from_name: J.L.W.S. The Special One

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
You would need a bot with admin powers to go through and unprotect the
articles, or there would be massive backlog.

Often, after semi-protection is lifted, the anonymous vandals quickly
return. Therefore, I oppose this idea.

On 11/20/06, Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com> wrote:
> Luna wrote:
> > Auto-expiring protection sounds like a very interesting idea -- has anybody
> > submitted this to  Bugzilla?
> >
> > On 11/12/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >> On 11/13/06, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> I believe it's been brought up to use an edit-approval program where new
> >>> accounts would have to get their edits approved if they're new -- this
> >> would
> >>> be in place of semiprotection.
> >> I oppose this. It undermines the assumption of good faith, whereas S-P
> >> is specifically used on pages that have a record of vandalism.
> >>
> >> It makes more sense to expand the protection model to allow for
> >> auto-expiry (as well as automatic labeling of protected pages).
> >> --
> >> Peace & Love,
> >> Erik
> >>
> >> Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
>
> This should be possible using a couple templates and a bot.
> Automatically-expiring templates like [[Template:Prod]] can place an
> article in an "expired" category after awhile, and a bot (or human) can
> go through and unprotect them. The subst:'d semi-protection template
> could take a parameter that determines how quickly the article is placed
> into this category, and I'd imagine that you could use the #time:
> function to give this parameter the same flexibility as the length field
> in [[Special:Blockip]].
>
> I guess it'd be possible for a user to come in later and modify the
> expiration date in the article's source code, but since that would
> require the user to be unaffected by the semi-protection, they shouldn't
> have an incentive to do so. Maybe sysops could compare the original
> semiprotect parameter to the current one when unprotecting the page, in
> case that parameter gets tampered with.
>
> --
> Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
> [[en:User:Mxn]] [[vi:User:Mxn]] [[m:User:Mxn]]
> AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
By the way, I listened twice to the "advertisement" issue (number 3 or
4) and thought it very interesting. I recommand you try it :-)

ant

Andrew Lih wrote:
> As Ilario said, let's try to open our minds a bit and discard the
> baggage from previous  "Wikicouncil" concepts.
>
> I'd also like to offer whatever the WikipediaWeekly
> (http://www.wikipediaweekly.com) podcast/audiocast can help in this
> matter. We've thought for a while a "town hall" live Skypecast might
> be useful for certain issues, with board members and other chapter
> heads taking part. This, and the vision/mission statement drafting,
> might be a good issue to start with. We've already had folks like
> Delphine, Kurt and Jimbo, on the podcast.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
>
>
> On 11/21/06, Ilario Valdelli <valdelli at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Too many words... and too many "unquoted" words. Plz quote.
>>
>>I agree with Anthere. Please extends your mind. For some reality the
>>wikicouncil it's a way to understand other realities...
>>
>>I know that to have a space in Wikipedia people *must* have a space in
>>English Wikipedia, besides English Wikipedia it's 50% of Wiki**** and
>>the Wikicouncil could be the way to understand that we are at crossroad:
>>still remains a localized and focused project... to become an
>>heterogeneous project (not globalized, but heterogeneous).
>>
>>The Wikicouncil could be the way to understand that there are other
>>realities and to offer to the board an ear given to these.
>>
>>Is there a "digital divide" in Wiki*****. Yes, there is and it's could
>>be a big problem. Plz, think about this situation... the special means
>>to go over the "Digital Divide" has got a special "Digital Divide" inside.
>>
>>Crazy situation.
>>
>>Ilario^_^
>>
>>Anthere wrote:
>>
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming#Approach
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>Thanks for not killing ideas in the egg. That's not helpful in the long
>>>run imho.
>>>
>>>Anthere
>>>
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Stan Shebs

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] contents
 under	education/information licenses

body:
David Monniaux wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell a ?crit :
>
>> When I pointed out that material related to the ESA should be Free I
>> wasn't attempting to make some grand argument about freedom, but
>> rather a more pragmatic reflection on the nature of space programs:
>> They aren't in business to generate pretty pictures,
>>
> That's exactly one of the problems. Since their line of work is building
> launchers and the like,
> they've largely off-loaded the tasks of taking pictures and maintaining
> pictures databases to
> external contractors. Also, since their job is not to provide a database
> of pictures free for
> advertisers to use, they buy the rights to these pictures from the
> external contractors only for
> information and education purposes. Buying them for all possible
> commercial uses, even if
> possible, would be more costly and wouldn't be in their scope of work.
>
What are the odds of getting interested Wikipedians in to take the
pictures instead? Contractors cost money, getting pictures taken for
free in exchange for free licensing seems like a better deal for ESA.
Lest one is concerned about amateur-quality work, I suspect that if ESA
were to publicly announce inside access for ten photographers, unpaid
but credited by name, they would have more than enough applications to
be able to accept only the best.

I also think WP could do more to cynically play on European chauvinism
than it has so far. 1/2 :-) A public statement by Jimbo, saying
something like "we will not accept unfree ESA images in WP, and while we
don't want WP to present a US-only view of space exploration, it's up to
the Europeans to fix this", would likely get reported widely, and
hopefully put some pressure on ESA to change what is at best a sloppy
practice.

Stan


subject:
[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of the
	Wikimedia Foundatio

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 11/17/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>OK... except that Erik specifically stated that these mission and
>>vision statements would be the things cited in explaining why WMF
>>would or would not support WikiFoo.
>
>
> Only in a very broad and general way. We want to be careful not to
> exclude too much a priori. But I am personally very much in favor of
> using the word "Knowledge" in the Mission & Vision statements, because
> it is, depending on how we interpret it (and we can argue for an
> interpretation based on the existing projects), already a fairly good
> limitation of scope. Florence has now objected to this word in the
> unstable Mission Statement and replaced it with "content". I still
> haven't seen an adequate explanation why "knowledge" should not be
> used.

I answered here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mission/Unstable#knowledge_under_a_free_license

I have not *now* objected to the use of the word knowledge in the
mission statement. This objection has been raised during the board
retreat, left unsolved at the end of it, and was actually listed as the
things for which no agreement was reached. So, this objection is now
nearly a month old.

One of the arguments you used against the word "content" is that
Stallman did not like the use of this word. I object to the word
knowledge, because I do not think this is what we are doing. We seek to
have all human being knowledgeable (that's definitly our vision), but
knowledge is an unpalpable concept. And we are doing something very
palpable. One of the relevant argument against the use of this word is
that "knowledge" can not be copyrighted, so producing freely-licenced
knowledge makes no sense. My most compelling argument is that
"knowledge" is something personnal. Something different for each person.

I will bold (/me crosses her fingers) and copy here two private
statements I read after the retreat, which have unfortunately not been
posted in public. I hope their authors will be fine with me doing this.
I think their words were wise and should be there.

------------------

Words of wisdom from Ilario

I have seen two or three contradictions during the discussions and I
would clarify them.

1.difference between "content" and "knowledge". I have had a
discussion with Oscar in a dinner but I was not sure about some
points. I have checked and I can write. The difference is not trivial.
If you know philosophy and particularly epistemology
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology] (but you can find more
in-depth informations in gnoseology) you could know that the word
"knowledge" is very complex. If you read particularly the chapter
"truth" in en.wikipedia you see that the knowledge is what you see of
the reality and IT'S THE TRUTH. From Plato to Kant there has been a
long discussion about this problem: "Can a man have the knowledge?"
"Can a man know the reality?". Saying that Wikipedia has the knowledge
we are saying that Wikipedia has the truth, that what you read in
Wikipedia cannot be discussed. It's important to understand the right
position of this word: a man can share knowledge with another man in
Wikipedia or everywhere but the knowledge cannot be "freely licensed"
and the knowledge cannot be provided by Wikipedia because the
knowledge is something personal and complex, if we accept some
positions as Empiricism, or cannot be provided by any human person, if
we accept the Platonism. There has been a long discussion in the
past... if the knowledge is provided by the religion (platonism) or by
the science (empiricism)... we are introducing a third actor:
Wikipedia :)

------------

Words of wisdom from Tim Shell

I spoke very briefly with Erik about this and he began taking me down a
similar path that Ilario followed here.

The term "knowledge" may have any number of esoteric meanings specific
to any number of technical or philosophical schools of thought.
However, 99.9% of the time, when people say knowledge, they do use the
term in one of these esoteric senses.  The word is used commonly to
mean, "something in your head, that you know."

Incorporating the word "knowledge" into a vision statement is a bad
idea, in my opinion, if we are trying to use the term in some esoteric
sense.
We would be implicitly endorsing a position, and we would be stating
something in the vision statement that most people would not fully
understand.

The objection to the use of the word "content" seemed to me to be very
weak.  Jimmy attributed to someone else the opinion that "content"
implied something in a box that you would sell.  This is silly.  You can
talk about the "content of one's character", the "content of a thought",
the "semantic content of a word".  None of this has anything to do with
boxing and selling.

Content in our sense means, basically, "stuff with information content",
or something like that.  This is what people commonly understand it to
mean in similar contexts.  So in my opinion "content" is perfectly good
for our vision statement.

-----------


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] contents under education/information licenses

body:
On 11/21/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> Note that, in the US, NASA, whose photographs are in the public domain,
> is protected from abusive by specific US laws prohibiting misuse of some
> symbols of the US government, including the NASA logo (the same applies
[snip]
> Note also that the Wikimedia Foundation also copyrights its logos in
> order to prevent abuse. We should not be hypocrites and deny to others
> what we do for the same purpose (especially since the Foundation grants
[snip]

As far as I can tell your argument is seriously lacking in internal consistency.

There are two primary areas where I find your argument completely
unconvincing at first glance:

You make an argument that we should permit logos which are encumbered
by copyright related restrictions, because non-copyright methods are
insufficient to protect the logos in some jurisdictions outside of the
US.   However, you fail to describe the nature of this failure and the
jurisdictions where it is material.  Although the law differs from
place to place, trademark is a powerful and well established concept
in most of the places I suspect matter to you.  Without a specific
argument related to the insufficiency of trademark protection outside
of the United States, I can not measure the importance of your
concerns.

> * This would enable us to counter systemic bias ; that is, allow content
> from some providers from countries where "fair use" does not apply (we
> for instance currently totally unbalance the portrayal of space programs
> by having 7000 photos from NASA and hardly any from ESA/CNES).
[snip]

More importantly, in my mind, is that while you might have an argument
related to the protection of logos and identifying marks for the
purpose of avoiding confusion and false associations,  you then take
the unexplained leap to non-identifying images.. Things like
scientific phenomena, rather than logos.

Images of research are best held in the public domain, they are things
which should be "free", as they are the result of the culmination of
work from generations of people.  It would be fundamentally
inconsistent for us to profess a commitment to Free Knowledge and then
endorse discriminatory restrictions on that knowledge.

"You may use this for educational purposes" is a false offer: for what
use is material that you may learn from, but may only put to use so
long as you can sufficiently hide the origins of your knowledge?

So argue to me that we should allow unfreely copyrighted images of
trademarked logos, and I will agree with you, for I support that
policy on the English Wikipedia (where such logos are used as 'fair
use' consistent with both US code and with established public
practices).   But I can not see how you can paint informative content
with the same broad brush.

If the European Space agency is so paranoid and so afraid to share,
that they will adopt a copyright policy which keeps their work from
the public eye then it is by their own choice.   The historical memory
of man is not always kind to those who wish to shroud their work in
secrecy, and no policy of Wikimedias will change that.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] contents under
	education/information licenses


list: wikien-l

from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as plot element

body:
The thrilling story of Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Captured Koala:
http://www.adamcadre.ac/content/brown/

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


body:
On 11/21/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
[snip]
> No.
> I'm discussing images of satellites, space launchers, astronauts, inside
> of spacecraft, and other similar content that carries the image of the
> launching institution.

Then why do you cite identifying marks, and our handling of our own
logos as justification for your arguments?

You seemed to be arguing that there was a material difference between
US protection for the purpose of mischaracterization and the
protection provided in Europe. But I don't see how that would at all
apply to pictures of spacecraft. (...and in fact I feel fairly
confident that the protection provided in the EU in most cases is not
only more comprehensive than the US protection, but is more
comprehensive to the point of obnoxiousness in some instances, but I
don't think we even need to get into that argument)

> Research images (e.g. images of phenomena) are another issue. However,
> ESA does not own the copyright to such images ; because of ESA's nature
> as a consortium, images from such or such instrument may be copyrighted
> by whichever institute provided the instrument.
> You will learn more about it by reading m:ESA_images

Much (a majority? I think so, but I don't have a cite... )of NASA's
work is executed by a consortium of contractors called "USA" you can
read more about it at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Space_Alliance .

NASA contracts are negotiated so that the work of these contractors
can be released as public domain. Perhaps the ESA could learn a thing
or two from us greedy Americans who insist that our public money be
spent to create public resources. ;)

> > "You may use this for educational purposes" is a false offer: for what
> > use is material that you may learn from, but may only put to use so
> > long as you can sufficiently hide the origins of your knowledge?
> I don't see what you mean. Such material could be used for any purposes
> of information or education, including informing other people, as
> opposed to, say, doing advertisements for a supermarket chain or a
> politician.

You're producing a strawman, ... I did too.. The problem with strawman
arguments is that they aren't all that informative.

"For educational use" has a lot of problems. It's not possible to
define "educational use" in a way which achieves your desired outcome
without also impeding a lot of other uses which you would probably
agree should not be denied.

> There's apparently a big misunderstanding here ; please consider reading
> m:ESA_images .

I have read it, and the biggest misunderstanding I see here is a
mistaken idea the the situation in the US is different from the rest
of the world.

In any case, the proposal the ESA opt-in for free images will increase
the pool of free images available, and I strongly believe a sudden
loss of commitment to free content on our part will remove the
incentive.


body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:
> On 11/21/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
>> What are the odds of getting interested Wikipedians in to take the
>> pictures instead? Contractors cost money, getting pictures taken for
>> free in exchange for free licensing seems like a better deal for ESA.
>> Lest one is concerned about amateur-quality work, I suspect that if ESA
>> were to publicly announce inside access for ten photographers, unpaid
>> but credited by name, they would have more than enough applications to
>> be able to accept only the best.
>>
>
> Right, I am not soooo sure that the ESA (or any other organisation,
> NASA included, for that matter) will let any random Wikipedian hop on
> the next satellite to take pictures of <insert name of planet here>.
> I'd love too, but hey, I don't think this is going to happen any time
> soon.
>
But those external contractors aren't on the satellite either - I
suppose there is an interesting legal question as to ownership of the
raw bits coming from an onboard camera, vs the final processed image. My
guess is that it simply may not have occurred to anyone in the
bureaucracy that there might be plenty of talented people who could do
the processing themselves, in much the same way that open-source
software projects, SETI at home, etc, are already doing successfully.
> I believe you will also understand the importance of monitoring what
> pictures get in and out concerning satellites, space shuttles and
> other highly technological objects.
>
You mean to filter out the photos of alien spacecraft? :-)
>> I also think WP could do more to cynically play on European chauvinism
>> than it has so far. 1/2 :-) A public statement by Jimbo, saying
>> something like "we will not accept unfree ESA images in WP, and while we
>> don't want WP to present a US-only view of space exploration, it's up to
>> the Europeans to fix this", would likely get reported widely, and
>> hopefully put some pressure on ESA to change what is at best a sloppy
>> practice.
>>
>
> Let us not jump to conclusions too fast here. :-)
> What you call "European chauvinism" I will rather call "lack of
> means", "lack of human ressources to write the right contracts with
> the n number of national laws involved in the launching of this or
> that satellite and the building of this or that camera" etc. There are
> reasons for the ESA and other organisations not being able to release
> their pictures under a free license and they go far beyond a manichean
> "good people who release in the public domain what they produce with
> public money" vs "bad people who want to keep stuff for themselves". I
> don't think "pressure" as you put it, is the way to go.
>
Certainly there are plenty of cultural and historical issues involved.
The PD-ness of the US govt material has always seemed to me a little bit
accidental, starting from the logical principle of not making taxpayers
pay twice for things they already bought, but it they had really thought
through all the possible consequences, they might have introduced some
kind of a special license at some point. But the ESA really does risk
their legacy vanishing in the same way that much copyrighted material
from the 20th century is vanishing - would European taxpayers be OK with
that if they knew it was going on?
>
> Now let me try and shift the debate a little here. Let us consider
> that the ESA, or whatever other organisation, comes up with a licence
> of their own. Let us imagine they allow free use of their images (in
> our free sense) *except* for political propaganda. Would that in any
> way be an acceptable thing to go by? Or is that definitely something
> we can't accept? It's a real question, I have no real opinion about
> this.
>
An interesting point! I think you'd have a tough time bounding
"political propaganda" in a globally-satisfactory way. After all, in the
US almost any climatological or meteorological data is now being
employed in the intense political debate on global warming. Even the
most evenhanded of WP articles on the subject is accused of promoting
one or another agenda, so with an ESA limitation on political
propaganda, satellite-produced maps of ocean temperature and such would
have to come from NASA - and in these partisan days, would you want to
trust them as a sole source?

Free licenses generally steer clear of trying to place limits on the
purpose of an image's use, because it's just so hard to define precisely.
> What I understand David was trying to say here is that maybe there is
> a mid-term agreement that can be reached, somewhere along the path.
> Are the Organisation X images worth us being just a tad less free (no
> political use of the images), are they not? It's a difficult question,
> but one that is worth debating.
>
I'm a little skeptical of the interim agreement idea, because that's
exactly how we got so infested with bogus fair use images. The original
"Salinger is too hard to get a photo of" policy somehow got twisted into
acceptance of unfree high school photos because the uploader was too
lazy to go outside and take a picture with his camera phone - and now
anybody enforcing the original policy is met with howls and wailing and
predictions of doom.

A fun idea might be to accept them for one year on a trial basis.  If
the ESA bureaucracy hasn't made any visible effort on their side in that
time, do a mass-deletion.

Stan


body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:
> My take is that these organisations need to be taught that it's better
> to make a licence with two exceptions (advertisement and political
> purposes, for example) rather than try the broader and anyway, in my
> opinion, non enforceable way of "educational and informational use
> only". And I may be dreaming, but I am pretty sure that with time and
> patience we can bring these organisations to something like that and
> end up with free-er images and material than an "educational use only"
> type thing.
>
One thing I wonder - if US govt images are PD, then theoretically they
could be misused for advertising or political purposes; but does that
actually happen now? Are we talking about neo-Nazis using the "big blue
marble" Apollo photos in their propaganda, or what?

Stan


from_name: Sean Black

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rethinking Fictional Topics

body:
The problem is that this is, yet again, being framed in the most
unproductive way possible, by those who have little to no knowledge on
the way these editors think and the way these articles tend to work.
If you did, you'd realise that the problem with so-called
"in-universe" information is not the information itself, but the tone.
You wouldn't bat an eye if it was written from the proper persepctive
... but instead of attempting to spearhead a campaign of rewriting
articles, which would be rather simple with a little research and a
little work, the goal is to get rid of them and start anew.

The point of Wikia (and I speak as a bureaucrat on one and the founder
of another, both based on a fictional universe) is less to give an
"in-universe" tone (not all "fans" are droolingly obsessed with
fictional details, despite the way you want to frame the issue) than
it is to give them an outlet for /detail/ not appropriate for a
general encyclopedia. Granted, the tone may vary amongst articles
(Memory-Alpha has templates for this), but it's not the main focus.

In essence, I suppose the point is that, yes, articles on fictional
characters and the like need to have analysis and context, etc. but
that without "in-universe" information, that analysis and context is
meaningless and valueless.

~~ Sean


subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] contents under
	education/information licenses

body:
On 11/21/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
[snip]
> There's apparently a big misunderstanding here ; please consider reading
> m:ESA_images .

I responded to your in depth on wikipedia-l, hopefully to reduce the
forest fire...

I wanted to comment publicly, however, that I think it is very unfair
of you to respond twice to me... One, your public reply, is more
friendly and the second your private reply far more aggressive.

I would not deny you the opportunity to respond with at least as much
intensity as I directed towards you, but if you maintain politeness in
public while making personal attacks my response will be to simply
begin forwarding your private messages to the list(s) prior to reading
them so the other parties will not fault me for being the more
aggressive party in the discussion.

Allow me to apologise for jumping right in with strong words after
your first message.  I understand this is a matter which you have
spent much on, and I do appreciate much of the work you have done.  I
hope you can understand why I might respond harshly to someone I've
previously debated on the importance of keeping our content free, when
he posts to the lists making what I saw to be a terribly unfair
argument.

Do you agree that it is unfair to compare the protection of our
trademarked logo to images of astronauts at work?

Do you agree that it is unfair to claim that the ESA is different from
NASA because the ESA uses contractors, when NASA also extensively uses
contractors?


from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Foundation-l] problem page on the ar: wikipedia

body:
The Foundation has received a complaint about the page on homosexuality
on the Wikipedia in Arabic. According to the person who complained, as
well as to people who ran the article through translators, the article
contains heavily jugmental assertions.

This is not the first time that we received complaints about such kind
of judgmental content based on cultural or religious norms ; I think we
also got similar complaints about the Yiddish Wikipedia.

In these cases, there are common traits :
* The bias expressed arises from the dominant culture of the people who
speak the language and thus get on the wiki. (Arabic tends to be spoken
in Muslim countries ; Yiddish tends to be spoken in Orthodox Askhenazi
Jew communities ; both of these religions condemn homosexuality.)
* The wiki communities are small.
* Very few people, or even none, at the Foundation or on OTRS (the email
processing system) read the said languages.

We also seem to have similar issues with e.g. regional languages or
languages from small countries with strong nationalism issue.

Your suggestions? It's hard to fix an article whose language we don't speak.

-- DM

The URL is:
 http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%AB%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9

 The article, or parts of the article clearly mentions that homosexuality
 causes AIDS, and causes many more medical problems.
 It also mentions that psychologists in the "Western World" found a cure
 homosexuality, which I take as hint to homosexuality being a disease.

 The article goes even further as to mention what Islam's view on
 homosexuality is and mentions that Homosexuals should be killed
according to
 the Islam Prophet.
 The rest of the article is full of wrong definitions and incorrect
 information but on a more acceptable level.


body:
David Monniaux wrote:
> Stan Shebs a ?crit :
>
>> One thing I wonder - if US govt images are PD, then theoretically they
>> could be misused for advertising or political purposes; but does that
>> actually happen now? Are we talking about neo-Nazis using the "big blue
>> marble" Apollo photos in their propaganda, or what?
>>
>
> No. Where did you fish this neo-Nazi idea? Reality is far more prosaic.
>
> We're talking of Mr Jean Dupont, member of Parliament from a pro-Europe
> party, waging a reelection campaign on a theme of "with Europe, we go
> beyond" using photos of ESA rockets, and ESA getting an angry complaint
> from Dupont's euroskeptic opponent and his party.
> (Apparently, this has happened, and of course they were at least able to
> say that this happened in violation of their policies. It would be more
> difficult for them to deal with people acting within their policies.)
>
Heh, clearly a cultural divide - somebody making that kind of complaint
in the US would be regarded as a lunatic. We stick to weightier issues,
like what the word "macaca" might mean. :-)
> Similarly, if a supermarket chain uses photographs of a spacecraft, be
> sure that there will be complaints that the agency favors such or such
> company.
>
> The big problem is that, as things are now, if A uses photos from B in
> an advertisement, it is generally interpreted as B endorsing A.
>
That's really a big difference in attitude, and helps explain some of
the confusion in this discussion. In any randomly-chosen US newspaper,
if you looked through all the ads, chances are you'd find at least one
using a NASA image, and it wouldn't occur to anyone to think of it as
endorsement. Those images are simply part of the library of stock
imagery stitched into the overall design.

Stan


body:
On 11/21/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
[snip]
> Most people we're dealing with in the "real world" don't know what "free" as in "free software means".
> What we propose to them is radically outside their frame of mind.
[snip]

But I'm talking to *you* and the members of the various lists
copied...  Not to the general public, I would use different language
and perhaps a different argument altogether with a differing audience.

When I pointed out that material related to the ESA should be Free I
wasn't attempting to make some grand argument about freedom, but
rather a more pragmatic reflection on the nature of space programs:
They aren't in business to generate pretty pictures, their work is
done (largely) with public monies, and as part of science the entire
world should be able to learn and benefit from their work in many ways
without discrimination.  This is the same line of thinking which has
inspired statements like Jimmy's ten things that should be free
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_movement#Wikimedia which,
btw, is an article that needs help.. that whole section is out of
place).

I would have elaborated more on my perspective, but from prior
discussions with you I didn't expect to sway you... rather I just
wanted to respond quickly before people were swayed by your
comparisons of logos to informative images, and claims that the US is
worlds apart from the rest of the world.

...I was honestly quite insulted by your off-list email, but I
understand what drove it, and I forgive you.

Thanks


subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] contents
	under	education/information licenses

body:
On 11/21/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
[snip]
> Most people we're dealing with in the "real world" don't know what "free" as in "free software means".
> What we propose to them is radically outside their frame of mind.
[snip]

But I'm talking to *you* and the members of the various lists
copied...  Not to the general public, I would use different language
and perhaps a different argument altogether with a differing audience.

When I pointed out that material related to the ESA should be Free I
wasn't attempting to make some grand argument about freedom, but
rather a more pragmatic reflection on the nature of space programs:
They aren't in business to generate pretty pictures, their work is
done (largely) with public monies, and as part of science the entire
world should be able to learn and benefit from their work in many ways
without discrimination.  This is the same line of thinking which has
inspired statements like Jimmy's ten things that should be free
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Culture_movement#Wikimedia which,
btw, is an article that needs help.. that whole section is out of
place).

I would have elaborated more on my perspective, but from prior
discussions with you I didn't expect to sway you... rather I just
wanted to respond quickly before people were swayed by your
comparisons of logos to informative images, and claims that the US is
worlds apart from the rest of the world.

...I was honestly quite insulted by your off-list email, but I
understand what drove it, and I forgive you.

Thanks
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 21/11/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
>
>
>> We're talking of Mr Jean Dupont, member of Parliament from a pro-Europe
>> party, waging a reelection campaign on a theme of "with Europe, we go
>> beyond" using photos of ESA rockets, and ESA getting an angry complaint
>> from Dupont's euroskeptic opponent and his party.
>> (Apparently, this has happened, and of course they were at least able to
>> say that this happened in violation of their policies. It would be more
>> difficult for them to deal with people acting within their policies.)
>>
>
>
> So the problem here is that the euroskeptic opponent thinks this is
> ESA's problem, and that ESA feels it has to go along with this idea.
> That is: the problem you're describing is local politics rather than
> that open content licences are problematic.
>
The significant point is that the complaint was taken seriously by
anybody at all. If somebody in the US complained about a NASA photo in a
supermarket ad, even the most timid NASA bureaucrat would feel safe in
showing the letter around the office for a laugh, and then pitching it
into the trash. The bureaucrat knows that even if the complainer somehow
got the attention of a news reporter, it would be for a segment on all
the nutjobs who waste NASA's time.

Stan


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Hello
>
> Can someone make for the board a *short* and efficient summary of the
> whole mo.wikipedia.org situation ?
> Please, someone near-neutral, in an npov manner ?
>
> Thanks
>
> Ant
>
>
>
As an outsider to this argument, I know little other than what I have
read on the mailing list and in articles, so I apologise in advance for
any inaccuracies, but I think it goes something like this:

To a close approximation, Moldovan == Romanian, but written in Cyrillic,
and is used in Moldova and Transnistria, which border Romania, and are
closely historically and culturally related.  There are considerably
fewer mo: speakers (3.4 M in Rep. Moldova, 0.5M in Transnistria) than
ro: speakers (24 M).

See [[Moldovan language]] for details.

However: Romanians have had an unhappy history with all things Russian
(see [[History of Romania]]) and the historically-recent carving up of
the [[Principality of Moldavia]], and many feel _very_ strongly, for
political, historical, and cultural reasons that they don't want to have
_anything_ to do with  the use of Cyrillic to write Romanian, to the
point that they took the Cyrillic character off the Wikipedia globe in
the logo for the ro: Wikipedia.

This is a _major_ nationalist issue for many Romanians. So, politics and
script system appear to be very tightly coupled.

There only seem to be three practical ways forward:

1 Maintain the status quo, and don't create an mo: Wikipedia

2 Create a separate mo: Wikipedia in Cyrillic, effectively duplicating
the ro: Wikipedia in a different script.

3 Two front ends, one database. Add dual-script interface support to the
ro: Wikipedia, but: unlike with the zh: Wikipedia, a dual-script
interface within a single domain will _not_ appeal to those who are
against having even a single Cyrillic letter on the logo, so there will
have to be two domains, ro: and mo:, the former with a Latin-only
interface and article display, and the latter with either Cyrillic-only
or dual-script support, both using the same back-end database, which
must, I believe, remain entirely Latin-based for technical, historical,
and diplomatic reasons.

My personal preference is option 3, since option 1 disenfranchises
almost 4 million people, and option 2 effectively forks the ro:
Wikipedia, and will in any case most likely simply be filled up with
machine-transliterated articles from ro:

However, to implement option 3, there will need to be not only a lot of
consensus-building, but also the implementation of a reliable,
round-trippable,  Latin <-> Cyrillic transliteration system for
Romanian, which does not yet exist. There are several options which are
_nearly_ workable, but work would be needed to make this happen, and
would require expertise from both the mo: and ro: communities.

Whichever option you choose, you will make some people _very_ unhappy.

-- Neil


subject: [Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia


subject: [Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia

body:
Hello

Can someone make for the board a *short* and efficient summary of the
whole mo.wikipedia.org situation ?
Please, someone near-neutral, in an npov manner ?

Thanks

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Foundation-l] promotion of free licenses

body:
On Nov 21, 2006, at 10:19 AM, David Monniaux wrote:

> We have a problem getting people to accept free licenses. One of the
> issues is that, at least in some countries, conditions stating that
> the
> authors allows any usage of his image for any duration are ruled
> illegal
> by courts (should the author complain), as abusive clauses. The
> idea is
> to protect authors from abuse by greedy publishers. I've even heard
> some
> lawyer from a photographers' society explaining to me that free
> licenses
> (including Creative Commons etc.) where thus illegal.
>
> Lately, in a private email, Greg Maxwell made a remark that I had made
> in other circumstances, that is
>
> For example, surely the 'share alike' nature of copyleft contracts
> prevents the contracts from being considered unconscionable. Such
> licenses would be acceptable for our purposes.
>
> Indeed, that's one point that we may argue: with "sharealike"
> licenses,
> the authors do not cede all rights with no compensation or insurance;
> they rather have strong guarantees that uses of their work will not
> stray from their intent of distribution of free content.
>
> That's one argument one may want to pursue when contacting sources.

It might be helpful if it could be shown that the creator received
something in return for their "free" license. We could, for example,
offer to publish their work on a top 20 website, thus assuring wide
distribution of their work. This actually makes sense as it creates a
potential market for their other work, should they try to sell it.

Fred


from_name: Marco Chiesa

subject: [Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia

body:
Neil Harris wrote:

>Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>Hello
>>
>>Can someone make for the board a *short* and efficient summary of the
>>whole mo.wikipedia.org situation ?
>>Please, someone near-neutral, in an npov manner ?
>>
>>Thanks
>>
>>Ant
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>As an outsider to this argument, I know little other than what I have
>read on the mailing list and in articles, so I apologise in advance for
>any inaccuracies, but I think it goes something like this:
>
>To a close approximation, Moldovan == Romanian, but written in Cyrillic,
>and is used in Moldova and Transnistria, which border Romania, and are
>closely historically and culturally related.  There are considerably
>fewer mo: speakers (3.4 M in Rep. Moldova, 0.5M in Transnistria) than
>ro: speakers (24 M).
>
>See [[Moldovan language]] for details.
>
>

As far I understand: Moldovan is written in Cyrillic only in
Transnistria, while the rest of Moldova switched to the Latin script
after gaining independence from the USSR; the Moldovan government states
that the official language is called Moldovan, and it's the same
language both in Moldova and Transnistria. Therefore, most of  the
Moldovan-speaking people have used Latin script for at least 15 years.
For this reason, they don't think it is correct that the wikipedia
called Moldovan uses Cyrillic. I understand they are ok to say Moldovan
and Rumanian are the same language.

Marco (Cruccone)


subject: [Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia


from_name: Martin Peeks

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as plot element

body:
Haha - that's great!

>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-
>  bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Ryan Wetherell
>  Sent: 21 November 2006 11:34
>  To: English Wikipedia
>  Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as plot element
>
>  That is most excellent!
>
>  On 11/21/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>  > The thrilling story of Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Captured
>  Koala:
>  > http://www.adamcadre.ac/content/brown/
>  >
>  > --
>  > Earle Martin
>  >             http://downlode.org/
>  > http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
>  > _______________________________________________
>  > WikiEN-l mailing list
>  > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>  > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>  > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>  >
>
>
>  --
>  Who knows when we shall meet again (if ever)?
>  But time keeps flowin' like a river, to the sea...
>  _______________________________________________
>  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: SonOfYoungwood at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rethinking Fictional Topics

body:
In a message dated 11/16/2006 4:57:36 PM Central Standard Time,
snowspinner at gmail.com writes:

I think  this misunderstands the nature of the dispute. It is not, I
think, people  who want to contribute in-universe stuff and people who
don't. It's a  dispute between people who think that in-universe stuff
is important to  have and people who don't. I suspect that if we give a
clear indication of  where in-universe material should go, people who
are knowledgeable about  fictional universes will start to offer their
in-universe material to  fan-run projects, and their out-of-universe
material to  Wikipedia.

Let's remember that there has to be in-universe overviews on  Wikipedia, such
as plot synopsis and whatnot. I feel that solid models are  [[Final Fantasy
VIII]], [[Jabba the Hutt]], and so on.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as plot element

body:
On 21/11/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:

> The thrilling story of Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Captured Koala:
> http://www.adamcadre.ac/content/brown/

Bah, done long before!

    http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Uncyclopedia_Brown

- d.


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Making it easier for the public to help out

body:
On 21/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/20/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Mmmh. I'm much more in favour of a solution that *isn't* {{sofixit}} -
> > this is not just for people who don't realise they can edit, it's also
> > for the substantial number of people who don't *want* to, but would
> > vaguely like to help in some way*.
>
> Well put.

We get an awful lot of emails which say "you guys are the best thing
since sliced bread, and I love you all dearly, it's wonderful that
anyone can edit... er, please fix the following typo for me since I'm
feart."

It's hard to kick that kind of person with {{sofixit}} ;-)

> > a) We make this an email-form. It gets routed straight to some kind of
> > OTRS-like ticket system, which has fairly liberal access given to it -
> > the point here isn't to make it "private", it's to make it easy to see
> > what's been handled and when a backlog builds up.
>
> Every second time I hear the word OTRS it's "OTRS is totally
> overloaded, is there some way of taking the pressure off?" My
> preferred solution (I think I mentioned it earlier) would be to place
> a message on the talk page, and to link to it from some centralised
> page. If done carefully, that centralised page could show which items
> still need to be addressed. Bearing in mind of course that if a talk
> page message *doesn't* get addressed immediately, it's not the end of
> the world, it happens frequently as it is.

When I say OTRS-like it's deliberate - this isn't going to be bolted
on to the existing system for handling @wikimedia.org emails, but
rather a seperate handling system which uses the same (or similar)
software and concepts. Basically, just something that lets us see
what's open, what's closed, what's being handled.

A monitored category, with talk-page tags, would probably work as well
for this, if a few people take it under their wing. Even if all we do
is tag it for cleanup etc, at least it means there are "this article
is Really Crappy" warnings on it for any future readers.

In the long run, I honestly see this taking pressure off main-OTRS -
it means that the people who will jump through the extra hoop or three
to contact us directly are likely to be those with a problem more
significant that "OMG someone vandalised this page".

> > c) The same as b), except it makes some kind of "mask account" do it,
> > rather than just the edit being treated as coming from the reader -
> > who, after all, may be banned unknown to themselves. It also ensures
> > anonymity of flaggin, which may be seen as desirable.
>
> Is anonymity desirable here? Why?

I feel it would be nice, in many ways; logging IP addresses is
defensible for contributions, but for something as trivial as a
critical comment... IMO it's overkill. YMMV.

An additional benefit of the "single flagging account" is that we can
trivially go back and see how the system is being used, just by
looking at the contributions of that single "user".

> > These may require some kind of not-quite-MediaWiki implementation, but
> > that would in some ways be good - we want this to be free of some of
> > the mediawiki constraints, like IP-blocking and so forth.
>
> What if someone uses this new mechanism to avoid their IP block and be
> a pain? How would we stop them?

*shrug* All they're able to do is leave ranty screeds on talkpages. We
can just dump those if it gets abused.

I do honestly feel that preventing blocks from governing this gives us
a net benefit - sure, we'll get some abuse, but we'll also get the
opportunity for a lot of users who would otherwise be unable to
participate to leave comments. (Think of AOL users, or those behind
school rangeblocks, etc etc)

> > I'm personally quite taken by a), since it would seem to scale better
> > than a single page, but it has the detriment fewer people would handle
> > it. On the other hand, it would ensure some level of privacy if, eg,
>
> If someone is flagging a specific problem with article X, it doesn't
> seem to make sense to me to send it only to a central repository.
> Talk:X very much seems the right place, if not the only place.

Ask yourself this: would it have worked for Siegenthaler, or for some
random hoax article in a walled garden? Talk-and-categorising would
work, I suppose - same effective result as central flagging.

> > people started leaving personal info in their messages.
>
> Yeah, that would be a problem. A sufficiently loud warning "Please do
> *not* leave any contact information here - your message will be made
> public." should be able to cover that.

How about "this article is about me, and..." cases?

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


from_name: geni

subject:
[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of the
	Wikimedia Foundation

body:
On 11/20/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Utterly and totally. I really don't see a case for having removed it at all.
>

Forces us to do original reseach in defineing what is a language and
in some cases creating a written script.

--
geni


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia

body:
Anthere schreef:
> Hello
>
> Can someone make for the board a *short* and efficient summary of the
> whole mo.wikipedia.org situation ?
> Please, someone near-neutral, in an npov manner ?
>
> Thanks
>
> Ant
Hoi,
As I can not edit on the Moldovan, the Romanian or any of the Balkan
Wikipedias but as I do have an interest in languages and as I have spend
a considerable amount of time trying to understand what the issues are.
I am happy to oblige.

As a language Moldovan is considered by linguists to be the same as
Romanian. The Romanian language is written in the Latin script. In the
days of the USSR, Moldova used to be a USSR republic and has since
become an independent nation. However, a small part, Transnistria, broke
away from Moldova and declared itself independent in 1990. There has
been a war between Moldova and Transnistria until a cease fire was
reached in 1992. Forces of the 18th Russian army fought on the side of
Transnistria.

Transnistria uses the Cyrillic script, Moldova the Latin script and as
part of the conflict, they both declared the use of script used by the
others illegal. The Wikipedia articles says: "The problem of the
official language in the MSSR <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSSR> had
become a Gordian knot <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordian_knot>, being
exaggerated and, perhaps, intentionally politicized. Some described the
language laws as "discriminatory" and criticized their rapid
implementation. Others, on the contrary, complained the laws were not
followed."

The problem for wikipedia is that we suffer the brunt of extremists of
both sides. People who will do whatever to keep their project alive and
people who will do whatever to kill off the http://mo.wikipedia.org  The
mo.wikipedia is traumatised by a lack of admins fighting spam and
vandalism and of vilification of people who want to create a project
that is in Cyrillic.

The mo.wikipedia can not at present function normally; their main page
stigmatises the effort and has people go to the http://ro.wikipedia.org.
There are people of other Wikipedia projects that vandalise each other
projects in the name of their "good" cause. Given that Wikipedia stands
for a Neutral Point Of View these people are all horribly wrong and
given these actions they cannot be trusted to bring a NPOV in their own
language either.

 From a language point of view, it would be best to come to one project,
a project where the Moldovan orthography both in the Latin and the
Cyrillic script is accepted. It is extremely likely that both a Moldovan
orthography and a Cyrillic script for this language will be supported by
the ISO in the future. Imho it will need a roadmap with clear
deliverables to both parties to come to such a situation.

Thanks,
     GerardM

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldova
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transnistria
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Transnistria


subject: [Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia


body:
Mohamed Ibrahim wrote:
> Hello all,
> I've been reading this mailing list for some time now but this's my first
> message actually.
> About the issue we have here, I've reviewed the article now and it does has
> some biased statements.
> the "cure of Homosexuality" section is added directly from an Arabic site
> where someone saying he is a homosexual and asking for help to stop
> homosexuality, then a doctor replies with what's written in the Wikipedia
> page section about a research done (no references to that research) showing
> some statistics about this topic, a template has been added now to put more
> references to this particular part.
>
> The "homosexuality in Islam" section was saying that "homosexuality causes
> AIDS as all other kinds of sexual activities do", I removed this part as
> it's not appropriate here, needs a seperate section about medical and
> biological effects of homosexuality the whole section now is rephrased and
> included in "homosexuality in religions" section, and it should be fine by
> now. I wish that the complainer to the foundation begin editing to improve
> the article.
>
> I see the problem is the same as in larger wikipedias, but in larger ones
> there're alot of people who edit the article
> and there're much more possibity of NPOV than in smaller ones like Arabic.
> active people are really few and you don't expect that all the articles are
> good ones in current time, on the other hand we do have excellent neutral
> articles written about "hot topics" in Muslim and Arabic communities like
> "Atheism[1], Holocaust[2], War on terrorism[3], Freemasonry[4], Freedom of
> speech[5]" and many more.
>
> what I'm trying to say that taking into consideration the number of people
> working on the project, I think we've done a good job since we've started
> back in 2003.
> You can't judge the whole thing through some biased articles, the wiki
> culture is not yet well-known through the Arab world and when someone comes
> to write in Wikipedia, they think it's some kind of a forum and writes his
> own opinion, but I'm optimistic about the future, we're growing in the
> number of "active" wikipedians. Also here in Egypt specifically we're trying
> to build-up Egyptian Wiki community which began actions since the bid for
> Wikimania Alexandria 2007, and then now preparing other events to organize.
>
> Best Regards,
> Mido, sysop on Arabic Wikipedia

Hello,

I do not think he was implying that the content was overall not good.
All projects have started small and we all met this situation where an
article was biased but there were few editors and not enough
knowledgeable on the topic. This is just part of growing, that's fine.

I think the main issue is rather this one. People are writing to otrs
about issues on some projects with a language no one at otrs knows
enough to even look at the article or conflict or whatever.

David could forward the email to your mailing list (presumably wikiar-l
exists) or post it on your pump (though it is really really hard when
you really do not know the language). However, there is a policy at
otrs: messages received are considered private. We can not post them
publicly.

So, David, or others, just do not know what to do with these emails and
those requests.

Cheers

Anthere

> 1. http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A5%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%A7%D8%AF
> 2.
> http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%87%D9%88%D9%84%D9%88%D9%83%D9%88%D8%B3%D8%AA
> 3.
> http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%B1%D8%A8_%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B1%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%A8
> 4. http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%88%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A9
> 5.
> http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%AD%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A3%D9%8A_%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B9%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%B1
>
> On 11/21/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
>
>>The Foundation has received a complaint about the page on homosexuality
>>on the Wikipedia in Arabic. According to the person who complained, as
>>well as to people who ran the article through translators, the article
>>contains heavily jugmental assertions.
>>
>>This is not the first time that we received complaints about such kind
>>of judgmental content based on cultural or religious norms ; I think we
>>also got similar complaints about the Yiddish Wikipedia.
>>
>>In these cases, there are common traits :
>>* The bias expressed arises from the dominant culture of the people who
>>speak the language and thus get on the wiki. (Arabic tends to be spoken
>>in Muslim countries ; Yiddish tends to be spoken in Orthodox Askhenazi
>>Jew communities ; both of these religions condemn homosexuality.)
>>* The wiki communities are small.
>>* Very few people, or even none, at the Foundation or on OTRS (the email
>>processing system) read the said languages.
>>
>>We also seem to have similar issues with e.g. regional languages or
>>languages from small countries with strong nationalism issue.
>>
>>Your suggestions? It's hard to fix an article whose language we don't
>>speak.
>>
>>-- DM
>>
>>
>>The URL is:
>>http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%AB%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9
>>
>>The article, or parts of the article clearly mentions that homosexuality
>>causes AIDS, and causes many more medical problems.
>>It also mentions that psychologists in the "Western World" found a cure
>>homosexuality, which I take as hint to homosexuality being a disease.
>>
>>The article goes even further as to mention what Islam's view on
>>homosexuality is and mentions that Homosexuals should be killed
>>according to
>>the Islam Prophet.
>>The rest of the article is full of wrong definitions and incorrect
>>information but on a more acceptable level.
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>


body:
On 11/21/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Some of our licenses (the one I use, for example) also add conditions
> (CC-BY-SA - share alike is a pretty drastic condition, when you think
> about it).

I think its important to carefully consider the difference between
"use" limitations and "redistribution" limitations. They are different
things.

> One of their condition is that those images can't be used for
> political propaganda, for example.

How would this materially differ from a restriction that the work
could not be used by the military or by anyone who builds weapons?

Or a restriction that the work couldn't be used by religious institutions?
...or a restriction that it couldn't be used to advocate democracy?

To the extent that political propaganda, military machinery, religion,
or democracy are all legal and accepted parts of our societies we can
conclude that they are all valid pursuits of man.

(here I wrote a long essay on our duty to the public as part of our
mission of facilitating the sharing of knowledge, but I removed it
because it was too far offtopic and would be better covered separately
at a later time)

[snip]
> of their own. Let us imagine they allow free use of their images (in
> our free sense) *except* for political propaganda.

Is it really the case that a narrow prohibition on political
propaganda is *all* they would want?

I ask this because often we have run into people who have said they
would only release under -ND because they had a concern that
downstream users might modify the work and misrepresent them.

I can sympathize with this concern but I offer that the CC-By (and
-SA) licenses contain a clause which allows the author to, as his
option and at any time, demand any downstream user *not* provide
attribution if he doesn't want to be associated with them or their
work.. and that the author could reasonably make the request in
advance. I also offer that almost every country has both fraud and
defamation laws which provide better protection than copyright can,
and that in cases of obviously evil use a court could declare a
release under a free license to be an unconscionable agreement and
nullify it...

... so I offer these things, only to find out that many people who
have claimed to be concerned about harm to their reputation are
actually concerned about things far broader and more difficult.

> Would that in any
> way be an acceptable thing to go by? Or is that definitely something
> we can't accept? It's a real question, I have no real opinion about
> this.

I think we need to be even more specific before we can really discuss
it. This is an area where the details matter a lot.

The idea of discriminating based on use strikes me as terribly bad
from a number of different angles.

Exactly what are they trying to prevent?  It's very important..

For example, lets imagine that their only concern is that a politician
will take credit for their work in their political advertisement.   If
this is really the case, then there situation is not so different from
an author of Free Content who really doesn't want a commercial
redistributor hiding the fact that the work was given freely to the
public.  ...
Both can be solved through similar means: A more aggressive
attribution or license notice requirement.

Would I support a license with a more aggressive attribution or
license notice requirement?  I already do...  Although I get a lot of
flack on our projects by releasing my images under the GFDL-1.2 except
by exception.

So if thats really their point, I think we could find an easy solution
through means which differ from a direct exclusion of certain natures
of use.

Now, lets imaging another possibility: Lets imagine that they don't
want their images used in political ads because they are concerned
about criticism. Perhaps the politician might show photographs of
gold-plated hammers and point out overspending.

Would I support a license which enabled this sort of prohibition?
*Not* *on* *your* *life*.

If thats really what they wanted, however, they probably wouldn't
settle on an agreement that would only limit politicians... it would
seem logical to try to limit us as well.

[snip]
> is that what they "want to do" can easily be changed, by patient,
> pedagogic and comprehensive explanations. What they "can do" is then
> another story altogether.

While I agree with the concept of "can do" and "want to do", and have
personally advocated a soft interpretation of "replicable" and
"non-replicable" as the basis for fair use decisions on enwiki... We
need to keep in mind that in this case 'can do' and 'want to do'  only
differ by how high we're calling... One man's "can't" is his bosses
"don't want". So the difference is quantitative (how much work to
change the policy) more than qualitative.

> What I understand David was trying to say here is that maybe there is
> a mid-term agreement that can be reached, somewhere along the path.
> Are the Organisation X images worth us being just a tad less free (no
> political use of the images), are they not? It's a difficult question,
> but one that is worth debating.

If restriction X is okay, we should go with it.. and open it to
everyone.. After all, it's okay.
If the restriction is not okay, taking it will cause harm... it will
remove our leverage. We have leverage today, and it's only growing.

> One thing I am certain of is that saying "Organisation X must change
> their ways" is definitely not the right answer. I'd much rather have a
> stance that goes "How can we make organisation X change their way for
> everyone's best interest?"

Lets try filling in the variable:

"ESA must change their ways..."
I don't agree. They can keep their images private. Thats their
business and their choice. We will cover their articles with what free
images we can get, and they will look silly compared to NASA.

"Wikimedia must change their ways..."
Again I don't agree. We shouldn't change our ways simply because
someone else has a differing agenda.

:)


body:
Anthere wrote:

>I think the main issue is rather this one. People are writing to otrs
>about issues on some projects with a language no one at otrs knows
>enough to even look at the article or conflict or whatever.
>
>David could forward the email to your mailing list (presumably wikiar-l
>exists) or post it on your pump (though it is really really hard when
>you really do not know the language). However, there is a policy at
>otrs: messages received are considered private. We can not post them
>publicly.
>
>So, David, or others, just do not know what to do with these emails and
>those requests.
>
>Cheers
>
>Anthere
>
>
>
So, what about having a couple of trusted people from ar.wikipedia
dealing with otrs?

Marco/Cruccone


from_name: Mohamed Ibrahim

body:
Hello all,
I've been reading this mailing list for some time now but this's my first
message actually.
About the issue we have here, I've reviewed the article now and it does has
some biased statements.
the "cure of Homosexuality" section is added directly from an Arabic site
where someone saying he is a homosexual and asking for help to stop
homosexuality, then a doctor replies with what's written in the Wikipedia
page section about a research done (no references to that research) showing
some statistics about this topic, a template has been added now to put more
references to this particular part.

The "homosexuality in Islam" section was saying that "homosexuality causes
AIDS as all other kinds of sexual activities do", I removed this part as
it's not appropriate here, needs a seperate section about medical and
biological effects of homosexuality the whole section now is rephrased and
included in "homosexuality in religions" section, and it should be fine by
now. I wish that the complainer to the foundation begin editing to improve
the article.

I see the problem is the same as in larger wikipedias, but in larger ones
there're alot of people who edit the article
and there're much more possibity of NPOV than in smaller ones like Arabic.
active people are really few and you don't expect that all the articles are
good ones in current time, on the other hand we do have excellent neutral
articles written about "hot topics" in Muslim and Arabic communities like
"Atheism[1], Holocaust[2], War on terrorism[3], Freemasonry[4], Freedom of
speech[5]" and many more.

what I'm trying to say that taking into consideration the number of people
working on the project, I think we've done a good job since we've started
back in 2003.
You can't judge the whole thing through some biased articles, the wiki
culture is not yet well-known through the Arab world and when someone comes
to write in Wikipedia, they think it's some kind of a forum and writes his
own opinion, but I'm optimistic about the future, we're growing in the
number of "active" wikipedians. Also here in Egypt specifically we're trying
to build-up Egyptian Wiki community which began actions since the bid for
Wikimania Alexandria 2007, and then now preparing other events to organize.

Best Regards,
Mido, sysop on Arabic Wikipedia

1. http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A5%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%A7%D8%AF
2.
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%87%D9%88%D9%84%D9%88%D9%83%D9%88%D8%B3%D8%AA
3.
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AD%D8%B1%D8%A8_%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D8%B1%D9%87%D8%A7%D8%A8
4. http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%A7%D8%B3%D9%88%D9%86%D9%8A%D8%A9
5.
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D8%AD%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9_%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A3%D9%8A_%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AA%D8%B9%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%B1

On 11/21/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
>
> The Foundation has received a complaint about the page on homosexuality
> on the Wikipedia in Arabic. According to the person who complained, as
> well as to people who ran the article through translators, the article
> contains heavily jugmental assertions.
>
> This is not the first time that we received complaints about such kind
> of judgmental content based on cultural or religious norms ; I think we
> also got similar complaints about the Yiddish Wikipedia.
>
> In these cases, there are common traits :
> * The bias expressed arises from the dominant culture of the people who
> speak the language and thus get on the wiki. (Arabic tends to be spoken
> in Muslim countries ; Yiddish tends to be spoken in Orthodox Askhenazi
> Jew communities ; both of these religions condemn homosexuality.)
> * The wiki communities are small.
> * Very few people, or even none, at the Foundation or on OTRS (the email
> processing system) read the said languages.
>
> We also seem to have similar issues with e.g. regional languages or
> languages from small countries with strong nationalism issue.
>
> Your suggestions? It's hard to fix an article whose language we don't
> speak.
>
> -- DM
>
>
> The URL is:
> http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%85%D8%AB%D9%84%D9%8A%D8%A9
>
> The article, or parts of the article clearly mentions that homosexuality
> causes AIDS, and causes many more medical problems.
> It also mentions that psychologists in the "Western World" found a cure
> homosexuality, which I take as hint to homosexuality being a disease.
>
> The article goes even further as to mention what Islam's view on
> homosexuality is and mentions that Homosexuals should be killed
> according to
> the Islam Prophet.
> The rest of the article is full of wrong definitions and incorrect
> information but on a more acceptable level.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of
 the	Wikimedia Foundatio

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>The problem is that when you talk about
>"knowledge" you have to add the disclaimer "not in the biblical sense",
>and that if it's "information" we've got, hello Wikistalk...
>
Biblical knowledge will still be necessary to ensure wiki-quickie growth
in the population of Wikistan. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:
> "worst parts of old ideas"
>
>
> * being a body of electors for determinng the election
> of board members
>
> This is bad idea which I have said alot about in the
> archives.  I think it is the most useless reason for
> creating a council.

? would be interested to hear a summary of the reasons why it is such a
bad idea.
My own perspective is very different.

Rough estimate perhaps, but I would gather that the majority of editors
  and readers have no idea or do not care there is a Foundation. And
that is understandable. That's why only about a 1000 people vote at each
election.

Amongst these 1000 people, how many really understand what the
Foundation is about ? I'd say very few. I have memories of editors
asking us repeatedly to block this person, mediate this conflict, decide
which article version was fine. And that is not at all what the
Foundation is about. By basically refusing to play this role, people are
asking far less now. But it took much personal effort to voluntarily
decide to not look at this personal conflict and rather focus my
attention on issues such as "will we have enough cash to pay next
servers bill".
It is quite a bit discouraging to see people consider the board is here
to mediate disputes (to which the board understand very little, because
it does not have the daily background good editors have), whilst they
can explain the board that "no, there is no reason to hire people to do
a certain job", as if they had a sort of superior knowledge and
understanding of what is going on.

Generally, everyone is welcome to make comments on the other groups
activities, but we should try to admit that those working on a daily
basis on a specific issues, *may* know better what is needed. It is like
a non-married with no children man explaining to a mother of three how
she should use tissue diapers instead of disposable ones because it will
save the planet and as such is more ethical :-) She can listen to him,
but in the end, she is the one changing the diaper...

But well... I may be wandering a bit here...

What really bugs me in the end, is this.
If we have at least 1000 people knowing about the Foundation, and caring
enough to vote for its board, we have far less people actually knowing
what is going on, and having an idea what the job encompasses.

I am still perplex of the past election candidates. About half of them
were people I knew. People involved at various levels in the Foundation
itself or in local associations. They have a minimum knowledge about the
role of a board member, and at least, we know they are interested in
these administratives tasks. We may appreciate their job and
personnality more or less, but at least, they showed their willingness
of being involved.

But about half of the candidates, I hardly know. Or did not know at all.
Because they had never been beyond their local project. Never tried to
get involved in making something like a press release, or helping on
otrs, or giving conferences, or giving a hand at Wikimania. Some had
done *nothing* at all at the organisational level.
Still, they get a lot of support from equally unknown people, because
they have a lot of edits, because they are nice and helpful generally.
They could be elected for these qualities regardless of the qualities
they could show on the board.

I can't help find that it is weird. I do not feel the board is *above*
people. It is another job. It is serving the project, just as editors
are serving the project, just as developers are serving the project.
Editors get sysops according to the quality of their work on the
project. Developers get more access according to the quality of their
work as developers. But board members... basically, there is no
requirement except that being appreciated/recognised by the largest
number of people for their activity as editors.

I am not sure indirect elections thanks to a "wikiblob" are the best way
to solve this actually. There may be different ways to fix that. But the
current situation strikes me as non sustainable in the long term. Until
now, choices were great in the end :-) but if we expand the board with
for example 9 elected people (not very likely), I am more hesitant.

Dunno. Maybe there should be requirements on candidates to show
involvment in organisational issues (but that's hard to measure). Or
maybe the candidates should go through a sort of screening procedure.

Just thoughts. Do not jump on me :-)

Anthere


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


body:
On 11/21/06, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> * If I put someones photo on CC-BY-SA (and he has given me right to do
> it) it doesn't mean that this image can be used eg. for advertising
> anti conception pills, because this person has still rights to protect
> his image..

This is because of publicity rights, it has nothing to do with the
license, it's another whole chunk of law... In fact, you can us that
image for such purposes so long as you either get the subjects
consent, sufficiently obscure his identity, or are just willing to
deal with the consequences (which are different and perhaps more
acceptable (well, not if you're in France perhaps!) to you than the
ones provided by copyright law).

> So if ESA has only this problem, I think, that ''special'' license
> compatible in every other aspect with PD, or CC-BY-SA is acceptable,
> but if ESA wants as stated some posts earlier any special treatment
> (educational use only, etc.) it's killing idea of freedom and I don't
> know how about other wikimedians, but I will leave projects, because
> I'm not worse than ESA so I want same treatment!

If as the special terms are acceptable enough that we could offer them
to everyone, and even accept a fairly large portion of our content
under those terms... and still be confident that we wouldn't be
failing at our mission.... then I agree completely.


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
On 11/21/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Amongst these 1000 people, how many really understand what the
> Foundation is about ? I'd say very few. I have memories of editors
> asking us repeatedly to block this person, mediate this conflict, decide
> which article version was fine. And that is not at all what the
> Foundation is about.

Groovy so next time the deletion or not of [[Brian peppers]] will be
left to the wikipedia community? Office actions will be limited to
legal threats only? To those of us in the receiving end the line is
somewhat less clear.

> What really bugs me in the end, is this.
> If we have at least 1000 people knowing about the Foundation, and caring
> enough to vote for its board, we have far less people actually knowing
> what is going on, and having an idea what the job encompasses.
>
> I am still perplex of the past election candidates. About half of them
> were people I knew. People involved at various levels in the Foundation
> itself or in local associations. They have a minimum knowledge about the
> role of a board member, and at least, we know they are interested in
> these administratives tasks. We may appreciate their job and
> personnality more or less, but at least, they showed their willingness
> of being involved.
>
> But about half of the candidates, I hardly know. Or did not know at all.
> Because they had never been beyond their local project. Never tried to
> get involved in making something like a press release, or helping on
> otrs, or giving conferences, or giving a hand at Wikimania. Some had
> done *nothing* at all at the organisational level.
> Still, they get a lot of support from equally unknown people, because
> they have a lot of edits, because they are nice and helpful generally.
> They could be elected for these qualities regardless of the qualities
> they could show on the board.

Or perhaps they got votes precisely because they were outsiders. If we
only elect people with past histories of dealing with the board will
allow the board to a degree become self selecting.

>
> I can't help find that it is weird. I do not feel the board is *above*
> people. It is another job. It is serving the project, just as editors
> are serving the project, just as developers are serving the project.
> Editors get sysops according to the quality of their work on the
> project. Developers get more access according to the quality of their
> work as developers. But board members... basically, there is no
> requirement except that being appreciated/recognised by the largest
> number of people for their activity as editors.
>

Nyet very few people if any ran on their background as editors.

> I am not sure indirect elections thanks to a "wikiblob" are the best way
> to solve this actually. There may be different ways to fix that. But the
> current situation strikes me as non sustainable in the long term. Until
> now, choices were great in the end :-) but if we expand the board with
> for example 9 elected people (not very likely), I am more hesitant.
>

You think you would be unable to work with the kind of people the
community wants in charge? Anyway it will be sometime before any
further elections can reasonably be held which provides an opertunity
for makeing the board better known

> Dunno. Maybe there should be requirements on candidates to show
> involvment in organisational issues (but that's hard to measure). Or
> maybe the candidates should go through a sort of screening procedure.
>

While that may be best practice in Iran I see no need to do that here.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
J.L.W.S. The Special One wrote:
> You would need a bot with admin powers to go through and unprotect the
> articles, or there would be massive backlog.
>
> Often, after semi-protection is lifted, the anonymous vandals quickly
> return. Therefore, I oppose this idea.

That's true. Basically anything that's too predictable is also prone to
vandalism. If only the #random: ParserFunction still worked. :P

--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
[[en:User:Mxn]] [[vi:User:Mxn]] [[m:User:Mxn]]
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


body:
Currently, on many projects, we allow three kinds of multimedia content :
1) content in the public domain
2) content available under "free" licenses (with our own definition of
"free"; some people disagree with GFDL being a free license)
3) content available under the "fair use" clause of US copyright law.

1) and 2) are easily reusable by third parties, while 3) is not (each
use of a "fair use" document must be justified).

Clearly, these rules were set with  the view of the US law : we put
stringent rules on allowing only "free" content, and then we opened a
whole boulevard with the US-specific "fair use" clause. I might even go
as far as to say that our stringent rules are acceptable only because we
have this "fair use" allowance.

Now, fair use does not exist in the legislation of many countries; or,
rather, it exists in a weaker or different form ("right of citation").
As a consequence, many wikipedias, targetting citizens of countries
other than the US, have decided to prohibit fair use content or at least
severely restrict it.

This proves a problem with some providers of content (companies,
government administrations, etc.) who would gladly provide e.g.
photographs usable for any informational or educational purpose, but
that they do not want to appear in advertisements (especially for
products unrelated to their activities).

An example is the European space agency (ESA) and the French space
agency (CNES) : they would gladly allow their photographs to be used for
any educational or informational purpose (including commercial, e.g.
DVDs, paper encyclopedias, textbooks etc.) but they do not want their
material to appear in e.g. advertisements for supermarkets or, worse,
political advertisements, because in such cases some idea of endorsement
of the product on their part is implied. They cannot use trademark
legislation to fight such abuse, in most cases.

Note that, in the US, NASA, whose photographs are in the public domain,
is protected from abusive by specific US laws prohibiting misuse of some
symbols of the US government, including the NASA logo (the same applies
for e.g. military insignia). The photo may well be termed "public
domain", but they can actually prosecute you if you use it in an
advertisement.

Note also that the Wikimedia Foundation also copyrights its logos in
order to prevent abuse. We should not be hypocrites and deny to others
what we do for the same purpose (especially since the Foundation grants
individual authorizations, not a blanket "for education or information").

In addition, the legislation of some countries may not allow blanket
licenses for any use (considered as clauses abusing the rights of the
authors, and thus null and void).

A solution would be to create a new category of content allowed on
Wikimedia projects :
4) Content available for use for any purpose, commercial or non
commercial, as long as it is informational or educational.

I see only advantages :
* This would enable us to counter systemic bias ; that is, allow content
from some providers from countries where "fair use" does not apply (we
for instance currently totally unbalance the portrayal of space programs
by having 7000 photos from NASA and hardly any from ESA/CNES).
* This would enable us to attract interesting content from providers who
do not want their work to be used in advertisements, for questions of
corporate or institutional image.
* This would be coherent with the goals stated in the bylaws of the
Wikimedia Foundation, that is, distribute informational content.

Common objections are :
* Jimbo said he would not longer allow content restricted to "non
commercial" usage.
=> This does not apply here, since the above mentioned content would be
usable for commercial uses.

(Non-commercial only licenses would be an annoyance for people willing
to distribute DVDs or in case we lack funds and we're forced to put up
advertisements. Neither would be hampered by the above mentioned
conditions.)

* Such content would be "unfree".
=> Then ban all fair use from all projects, since "fair use" content is
considerably more unfree. "Fair use" content is usable for
educational/informational use only for narrow cases, and is only usable
by US residents.

In short, this objection is US-centric. :-)

* ESA and CNES should do like NASA does.

ESA and CNES operate under different laws and rules than NASA. NASA
employs many of its photographers, whose work is in the public domain as
work of US government employees ; ESA and CNES have to buy many
photographs from non-employees, typically under conditions allowing any
educational or informational use but disallowing uses in commercial
advertisements.

Again, US-centric objection. :-)

To summarize my point of view: to be coherent, we should
* either allow such content usable for any educational or informational
uses, including commercial:
* either prohibit "fair use" content from all projects (and perhaps also
content constrained by laws other than copyright, e.g. insignia of US
government administrations).

Regards,
--DM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] contents under education/information licenses


subject: [Foundation-l]  problem page on the ar: wikipedia

body:
Right, as Anthere says I was not implying that the Arabic Wikipedia was
overly bad. :-)

It's just my general feeling that the smaller the community is on a
Wiki, the larger the chances are that some articles will be written from
a specific point of view (often some point of view dominant in the
community). There's no critical mass to neutralize them.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN:  [17800] trunk/phase3

body:
Mark Clements wrote:
> Is there a reason why replies to mediawiki-cvs are coming to wikitech-l
> suddenly?  Or has that always been the case and up until now there just
> haven't been any replies?

I usually send my comments directly to the developer. It saves
embarrassment, although of course it reduces the benefit to other developers.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 11/21/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> Bah. I'm proposing them CC-BY-SA as a solution. Though the license is
> deemed "free", the -SA clause probably precludes most uses in
> advertisement. (If it's not sufficient, I'll propose GFDL, which we
> consider "free" even though it de facto prohibits many uses, e.g.
> postcards.)

You could probably manage a GFDL postcard from a couple of different angles.

#You could have a funny postcard which folds out with the license in
small print. ;) .. Okay, only good for making fun of the GFDL.

#You could recognize that the protected acts that the GFDL controls
are acts which are exclusive rights of the copyright holder: copying,
*public performance*, derivative works... and then sell your GFDLed
postcards in a package which provides N postcards, 1 copy of the GFDL,
and where the postcards themselves do not include the GFDL. Buyers of
the cards can now send out the postcards without the GFDL because
since they are not executing any of the protected rights, they need
not even read the GFDL, it doesn't matter what it says.

Really I think the idea of licenses that make some kinds of uses
impossible are bad, while making some kinds of use somewhat less easy
can be acceptable. GFDL actually prohibits far less then some folks
involved with our projects think (heck, many people think that if you
put a dozen GFDL images in a book then the book must have a dozen
copies of the GFDL!).... and this may become more clear in future
versions of the GFDL, so be sure to keep your eyes on the draft
process.


from_name: Oldak Quill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia as plot element

body:
> On 21/11/06, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>
> > The thrilling story of Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Captured Koala:
> > http://www.adamcadre.ac/content/brown/

An existential nightmare from a latterday Camus.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


body:
Hello,

The Arabic Embassy is mentioned on meta as all other embassies and can be
easily contacted, any of the admins will reply to u, the current ambassador
is absent and likely will be replaced soon.
I've left a msg about this particular issue in homosexual_talk, you can
leave a message about what you want in the embassy page in English so u can
get a contact to talk to or in the pump in Arabic. also the wiki-ar is a
good place to leave your messages, despite being inactive currently but most
active wikipedians and admins are already subscribed.

Embassy:
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%A7:%D8%B3%D9%81%D8%A7%D8%B1%D8%A9
Pump:
http://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D9%88%D9%8A%D9%83%D9%8A%D8%A8%D9%8A%D8%AF%D9%8A%D8%A7:%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D9%8A%D8%AF%D8%A7%D9%86
Mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikiar-l

Best regards,
Mido

On 11/21/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> I do not think he was implying that the content was overall not good.
> All projects have started small and we all met this situation where an
> article was biased but there were few editors and not enough
> knowledgeable on the topic. This is just part of growing, that's fine.
>
>
> I think the main issue is rather this one. People are writing to otrs
> about issues on some projects with a language no one at otrs knows
> enough to even look at the article or conflict or whatever.
>
> David could forward the email to your mailing list (presumably wikiar-l
> exists) or post it on your pump (though it is really really hard when
> you really do not know the language). However, there is a policy at
> otrs: messages received are considered private. We can not post them
> publicly.
>
> So, David, or others, just do not know what to do with these emails and
> those requests.
>
> Cheers
>
> Anthere
>

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from_name: David Monniaux

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] contents
 under	education/information licenses

body:
Gregory Maxwell a ?crit :
> You make an argument that we should permit logos which are encumbered
> by copyright related restrictions,
No.
>> * This would enable us to counter systemic bias ; that is, allow content
>> from some providers from countries where "fair use" does not apply (we
>> for instance currently totally unbalance the portrayal of space programs
>> by having 7000 photos from NASA and hardly any from ESA/CNES).
>>
> [snip]
>
> More importantly, in my mind, is that while you might have an argument
> related to the protection of logos and identifying marks for the
> purpose of avoiding confusion and false associations,  you then take
> the unexplained leap to non-identifying images.. Things like
> scientific phenomena, rather than logos.
>
No.
I'm discussing images of satellites, space launchers, astronauts, inside
of spacecraft, and other similar content that carries the image of the
launching institution.

Research images (e.g. images of phenomena) are another issue. However,
ESA does not own the copyright to such images ; because of ESA's nature
as a consortium, images from such or such instrument may be copyrighted
by whichever institute provided the instrument.
You will learn more about it by reading m:ESA_images
> "You may use this for educational purposes" is a false offer: for what
> use is material that you may learn from, but may only put to use so
> long as you can sufficiently hide the origins of your knowledge?
>
I don't see what you mean. Such material could be used for any purposes
of information or education, including informing other people, as
opposed to, say, doing advertisements for a supermarket chain or a
politician.
> If the European Space agency is so paranoid and so afraid to share,
> that they will adopt a copyright policy which keeps their work from
> the public eye then it is by their own choice.
There's apparently a big misunderstanding here ; please consider reading
m:ESA_images .


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

references:
<ejpvce$i6v$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b80736c80611200137q227b27bfid705ad67c11c0012@mail.gmail.com>
	<ejrtl1$h9u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b80736c80611200156h39bb1e7brc71829de86c262ee@mail.gmail.com>
	<ejrvqd$od4$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 20/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> A chinese delicacy :-)
> Okay, it is not a young suggestion
>
> Let's do an omelet with wikicouncil, single login, wikidata, children
> filters, and other ancient concepts.

I've not read the entire discussion so I've no idea whether we're
seriously considering children filters. If this is purely a joke,
forgive me for the humour failure.

I don't think Wikimedia or any of its projects should filter content
for children (see the Wikipedia guidelines on this). Different
children--even within the same nation, society or culture--are raised
with differing cultural values. In many Christian countries, for
example, there is a tendency to vilify sex and sexual content. I was
raised without a sense of "wrongness" relating to sex and would not
have appreciated it being thrust upon me.

If some Council were charged with creating filters for content, I am
not in much doubt that it would be hijacked by those who wish to
overly censor our content for "the sake of children". After all,
surely the people most interested in creating filters are those who
think Wikipedia is overly "liberal" (appalling word) in the content we
serve and are overly lax about whom this content is served to?

Parents, using ISP and software "nannies" (or even sitting in the room
with the child), should have the power to control what their children
see. To that level, we should be entirely free and unrestricted in
what our users are able to see.

--
  Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
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niht-hr?fn stated for the record:
> As far as "gender is
> irrelevant" goes, this is simply not true.

Citation required.

> Gender of editors really
> does matter as far as coverage and quality thereof goes.

O RLY? How?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Hunde, wollt ihr ewig leben?
 sean at epoptic.com | Friedrich der Gro?e, Kolin, 18 June 1757
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Rethinking Fictional Topics

body:
On 21/11/06, Sean Black <smblac at gmail.com> wrote:
> The problem is that this is, yet again, being framed in the most
> unproductive way possible, by those who have little to no knowledge on
> the way these editors think and the way these articles tend to work.
> If you did, you'd realise that the problem with so-called
> "in-universe" information is not the information itself, but the tone.
> You wouldn't bat an eye if it was written from the proper persepctive
> ... but instead of attempting to spearhead a campaign of rewriting
> articles, which would be rather simple with a little research and a
> little work, the goal is to get rid of them and start anew.
>
> The point of Wikia (and I speak as a bureaucrat on one and the founder
> of another, both based on a fictional universe) is less to give an
> "in-universe" tone (not all "fans" are droolingly obsessed with
> fictional details, despite the way you want to frame the issue) than
> it is to give them an outlet for /detail/ not appropriate for a
> general encyclopedia. Granted, the tone may vary amongst articles
> (Memory-Alpha has templates for this), but it's not the main focus.
>
> In essence, I suppose the point is that, yes, articles on fictional
> characters and the like need to have analysis and context, etc. but
> that without "in-universe" information, that analysis and context is
> meaningless and valueless.

I entirely agree. These policies seem to be an attempt to move
so-called "fancruft" off Wikipedia. The problem *is* that they are
written from the wrong perspective and in the wrong tone and this can
be changed.

It is my opinion that, since Wikipedia is not paper and is large
enough, the greater the depth of information we have the better. This
information simply needs to be factually accurate, verifiable and
non-vanity.

--
Oldak Quill (oldakquill at gmail.com)


from_name: Rama Rama

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] contents under education/information
	licenses

body:
Gregory, I fear that there might be some sort of misunderstanding here.

I think that we all share the same ideal of information sharing.
However, practically, there are constraints with which we have to
accomodate.

In this case, we might wish that the CNES put their photographs in the
Public Domain, but our wishes are irrelevant because this is
impossible. (Furthermore, I feel that you are quite unfair to the
CNES, because it is not their choice anyway).

Since we are already using non-free images under "fair use"
conditions, I fail to understand how the "if it's not Free it sucks"
type of discourse is relevant.

The question is that, *practically*, there are Wikipedia which for
different reasons do not have Fair Use provision ; that there is a
legitimate need for some photographs ; and that we have people quite
willing to share their photographs as much as they possibly can.

In this respect, it is legitimate to wonder whether Wikipedia which to
not have Fair Use might allow themselves to use these images. Lyrical
discourses relying on the Judgement of History contribute little to
the discussion.

  -- Rama