frequent choice of codes that are the codes for languages given
> by the standards organisation when new projects are proposed. Please
> explain what is gained by going against what is the standard for the
> acceptance of languages and measure it against what it would cost us to
> do it in an idiosyncratic manner. Please explain what is wrong to use
> either codes that comply with the standard and when we do not want to
> use such a code, a code that is manifestly different.
>
> It is fine to have a different opinion but please let there be some
> method behind the madness.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> ScottL wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> ScottL wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The practical approach is still to presume that the existence of an
>>>> official ISO 639 is strong evidence for allowing a Wikipedia in that
>>>> language, and that the absence carries a presumption that we should
>>>> not.  Nevertheless, any presumption is rebuttable.  Several constructed
>>>> languages have a code, but the barriers for having Wikipedias in those
>>>> should be higher.  For languages without a code there is still a large
>>>> swath of q-codes available for user definition if a language meets our
>>>> other criteria.
>> From a practical approach you have a point but I hesitate to adopt
>>
>>> the POV of an external organization even a standards body unless the POV
>>> is can be reasonably supported.  Which means it should still be a case
>>> by case thing.
>>>
>>>
>> Absolutely.  That's why I emphasize that such a POV is only a starting
>> point.
>> .
>> Ec
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Before reverting blanking, please read the text

body:
On 10/20/06, Parker Peters <onmywayoutster at gmail.com> wrote:
> At least, that's how it seems. Right now, I've watched as over half the
> participants on this thread are trying to defend an absolutely indefensible
> refusal by an admin to contact a user who has an issue with an article and
> find out what the real problem is, a refusal to even leave a warning message
> or better yet the NEW USER WELCOME MESSAGE.

Talking about absolutely indefensible refusals to contact users who
have done things in an incorrect way, have you [1] mentioned this to
Darwinek [2]?

[1] Or anyone else for that matter
[2] Hint: the answer is no

--
Sam


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] Editors, who are not editors

body:
JzG wrote:
> I have to say, though, that the so-called "sandboxians" who spend
> their time at
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox/Storytelling and so on,
> really do seem to have missed the point a bit.

Shouldn't they be at everything2 or something?


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sourcing question

body:
On 20/10/06, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:State_Road_913_%28Florida%29#A_bulletproof_argument...
> Am I right or is the IP right? Do commercially-produced maps that show
> an unsigned designation continuing along a causeway trump Department of
> Transportation sources?

Without looking at the URL, because I know I would get confused by an
interminable and confusing debate, and answering on general
principles...

a) If the DoT issues or maintains these designations, which one would
assume it does, then their sources are to be preferred when there's a
discrepancy - the higher on the chain the source is, the less likely
it is for transmission errors or copyright traps* to sneak in.

-but-

b) if there is reason to believe the authoritative source may be
incorrect, for example if the map dates from 1970 or if it happens to
miss out a city for no apparent reason, cite both and briefly discuss.

"The Department of Transportation gave the end of the designated area
as X in a 1975 publication [1], though more recent sources have
suggested it may extend as far as Y [2]. A more recent DoT source is
not currently available to clarify this."

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


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 10/19/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

> I'm also wondering why it isn't "ABSOLUTELY INEXCUSABLE" for the human
> who originally blanked the article to be acting in a manner that's no
> more intelligent than a bot as well. We grant newbies a lot of slack,
> and we grant the aggrieved victims of libel even more slack, but if the
> inexcusability of this is really absolute then in this case the original
> blanker is just as much in the wrong.
>

Joe random person off the street is not going to be familiar with
Wikipedia's process and procedures in any significant way.  Even if they
happen across an article and click on "edit" for some legitimate reason such
as libel.

Any experienced editor, particularly admins, should be held to the higher
standard of knowing what our policies are, and what proper notifications and
efforts are.

If anything, perhaps the unregistered account editing should be made a bit
more blatantly hand-holding to encourage people who are newbies to do the
right thing.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


list: commons-l

from_name: peter green

subject: [Commons-l] www.wikitheque.fr (.org, .com)

body:
> Examples of tasks include: I'm looking for a photograph of an animal,
> where do I look? I only know the French common name of that species,
> what do I do?
i'd say the best bet for that right now would be to go to the french
wikipedia and find the scientific name (and possiblly even a link to
commons) from there.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pattern copyvios involving comic book characters

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:22:35 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> If you want to
>> propose being equally "ruthless" for fictional characters I want to see
>> a reason that's just as strong.
>
> Sure.  They are the number one source of original research, banned by
> policy, and these articles have misled countless editors into
> believing that (a) "I read it on teh internets" is adequate sourcing
> and (b) we should tailor policy on verifiability, original research
> and neutrality to ensure that these articles are not impacted.

All of which is already covered by the same policies policy in both
fictional character and living-person-biography. The only thing that BLP
does is make the enforcement of our original research and verification
policies more _urgent_ on living-person-biography articles, it doesn't
put any additional constraints on the material that can be found within.

The articles are held to the same content standards already, it's the
urgency in applying those standards that I'm questioning here. Why is it
just as urgent to deal with OR on fictional character articles as it is
to deal with OR on living person articles?

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body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>> Actually, it wasn't all _that_ blatant. Blatant crap is stuff like
>> "GEORGE IS GAY LLOLZORS!!1!".
>>
> Your example is easy to find because it is in all caps.  However a
> simple "George is gay" in normal typeface in the middle of a long
> article about somebody named George (Curious George?) will not be easily
> noticed.

And hence it is not blatant. IMO, of course.

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Comic book articles and fancruft (was: Pattern
 copyvios involving...)

body:
Earle Martin wrote:
> On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> There's reasons why BLP is "ruthless" with
>> regard to biographies of living people and those reasons are completely
>> inapplicable to biographies of fictional characters. If you want to
>> propose being equally "ruthless" for fictional characters I want to see
>> a reason that's just as strong.
>
> I thought having an encyclopedia that didn't suck was a pretty strong
> reason. Do I need to elaborate on what I think that entails? I hope
> not; I would have thought it was fairly self-evident.

We already _have_ content policies that require fictional character
articles to "not suck." They're the same content policies we have for
biographies of living persons. The only difference is that BLP says we
have to apply those content policies with the utmost speed and
efficiency, because serious harm can come from some such policy
violations on articles about living persons.

It is not at all self-evident that the same sort of harm can come from
having articles that "suck" on fictional characters. If our article on
Peter Parker claims he's gay, is he going to sue Wikimedia Foundation
for libel or get fired by a homophobic J. Jonah Jameson?

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subject: [WikiEN-l] School of Hard Knocks, or, what I learnt from my RfA

body:
On 10/20/06, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:

> I generally only participate in RfAs where I know the editor who has
> been nominated (and thus feel qualified to make a judgment), or where
> I am so impressed that I feel justified in making a judgment despite
> not knowing them.
>
> I may be setting the bar for participation too low here, and I am sure
> that there are many deserving candidates who I have not supported who
> turn out to be great admins whom I work well with once they are
> promoted. Nevertheless, my underlying criterion remains whether I
> trust the person to exercise good judgment.
>

I figure either I should know someone previously, or spend the time to
research them enough to determine if they have good judgement.

For many of the RFAs, I let it go for a while and determine that they aren't
showing me enough within the RFA itself to justify me investing a good
fraction of an hour to study their editing habits.

I'm not sure if that's good for the process overall or not.  But I don't
have the time to personally follow up reading the last 500 edits made by
everyone who gets nominated.  To some degree, I rely on the process of
others who know the person coming along and either posting a good enough
"Support" comment that it piques my interest or posting something in the
"Oppose" section that attracts interest.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:22:35 -0600, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>If you want to
>propose being equally "ruthless" for fictional characters I want to see
>a reason that's just as strong.

Sure.  They are the number one source of original research, banned by
policy, and these articles have misled countless editors into
believing that (a) "I read it on teh internets" is adequate sourcing
and (b) we should tailor policy on verifiability, original research
and neutrality to ensure that these articles are not impacted.

I'd say that was a pretty bad - and pretty big - problem.  BLP tends
to affect one individual badly but be easily, this affects a big chunk
of the project in a way which is making it actively worse because any
improvement to any article is resisted by reference to similar cruft
in another one.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Editors, who are not editors

body:
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:48:43 -0700, "George Herbert"
<george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>Fortunately I realized what I was doing,
>and simultaneously realized there were several whole classes of engineering
>materials articles which didn't exist yet, so I've started working on
>those...

YMYA. Only in my case I'm looking at industrial controls and quarry
plant.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Editors, who are not editors

body:
On 10/20/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that you need to be careful about that; I've seen quite a number of
> experienced editors and administrators fall into that trap for periods of
> time.  I myself am currently extricating myself from an hole I fell in for a
> couple of months, doing much more "administrative stuff" in wikispace and
> talk than any real article edits.  Fortunately I realized what I was doing,
> and simultaneously realized there were several whole classes of engineering
> materials articles which didn't exist yet, so I've started working on
> those...

Raw numbers are pretty meaningless (most of my article space edits
lately have been removeing images)

--
geni


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Larry Craig

body:
Abigail Brady wrote:
<snip>
> Also HE VOTED AGAINST CUDDLY ANIMALS.
>

Oh, well that does it then. I'll order a Level 14 Cabalstrike.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Sherool

subject: [Wikitech-l]  Password reminder from Wikipedia spam

body:
Could we please get the feature eluded to here:
<http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5370> turned on for the
English Wikipedia (and probably the rest of the projects too)? At least
one vandal seems to have spesialised in spamming people with passwod
reminders (he must have a bot), and growing number of people have been
complaining about it. After replying to some threads about it on the admin
noticeboard on enWiki I seem to have incured the "wrath" of this
individual as well since I found 112 password reminders in my mailbox
today.

Sure they are easy to filter out, but we can't let spammers have free
reign like this. If there is such a "throttle" feature it needs to be
activated ASAP (how many times a day does the average user forget his
password?). If nothing else all these mails are a unnessesary strain on
our mail system. Pluss some users have "threatened" to report it to
SpamCop and such, and we don't want our mailserver blacklisted now do we?

--
[[:en:User:Sherool]]


from_name: Leon Weber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Password reminder from Wikipedia spam

body:
Am Freitag 20 Oktober 2006 17:25 schrieb Sherool:
> Could we please get the feature eluded to here:
> <http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=5370> turned on for the
> English Wikipedia (and probably the rest of the projects too)? At least
> one vandal seems to have spesialised in spamming people with passwod
> reminders (he must have a bot), and growing number of people have been
> complaining about it.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:69.50.208.4#Password_reset_attempt
--
Leon Weber
[[de:User:LeonWeber]]


body:
You wrote:
> After reading David Gerard's post "RFA has gone weird"[1]  two weeks
> back, I decided on a whim to nominate myself for adminship. [2] My
> principle was that I would largely ignore the existing process for the
> calcified barnacle that it is and apply a no-nonsense stance towards
> self-important questioning...

What a marvelous experiment!  Well done, very well done.
I was thinking of doing something like that myself; now I either
(a) don't have to, because you already did, or (b) *really* have
to, now that you've established the precedent...

I can't say I'm at all surprised at the results you got.

(I do wonder what can be done about the phenomenon?)


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Legal threats on [[Talk:OmniCode]]

body:
Some anon-IP user on [[Talk:OmniCode]] has been rattling sabers about
threatening to sue people for failing to acknowledge a company named
Omnicode, which apparently has a registered trademark on that name
which is being allegedly infringed by the geek-coding system called
OmniCode which is featured in the Wikipedia article of that name.

It's certainly possible that the creator of that coding system is
committing a trademark violation by using the name, but would
Wikipedia or its editors have any liability for writing an article
about it?  It would seem that a noncommercial, encyclopedic use of
the name in the course of discussing something that the name has been
used for (legally or illegally) wouldn't itself be actionable, but
I'm not a lawyer.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Anthony

body:
On 10/20/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
> > On 10/19/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> On 10/19/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> In this case the article consisted of nothing more than naming the
> >> person and where she works and a unsourced rumor about her having an
> >> abortion.
> >
> > I'm disappointed to have read this entire thread before getting this bit of
> > information.
> ...
> > Absolutely.  If you're going to revert a blanking, you should be damn sure
> > that at least *some* part of the original text was in fact accurate.
>
> Don't know whether the reverter was "damn sure", but some part of the
> original text _was_ in fact accurate. The unsourced rumor was in the
> second half of the article, the first half of the article was pretty
> much okay.
>
So this might not have been a case of what I referred to as
"absolutely" "unacceptable", which for some reason you cut out.  Here
it is:

"I'd buy the argument that you read some of a long blanked page and
missed the vandalism... (although you should also look at the recent
history). But the argument that it's okay for a human to revert
without reading at all? ... unacceptable."

Anthony


from_name: Fastfission

body:
On 10/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Paraphrasing is only sometimes a copyvio.  Saying that it _can_ be does
> not imply that it is.  Many of the marvunapp entries are very short, and
> suggest that there may not be much more to say about a particular
> character.  In such cases the merger principle may be applicable because
> the information itself is not copyrightable, and the number of ways that
> you can express that information is very limited.
>
> If we only have occasional short short quoted paragraphs that are
> properly attributed that comes well within fair use.

Especially when the "nature of the copyright material" is that it
itself is heavily based on other copyrighted materials. Their material
consists of paraphrasing copyrighted material to begin with (summaries
of fictional plots and things like that which are drawing heavily on
creative works published by Marvel comics); our use of them to create
derivative works (when not copying-and-pasting, of course) seems well
within the bounds of "fair use" to me.

> One possible source of copyvios is selection, but that is far more
> difficult to establish.  If a person is systematically drawing on
> marvunapp's material and using that as the basis for what he includes
> that could be a copyvio, but a small random selection of material would
> not be.

I don't think Marvunapp is claiming to have a selection scheme except
for "everything", which means it would not be a copyrightable
selection scheme. If I understand things correctly. In this case it
would be no more of a selection scheme as the phonebook.

> In your comments you make no mention of your negotiations with
> marvunapp, and their willingness to find an accomodation.  This is
> better than assuming that because they have complained there is
> necessarily a copyvio.  Even if none of our entries are copyvios and
> what we do is entirely within the law, they still have a right to exist
> in their own particular niche, and we should resist the urge to
> overwhelm them with our size, or to otherwise engage in Borg-like behaviour.

Perhaps the best approach here is to just give more attribution (and
links back to them). I am sure they would appreciate that and it might
dissolve the whole dispute. There's no reason not to link to them if
they are the immediate source of the information, even if they are not
the ultimate source of the copyright (it is usually quite helpful in
such cases to distinguish between the two).

That being said, their copyright infringement claims, except in the
case of the direct copy-and-paste, seem spurious to me, and somewhat
ironic. They are claiming that we are infringing upon their creative
material, which is itself largely uncreative. They should hope that
Marvel will not hold them to the same copyright standards that they
hope to try and hold Wikipedia too. People in glass houses shouldn't
throw cease-and-desist orders; when one's "creative content" is
essentially derivative one should not get *too* mad when another makes
derivative products from it (or at least not be surprised).

FF


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Feature request: "single block"

body:
On 10/20/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mind you, dealing uniformly with open proxies is a good thing.

Is it? Even in China where they may need to use open proxies to edit
the Chinese Wikipedia (which is still blocked for some users there)?

Wikis should be informed of users who are editing and are blocked
elsewhere, but I think automatically blocking a user or IP on every
wiki is often going to cause more problems than it solves.

Angela.


from_name: David Monniaux

body:
peter green wrote:

>>Examples of tasks include: I'm looking for a photograph of an animal,
>>where do I look? I only know the French common name of that species,
>>what do I do?
>>
>>
>i'd say the best bet for that right now would be to go to the french
>wikipedia and find the scientific name (and possiblly even a link to
>commons) from there.
>
Yes, this is exactly the method we explain on www.wikitheque.fr. It may
sound obvious to us, but external users can't be expected to guess it.
This is why we give those task-oriented recipes...


from_name: ApostateAmish at aol.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] content_actions.php

body:
A hooks.txt file in a recent distribution of MediaWiki refers to a
content_actions.php file, which supposedly exposes instantiation logic of edit  tabs at
the top of the page. I find no such file in that distribution. Am I  missing
something, or will I need to write original code to gain control of  those
ubiquitous tabs?


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Good example;
	The works of Charles Darwin freed :)

body:
On 10/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Links would be enough.
>
> Ec

collections.iwm.org.uk/upload/pdf/newlegal02a.pdf

In other bad news I've just discovered that the national coal board
collection was broken up in 1990s which will make tracking parts of it
down rather difficult.

--
geni


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
Hoi,
Please explain what the arguments are NOT to accept a standard that is
the only viable way of making sure that other people understand what
language we are using. Please explain what alternative exists given the
all too frequent choice of codes that are the codes for languages given
by the standards organisation when new projects are proposed. Please
explain what is gained by going against what is the standard for the
acceptance of languages and measure it against what it would cost us to
do it in an idiosyncratic manner. Please explain what is wrong to use
either codes that comply with the standard and when we do not want to
use such a code, a code that is manifestly different.

It is fine to have a different opinion but please let there be some
method behind the madness.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Ray Saintonge wrote:
> ScottL wrote:
>
>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> ScottL wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> The practical approach is still to presume that the existence of an
>>> official ISO 639 is strong evidence for allowing a Wikipedia in that
>>> language, and that the absence carries a presumption that we should
>>> not.  Nevertheless, any presumption is rebuttable.  Several constructed
>>> languages have a code, but the barriers for having Wikipedias in those
>>> should be higher.  For languages without a code there is still a large
>>> swath of q-codes available for user definition if a language meets our
>>> other criteria.
> From a practical approach you have a point but I hesitate to adopt
>
>> the POV of an external organization even a standards body unless the POV
>> is can be reasonably supported.  Which means it should still be a case
>> by case thing.
>>
>>
> Absolutely.  That's why I emphasize that such a POV is only a starting
> point.
> .
> Ec
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Editors, who are not editors

body:
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 09:55:35 +1000, "Peter Ansell"
<ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:

>I have been increasingly worried about one editors contribution
>history lately. The vast majority (possibly over 90%) of their last
>500 edits have been in Wikipedia/Wikipedia talk space. It is my
>understanding that Wikipedia: space is for editors to use to organise
>the development of articles.

It rather depends.  If they are an admin, doing admin things, then
it's understandable.  One of the more frustrating things is that we
take people who are good editors, give them admin tools, and then they
spend the rest of their time fighting idiots until they get pissed off
and leave.  Well, maybe.

I have to say, though, that the so-called "sandboxians" who spend
their time at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox/Storytelling and so on,
really do seem to have missed the point a bit.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
Trademarks don't give you blanket ownership of a term.  They give you
protection against people using a term in a specific context, and
that's it - basically, the context of similar things to what you use
the trademark for.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] [Fwd: photo by gus freedman -- may I use in book]

body:
>    Do I have your permission to use the photo by Gus Freedman from
> Wikipedia in my book What Every American Should Know about Who's Really
> Running America?

On 10/20/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> She is a journalist and friend of Wikipedia, so please help her if you
> can. :)  I don't know the photo she is talking about...

Gus Freedman was the photographer commissioned to take photos at
Wikimania. Brad uploaded a lot of these to Commons, so I expect it's
one of those she's talking about. If it is, the Wikimedia Foundation
holds the copyright to those and they're released under CC-BY-SA-2.5,
so the Foundation could grant the rights to use them without needing
to adhere to that license if it wanted to.

Angela


from_name: Derbeth

body:
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 16:40:53 +0200, Kelly Martin wrote:

> I would support the Foundation providing an open proxy listing service
> to which individual projects could subscribe to or not depending on
> their particular circumstances.

Ok, but this is not a solution for problem of occasional vandals from shared IP (like AOL) that are blocked for a short time on Wikipedia, then come to Wikibooks, are blocked, so go to Wikinews, got blocked again, so switch to Wiktionary and so on - everything from the same IP in a few minutes. If the first block on Wikipedia was working on another projects, such situations would not happen. For me, the current state is pathological - an IP gets blocked on Wikipedia due to vandalism, but the guy behind it has still possibility to devastate any other project.

--
http://pl.wikipedia.org - otwarta encyklopedia
http://pl.wikinews.org - otwarte ?r?d?o informacji
http://pl.wikibooks.org - otwarte podr?czniki

Opera - the fastest browser on Earth!


from_name: Earle Martin

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Comic book articles and fancruft (was: Pattern copyvios
	involving...)

body:
On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Earle Martin wrote:
> > I think Phil is speaking from having read numerous fictional character
> > articles, not implying that his feelings stem from this incident. (I
> > happen to agree with him; the amount of blithering fancruft is
> > astonishing.)
>
> Yet he's using this incident as his "excuse" for it. If this incident
> itself had nothing specifically to do with his proposal and he was just
> tossing in an old dream of his, why was it initially focused on just
> Marvel comics characters?

Because a wise man once said, "Pick the low-hanging fruit." Everything
has to start somewhere, jihad on fancruft included.

> There's reasons why BLP is "ruthless" with
> regard to biographies of living people and those reasons are completely
> inapplicable to biographies of fictional characters. If you want to
> propose being equally "ruthless" for fictional characters I want to see
> a reason that's just as strong.

I thought having an encyclopedia that didn't suck was a pretty strong
reason. Do I need to elaborate on what I think that entails? I hope
not; I would have thought it was fairly self-evident.

> Also, the definition of "fancruft" is far less clear than the definition
> of "libel." I'd want to see something solid and widely accepted for that
> as well.

Okay, then, I'd like to throw that one out to the list, but I'll start
with: unnecessarily verbose, gushing and hyper-detailed recitation of
trifling details about a fictional element, contributed with a
reverence better reserved for factual information. (Or, in the terms
that I prefer, the dull and witless prattling of socially-impaired
nerds, but that's only my opinion, and not a recommendation for policy
wording.)

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-10-21

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

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

Passed 421 of 437 tests (96.34%) FAILED!


subject: [Foundation-l] Dublin Core and OAI

body:
Hi,

I remember seeing projects on "Dublin Core" metadata and "OAI"
retrieval. I've been asked about it in a conference where I was
promoting Wikimedia projects.

Where can I learn more about what we do on these points?

Thanks


subject: [Foundation-l] Dublin Core and OAI


body:
After reading David Gerard's post "RFA has gone weird"[1]  two weeks
back, I decided on a whim to nominate myself for adminship. [2] My
principle was that I would largely ignore the existing process for the
calcified barnacle that it is and apply a no-nonsense stance towards
self-important questioning. The process has just closed, and I was of
course unsuccessful. I would note that I did not enter into this
process with the realistic expectation of success. (Although I was
pleased to discover that I polled almost as many positive votes as
negative, most of which seemed to agree with my take on the
situation.)

What I learnt from reading (and occasionally replying to) comments were:

1) ZOMG how dare you not answer the questions??!!1!!1
2) One has to have "a specific reason" for wanting admin tools. Being
generally concerned for the good of the project is not enough to
satisfy the razor minds of the RfA voters.
3) Editcountitis is actually a mindset of self-improvement, not a
pointless obsession. You must have as many edits as is humanly
possible before even considering being an admin. ("Storkk" lays it out
straight: "390 mainspace edits isn't really evidence of gnoming. I am
really looking for something like 3000 - 4000.")
4) You must participate in all existing processes whether you like it
or not. You must also get into discussions with people on their talk
pages. Why? Shut up with your questions already. You just have to. I
don't qualify, notes "(aereopagitica)", because I have "less than 100
XfD discussions participated in and less than 50 user Talk
contributions".
5) Answering questions, and replying to critical comments, bluntly and
to the point is "arrogant", "contemptuous", "insulting", "proud", and
"incivility of [a high] magnitude". Also symptomatic of needing
"self-improvement" and "a thicker skin", advises "Dlohcierekim".
6) Life as an admin is a hellish, Kafka-esque nightmare of continuous
inquisition from a swollen, all-powerful bureaucracy. ("[W]hat you
experience here is only a taste of what one will face as an admin",
comments "Physicq210".)
7) It is somehow useful for people to cast a "neutral vote", rather
than just leaving a comment, which is of equivalent logical value.
8) Despite there being over a thousand administrators already, one bad
egg is enough to cause havoc, disaster, dogs and cats living together,
and mass hysteria. The solution to this is obviously to keep the
number of administrators as small as possible, thus maintaining the
status quo and preventing more potential bad people from becoming
admins.
9) Even stating "I promise not to go batshit" and signing it with your
real name is not enough to sway the high muck-a-mucks. Consider taking
classes in advanced boot-licking before responding to comments.
("[C]andidate is... plainly in that class of admin who would
immediately set out causing grief and bloodshed.", declares "Splash".)
10) This is all going to go on your permanent record, son. Don't let
your mouth write a check that your butt can't cash. ("Would recommend
not returning to RfA in future", adds "Splash", ominously.)

So I guess it's back to the edit mines for this particular peon....

[1] http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-October/054960.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Earle_Martin

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: ScottL

body:
   Same boat here but as I spend less time on wikipedia lately its not a
big deal.  I find that less responsibility makes things more fun in many
cases anyway.  I am especially the same in that I don't have a lot of
confidence in my writing, well and I can be a bit argumentative at times
(though usually polite).

SKL

Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> I'm fairly similar to you, I've been around for a little more than two
> years (June 2004), I have around 2000 edits, I've proven myself to be
> curteous, I've participated in process, I do occasional
> vandal-fighting. Most of my wikipedia time is spent helping clueless
> newbies do their first articles (that right there should qualify me,
> you have to have the patience of a small planet!). I'm very familiar
> with process (as much as anyone can, given how much process we have).
> I don't get into arguments much, if I see one I try to defuse it. If I
> do get into an argument, I argue curtiously and respectfully. I'm a
> stand-up guy. I'm not a very good writer though, so I tend not to make
> big article improvements, but I've helped out the encyclopedia in many
> other ways. I feel like I've improved it. I see no reason why I
> shouldn't be allowed to be an admin.
>
> But I would never pass an RfA. I mean, if someone would nominate me, I
> would accept (although I don't think anyone will), but I'm pretty sure
> that I would get shot down pretty easily because of my edit-count and
> my less than stellar involvement with articles. But I have helped with
> the encyclopedia, in many ways. With admin-tools, I know I could help
> more. That doesn't seem likely though. It's bordeline mental, what RfA
> has become.
>
> --Oskar
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Comic book articles and fancruft (was: Pattern
	copyvios involving...)

body:
On 10/21/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>
> > Also, the definition of "fancruft" is far less clear than the definition
> > of "libel." I'd want to see something solid and widely accepted for that
> > as well.
>
> Okay, then, I'd like to throw that one out to the list, but I'll start
> with: unnecessarily verbose, gushing and hyper-detailed recitation of
> trifling details about a fictional element, contributed with a
> reverence better reserved for factual information. (Or, in the terms
> that I prefer, the dull and witless prattling of socially-impaired
> nerds, but that's only my opinion, and not a recommendation for policy
> wording.)
>
>
> --
> Earle Martin

The thing is "unneccesarily verbose", "gushing", "trifling details" make the
whole term subjective. Where one finds even finds a mention of comic book
character verbose, not everyone will agree. You can't treat fancruft until
there's a proper objective definition of what it is.

I'll suggest you shouldn't go in more detail with a fictional character than
you'd go with the bio of an living person. When you mention "the dull and
witless prattling of socially-impaired
nerds" it's clear you already set a very high standard for fictional
content. And I don't see why the standard should be any higher than with
non-fictional stuff. It's just as much part of our daily lives.

Mgm


from_name: geni

body:
On 10/21/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>1) ZOMG how dare you not answer the questions??!!1!!1

As an admin you need to be able to provide a reason to do anything. A
unwillingness to communicate is a bad sign

> 2) One has to have "a specific reason" for wanting admin tools. Being
> generally concerned for the good of the project is not enough to
> satisfy the razor minds of the RfA voters.

Sure we have no shortage of paper admins (you know that 100 admin
actions per month will put you in the top 3rd of active admins?)

> 3) Editcountitis is actually a mindset of self-improvement, not a
> pointless obsession. You must have as many edits as is humanly
> possible before even considering being an admin. ("Storkk" lays it out
> straight: "390 mainspace edits isn't really evidence of gnoming. I am
> really looking for something like 3000 - 4000.")

There are gnoming activities where it is trivial to rack up thousands of edits.

> 6) Life as an admin is a hellish, Kafka-esque nightmare of continuous
> inquisition from a swollen, all-powerful bureaucracy. ("[W]hat you
> experience here is only a taste of what one will face as an admin",
> comments "Physicq210".)

Sure if you want to be at all active.

> 7) It is somehow useful for people to cast a "neutral vote", rather
> than just leaving a comment, which is of equivalent logical value.

that isn't quite the case.

> 8) Despite there being over a thousand administrators already, one bad
> egg is enough to cause havoc, disaster, dogs and cats living together,
> and mass hysteria. The solution to this is obviously to keep the
> number of administrators as small as possible, thus maintaining the
> status quo and preventing more potential bad people from becoming
> admins.

I sleep better at night knowing that a lagre number of admins make the
same mistake that you do.

In any case people remember the userbox wars. A couple of foolish
admins can do a lot of damage.

> 9) Even stating "I promise not to go batshit" and signing it with your
> real name is not enough to sway the high muck-a-mucks. Consider taking
> classes in advanced boot-licking before responding to comments.
> ("[C]andidate is... plainly in that class of admin who would
> immediately set out causing grief and bloodshed.", declares "Splash".)

Yeah they remeber cyde's promises as well.

--
geni


from_name: Arwel Parry

body:
In message
<f80608430610201737l2ec92722tcc09cfe66b61c03d at mail.gmail.com>, geni
<geniice-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> writes
>On 10/21/06, Earle Martin
><wikipedia-yIYeTQxHKJFg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>>1) ZOMG how dare you not answer the questions??!!1!!1
>
>As an admin you need to be able to provide a reason to do anything. A
>unwillingness to communicate is a bad sign

Personally, I'll reply to reasonable questions about what I've done, but
have seldom been asked to. The hundreds of IP's I've blocked rarely seem
to protest their innocence, and if someone claims collateral damage then
I'll unblock and keep an eye on their activities for a while. I'm glad I
got my admin flag three years ago when RfA wasn't at all bureaucratic.

>> 2) One has to have "a specific reason" for wanting admin tools. Being
>> generally concerned for the good of the project is not enough to
>> satisfy the razor minds of the RfA voters.
>
>
>Sure we have no shortage of paper admins (you know that 100 admin
>actions per month will put you in the top 3rd of active admins?)
>
>> 3) Editcountitis is actually a mindset of self-improvement, not a
>> pointless obsession. You must have as many edits as is humanly
>> possible before even considering being an admin. ("Storkk" lays it out
>> straight: "390 mainspace edits isn't really evidence of gnoming. I am
>> really looking for something like 3000 - 4000.")
>
>There are gnoming activities where it is trivial to rack up thousands of edits.

1000 good edits should be plenty.

>> 6) Life as an admin is a hellish, Kafka-esque nightmare of continuous
>> inquisition from a swollen, all-powerful bureaucracy. ("[W]hat you
>> experience here is only a taste of what one will face as an admin",
>> comments "Physicq210".)
>
>Sure if you want to be at all active.

I'm reasonably active - I don't do RC patrol very often or run CDVF, but
I do keep an eye on the 3500 articles on my watchlist, which is plenty
to be going on with, blocking evildoers and reverting vandalism. So far
I've avoided the bureaucracy for three years. It's even three and a half
weeks since my talk page was last vandalised by "Johnny the Vandal"
(with any luck he may have died).

--
Arwel Parry


subject: [Wikitech-l] content_actions.php

body:
There's  also an "extensions/examples/Content_action.php" file, which sounds
like it  may be particularly interesting to you. It's
viewable via the web  at:
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/extensions/examples/Content_ac
tion.php?revision=12179&view=markup

Hope  that helps.

All the best,
Nick.

Thanks for finding the file and finding instances of the content_actions
array.

That helps some. Point of confusion #1 for me appears to have been whether
the referenced file was in the distribution I downloaded, or on the CVS/viewvc
directory you cited. I had looked there as well, but it has moved from
extensions/... to extensions/examples... , thus my confusion.

I'm not up to altering things over there just yet, but for someone who  makes
it easy, that path might best be revised in the hooks.txt file where I  found
the reference.

Point of confusion #2 was my hope that content_action.php would be a
repository of keys to the instantiation logic, rather than an example of how to  add
tabs. I was hoping to find something like MediaWiki:Sidebar where I could  use
text to describe what tab appears when. Unfortunately, it seems I'll have to
think my way out of this one instead.

The example in content_action.php of how to add an edit tab might  illuminate
my study of how to remove the tabs. I only want them to appear on  particular
pages for users who have edit privileges for those particular pages.  The
if/else that replaces "edit" with "view source" is one place to start poking
around, but that only seems to respond affirmatively to page  protection.
Conceptually, it seems easy enough to change the "else"  action that returns "view
source" so it simply doesn't render the tag at  all, but that only allows the
tag to be removed from protected  pages. I'll probably need to find the logic
that returns a "not logged in"  message when log-in is required, then move the
check-for-log-in status (or other  edit permissions) so that it checks before
rendering the tab. My code might  not be pretty, but if nobody else has
developed this functionality, it might be  worth my while to carve it out.


from_name: Felipe Ortega

subject: [Wikitech-l] Inconsistency in import results?

body:
Hi all.

I remember something about this posted aprox a year
ago, but now we have new software versions so...
There's something strange when I try to import dumps.

I've downloaded latest version of mwdumper.jar. I get
a full .7z dump (for research purposes) of, let's say,
svwiki.

Well, I create a new database, build the 29 tables
with the tables.sql script (but remove the InnoDB type
of tables, due to some compatibility problems in our
MySQL, I think it doesn't mind).

Ok, I launch mwdumper.jar with the appropiate
parameters, things go on and finally obtain:

373,142 pages (228.901/sec), 2,659,777 revs
(1,631.616/sec)

As it should be. But when I log on in svwiki database
in MySQL it says:

mysql> select count(page_id) from page;
+----------------+
| count(page_id) |
+----------------+
|          30000 |
+----------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql> select count(rev_id) from revision;
+---------------+
| count(rev_id) |
+---------------+
|        722180 |
+---------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

Far lower results.

Shouldn't I get the same figures? Anyone could help?

When I fix this problem, I've built a functional
script to recover per user statistics of contributions
in several periods of time (months, weeks, etc...).

Thanks everybody.

Felipe.

______________________________________________
LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo.
Llamadas a fijos y m?viles desde 1 c?ntimo por minuto.
http://es.voice.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] content_actions.php

body:
Don't  know the answer to Point of confusion #2, but #1 is fixed now in
r17138
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/docs/hooks.txt?r1=17138
&r2=17137&pathrev=17138  ).

All the best,
Nick.
Thanks for taking care of that.

Point of confusion #2a was easy:  I just commented out the call and  the
"view source" tab is gone from locked pages. For #2b -- to make the tab  go away
for unregistered users or for those otherwise not permitted to edit  -- I'll
need to read the code until I understand it better

/** else {
*  $content_actions['viewsource'] =  array(
*   'class' => ($action == 'edit') ?  'selected' : false,
*   'text' =>  wfMsg('viewsource'),
*   'href' =>  $this->mTitle->getLocalUrl( $this->editUrlOptions()  )
*  );
* }
*/


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

body:
I'm fairly similar to you, I've been around for a little more than two
years (June 2004), I have around 2000 edits, I've proven myself to be
curteous, I've participated in process, I do occasional
vandal-fighting. Most of my wikipedia time is spent helping clueless
newbies do their first articles (that right there should qualify me,
you have to have the patience of a small planet!). I'm very familiar
with process (as much as anyone can, given how much process we have).
I don't get into arguments much, if I see one I try to defuse it. If I
do get into an argument, I argue curtiously and respectfully. I'm a
stand-up guy. I'm not a very good writer though, so I tend not to make
big article improvements, but I've helped out the encyclopedia in many
other ways. I feel like I've improved it. I see no reason why I
shouldn't be allowed to be an admin.

But I would never pass an RfA. I mean, if someone would nominate me, I
would accept (although I don't think anyone will), but I'm pretty sure
that I would get shot down pretty easily because of my edit-count and
my less than stellar involvement with articles. But I have helped with
the encyclopedia, in many ways. With admin-tools, I know I could help
more. That doesn't seem likely though. It's bordeline mental, what RfA
has become.

--Oskar


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>ScottL wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>ScottL wrote:
>>>>
>>>>The practical approach is still to presume that the existence of an
>>>>official ISO 639 is strong evidence for allowing a Wikipedia in that
>>>>language, and that the absence carries a presumption that we should
>>>>not.  Nevertheless, any presumption is rebuttable.  Several constructed
>>>>languages have a code, but the barriers for having Wikipedias in those
>>>>should be higher.  For languages without a code there is still a large
>>>>swath of q-codes available for user definition if a language meets our
>>>>other criteria.
>>>>
>>>>
>>From a practical approach you have a point but I hesitate to adopt
>>
>>
>>>the POV of an external organization even a standards body unless the POV
>>>is can be reasonably supported.  Which means it should still be a case
>>>by case thing.
>>>
>>>
>>Absolutely.  That's why I emphasize that such a POV is only a starting
>>point.
>>
    Hoi,

Please explain what the arguments are NOT to accept a standard that is
the only viable way of making sure that other people understand what
language we are using. Please explain what alternative exists given the
all too frequent choice of codes that are the codes for languages given
by the standards organisation when new projects are proposed. Please
explain what is gained by going against what is the standard for the
acceptance of languages and measure it against what it would cost us to
do it in an idiosyncratic manner. Please explain what is wrong to use
either codes that comply with the standard and when we do not want to
use such a code, a code that is manifestly different.

It is fine to have a different opinion but please let there be some
method behind the madness.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Your requests for explanations seem more rhetorical than substantive.  These requests would be better placed in the context of considering a specific language.  Beyond that you are attacking points that I never made.  I merely said that there are circumstances where there are better alternatives than a slavish adherence to standards.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] starting a new language

body:
Hoi,
When you standardise on ISO-639-3 you will find that the bat code no
longer is used. Slavic (other) is a deprecated code. It is therefore not
a good idea to use it. The description of the Latvian entry at
Ethnologue is explicit; Lagalian is considered a dialect.

When Latgalian's status as a dialect is to be disputed, I am quite happy
to help. We are at this stage looking into how this can be done in a
friendly but also linguistic way. It has to be clear to all that this is
a lot of work and that the heavy lifting will have to be done by those
who propose the change. In the mean time, the codes have there use as
they articulate to others and particular to automated processes what the
language is. When the codes that are used are a mess and are chosen for
political reasons, you prevent this process from happening smoothly.

What is of relevance is what languages or dialects we choose for new
projects. The codes used are a technical issue. When you make them more
than that, it only becomes political and it does not help at all. I am
opposed for all the above reasons and all the reasons that I have given
before to any code that are not consistent with the standard. I am
opposed to the creation of Latgalian under the code bat-ltg.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Mark Williamson wrote:
> I think everybody agrees that we shouldn't use 3-letter codes that belong to
> other languages.
>
> When people propose to use codes that belong to other languages, it's out of
> ignorance, not malice.
>
> However, to be able to use bat-ltg instead of lat-ltg is a different debate
> -- "bat-ltg" doesn't belong to another language, and it likely never will.
>
> Mark
>
> On 20/10/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Please explain what the arguments are NOT to accept a standard that is
>> the only viable way of making sure that other people understand what
>> language we are using. Please explain what alternative exists given the
>> all too frequent choice of codes that are the codes for languages given
>> by the standards organisation when new projects are proposed. Please
>> explain what is gained by going against what is the standard for the
>> acceptance of languages and measure it against what it would cost us to
>> do it in an idiosyncratic manner. Please explain what is wrong to use
>> either codes that comply with the standard and when we do not want to
>> use such a code, a code that is manifestly different.
>>
>> It is fine to have a different opinion but please let there be some
>> method behind the madness.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>     GerardM
>>
>>
>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>
>>> ScottL wrote:
>>>
>>>> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> ScottL wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The practical approach is still to presume that the existence of an
>>>>> official ISO 639 is strong evidence for allowing a Wikipedia in that
>>>>> language, and that the absence carries a presumption that we should
>>>>> not.  Nevertheless, any presumption is rebuttable.  Several
>>>>>
>> constructed
>>
>>>>> languages have a code, but the barriers for having Wikipedias in those
>>>>> should be higher.  For languages without a code there is still a large
>>>>> swath of q-codes available for user definition if a language meets our
>>>>> other criteria.
>>>>>
>>> From a practical approach you have a point but I hesitate to adopt
>>>
>>>
>>>> the POV of an external organization even a standards body unless the
>>>>
>> POV
>>
>>>> is can be reasonably supported.  Which means it should still be a case
>>>> by case thing.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Absolutely.  That's why I emphasize that such a POV is only a starting
>>> point.
>>> .
>>> Ec


subject:
[Foundation-l] Good example;
 The works of Charles Darwin freed :)

body:
geni wrote:

>On 10/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Links would be enough.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>collections.iwm.org.uk/upload/pdf/newlegal02a.pdf
>
>
Thanks.  I wonder how much of it is enforceable.  Of course it only
relates to film and videos.  It does not appear to cover text or still
photographs.

For specific observations: the Museum copyrights in 3.1 would not
operate to restore copyrights that had already expired.  Section 3.6
assigning one's own copyrights to the IWM seems to be way over the top.

A common problem with a lot of these kinds of conditions is that they
are seldom enforced strictly, and contain more bark than bite.  Any real
argument always needs to involve specific circumstances.  To the extent
that it is a contract rather than a statute it cannot directly bind
third parties.  The contract may require you to bind end-users to the
contract, but if you fail to do so they can only go after you.  Any
actions that they may have against third parties will be limited to
those provided by the law alone, and not those allowed in the contract.
This then becomes a matter of how much risk the person signing an
agreement with them is willing to accept.

Ec


body:
Earle Martin wrote:

>On 20/10/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>Earle Martin wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I think Phil is speaking from having read numerous fictional character
>>>articles, not implying that his feelings stem from this incident. (I
>>>happen to agree with him; the amount of blithering fancruft is
>>>astonishing.)
>>>
>>>
>>Yet he's using this incident as his "excuse" for it. If this incident
>>itself had nothing specifically to do with his proposal and he was just
>>tossing in an old dream of his, why was it initially focused on just
>>Marvel comics characters?
>>
>>
>Because a wise man once said, "Pick the low-hanging fruit." Everything
>has to start somewhere, jihad on fancruft included.
>
Jihad is normally associated with religious fanatics.

>>There's reasons why BLP is "ruthless" with
>>regard to biographies of living people and those reasons are completely
>>inapplicable to biographies of fictional characters. If you want to
>>propose being equally "ruthless" for fictional characters I want to see
>>a reason that's just as strong.
>>
>>
>I thought having an encyclopedia that didn't suck was a pretty strong
>reason. Do I need to elaborate on what I think that entails? I hope
>not; I would have thought it was fairly self-evident.
>
I'll save you the problem of embarassing yourself with an elaboration.
An encyclopedia that doesn't suck recognizes that different people have
different ideas about what is important, and respects them for that.
What could be more self-evident than that.

Ec


from_name: Steve Bennett

references:
<op.thorvdwisqj770@doissetep> <op.thp312v3sqj770@doissetep>
	<bd4c411e0610200740v1ec41c08lbac0dc45d6b1e143@mail.gmail.com>
	<op.thqmofbsv28n8a@localhost.localdomain>

body:
On 10/20/06, Derbeth <derbeth at wp.pl> wrote:
> Ok, but this is not a solution for problem of occasional vandals from shared IP (like AOL) that are blocked for a short time on Wikipedia, then come to Wikibooks, are blocked, so go to Wikinews, got blocked again, so switch to Wiktionary and so on - everything from the same IP in a few minutes. If the first block on Wikipedia

Would a "two strikes and you're out" policy (get blocked on two of the
sites, get blocked on them all) help?

Steve


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sourcing question

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 20/10/06, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:State_Road_913_%28Florida%29#A_bulletproof_argument...
>>Am I right or is the IP right? Do commercially-produced maps that show
>>an unsigned designation continuing along a causeway trump Department of
>>Transportation sources?
>
>
> Without looking at the URL, because I know I would get confused by an
> interminable and confusing debate, and answering on general
> principles...

Actually here it's really one long argument from one side with one response.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Till Westermayer wrote:

>For the visionary minded: combine both, set up a foundation with the
>goal to "free" copyrighted material (for wikipedia and others), give
>it $ 100,000,000 so it can use $ 1,000,000 every year from now on for
>buying copyrights. Of course that's not the same impact as spending $
>100M at once, but it would be a far more sustainable approach to
>change the way copyright works and do something good for a long time.
>
Without agreeing that it's the way to go, in this vision we could do
better than a 1% return on investment. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Cary Bass

body:
David

How do we become involved in wikitheque?  I see no login screen :)

Cary

> -----Original Message-----
> From: commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of David Monniaux
> Sent: Friday, October 20, 2006 1:56 PM
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] www.wikitheque.fr (.org, .com)
>
>
> peter green wrote:
>
> >>Examples of tasks include: I'm looking for a photograph of an animal,
> >>where do I look? I only know the French common name of that species,
> >>what do I do?
> >>
> >>
> >i'd say the best bet for that right now would be to go to the french
> >wikipedia and find the scientific name (and possiblly even a link to
> >commons) from there.
> >
> Yes, this is exactly the method we explain on www.wikitheque.fr. It may
> sound obvious to us, but external users can't be expected to guess it.
> This is why we give those task-oriented recipes...
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
George Herbert wrote:

>This may not be all that hard, in many cases.
>
>My late Grandfather wrote a reasonably widely used introductory general
>science college textbook in the 1950s, with several editions through the
>late 50s.  There's probably no likelyhood that it could be republished now,
>and even if it could be I think all involved would react positively to
>CC-something licensing it, perhaps just outright donating it.
>
>There had been some talk about this after my grandmother passed away a few
>years ago, but nobody acted on it.
>
Assuming that your grandfather's rights passed on to her when he died,
how did she deal with it in her will?  If she didn't say anything, how
was the residue of her estate distributed?  If she was intestate, how
many children shared in the copyrights?  These are the kind of questions
that need to be addressed to determine who can choose what to do with
the rights.  If the (more than one) children inherited equally any one
can grant the GFDL licence.

If your grandfather lived in the United States, and the copyright was
not renewed, the work is already in the public domain.

>I bet that there would be a huge net benefit to starting up and organising a
>donations campaign for such a trust.  A website, some volunteers, a
>consistent donations policy, and a little legwork to get some PR out in the
>scientific press would go a long way.
>
I doubt it. More often then not grandchildren have no idea that
grandfather once published a book unless there was a ton of unsold
copies cluttering up the basement.

Ec


from_name: Piotr "Derbeth" Kubowicz

references:
<op.thorvdwisqj770@doissetep> <op.thp312v3sqj770@doissetep>
	<bd4c411e0610200740v1ec41c08lbac0dc45d6b1e143@mail.gmail.com>
	<op.thqmofbsv28n8a@localhost.localdomain>
	<f1c3529e0610202321r9d88b16lcaa33e0b698c9c7b@mail.gmail.com>

body:
Dnia Sat, 21 Oct 2006 08:21:27 +0200, Steve Bennett napisa?(a):

> Would a "two strikes and you're out" policy (get blocked on two of the
> sites, get blocked on them all) help?
>
> Steve

I would prefer another option: block for two hours or less with only anonymous users blocked applies to all projects. Large part of acts of vandalism fall under this criterium.

--
Piotr 'Derbeth' Kubowicz
Jabber id: derbeth at jabber.wp.pl

Pom?? Wikibooks stworzy? najwi?kszy zbi?r otwartych podr?cznik?w! http://pl.wikibooks.org/

Opera - the fastest browser on Earth! http://www.opera.com/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Roger Luethi wrote:
>
>
>> It is not so much about copyright reform as it is about investing money
>>
>>rather than spending it, and this is a rare opportunity to talk about that.
>>
>>Another example, unrelated to copyright reform: Wikipedia editors need
>>access to primary sources, particularly academic journals. The fate of
>>current ventures in Open Access journals largely determines whether most
>>potential Wikipedia editors will have easy access to the sources they need
>>in the years to come, and funding for these journals (or lack thereof) will
>>be a major factor.
>>
>>
>Right. There are journal archives around with stuff going back hundreds
>of years, but they claim copyright on all their materials; if we could
>free that which already qualifies for PD-old, it would be a major step
>in the right direction.
>
Being copyright is not just a simple matter of claiming copyright.  The
old stuff is already free; it doesn't need any more freeing.  The law
decides, not the claimants.  If it qualifies just use it.

Ec


body:
Is the supposed trademark owner in the coding business?

On 10/21/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Trademarks don't give you blanket ownership of a term.  They give you
> protection against people using a term in a specific context, and
> that's it - basically, the context of similar things to what you use
> the trademark for.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [Commons-l] Dream a little...

body:
On 10/15/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Does Corbis even own the copyright on the images they archive?  What about AP?

This is a bit off topic, but Corbis CLAIMS to own the copyright on all
of their images. They have a substantial number of public domain
images in their catalog as well that they claim to own the copyright
on as well (i.e. many images from the 19th century, some which were
created by the U.S. federal government, etc.), because they "own the
copyright to the scan" (at least, that's what their lawyer told me
when I asked about a few of them in particular). Which is of course
bullshit, but they don't seem to mind charging people licensing fees
"for the scan". If we want to do anything with them, let's make sure
we don't pay for anything that shouldn't need to be paid for.

FF


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dream a little...

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

Ray Saintonge stated for the record:

> George Herbert wrote:
>
>>I bet that there would be a huge net benefit to starting up and organising a
>>donations campaign for such a trust.  A website, some volunteers, a
>>consistent donations policy, and a little legwork to get some PR out in the
>>scientific press would go a long way.
>>
>
> I doubt it. More often then not grandchildren have no idea that
> grandfather once published a book unless there was a ton of unsold
> copies cluttering up the basement.

Probably true, though there are those of us who are periodically
reminded in a very pleasant way that our grandfathers once published books.

George, I would very happily take advantage of your trust.  I am
actively investigating ways to set free my grandfather's books that are
currently out of print.  (Those that are still in print are doing very
nice things for his great-grandkids' college funds, so I will greedily
retain my copyrights to them for now.)

- --
 Sean Barrett     | The other side to the Wikipedia that nobody really
 sean at epoptic.com | likes to talk about... is that a large portion of
                  | the content is fairly pornographic, and actually
                  | quite lewd. --Encyclopedia Britannica spokesman
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFOliL/SVOiq2uhHMRAiVXAKDmYyytUAZWDzMZZBIMAt7mcnk+UwCfe8My
39588ozcYcYRZH39/+XyoHo=
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from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Include both, with sources?

body:
> From: SPUI <drspui at gmail.com>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:State_Road_913_%28Florida%
> 29#A_bulletproof_argument...
> Am I right or is the IP right? Do commercially-produced maps that show
> an unsigned designation continuing along a causeway trump
> Department of
> Transportation sources?

Why does either source need to "trump" the other?

Why not note the discrepancy in the article and give the sources for
each of the two contradictory descriptions?


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 10/21/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> After reading David Gerard's post "RFA has gone weird"[1]  two weeks
> back, I decided on a whim to nominate myself for adminship. [2]

Firstly, let me say that I was planning to support because of your
attitude, but I must have forgotten. Consider it 25/32/12! The more
candidates from the Mark Gallagher school, the better, in my opinion.

On 10/21/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>
> What a marvelous experiment!  Well done, very well done.
> I was thinking of doing something like that myself; now I either
> (a) don't have to, because you already did, or (b) *really* have
> to, now that you've established the precedent...
>
> I can't say I'm at all surprised at the results you got.
>
> (I do wonder what can be done about the phenomenon?)

The issue is the people who participate and the requirements they
impose, which are both wildly idiosyncratic and, to the casual
observer, utterly abstract in their origin.

I think it's a good idea to judge candidates based on their
contribution to the encyclopaedia. That's what we're here for, after
all. But this is almost always done on editcount, and everyone has a
different count they are looking for. Why not take a look at some of
the pages they have written, or contributed significantly to, and
judge them on whether they're well written articles? The same goes for
other criteria people impose.

I generally only participate in RfAs where I know the editor who has
been nominated (and thus feel qualified to make a judgment), or where
I am so impressed that I feel justified in making a judgment despite
not knowing them.

I may be setting the bar for participation too low here, and I am sure
that there are many deserving candidates who I have not supported who
turn out to be great admins whom I work well with once they are
promoted. Nevertheless, my underlying criterion remains whether I
trust the person to exercise good judgment.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:00:58 -0600, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>>> If you want to
>>> propose being equally "ruthless" for fictional characters I want to see
>>> a reason that's just as strong.
>>
>> Sure.  They are the number one source of original research, banned by
>> policy, and these articles have misled countless editors into
>> believing that (a) "I read it on teh internets" is adequate sourcing
>> and (b) we should tailor policy on verifiability, original research
>> and neutrality to ensure that these articles are not impacted.
>
>All of which is already covered by the same policies policy in both
>fictional character and living-person-biography. The only thing that BLP
>does is make the enforcement of our original research and verification
>policies more _urgent_ on living-person-biography articles, it doesn't
>put any additional constraints on the material that can be found within.

If you look into the debates on these policies you will see that for
popular culture articles there is a large body of opinion which holds
that if there are no reliable sources for an article then we should
allow, by policy, the use of whatever sources we can find, reliable or
not.

>The articles are held to the same content standards already, it's the
>urgency in applying those standards that I'm questioning here. Why is it
>just as urgent to deal with OR on fictional character articles as it is
>to deal with OR on living person articles?

I disagree that they are held to the same standards.  I can find you a
treeware biography of Leonard Cheshire, I cannot find a treeware
biography of Garfield.  I know which is the more significant, by any
rational definition.  Guess which gets the most coverage?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Oct 21, 2006, at 10:38 AM, Ray Saintonge wrote:

>>
> I'll save you the problem of embarassing yourself with an elaboration.
> An encyclopedia that doesn't suck recognizes that different people
> have
> different ideas about what is important, and respects them for that.
> What could be more self-evident than that.

It may be that my point has gotten lost amongst the rhetoric here.
Personally, I'd vote to keep any article on a costumed character in
Marvel or DC with appearances in multiple issues. The problems are
not in terms of what is important.

The problem is... well, let's pull up a solid midlist Marvel
character - Speedball. 1603 word article. Only 500 words of that
pertain to the real world instead of the fictional world of the
comics. That's the problem. Fancruft is in many ways a poor choice of
terms for this. Especially since it's not even necessarily the case
that the information itself is the problem. The problem is that
virtually the entire article was written so as to pertain to the
Marvel Universe, with occasional citations of issue number.

It's not a problem unique to any area, either. I'll wager that any
fictional text that has spawned articles about its individual
characters has at least one article like this. (Oddly, the exception
to this seems to be Pokemon, where all of the articles I've glanced
at [Admittedly just a sample] take an out-of-universe perspective.)

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


subject: [WikiEN-l] Include both, with sources?

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
>>From: SPUI <drspui at gmail.com>
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:State_Road_913_%28Florida%
>>29#A_bulletproof_argument...
>>Am I right or is the IP right? Do commercially-produced maps that show
>>an unsigned designation continuing along a causeway trump
>>Department of
>>Transportation sources?
>
>
> Why does either source need to "trump" the other?
>
> Why not note the discrepancy in the article and give the sources for
> each of the two contradictory descriptions?

Because normally we don't report on errors on maps. We don't say "FDOT
turned over part of SR 2 to Nassau County in the 1980s, but some maps
still show it as a state road."


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd:  Dream a little -- collaboration

body:
phoebe ayers wrote:

>If I had $100 mil to work with, or even a tenth of that, I'd want to set up
>a framework for coordinating current digitization, archiving and online
>content distribution projects. Such an organization could provide
>digitization support and expertise, hosting support, and lobbying and legal
>support for free licenses and free content. This organization could have as
>clients everyone from the Internet Archive to a random university library
>that has a collection of papers they're digitizing to the free Darwin
>project to... whatever. Like CNI ( http://www.cni.org/) the organization
>could help make connections between partners, but on a much larger scale.
>I've done research into what digital libraries and collections of free
>content exist, and it's truly unbelievable how many startup digitization and
>content-freeing projects there are out there, many of which are struggling
>for lack of money, manpower and expertise. Only by working with the people
>who have local expertise in what content is available where -- the
>librarians, archivists, copyright holders and government agencies of the
>world -- will these corners of excellent content be unearthed and made
>available to everyone.
>
Leave it to a librarian to make one of the most important suggestions. :-)

Big as Wikimedia may have become we cannot go it alone.  We are part of
a much wider world of people who believe in free and open access to
knowledge.  If another site makes a work freely available we don't need
to copy it just so we can have it on our own database; that's the Borg's
job.  Enabling others to do as much as we do with a piece of work is
just as valuable as doing it ourselves.  A site that specializes in the
works of Charles Dickens should be enabled to do everything about
Dickens that we could do as long as it keeps its work free.  If some
other site includes the material, but makes free access difficult, I
would be the last one to object to their being treated as competitors.

I have not made the kind of detailed study that Phoebe has, but I have
certainly run into many, many other sites that offer free material.
Some are not in economic peril, and have an established institution to
back them.  Others (like Google) may not have economic problems, but I
am very mistrustful of their motives.  Yet others are one person's
labour of love.  These are only as strong as that person's health and
financial resources; they have no backup.  One sign that would make me
suspicios about the viability of such a site is the complete lack of
edits for a significant time.  A reasonable agreement with the last
group would be to provide backup that is not publicly accessible for as
long as they are keeping the site active.  We coluld also make technical
resources available to them.

>Even huge digitization projects are plagued by the fact that they're often
>fighting a losing battle. For instance, the U.S. government has an ongoing
>project to archive online materials produced by government agencies, but
>still hundreds of thousands of documents a year go offline, disappear and
>are lost forever, mostly not through malice but through an inability to keep
>up. Project Gutenburg has been going on for years and there are still
>thousands of works that could be included. These projects, and more
>importantly much smaller and unknown ones besides, could do with support and
>help coordinating volunteer hours to expand the scope of current
>preservation efforts. Wikimedia, through providing the right framework, has
>achieved the seemingly impossible in five short years -- the world's largest
>reference work, plus a cultural movement to boot. Think about what
>developing an equally appropriate framework for content freeing and
>distribution efforts could do.
>
This too is important.  There is too much for any one organization to
handle, even one as large and with such deep pockets as the US Governent
and its agencies.  There are many smaller archives that completely lack
the resources for digitizing their collections.

We need to seriously consider the implications of the cultural
movement.  That non-propritary approach to knowledge has yet to reach
its potential for world-wide education.

Ec


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 10/21/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Oct 2006 18:00:58 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> If you look into the debates on these policies you will see that for
> popular culture articles there is a large body of opinion which holds
> that if there are no reliable sources for an article then we should
> allow, by policy, the use of whatever sources we can find, reliable or
> not.

I disagree with this characterisation of the argument.  I'm not going
to argue that some people might put it like that or think of it like
that, but many Wikipedians hold, instead, that characterising sources
as 'reliable' or 'unreliable' based only on their means of
publication, for instance, is poor policy, and we should not have
blanket policy defining this.

> I disagree that they are held to the same standards.  I can find you a
> treeware biography of Leonard Cheshire, I cannot find a treeware
> biography of Garfield.  I know which is the more significant, by any
> rational definition.  Guess which gets the most coverage?

More coverage is not anything to do with standards, IMO; simply that
more people feel qualified to write about Garfield than about Leonard
Cheshire.  It's a manifestation of systemic bias, not a case of
intentional bias.  I suspect if a Leonard Cheshire fanboy, if such
existed, spewed huge amounts of trivia and unsourced crap onto that
article it'd probably take just as long for it to be sorted out as on
a popular culture article, since AFAIR Cheshire is dead and thus not
covered by BLP.

In my opinion, that we have extensive articles on 'trivial' subjects
does not mean that we are disparaging 'serious' subjects.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Comic book articles and fancruft

body:
Earle Martin wrote:

>On 21/10/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Jihad is normally associated with religious fanatics.
>>
>>
>Only by the ignorant. People who have actually spent any time reading
>about the subject rather than listening to the spoutings of tabloid
>newspapers and Fox News pundits will be aware that jihad takes a
>multitude of forms, the foremost of which is spiritual jihad within
>oneself, the crusade against sin and sloth. [0] We need a crusade
>against sloth. Our sloth is sloth of editing, which leads to articles
>fairly groaning at the seams under the load of their excess verbiage.
>
I suppose that a crusade is just as socially acceptable among Muslims as
a jihad is among Christians.  Sloth as one of the [[Seven deadly sins]],
dates back to the seventh century, as does Islam.  I take due note of
your modern seventh-century solutions to these problems.

>>An encyclopedia that doesn't suck recognizes that different people have
>>different ideas about what is important, and respects them for that.
>>What could be more self-evident than that.
>>
>>
>I disagree thoroughly. WP:NOT an indiscriminate collection of
>information, remember?
>
Our comic book aficionados would disagree that they are indiscriminate
in their treatment of the subject.

>If we respected everbody's different ideas, it
>would be.
>
Wow!  There goes a pillar!

>An encyclopedia that doesn't suck contains material that has been
>agreed by consensus to be relevant and useful.
>
Ultimately, yes.

>[1] If only there were some kind of online reference I could point to
>on this. Oh, wait, there is.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jihad#Greater_and_lesser_Jihad
>
Excellent! It establishes that you were preaching the lesser jihad
whereby thes comic book articles would be conquered by the sword,
instead of having people examine their own motivations for expanding
these articles.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Include both, with sources?

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>On Sat, 21 Oct 2006 11:07:40 -0400, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Because normally we don't report on errors on maps. We don't say "FDOT
>>turned over part of SR 2 to Nassau County in the 1980s, but some maps
>>still show it as a state road."
>>
>>
>Why not, if it's verifiable?  Surely that is an interesting and useful
>piece of information?
>
For once I agree with you about something. :-)

I suppose that in some ways this is related to NPOV issues, but where
there is no real dispute.  This kind of innocent error tends to be
perpetrated until they are widely pointed out, and that needs to be done
for as long as the error keeps recurring.  In another area the term
"brontosaurus" was deprecated 95 years after it was introduced, but we
can't avoid the fact that this creature is still ubiquitous in
children's literature.  Much of this is written by people with no
understanding of paleontology.  We'll probably need to keep pointing out
this error much longer than the one about the Nassau County roads.

Ec


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> Some anon-IP user on [[Talk:OmniCode]] has been rattling sabers about
>  threatening to sue people for failing to acknowledge a company named
>  Omnicode, which apparently has a registered trademark on that name
> which is being allegedly infringed by the geek-coding system called
> OmniCode which is featured in the Wikipedia article of that name.
>
> It's certainly possible that the creator of that coding system is
> committing a trademark violation by using the name, but would
> Wikipedia or its editors have any liability for writing an article
> about it?  It would seem that a noncommercial, encyclopedic use of
> the name in the course of discussing something that the name has been
>  used for (legally or illegally) wouldn't itself be actionable, but
> I'm not a lawyer.
>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:General_disclaimer#Trademarks

> Any of the trademarks, service marks, collective marks, design
> rights, personality rights or similar rights that are mentioned, used
> or cited in the articles of the Wikipedia encyclopedia are the
> property of their respective owners. Their use here does not imply
> that you may use them for any other purpose other than for the same
> or a similar informational use as contemplated by the original
> authors of these Wikipedia articles under the GFDL licensing scheme.
> Unless otherwise stated Wikipedia and Wikimedia sites are neither
> endorsed nor affiliated with any of the holders of any such rights
> and as such Wikipedia can not grant any rights to use any otherwise
> protected materials. Your use of any such or similar incorporeal
> property is at your own risk.

Any gripes that they have over the trademark can be taken elsewhere,
before they are indefinately blocked for making legal threats.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP

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from_name: Timwi

body:
Angela wrote:
> On 10/20/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Mind you, dealing uniformly with open proxies is a good thing.
>
> Is it? Even in China where they may need to use open proxies to edit
> the Chinese Wikipedia (which is still blocked for some users there)?

Surely this applies to all Wikimedia projects equally, not just the
Chinese Wikipedia.


subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP 5.2.0RC6 Testing

body:
Ilia Alshanetsky wrote:
>
> Hello!
>
> You are receiving this email because your project has been select to
> take part in a new effort by the PHP QA Team to make sure that your
> project still works with PHP versions to-be-released.

Does MediaWiki participate in this?


body:
Sherool wrote:
>
> At least one vandal seems to have spesialised in spamming people with
> passwod reminders (he must have a bot), and growing number of people
> have been complaining about it.

... You *do* realise, though, that he does it primarily *because* people
get upset about it?

> Sure they are easy to filter out, but we can't let spammers have free
> reign like this.

If you'd filter them out and not make a peep about it, he'd lose
interest quickly.

Timwi


body:
I apologise for replying myself...

I've done exactly the same with a tiny dump (amwiki)
and it worked perfectly (100% match between mwdumper
and mysql results).

Is there any problem with bigger dumps?

 --- Felipe Ortega <glimmer_phoenix at yahoo.es>
escribi?:

> Hi all.
>
> I remember something about this posted aprox a year
> ago, but now we have new software versions so...
> There's something strange when I try to import
> dumps.
>
> I've downloaded latest version of mwdumper.jar. I
> get
> a full .7z dump (for research purposes) of, let's
> say,
> svwiki.
>
> Well, I create a new database, build the 29 tables
> with the tables.sql script (but remove the InnoDB
> type
> of tables, due to some compatibility problems in our
> MySQL, I think it doesn't mind).
>
> Ok, I launch mwdumper.jar with the appropiate
> parameters, things go on and finally obtain:
>
> 373,142 pages (228.901/sec), 2,659,777 revs
> (1,631.616/sec)
>
> As it should be. But when I log on in svwiki
> database
> in MySQL it says:
>
> mysql> select count(page_id) from page;
> +----------------+
> | count(page_id) |
> +----------------+
> |          30000 |
> +----------------+
> 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
>
> mysql> select count(rev_id) from revision;
> +---------------+
> | count(rev_id) |
> +---------------+
> |        722180 |
> +---------------+
> 1 row in set (0.00 sec)
>
> Far lower results.
>
> Shouldn't I get the same figures? Anyone could help?
>
> When I fix this problem, I've built a functional
> script to recover per user statistics of
> contributions
> in several periods of time (months, weeks, etc...).
>
> Thanks everybody.
>
> Felipe.
>
>
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________
> LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo.
> Llamadas a fijos y m?viles desde 1 c?ntimo por
> minuto.
> http://es.voice.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

______________________________________________
LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo.
Llamadas a fijos y m?viles desde 1 c?ntimo por minuto.
http://es.voice.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Planned change to default IP blocking behavior

body:
effe iets anders wrote:
> As I understand it it is also possible to set the standard locally
> different, so why changing it globally? I think it would be best if
> the communities make these decisions themselves and define it in their
> monobook.

Inconsistency in behavior is not good; it makes administrative actions
confusing and error-prone.

> But one way or another, I think it is very important that it is easy
> for another sysop to see in the log how the block was performed. Is it
> possible that an additional note will be added to the blocklog and the
> blocklist, telling what type of block was performed?

This is already logged, as far as I know.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Include both, with sources?

body:
SPUI wrote:
> Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
>> On Sat, 21 Oct 2006 11:07:40 -0400, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Because normally we don't report on errors on maps. We don't say "FDOT
>>> turned over part of SR 2 to Nassau County in the 1980s, but some maps
>>> still show it as a state road."
>> Why not, if it's verifiable?  Surely that is an interesting and useful
>> piece of information?
>
> How is it interesting that maps make mistakes? In an article about a
> town, would we say that a map once spelled it incorrectly?

If it's a _widespread_ error, then people are likely to come across it
independently. The information that it's a widespread error is quite
useful in this situation. We have whole entire articles on urban legends
and the like, adding a line to an article like this doesn't seem out of
line to me.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Include both, with sources?

body:
SPUI wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> I suppose that in some ways this is related to NPOV issues, but where
>> there is no real dispute.  This kind of innocent error tends to be
>> perpetrated until they are widely pointed out, and that needs to be done
>> for as long as the error keeps recurring.  In another area the term
>> "brontosaurus" was deprecated 95 years after it was introduced, but we
>> can't avoid the fact that this creature is still ubiquitous in
>> children's literature.  Much of this is written by people with no
>> understanding of paleontology.  We'll probably need to keep pointing out
>> this error much longer than the one about the Nassau County roads.
>
> So you'd like to fill up road articles with reports of maps that show
> them still existing, or not existing, or going incorrectly? Talk about
> "cruft"...

There are probably a not insignificant number of editors who would
consider articles about roads to be _entirely_ "cruft". I don't agree
with that myself, but it's an indication of how cruft is in the eye of
the beholder.

Maybe if the article was about Florida as a whole, or roads in general,
then mentioning specific roads being mislabelled on certain maps would
be too niggling a bit of minutiae to justify including. But in an
article that's specifically about that one particular road, it seems to
me that within that context it's not necessarily trivial. Especially not
when the source-in-error is one that's commonly used.

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from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Commons-l] www.wikitheque.fr (.org, .com)

body:
Cary Bass wrote:

>David
>
>How do we become involved in wikitheque?  I see no login screen :)
>
At this point, we've ruled against making the site editable.

Reasons:
* The Wiki interface is heavy and disorienting for newcomers. Remember,
this site is a bit like the help desk of a library, where you give clear
and precise directions. => we would have at least to use a very
"castrated" interface
* We cannot afford vandalism in such a place, therefore even with a wiki
we'd have to restrict edition.
* We don't put up content there - simply "recipes" for common cases for
looking for information.


from_name: Tels

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

Moin,

On Saturday 21 October 2006 14:36, Timwi wrote:
> Sherool wrote:
> > At least one vandal seems to have spesialised in spamming people with
> > passwod reminders (he must have a bot), and growing number of people
> > have been complaining about it.
>
> ... You *do* realise, though, that he does it primarily *because* people
> get upset about it?
>
> > Sure they are easy to filter out, but we can't let spammers have free
> > reign like this.
>
> If you'd filter them out and not make a peep about it, he'd lose
> interest quickly.

This dos not work, the emails are still generated, people are still upset
etc.

By your line of reasoning vandals would go away if everyone would just
ignore them.

There really is now reason to allow more then X password reminders being
sent per day. Likewise, blocked IPs shouldn't be able to do this at all.

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Sat Oct 21 15:23:32 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Man, I'm hot." - "Thirsty?" - "No, I mean good looking."

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