from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Speaking of movies...

body:
For those not familiar with this particular bit of American culture,
today is Groundhog Day. It occurs to me that the movie of this name is a
good metaphor for Wikipedia at times. So to celebrate the tradition and
create this experience for yourself, I might suggest you spend the day
trying to edit articles like [[George W. Bush]] or [[Arab-Israeli
conflict]]. Then crawl back in your burrow and figure out how to spend
the rest of your winter.

<announcer voice>
Your Wikipedia forecast for today: Morning calm, changing to edit wars
by afternoon with a chance of blocking, especially in the Washington,
D.C. area.
</announcer voice>

--Michael Snow


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA

subject: [WikiEN-l] request

body:
Is Wiki censored in Iran, too?

--- sara karimi <chemistry_student84 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>     hi, how are you?my name is maryam oroojeni,Im a
> chemist in iran .Im searching about Bisphenol A and
> methods of synthesis,I'd like to use your
> information about it ,could you send for me any
> articles about it?thank u ,good luck. bye
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
>
>  What are the most popular cars? Find out at Yahoo!
> Autos
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Jon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
Time to block [[User:The Epopt]] indefinitely then, on the grounds that it is clearly beneficial to the encylopaedia to do so!

Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
  -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

grm_wnr stated for the record:

> I have blocked both of you for off-site editing coordination.
>
> (that's a joke , in case anyone is wondering)
>
> grm_wnr

Y'know, if [[User:the Epopt]] were blocked, I'd create a sockpuppet and
have the time of my life. You'd never catch me, because I'd edit a
completely different set of pages. I'd never touch RfAr -- I'd stay
away from Crap for Deletion -- I'd even avoid making fun of Process That
Is Important -- instead, I'd actually edit articles!

Mmm ... articles ...

- --
Sean Barrett | Nanotechnology can do *anything*, just
sean at epoptic.org | like atomic power could in the 1950s.
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To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger  NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail


list: foundation-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] calendar

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I am doing a bit of cleaning..
>
> In case someone feels tired of editing articles today or if you are
> already planned to participate to a major meeting (an sql conference...
> whatever...), please help update our calendar
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Calendar

I looked at it briefly but don't understand what it means.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] calendar

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I am doing a bit of cleaning..
>
> In case someone feels tired of editing articles today or if you are
> already planned to participate to a major meeting (an sql conference...
> whatever...), please help update our calendar
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Calendar

I looked at it briefly but don't understand what it means.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] calendar

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I am doing a bit of cleaning..
>
> In case someone feels tired of editing articles today or if you are
> already planned to participate to a major meeting (an sql conference...
> whatever...), please help update our calendar
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Calendar

I looked at it briefly but don't understand what it means.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Foundation-l] calendar

body:
Anthere wrote:
> I am doing a bit of cleaning..
>
> In case someone feels tired of editing articles today or if you are
> already planned to participate to a major meeting (an sql conference...
> whatever...), please help update our calendar
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Calendar

I looked at it briefly but don't understand what it means.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] So much for books as reliable references!

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113858811205659673-1oPuv_I9jyv2P9k_u8qNN_3obQM_20070130.html?mod=rss_free
>
>Publishers Say Fact-Checking Is Too Costly
>By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
>Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>January 30, 2006; Page B1
>
Actually, it's sort of interesting that this is news. While it's
common practice to have peer review for scholarly books, the "peer"
part of the term should be a hint that it's not the publisher doing
the checking! My guess is that our reverence for the printed page
is such that we just assume no one would dare to print without
being certain of its correctness.

Alas, now all the POV-pushers will point to this as evidence that
every source they dislike must be in error.

Stan


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RFC: One big and a number of special encyclopedias

body:
On 2/2/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> BUT, some people do not see Wikipedia as revolution encyclopedia. Some
> people want to work on a classic encyclopedias which are divided into
> general and special. In general, project Wikispecies is a try to make
> one specialized encyclopedia.

The need for such a separation for wikibased encyclopedias has not
been demonstrated.

In the past people have attempted to apply social network metrics to
determine our scaling potential.  However, it would appear that the
work on Wikipedia is already self-segmenting  (i.e. people who care to
write about football are unaffected by people writing about physics)
and that the only real shared resource is the article title namespace,
from which we've seen few difficulties .


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Now we are getting down to the truth about this. Not that we should
let up.

Fred

On Feb 2, 2006, at 10:29 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> http://online.wsj.com/public/article/
> SB113858811205659673-1oPuv_I9jyv2P9k_u8qNN_3obQM_20070130.html?
> mod=rss_free
>
> Publishers Say Fact-Checking Is Too Costly
> By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
> Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
> January 30, 2006; Page B1
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright complaints

body:
Kim Bruning wrote:
> Are there any (hopefully public) statistics/numbers/guesses as to
> how many copyright complaints the foundation gets per $time_period?
>
> If not, is there any guess, rule of thumb, estimate, or ballpark figure
> available, or could anyone dare give me a guesstimate?
>
> read you soon,
> 	Kim Bruning
>
>
Hoi,
It is not possible to give you a figure that is inclusive of all the
projects. On OTRS the primary place for many of these complaints, the
mailqueues for the different languages do not discuss these things. I
work on OTRS for the Dutch queue, I get complaints occasionally and they
get handled.

Thanks,
   GerardM


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright complaints


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright complaints

body:
Kim Bruning wrote:

>On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 10:45:36AM +0100, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
>
>
>>Kim Bruning wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Are there any (hopefully public) statistics/numbers/guesses as to
>>>how many copyright complaints the foundation gets per $time_period?
>>>
>>>If not, is there any guess, rule of thumb, estimate, or ballpark figure
>>>available, or could anyone dare give me a guesstimate?
>>>
>>>read you soon,
>>>	Kim Bruning
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Hoi,
>>It is not possible to give you a figure that is inclusive of all the
>>projects.
>>
>>
>
>That's fine, en.wikipedia would be sufficient. I'd like some kind of order of magnitude
>of the problem, and if indeed there is one.
>
>This is important for wikipolitical reasons on en.wikipedia. If I lose, my right
>honerable opposition shall likely successfully endeavour to severely reduce copyright
>checks on the english wikipedia.
>
>sincerely,
>	Kim Bruning
>
>
I am curious about this as well.  I'd also like to see a difference between those complaints that have come in from other sources such as:

*e-mail complaints to board members and/or the Foundation "official" e-mail addresses
*Snail mail complaints about copyright infringement
*court-ordered content take downs by subpoena or cease and desist letters
*e-mail complaints to project admins or sysops
*content owner's complaints on project talk pages
*suspected copyright infingement discoveries by editor/contributors on projects

Of all these, I would guess that the editors and participants on most Wikimedia projects do a fairly good job of identifying content that is likely to have originated from someplace other than the project it is posted on.  Certainly it is suspect to review any very large contributions of text, especially when there is 32K of content with only one edit on the page.  Sometimes a textual contribution simply stands out as having come from something other than a traditional Wikimedia editor due to its exceptional polish in grammar or a surprisingly consistant (usually non-neutral) POV.

I've never had a formal complaint addressed to me, but I have seen just one single copyright complaint by the original author or publisher.  Far more often I've seen an author try to contribute previously published content and then try to explain the GFDL to that same author.  In every case I've seen like that, the author was willing to grant GFDL rights when possible.

In all, I would guess that user suspected cases of copyright infingement outnumbers all other types of copyright violation identifications by at least a ratio of 100:1 or more.  I'm curious to see if anybody else on this list has had any similar experiences.

For that, en.wikibooks has on average about 2-3 significant copyright violations per week, sometimes more if a troublesome user is deliberately staying ignorant on the subject.  Scale that about 100x and I think you might be close for Wikipedia, but I'm not as familiar with that project.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright complaints


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright complaints

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Kim Bruning wrote:
>
>> Are there any (hopefully public) statistics/numbers/guesses as to
>> how many copyright complaints the foundation gets per $time_period?
>>
>> If not, is there any guess, rule of thumb, estimate, or ballpark figure
>> available, or could anyone dare give me a guesstimate?
>
> It is not possible to give you a figure that is inclusive of all the
> projects. On OTRS the primary place for many of these complaints, the
> mailqueues for the different languages do not discuss these things. I
> work on OTRS for the Dutch queue, I get complaints occasionally and
> they get handled.

I don't think that the issue here is about whether they are handled.
Statistics on the complaints received with such data as whether the
complainers are the copyright owners themselves, or third parties would
be very helpful in evaluating and developing policy.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright complaints


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>Clearly you didn't get the memo.
>[[Wikipedia:Off-Wiki policy discussion considered harmful]]
>(Next up: someone to argue speeding laws don't count because they were
>passed by people who were stationary at the time.)

    http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html

"Because "considered harmful" essays are, by their nature, so
incendiary, they are counter-productive both in terms of encouraging
open and intelligent debate, and in gathering support for the view
they promote. In other words, "considered harmful" essays cause more
harm than they do good."

"Typically, "considered harmful" essays gets written because someone
has an axe to grind, and they feel like making that grinding process
both public and dogmatic. This is a form of grandstanding, of course,
but it is done with a purpose beyond simple publicity seeking. Usually
such "considered harmful" essays are intended to draw attention to a
little-known subject about which the author is passionate, or to
highlight what the author feels to be a poor decision by someone else.
In addition, there are those "considered harmful" essays that are
written as part of a long-running argument that has gradually
escalated."

(and yes, I put that on the wiki too)

- d.


from_name: GerardM

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Outsiders on the Board? (was Re: Poll for
	Wikistandards)

body:
Hoi,
Given what has been written, I fail to see where the danger is in what
I wrote. So far I understand I was correct in my understanding of how
things work. If anything what Brad wrote did more to confirm my
understanding than to change my understanding.

I do not believe in security by obscurity. It is a protocol that fails
miserably. It is best to be open and honest about where riscs come
from and in what way liability can occur and how such dangers can be
lessened. It is prudent and more cost effective to do this analysis
well and invest in sensible procedures that are communicated well than
in taking out expensive insurance policies that may cover a lot but in
the end give a false sense of security because it does not make the
risc less, it makes the risc different.

The bottom line of securtiy is that to a large extend you define how
secure you are by your behaviour. This means that risc analysis is not
something that you do occasionally, security is an attitude. It is
something that needs to be done continuously based on the observation
of changing circumstances.

When people are employed, they have some protection. When people are
fulfilling their specified role as a volunteer they have some
protection. When people are expressing what is considered a neutral
point of view, they are probably protected because it is the freedom
of speech that allows for this. When people transgress against the
neutral point of view policy and they add for instance libelous
content, they are clearly in violation of everything we stand for.

Our community of volunteers do a remarable job at weeding out all the
cranks and crackpots. I agree with Waerth that it makes no difference
if you are an anonymous or a signed in user, POV pushing, a-social
behaviour, vandalism needs to be stopped. There is no excuse.

If anything when we look at risc analysis, being able to deal with
contentious issues in an even handed way is our best strategy. Having
mediation and for the hard cases arbitration is exactly right given a
sufficiently sized community.

The one thing that escapes me is not OTRS, it is how people are
affected when they are personally sued in their own country. My
understanding here is that people have to obey the laws of the land.
When this means that certain things cannot be written about because it
would be dangerous; ie write about politicians / corruption etc it
makes sense not to pressure these people to write about this in the
light of our precious NPOV. It is their risc that is to be kept into
mind. I hope we will never see the day that a Wikimedia editor has his
day in court when it is clear to all that he or she did everything
within the guidelines of the Wikimedia projects.

Thanks,
   GerardM

On 2/1/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> > It seems to me that he is basically right.  The doctrine is
> > [[respondeat superior]], and it typically applies only to people
> > working in an official capacity.
> >
> > Anthony
>
>
> I looked at the article [[respondeat superior]]. It typically applies
> only to people in a relationship of employer/employee.
>
> "is a legal doctrine which states that an employer is responsible for
> employee actions performed within the course of the employment."
>
> The problem is that there are only two people in that type of situation.
> Others are not a relationship of employer/employee. Neither the board
> members, nor the officers (except possibly Danny, but he is not employed
>   as an officer).
>
> So, I am not sure how this doctrine exactly applies to us.
> But let's imagine that for some reason, it actually applies to us.
>
> What is missing is Gerard argument (which is to claim that board members
> and officers are better protected than volunteers) is the field of
> application of the protection.
>
> What would be the field of application ? it would be the activities
> directly in relation with the Foundation itself. And only those
> activities. So, I do not see where the comparison stands.
>
> Editorial field : If a board member edits an article and adds defamatory
> content, he is responsible just as a regular volunteer. This activity is
> unrelated to the Foundation activities and I doubt much the board member
> (or the officer) will be more protected than any one else. This is his
> own responsability to add defaming content to an article imho.
>
> However, if a board member makes a real bad decision in terms of
> allowing expenses, it is normal that he holds a certain responsability.
> A volunteer not involved in the Foundation can *not* take that decision,
> so there is no reason why he would be held responsable. Hence, the first
> may be protected by the Foundation, but there is no reason to protect
> the second person from a decision he can not be involved. There is no
> lack of equality or unfairness, since the field of application only
> applies to the first person.
>
> Now, what I think bother Gerard is this : what if a volunteer answers in
> OTRS and does so in the name of the Foundation, even though he has
> received no authority/delegation to do so? Will he be protected ?
> Probably not. He is even liable to the Foundation and should the
> Foundation be threatened by the answer given by the volunteer, the
> Foundation could indeed defend itself by suing the volunteer. In that
> sense, yes, the volunteer is *less* protected than the board
> member/officer. But here, I think the volunteer must use common sense
> and not "imply" he is talking in the name of the Foundation when he is
> not. Or if he does so, it is best he be careful of his answer.
>
> And... for those of you who do not have access to OTRS, any message sent
> through info-en contains at its bottom the following message :
>
> Disclaimer: all mail to this address is answered by volunteers, and
> responses are not to be considered an official statement of the
> Wikimedia Foundation. For official correspondence, you may contact the
> site operators at <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>.
>
> So, the risk is very limited indeed. It mostly relies on common sense
> and good faith from both parties.
>
> ant


body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:

>On 2/2/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>>Now this is an interesting situation.  Bureaucrats and admins are asked
>>to "speak on behalf of the Foundation" in regards to enforcing policies
>>on each of the seperate projects.
>>
>>
>
>When? How? Where?
>
>Delphine
>--
>~notafish
>
>
I just got through dealing with one group, the Hesperian Foundation,
which was in the process of using Wikibooks to help with the
collaborative effort of translating an English language medical textbook
from English to Hatian Creole.  See this page for more details:

http://www.researchonline.net/haiti/nodentist/index.htm

As an administrator at Wikibooks, I informed the project manager, John
Rigdon, that he should try to do this on Wikisource instead.  As it
turns out, he is actually going to be creating the Hatian Creole
language Wikisource project in order to get this translation project
moving, and there is some additional Creole content that is likly to be
contributed as well.  As a relative newcomer to Wikimedia projects, he
is still a little bewildered by all of the politics that are involved
with all of the sister projects and just wants to have some space to try
a wiki, and make some meaningful contributions as well.

I'm basically just holding his hand and get him through some of the
rough spots, while politely informing him of the various project
policies.  This is a win-win situation for both his group and the
Wikimedia Foundation, as we now are going to have a significant
contribution to a language that has not been covered before, and his
group is going to have a collaborative editing environment that would
otherwise cost money that his non-profit group could not realistically
afford for any substantial length of time.

I also use this as an example of a petty detail that board members
should not be intimately involved with on a day to day basis but instead
be dealt with by project-specific administrators.  We are not creating
new policy by any means, but merely enforcing existing policies and
helping to explain the subtle differences between each project.  Is this
something that board members really want to micro-manage?

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] calendar

body:
I am doing a bit of cleaning..

In case someone feels tired of editing articles today or if you are
already planned to participate to a major meeting (an sql conference...
whatever...), please help update our calendar

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

thanks

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] calendar


from_name: Guettarda

body:
On 2/2/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
>
>
> In many fields the peer-review of even scholarly books is not all that
> high.  In the sciences, journal articles hold much more weight than
> books, because there's a perception that anybody can get a book published.
>
> -Mark

In my experience it hasn't been so much that "anyone can get a book
published" (in sciences, unlike humanities, books are required for tenure)
but rather that books are an outlet for older, established people to advance
their pet theories.  Peer review is not only much gentler on books than on
journal articles, it's also harder to find someone willing to give that sort
of a level of review to a book because it's so much longer a work

Ian


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 2/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113858811205659673-1oPuv_I9jyv2P9k_u8qNN_3obQM_20070130.html?mod=rss_free
>
> Publishers Say Fact-Checking Is Too Costly
> By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
> Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
> January 30, 2006; Page B1
>
>
> - d.

No problem; just use really old books ;-)

Kirill Lokshin


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dumps status

body:
Generally things seem to be working. Most wikis got done just fine (though the
largest ones still take a long time to complete!)

A few of the page dumps aborted with odd errors reading the XML source of the
stub dumps. I'm not sure what's causing this; it seems mostly repeatable when I
run them via the dump runner script, but the stub files look ok when I look at
them directly.

It might be due to the slightly older PHP running on the dump machine; if it
didn't get the APC upgrade it might have weird random problems or something.
Maybe. I'm upgrading it to match the other servers, and will try the failed
cases again before starting the full set again...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Delirium

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> Actually, it's sort of interesting that this is news. While it's
> common practice to have peer review for scholarly books, the "peer"
> part of the term should be a hint that it's not the publisher doing
> the checking! My guess is that our reverence for the printed page
> is such that we just assume no one would dare to print without
> being certain of its correctness.

In many fields the peer-review of even scholarly books is not all that
high.  In the sciences, journal articles hold much more weight than
books, because there's a perception that anybody can get a book published.

-Mark


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Insulting the islam is allowed on nl: wikipedia

body:
We had this question (comics with Muhamed) on Serbian Wikipedia. Up to
present, all people who wanted to talk about it concluded that we
should not care about anything which can be treated as offensive
inside of religious groups (nor Islam, nor Christianity, nor...).

On 2/2/06, James R. Johnson <modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:
> May I ask... are anti-American or anti-Christian statements going without
> notice/care/concern?  Some articles on the German wiki could be biased,
> then...
>
> James
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
> [mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Delirium
> Sent: Wednesday, February 01, 2006 2:01 PM
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Insulting the islam is allowed on nl:
> wikipedia
>
> Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
> > Ermmm probably you didn't read about already one good user ..... who
> > is a muslim ..... has left nl: over these remarks ..... and you say
> > let this user stay on ?? Is there something wrong there? We will loose
> > more users than this one who insults all who bring us. Are you on nl:
> > wikipedia by any chance :|
>
> This is unfortunate, but in combatting a problem we have to make sure we
> don't introduce a worse one.
>
> Consider a vaguely similar situation on en: at least one American user I
> know of has left (at least temporarily) after some non-Americans made
> particularly vociferous anti-American comments, along the lines of
> "Americans are bigoted idiots who voted in a fascist president and don't
> know anything about world affairs" (paraphrase).  Should we ban people
> for making such comments?  I think they should be discouraged, and
> people should be banned if they're being disruptive (e.g. going around
> specifically to make offensive comments), but being too ban-happy is
> problematic also.
>
> -Mark
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On 2/2/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> We had this question (comics with Muhamed) on Serbian Wikipedia. Up to
> present, all people who wanted to talk about it concluded that we
> should not care about anything which can be treated as offensive
> inside of religious groups (nor Islam, nor Christianity, nor...).

Of course, in the sense of comics :)


body:
(I am going out of Belgrade for a couple of days and I would like to
start this RFC, too. When I back to Belgrade (during the next week)
I'll try to make proposals for mass content adding and this idea on
Meta.)

In this moment we (on sr:) are talking about mass content adding in
Serbian Wikipedia. The main issue are 40.000 of French municipalities
and around 60.000 of municipalities from former Yugoslavia. (As well
as municipalities from the rest of the world.)

Even this kind of articles will have a limited amount of information
at the beginning, the amount of information can grow. For example: In
this moment we have geographic and some demographic data. But, in the
near future I can add some linguistic data, too (what dialect is
spoken in what place; this can be very interesting because some
dialectology atlases have a lot of information); as well as we can add
a number of other information which are related to geography (time
lines, ethnography, etc.).

BUT, some people do not see Wikipedia as revolution encyclopedia. Some
people want to work on a classic encyclopedias which are divided into
general and special. In general, project Wikispecies is a try to make
one specialized encyclopedia.

My suggestion is to resolve this conflict on software level: Like
Wikispecies, we can have (subdomains) xx.geography.wikipedia.org,
xx.astronomy.wikipedia.org, and even xx.economy.wikipedia.org,
xx.history.wikipedia.org etc. Such subdomains, as well as Wikispecies
would become categories inside of Wikipedia as well as separate sites
which would have only articles from specific field.

Also, this would make more easy possibility to print Wikipedia
partially. It would be more easy to make editions like "Wikipedia:
Geography", "Wikipedia: Linguistics" etc.

What do you think?


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 2/2/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Delphine M?nard wrote:
> >On 2/2/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> >>Now this is an interesting situation.  Bureaucrats and admins are asked
> >>to "speak on behalf of the Foundation" in regards to enforcing policies
> >>on each of the seperate projects.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >When? How? Where?
> >
> >Delphine
> >--
> >~notafish
> >
> >
> I just got through dealing with one group, the Hesperian Foundation,
> which was in the process of using Wikibooks to help with the
> collaborative effort of translating an English language medical textbook
> from English to Hatian Creole.  See this page for more details:
>
> http://www.researchonline.net/haiti/nodentist/index.htm
>
> As an administrator at Wikibooks, I informed the project manager, John
> Rigdon, that he should try to do this on Wikisource instead.  As it
> turns out, he is actually going to be creating the Hatian Creole
> language Wikisource project in order to get this translation project
> moving, and there is some additional Creole content that is likly to be
> contributed as well.  As a relative newcomer to Wikimedia projects, he
> is still a little bewildered by all of the politics that are involved
> with all of the sister projects and just wants to have some space to try
> a wiki, and make some meaningful contributions as well.
>
> I'm basically just holding his hand and get him through some of the
> rough spots, while politely informing him of the various project
> policies.  This is a win-win situation for both his group and the
> Wikimedia Foundation, as we now are going to have a significant
> contribution to a language that has not been covered before, and his
> group is going to have a collaborative editing environment that would
> otherwise cost money that his non-profit group could not realistically
> afford for any substantial length of time.
>
It seems to me that this is something anyone could do, admin or not,
and I wouldn't consider it "speaking on behalf of the foundation".

If I explain to someone how the US tax law works and hold their hand
to get them through the rough spots, while politely informing them of
tax laws and precedents, am I speaking on behalf of the United States
Congress?  Of course not.

Of course, the foundation for the most part doesn't even *make*
Wikipedia policy, so this is even more removed from such a situation.

Anthony


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] request

body:
"sara karimi" wrote

>    hi, how are you?my name is maryam oroojeni,Im a chemist in iran .Im
> searching about Bisphenol A and methods of synthesis,I'd like to use your
> information about it ,could you send for me any articles about it?thank u
> ,good luck.

We have an article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisphenol_A. Is there any
reason you cannot read it online?

If it doesn't have enough information, you should ask any further questions
on its discussion page ('Discuss this page').

Charles


from_name: Walter Vermeir

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] Password security

body:
Andrew Gray <shimgray at ...> writes:
> It strikes me that announcing in advance "Hey, guys, a number of
> accounts INCLUDING n SYSOPS have blank passwords and can easily be
> taken over..", then not fixing it for a while, is a recipe for
> disaster. It's not that hard to generate a list of users with admin
> privileges, and presumably neither is it impossible to write a short
> script to try 800 logins...

But there can not be many sysop or higher accounts with no password (I hope).

Using no password, especially when you are sysop is highly irresponsible and
those users should be de-sysoped.

When there are no accounts left that are anything else then normal users then
blank password could be enabled again for 2 weeks or so to give those users the
time to pick a password.

How can users who have no access anymore to there account regain access Brion?

Make a bugzilla ticket?

Walter


from_name: FlaBot

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Dumps status

body:
Hi Brion !

Thanks a lot fr all your work !!!

Perhaps i am blind and didnt know it, but i miss the ja-wiki-dump ?

Greating Flacus

2006/2/2, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>:
> Generally things seem to be working. Most wikis got done just fine (though
> the
> largest ones still take a long time to complete!)
>
> A few of the page dumps aborted with odd errors reading the XML source of
> the
> stub dumps. I'm not sure what's causing this; it seems mostly repeatable
> when I
> run them via the dump runner script, but the stub files look ok when I look
> at
> them directly.
>
> It might be due to the slightly older PHP running on the dump machine; if it
> didn't get the APC upgrade it might have weird random problems or something.
> Maybe. I'm upgrading it to match the other servers, and will try the failed
> cases again before starting the full set again...
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
>

--
[[:de:Benutzer:Flacus]][[:de:Benutzer:FlaBot]]
http://tools.wikimedia.de/~flacus/IWLC/


from_name: SJ

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Speaking of movies...

body:
> Michael Snow wrote:
> >
> > <announcer voice>
> > Your Wikipedia forecast for today: Morning calm, changing to edit wars
> > by afternoon with a chance of blocking, especially in the Washington,
> > D.C. area.
> > </announcer voice>

<wakes in fright>

Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> And sure enough, the candlemas article mentions that candlemas
> celebration evolved in the USA and Canada in... the Groundhog Day...

This is cool.

> Tonight, it is time to prepare the crepes (they are eaten at dinner and must be
> prepared 2  hours before). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepe.

"Must"... so they have to be done by 6, and eaten after 8?
How big should the crepe be that one flips for good luck?


from_name: edward

subject: [Wikitech-l] process for contributing mediawiki extensions?

body:
Hello,

I have developed a couple of MediaWiki extensions and I was wondering how I
would go about finding out if they would be useful to the MediaWiki
community, and if they are, how I might go about contributing them to the
MediaWiki project?

thanks,
Andrew.


from_name: Guillaume Paumier

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Speaking of movies...

body:
*squashes the clock radio*

g.

On 02/02/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> For those not familiar with this particular bit of American culture,
> today is Groundhog Day. It occurs to me that the movie of this name is a
> good metaphor for Wikipedia at times. So to celebrate the tradition and
> create this experience for yourself, I might suggest you spend the day
> trying to edit articles like [[George W. Bush]] or [[Arab-Israeli
> conflict]]. Then crawl back in your burrow and figure out how to spend
> the rest of your winter.
>
> <announcer voice>
> Your Wikipedia forecast for today: Morning calm, changing to edit wars
> by afternoon with a chance of blocking, especially in the Washington,
> D.C. area.
> </announcer voice>
>
> --Michael Snow
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Guillom
"Je sers la science et c'est ma joie" - Basile le Disciple
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guillom


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Dumps status

body:
FlaBot wrote:
> Thanks a lot fr all your work !!!
>
> Perhaps i am blind and didnt know it, but i miss the ja-wiki-dump ?

ja, ko, ms, and th are on the other server cluster:
http://download-yaseo.wikimedia.org/

I'm about to start the next run there.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113858811205659673-1oPuv_I9jyv2P9k_u8qNN_3obQM_20070130.html?mod=rss_free

Publishers Say Fact-Checking Is Too Costly
By JEFFREY A. TRACHTENBERG
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 30, 2006; Page B1

- d.


body:
Thank you Rob. I suppose i'm not so sure what you meant by putting it on Meta.
Do you mean to post a link to my extensions on a Meta page that describes
extensions? But in any case, yup, i will post my question to mediawiki-l.

thanks,
Andrew.

On February 2, 2006 08:34 pm, Rob Church wrote:
> Might I recommend posting on the mediawiki-l mailing list? Also put
> things like this on Meta, and announce it here if it might be useful
> to Wikimedia. :)
>
>
> Rob Church
>
> On 02/02/06, edward <molasses-one at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I have developed a couple of MediaWiki extensions and I was wondering how
> > I would go about finding out if they would be useful to the MediaWiki
> > community, and if they are, how I might go about contributing them to the
> > MediaWiki project?
> >
> > thanks,
> > Andrew.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Speaking of movies...

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> For those not familiar with this particular bit of American culture,
> today is Groundhog Day. It occurs to me that the movie of this name is a
> good metaphor for Wikipedia at times. So to celebrate the tradition and
> create this experience for yourself, I might suggest you spend the day
> trying to edit articles like [[George W. Bush]] or [[Arab-Israeli
> conflict]]. Then crawl back in your burrow and figure out how to spend
> the rest of your winter.
>
> <announcer voice>
> Your Wikipedia forecast for today: Morning calm, changing to edit wars
> by afternoon with a chance of blocking, especially in the Washington,
> D.C. area.
> </announcer voice>
>
> --Michael Snow

Interesting...

I did not know what Groundhog Day was...
I took the opportunity to go see...

Curiously, I thought, this is the same day than what we call in french
Chandeleur (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandeleur).

in french, there is a saying
Si la louve se met au soleil, le 2 f?vrier : six semaines d'hiver derri?re.
If the female wolf goes in the sun on the 2nd of february : 6 more weeks
of winter will come.

I thought "it sounds like the Groundhod stuff"

I went to look for the english version of Chandeleur. It is called
Candlemas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Candlemas).

It says it is a Christian feast commemorating the purification of the
Virgin Mary and the presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple.

And sure enough, the candlemas article mentions that candlemas
celebration evolved in the USA and Canada in... the Groundhog Day...

-----

It is quite funny to see how similar traditions evolved in such a
different type of celebration :-))))

In France, we of course celebrate it with food !!!

So, if you do not feel like editing George W. Bush tonight, it is time
to prepare the crepes (they are eaten at dinner and must be prepared 2
hours before). See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crepe.

Happy Chandeleur !


from_name: Kim Bruning

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright complaints

in_reply_to:
<43E1D4C0.9050303@gmail.com>;
	from gerard.meijssen@gmail.com on Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 10:45:36AM
	+0100

body:
On Thu, Feb 02, 2006 at 10:45:36AM +0100, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Kim Bruning wrote:
> > Are there any (hopefully public) statistics/numbers/guesses as to
> > how many copyright complaints the foundation gets per $time_period?
> >
> > If not, is there any guess, rule of thumb, estimate, or ballpark figure
> > available, or could anyone dare give me a guesstimate?
> >
> > read you soon,
> > 	Kim Bruning
> >
> >
> Hoi,
> It is not possible to give you a figure that is inclusive of all the
> projects.

That's fine, en.wikipedia would be sufficient. I'd like some kind of order of magnitude
of the problem, and if indeed there is one.

This is important for wikipolitical reasons on en.wikipedia. If I lose, my right
honerable opposition shall likely successfully endeavour to severely reduce copyright
checks on the english wikipedia.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright complaints


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 2/2/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:

> Now this is an interesting situation.  Bureaucrats and admins are asked
> to "speak on behalf of the Foundation" in regards to enforcing policies
> on each of the seperate projects.

When? How? Where?

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: So much for books as reliable references!

body:
Delirium wrote:

> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> Actually, it's sort of interesting that this is news. While it's
>> common practice to have peer review for scholarly books, the "peer"
>> part of the term should be a hint that it's not the publisher doing
>> the checking! My guess is that our reverence for the printed page
>> is such that we just assume no one would dare to print without
>> being certain of its correctness.
>
> In many fields the peer-review of even scholarly books is not all that
> high.  In the sciences, journal articles hold much more weight than
> books, because there's a perception that anybody can get a book published.

I'm not so sure that the peer review of journal articles is necessarily
that much better. I recently dealt with a situation in which the
submitter of an article was able to specifically request that his
article not be forwarded to one of the logical candidates for
peer-reviewing it, because he anticipated that this person would give an
unfavorable review. Cherry-picking your reviews hardly counts as
rigorous scholarship in my book.

The theory of peer review is nice, but even in academia the execution is
often shoddy and politically skewed. Practices at different journals
vary, of course, so the reputation of the journal needs to be considered
beyond just the question of whether it qualifies as peer-reviewed.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] calendar

body:
On 2/2/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:

> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Calendar
>
> I looked at it briefly but don't understand what it means.

I am sorry to say I had the same exact feeling :-)

Wiki calendars are wiki, not calendar. :P

Delphine
--
~notafish


subject: [Foundation-l] calendar


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: calendar

body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:
> On 2/2/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Calendar
>>
>>I looked at it briefly but don't understand what it means.
>
>
> I am sorry to say I had the same exact feeling :-)
>
> Wiki calendars are wiki, not calendar. :P
>
> Delphine
> --
> ~notafish

Granted, it is messy...

All right, do you prefer this type of presentation ?
It seems clearer to me...

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WQ/3/8#Calendar

?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: calendar


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Floricic vs. Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. - another update

body:
The date to announce a decision today about the preliminary injunction
against Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. was cancelled today after the
lawyer for the parents of the dead hacker Tron started questioning the
procuration of the lawyer for Wikimedia Deutschland. This is
considered quite an unusual step since the judge had already announced
that he does not agree with the argument that the postmortal rights of
Boris Floricic is violated by mentioning the full name.

The new date for the decision will be the 9th of February 2006.

Wikimedia Deutschland issued a statement to the press today and
explained the situation. Those of you who "Sprechen Sie Deutsh" might
want to read or babelfish this url:
http://www.wikimedia.de/2006/02/entscheidung-uber-einstweilige-verfugung-vertagt/

Wikimedia Deutschland considers this move by the lawyer of Tron's
parents to be an attempt to delay the process' end. It also "regrets"
that the confidentiality of the out-of-court negotiation attempt
(which was given at the request of Tron's lawyer) was broken several
times.

Heise has some quotes from this lawyer and from Wikimedia's lawyer,
Thorsten Feldmann: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/69162


from_name: Snowspinner

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
On Feb 2, 2006, at 6:10 AM, David Gerard wrote:

>  In other words, "considered harmful" essays cause more
> harm than they do good."

[[Considered harmful essays considered harmful]]?

-Phil


from_name: Michelle

subject: [WikiEN-l] And we thought Brandt was bad

body:
The Shiloh Shepherd Dog article has attracted a lot of attention from
breeders and other parties highly involved with the breed.  One would
think that this would be a good thing, however, it turns out that
there's a long running dispute between the breed founder and her
original dog club and registry and the newer club and registries.  Its
gotten incredibly nasty and they're doing their best to bring it to
Wikipedia.

I've been attempting to help them along for more than 2 months now and
its degenerating into attacking everything in sight just so they can
keep the arguments going.  If anyone would be interested in wading into
the mess and lending a helping hand, I would greatly appreciate it.

Personally, I'd like to see them all banned from editing the article or
its talk page :P

Jareth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jareth)


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/2/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
> > Actually, it's sort of interesting that this is news. While it's
> > common practice to have peer review for scholarly books, the "peer"
> > part of the term should be a hint that it's not the publisher doing
> > the checking! My guess is that our reverence for the printed page
> > is such that we just assume no one would dare to print without
> > being certain of its correctness.
>
> In many fields the peer-review of even scholarly books is not all that
> high.  In the sciences, journal articles hold much more weight than
> books, because there's a perception that anybody can get a book published.
>
> -Mark

Do you do much organic synthersis? All those claims of 90% yield tend
to be treated slightly skepticaly.

--
geni


from_name: DF

subject: [WikiEN-l] Evil Copyvio  Lists

body:
Whenever I try to deal with unusual copyright
questions myself, I seem to get variously ignored,
harassed, challenged with nonsense legal theories, and
ad hominem'ed to death.  So, I have decided that I am
just not going to do it any more.  The whole
experience is simply way too unpleasant for the
limited amount of good I am able to accomplish.

Hence someone else is going to have to do it.

I have created a list of evil lists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/Evil_looking_lists

These ~35 lists appear to be creative works copied
from the likes of VH1, Rolling Stone, and Time
Magazine.  Under US case law a list whose membership
is determined by editorial opinion (rather than facts,
statisics or polling) is subject to copyright
protection, and simply copying such a list into
Wikipedia will generally constitute a copyright
infringment.  Most of the lists I have highlighted are
of the "Best of" variety, and appear to consist solely
of the editor's judgment about who the best are.  (I
have tried to exclude lists which were based on votes
or polling, as such are not subject to copyright
protection, but it is possible that some lists based
on polling slipped through without my noticing.)

Such lists should be deleted or abbreviated to a
length and purpose consistent with fair use.

As per my initial comments, I don't intend to pursue
this matter further.  I'm hoping that my list of evil
will be looking quite red some time in the future, but
I am not optimistic that it will happen.

-DF

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] markup in talk pages

body:
Hello

Since I did not find a recommendation about that structure, I ask
here.
Is it ok to use ---- to indicate the beginning and the end of a
contribution to a talk page.

Thanks

Uwe Brauer


from_name: Joshua Griisser

subject: [WikiEN-l] Coin photos and scans

body:
According to our [[WP:IUP|Image use policy]]:

"''According to the image use policy: "Also note that in the United States, reproductions of two-dimensional artwork which is in the public domain because of age do not generate a new copyright ? for example, a straight-on photograph of the Mona Lisa would not be considered copyrighted (see Bridgeman v. Corel). Scans of images alone do not generate new copyrights ? they merely inherit the copyright status of the image they are reproducing.''"

Does this mean that images taken from coin auction catalogs (whether paper or online) could be uploaded under a {{tl|Money-US}} license? As an example of what I'm talking about, see this:

[http://www.coinfacts.com/nickels/shield_nickels/1866_nickel_obv.jpg]

This and similar images are clearly either scans or straight-on photos, with essentially no creative work involved. Since they are large, high-resolution pictures, they would be very useful on Wikipedia. Can they be used in compliance with copyright law and Wikipedia policy?

- [[User:Crotalus horridus]]


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Foundation-l] Narrative vs. Selective bias

body:
Anonymous (junk164) wrote:

> The current formulation of the Neutral point of view policy does
> not make the above distinction clear, thus leading one to
> believe that eliminating narrative bias (judgments about views)
> will make the article itself unbiased.

This observation would be relevant if there were any examples
where the current NPOV policy has misled Wikipedia.

Selection is a strong force.  There are very few articles
describing the world from a Neanderthal's point of view.

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


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Evil Copyvio Lists

body:
In my opinion, such lists should go. I intend to investigate your Evil
List later on tonight.

-Matt

On 2/2/06, DF <dragons_flight at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Whenever I try to deal with unusual copyright
> questions myself, I seem to get variously ignored,
> harassed, challenged with nonsense legal theories, and
> ad hominem'ed to death.  So, I have decided that I am
> just not going to do it any more.  The whole
> experience is simply way too unpleasant for the
> limited amount of good I am able to accomplish.
>
> Hence someone else is going to have to do it.
>
> I have created a list of evil lists:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/Evil_looking_lists
>
> These ~35 lists appear to be creative works copied
> from the likes of VH1, Rolling Stone, and Time
> Magazine.  Under US case law a list whose membership
> is determined by editorial opinion (rather than facts,
> statisics or polling) is subject to copyright
> protection, and simply copying such a list into
> Wikipedia will generally constitute a copyright
> infringment.  Most of the lists I have highlighted are
> of the "Best of" variety, and appear to consist solely
> of the editor's judgment about who the best are.  (I
> have tried to exclude lists which were based on votes
> or polling, as such are not subject to copyright
> protection, but it is possible that some lists based
> on polling slipped through without my noticing.)
>
> Such lists should be deleted or abbreviated to a
> length and purpose consistent with fair use.
>
> As per my initial comments, I don't intend to pursue
> this matter further.  I'm hoping that my list of evil
> will be looking quite red some time in the future, but
> I am not optimistic that it will happen.
>
> -DF
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] A school teacher's wiki-like classroom experiment

body:
This is excellent:

    http://www.nowtoronto.com/issues/2006-02-02/goods_next.php

It may also be a good experiment to suggest to teachers in general if
they're trying to explain Wikipedia.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A school teacher's wiki-like classroom experiment


from_name: Thanh Ngo

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to add/edit an article serverside

body:
Hi,

I am new to MediaWiki. Don't know if anyone asked this before (I looked
into the codes and looked around for a while). This problem raises when
I want to add a bunch of articles into MediaWiki.

Suppose that I have a bunch of text files in wiki's format. How can I
add them to MediaWiki with one article for each text file. And then, how
can I edit some of those articles when their corresponding text files
are changed (I know which files are changed)? By how here, I mean what
functions should I call and under what dependencies? Also, I like to
have those article added/editted under admin/sysop authorization.

Thank your in advance for your help.

Best,
-Thanh


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Evil Copyvio Lists

body:
Looks like a pretty clear case of something we don't need around: 1.
looks copyrighted, 2. doesn't seem to be very vital content at that.

Anybody see it otherwise?

FF

On 2/2/06, DF <dragons_flight at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Whenever I try to deal with unusual copyright
> questions myself, I seem to get variously ignored,
> harassed, challenged with nonsense legal theories, and
> ad hominem'ed to death.  So, I have decided that I am
> just not going to do it any more.  The whole
> experience is simply way too unpleasant for the
> limited amount of good I am able to accomplish.
>
> Hence someone else is going to have to do it.
>
> I have created a list of evil lists:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dragons_flight/Evil_looking_lists
>
> These ~35 lists appear to be creative works copied
> from the likes of VH1, Rolling Stone, and Time
> Magazine.  Under US case law a list whose membership
> is determined by editorial opinion (rather than facts,
> statisics or polling) is subject to copyright
> protection, and simply copying such a list into
> Wikipedia will generally constitute a copyright
> infringment.  Most of the lists I have highlighted are
> of the "Best of" variety, and appear to consist solely
> of the editor's judgment about who the best are.  (I
> have tried to exclude lists which were based on votes
> or polling, as such are not subject to copyright
> protection, but it is possible that some lists based
> on polling slipped through without my noticing.)
>
> Such lists should be deleted or abbreviated to a
> length and purpose consistent with fair use.
>
> As per my initial comments, I don't intend to pursue
> this matter further.  I'm hoping that my list of evil
> will be looking quite red some time in the future, but
> I am not optimistic that it will happen.
>
> -DF
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: interview about the evolution of wikipedia

body:
On 2/1/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is the podcast interview I did last Thursday. I haven't listened
> yet myself ... hope I suitably calmed the slightly annoyed AFD subject
> and his fans!

Oh the intro music includes a little quote from Tony Benn. :)

He's cool.  Good, intelligent questions.  Great responses.  And he
finishes the podcast with a bit of Ibanez.


from_name: BanyanTree

subject: [WikiEN-l] The deletion paradox

body:
On Feb 1, 2006, at 5:06 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> On 2/1/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Yes, it is described in many places that potentially libellous
>> material does not belong. But there is a difference between "it
>> doesn't belong" and "actively look for it and destroy it unless it has
>> rock solid references".
>>
>
> I thought it didn't need to be described, I assumed it to be
> commonsense.  But perhaps it does need to be spelled out.
>
> If there is an item of any kind that contains unverified potentially
> libellous statements, it's probably best to delete it and put a note
> about what you've done on [[WP:AN]].  Someone can look at the history
> and see if it contains salvageable early revisions.
> _______________________________________________
>

This actually does need to be clearly spelled out in some topics.

I tend to edit in modern central African conflicts and I'm pretty sure
I've thrown together a couple bio stubs, because I was sick of a
redlink, that basically state "So and so is a leader of a militia in
eastern Congo and is complicit in the murder, torture and mass rape of
civilians" and didn't bother to put a reference in.  I've certainly
created articles that say "Gen. X oversaw Y war crime" without citing a
specific source for that fact.  I don't think [[Rwandan Genocide]] has
a single citation or in-line reference. Should [[Rwandan Genocide]] be
deleted until a sourced version is created, as there are all manner of
accusations  about people on that page?  I certainly don't know for
certain that it's all kosher.

I imagine that the state of the Central Africa articles now is about
what the U.S. articles were in 2001.  The emphasis of most of the
regular editors there is on expanding content rather than worrying
about citing facts that may be controversial.  I sometimes get the
feeling reading this list that Wikipedia has reached a uniform level of
comprehensive detail on the level of the Pokemon articles, when most of
the articles on my watchlist are in a laughable state in comparison to
both their real world importance and to other Wikipedia articles.
Wikipedia may have reached a point in its biased-for articles that the
brakes need to be put on, but I don't see that being particularly
helpful to the biased-against topics when they are subject to the same
blanket response.

Regards,
BanyanTree


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-02-03

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

Running test Definition list with wikilink containing colon... FAILED!
Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Broken link... FAILED!
Running test Link to namespaces... FAILED!
Running test Piped link to namespace... FAILED!
Running test Link containing % (not as a hex sequence)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing % as a single hex sequence interpreted to char... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Magic links: internal link to RFC (bug 479)... FAILED!
Running test Magic links: PMID incorrectly converts space to underscore... FAILED!
Running test Nonexistant template... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test Image caption containing another image... FAILED!
Running test Disabled subpages... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Basic section headings... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Handling of sections up to level 6 and beyond... FAILED!
Running test Resolving duplicate section names... FAILED!
Running test Template with sections, __NOTOC__... FAILED!
Running test Link inside a section heading... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Image link to nonexistent file (bug 1850 - good)... FAILED!
Running test :Image link to nonexistent file (bug 1850 - bad)... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 247 of 281 tests (87.9%) FAILED!


from_name: Rob Church

body:
Might I recommend posting on the mediawiki-l mailing list? Also put
things like this on Meta, and announce it here if it might be useful
to Wikimedia. :)

Rob Church

On 02/02/06, edward <molasses-one at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have developed a couple of MediaWiki extensions and I was wondering how I
> would go about finding out if they would be useful to the MediaWiki
> community, and if they are, how I might go about contributing them to the
> MediaWiki project?
>
> thanks,
> Andrew.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
brion at pobox.com wrote:
> An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

I've set up a cronjob to run the parser tests every night and mail out any
failures. Hopefully this will encourage us to get them cleaned up quick. :)

> Passed 247 of 281 tests (87.9%) FAILED!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: asd asdh

subject: [WikiEN-l] WIKIPEDIA USER ZOE

body:
ZOE IS A TERRORIST SYMPATHIER, BLOCKS AMERICAN PATRIOT FOR REPORTING TERRORIST

---------------------------------
Relax. Yahoo! Mail virus scanning helps detect nasty viruses!


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Anonymous (junk164) wrote:
>
>
>>The current formulation of the Neutral point of view policy does
>>not make the above distinction clear, thus leading one to
>>believe that eliminating narrative bias (judgments about views)
>>will make the article itself unbiased.
>>
>>
>This observation would be relevant if there were any examples
>where the current NPOV policy has misled Wikipedia.
>
>Selection is a strong force.  There are very few articles
>describing the world from a Neanderthal's point of view.
>
Maybe that's because Neanderthals are typically illiterate. :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
On 2/3/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> As I understand it (and there's a good chance I got this all wrong, if
> I did, please forgive me) this whole thing started with some
> discussion of [[Gazeebow Unit]] at WP:ANI, and Tony said "This issue
> has been discussed on wikien-I". Some people then said (I'm
> paraphrasing here) "Well, we weren't a part of that discussion, could
> we please bring it up in a forum which everyone is happy with". The
> response (again, paraphrasing) "Hey, if you don't want to subscribe
> that's your problem", and that got the snowball rolling.

Not really.  The thing had already been discussed on WP:DRV.  In both
places there was a lot of positive response, and in any case this
wasn't exactly a revolutionary move or a policy change.  It was just a
personal decision.

But it's nice to get stuff known and discussed widely, rather than
just in one place--that is a very big wiki and many people don't seem
to have heard of deletion review.

So wikien-l is a good place to announce it, too.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
I don't want to start a bug argument or anything, but their point is a fair one.

It's impossible to expect that everyone should be subscribed to the
mailing list, which means that not everyone can participate in debate
here. While a "... considered harmful" essay is a bit over the top,
it's only fair that the main discussion of a specific issue should be
carried out at the appropriate page, so everyone can be a part of it.
The mailing list is only for a very few dedicated users (or users like
me, who really have no life and needs something to fill his inbox
with).

As I understand it (and there's a good chance I got this all wrong, if
I did, please forgive me) this whole thing started with some
discussion of [[Gazeebow Unit]] at WP:ANI, and Tony said "This issue
has been discussed on wikien-I". Some people then said (I'm
paraphrasing here) "Well, we weren't a part of that discussion, could
we please bring it up in a forum which everyone is happy with". The
response (again, paraphrasing) "Hey, if you don't want to subscribe
that's your problem", and that got the snowball rolling.

Another thing, when asked for a link to the relevant post (which is
really quite reasonable, everyone always produces diffs in a second),
David Gerard said "It's a long-running discussion. Check the January
archive and start middle-clicking". That is something really tactless
to say. It might take a wikien subscriber a couple of minutes at most
to find a link to a post in the archive (especially since Gmail has
that wonderful little search engine), but for someone who never reads
the list, it might take a ? hour or more.

The link, by the way is
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-January/038459.html
which to me less than a minute to find.

I'm not saying that policy discussion shouldn't occur at the
mailinglist. Policy discussion can occur here, at #wikipedia, at your
local pub for all I care. I'm just saying that when people has
d?scussed something at a different location than the main wiki, it's
not so insane that people feel a little left out (oh, god that sounded
corny, you get my point). In my opinion, all of this could have been
avoided if everyone paid a little more attention to [[WP:CIVIL]],
that's all.

--Oskar

PS. You know, I hear all the time on this list people saying that the
AfD is some sort of inbred group that don't let any outside opinions
in. Well, they probably think that the mailinglist is a bunch of
people that all agree with eachother that discusses issues in a
semi-closed enviroment, and don't want to let anyone in. I'm just
saying, maybe we are a little bit guilty of what we accuse them of. A
little self-reflection never hurt anyone (with the obvious exception
of Kafka).

On 2/2/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Andrew Gray wrote:
>
> >Clearly you didn't get the memo.
> >[[Wikipedia:Off-Wiki policy discussion considered harmful]]
> >(Next up: someone to argue speeding laws don't count because they were
> >passed by people who were stationary at the time.)
>
>     http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/comment/chech.html
>
> "Because "considered harmful" essays are, by their nature, so
> incendiary, they are counter-productive both in terms of encouraging
> open and intelligent debate, and in gathering support for the view
> they promote. In other words, "considered harmful" essays cause more
> harm than they do good."
>
> "Typically, "considered harmful" essays gets written because someone
> has an axe to grind, and they feel like making that grinding process
> both public and dogmatic. This is a form of grandstanding, of course,
> but it is done with a purpose beyond simple publicity seeking. Usually
> such "considered harmful" essays are intended to draw attention to a
> little-known subject about which the author is passionate, or to
> highlight what the author feels to be a poor decision by someone else.
> In addition, there are those "considered harmful" essays that are
> written as part of a long-running argument that has gradually
> escalated."
>
> (and yes, I put that on the wiki too)
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] The Counter Vandalism Unit? Whaa?

body:
Wikipedia's still great, I love it, but really. The Wikipedia Counter
Vandalism Unit?

Let's just strap on the jackboots and start humming Beethoven's 5th.

Silly, silly me, thinking the Wikipedia Militia was bad. They've even
got their own freaking logo! Which, if I'm not mistaken, is a gross
copyright vio.

"Semi-protection" is also something that bothers me no end. As does
the concept of needing to "semi-protect" talk pages.

Wikipedia doesn't need protection. It needs participation. It's not a
piece of china, folks.

Neither is it some kind of dystopian arcology that needs paramilitary
posses threatening people around every corner.

<crazy old guy rant>There's TOO MUCH PROCESS going on in articles
these days. Too many damn boxes!</rant>


from_name: Chris Backert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unitary Administrator

body:
I would like to request your assistance in a dispute involving myself
([[user:68.50.103.212
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:68.50.103.212> ]]), user
[[User:Kim Bruning <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kim_Bruning> ]] and
administrator [[User:Demi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Demi> ]].

Context:

This concerns the article [[Wikipedia:Requests
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/United_States_C
ongress>  for comment/United States Congress]], within the subsection "The
established conduct methods have not been used." This section erroneously
states "Both the Senate and the House have established ethics bodies which,
so far as I can see, have not yet been used in an attempt to resolve this
matter." (only members of the respective body can refer matters to the
ethics committee)

Background:

I possibly erroneously removed this
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Un
ited_States_Congress
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Un
ited_States_Congress&diff=37784818&oldid=37784402>
&diff=37784818&oldid=37784402]. [[User:Kim Bruning
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kim_Bruning> ]] reverted my changes
reminding me not to delete comments from an
RFC[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment
/United_States_Congress
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Un
ited_States_Congress&diff=37788703&oldid=37787526>
&diff=37788703&oldid=37787526]. I then corrected myself moving the erroneous
text to the discussion page
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Un
ited_States_Congress
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Un
ited_States_Congress&diff=37797772&oldid=37793404>
&diff=37797772&oldid=37793404], explaining "Comments are misguided and
statements are blatantly false, moved to talk." [[User:Kim
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Kim_Bruning>  Bruning]] immediately
reverted my changes, ignoring my comment and saying "RV political vandalism.
Please watch,
block"[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comm
ent/United_States_Congress
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Un
ited_States_Congress&diff=37827895&oldid=37813686>
&diff=37827895&oldid=37813686] I later reminded Kim that this was not
vandalism and again moved the erroneous material to the discussion page
[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Un
ited_States_Congress
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Un
ited_States_Congress&diff=37898657&oldid=37855853>
&diff=37898657&oldid=37855853], and explained "These comments are in the
talk area and contain factually incorrect accusations. please do not revert
again (3RR)."

Blocked:

Administrator [[User:Demi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Demi> ]] then
unilaterally intervened and blocked me for 12 hours with the brief
explanation of "Repeatedly removing valid comments from RFC." I believed
this was an abuse of administrative privileges. I do not see how was in
violation of <b>any</b> Wikipedia policy. The Wikipedia article for blocking
policy under the category "Excessive
Reverts"[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Excessive_re
verts
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy%23Excessive_reverts>
], links to the Three-Revert Rule. ("The policy states that an editor must
not perform more than three reversions, in whole or in part, on a single
Wikipedia article within a 24 hour period.") which as you can see I am not
in violation of.

Follow-up:

I have twice emailed [[User:Demi <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Demi> ]]
asking for an explanation, arbitration, or leniency for the excessive 12
hour block.

As explained in these emails to Demi, I am one of the primary contributors
to the article in question. I am the original author and primary contributor
to the related article  [[Wikipedia:Congressional
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Congressional_Staffer_Edits>
Staffer Edits]]. I also was the user who originally uncovered the extent of
the abuses by the Congressional IP address beyond Congressman Meehan. I have
repeatedly worked to revert vandalism in Wikipedia as represented by my
contributions. All of my edits have been in good faith. I believe this
absolutely falls under the Wikipedia:Blocking
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Blocking_policy#Controversial_blocks
>  policy for Controversial Blocks.

Plee:

I do not ask that you remove or shorten my blocking. I do ask that some form
of arbitration be introduced to this situation. I still protest that my
edits were correct and leaving factually incorrect information in the RFC
degrades the credibility of the RFC and Wikipedia as a whole.

Furthermore is you have a review process for administrators I would
recommend it for administrator [[User:Demi
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Demi> ]] as I was blocked with no warning
from any administrator, no arbitration was offered. Demi posted on my user
discussion page [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:68.50.103.212] but
gave no explanation of my block other than he "disagree[s] with your
description of the situation." Admin  [[User:Commander Keane|
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Commander_Keane> ] added to the
discussion that "This isn't a democracy, we don't have to present you with
laws (policies) that you violated . You did the wrong thing."

Questions:

I ask the Wikipedia Community, are there no rules or regulations for
administrators? Can administrators make unilateral decisions as to that what
is "wrong or right?"  How can any user know what is wrong or right? Were the
actions of [[User:Demi] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Demi> ] correct?

Can any user post false declarations in an RFC?

Thank you for your time,

[[user:68.50.103.212 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:68.50.103.212> ]]


from_name: Dan Jacobson

subject: [WikiEN-l] add UTC to time

body:
One each page e.g.,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C0_and_C1_control_codes
we see e.g.,
"This page was last modified 03:06, 1 February 2006.":
Say GMT, UTC, etc., like you do for signatures.


body:
On 2/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/3/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia's still great, I love it, but really. The Wikipedia Counter
> > Vandalism Unit?
> >
> > Let's just strap on the jackboots and start humming Beethoven's 5th.
> >
> > Silly, silly me, thinking the Wikipedia Militia was bad. They've even
> > got their own freaking logo! Which, if I'm not mistaken, is a gross
> > copyright vio.
> >
>
> Sure but we tend not to worry about that as long as it stays within
> wikimedia projects. Otherwise there are rather a lot of othr images
> that need to go.

Maybe it's time to start enforcing the rules. It seems a bit odd to
have rule-enforcers breaking rules.

> > "Semi-protection" is also something that bothers me no end. As does
> > the concept of needing to "semi-protect" talk pages.
> >
> > Wikipedia doesn't need protection. It needs participation. It's not a
> > piece of china, folks.
> >
>
> Ummm are you going to sit there refreshing your talk page once a
> second to catch all the vandalism at GWB?

Nope!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Here's an interesting one

body:
On 2/3/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/3/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > As I understand it (and there's a good chance I got this all wrong, if
> > I did, please forgive me) this whole thing started with some
> > discussion of [[Gazeebow Unit]] at WP:ANI, and Tony said "This issue
> > has been discussed on wikien-I". Some people then said (I'm
> > paraphrasing here) "Well, we weren't a part of that discussion, could
> > we please bring it up in a forum which everyone is happy with". The
> > response (again, paraphrasing) "Hey, if you don't want to subscribe
> > that's your problem", and that got the snowball rolling.
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
> Not really.  The thing had already been discussed on WP:DRV.  In both
> places there was a lot of positive response, and in any case this
> wasn't exactly a revolutionary move or a policy change.  It was just a
> personal decision.

While this is no doubt true, that's not what offended people. It was
not very "diplomatic" to just go out and say that it's already been
discussed on wikien, what I'm saying is that all this could have een
avoided if all parties had had a more civil tone.


body:
Hmm, seems I remember writing something like this to mass-create a ton
of pages in a test wiki a while ago. I'll dig up the script and see
about putting it somewhere. An import text file script could be
useful.

Meanwhile; look at, for instance; the
maintenance/InitialiseMessages.inc file. There's a chunk in this which
shows how to create/edit an article with code running from the command
line.

Rob Church

On 03/02/06, Thanh Ngo <ntthanhvn at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am new to MediaWiki. Don't know if anyone asked this before (I looked
> into the codes and looked around for a while). This problem raises when
> I want to add a bunch of articles into MediaWiki.
>
> Suppose that I have a bunch of text files in wiki's format. How can I
> add them to MediaWiki with one article for each text file. And then, how
> can I edit some of those articles when their corresponding text files
> are changed (I know which files are changed)? By how here, I mean what
> functions should I call and under what dependencies? Also, I like to
> have those article added/editted under admin/sysop authorization.
>
> Thank your in advance for your help.
>
> Best,
> -Thanh
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
Link to it, write about it, post the code...whatever. Adding a page
about it, categorising it, and perhaps using it as a springboard to
link to further discussions sounds good to me.

Re mediawiki-l; I meant you ought to "announce" it and see what sort
of emails come back. ;-)

Rob Church

On 02/02/06, edward <molasses-one at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Thank you Rob. I suppose i'm not so sure what you meant by putting it on Meta.
> Do you mean to post a link to my extensions on a Meta page that describes
> extensions? But in any case, yup, i will post my question to mediawiki-l.
>
> thanks,
> Andrew.
>
> On February 2, 2006 08:34 pm, Rob Church wrote:
> > Might I recommend posting on the mediawiki-l mailing list? Also put
> > things like this on Meta, and announce it here if it might be useful
> > to Wikimedia. :)
> >
> >
> > Rob Church
> >
> > On 02/02/06, edward <molasses-one at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > I have developed a couple of MediaWiki extensions and I was wondering how
> > > I would go about finding out if they would be useful to the MediaWiki
> > > community, and if they are, how I might go about contributing them to the
> > > MediaWiki project?
> > >
> > > thanks,
> > > Andrew.
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] markup in talk pages

body:
That is completely and entirely up to you. A wiki is a freeform,
free-range canvas...and if it's yours, it's yours to lay out how you
want.

A sensible convention, however, at least for wikis using MediaWiki, is
to use section headings to split up discussions into smaller threads.
One can even add a section to a talk page using the "+" link near the
edit button. Sections can be edited alone, meaning there's less markup
to look at, and it's easier to locate what it is you're responding to
in the text box.

Of course, there's nothing stopping you doing that *and* using ----.
Ah, decisions.

Rob Church

On 02/02/06, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
> Hello
>
> Since I did not find a recommendation about that structure, I ask
> here.
> Is it ok to use ---- to indicate the beginning and the end of a
> contribution to a talk page.
>
> Thanks
>
> Uwe Brauer
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: geni

body:
On 2/3/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia's still great, I love it, but really. The Wikipedia Counter
> Vandalism Unit?
>
> Let's just strap on the jackboots and start humming Beethoven's 5th.
>
> Silly, silly me, thinking the Wikipedia Militia was bad. They've even
> got their own freaking logo! Which, if I'm not mistaken, is a gross
> copyright vio.
>

Sure but we tend not to worry about that as long as it stays within
wikimedia projects. Otherwise there are rather a lot of othr images
that need to go.

> "Semi-protection" is also something that bothers me no end. As does
> the concept of needing to "semi-protect" talk pages.
>
> Wikipedia doesn't need protection. It needs participation. It's not a
> piece of china, folks.
>

Ummm are you going to sit there refreshing your talk page once a
second to catch all the vandalism at GWB?

> Neither is it some kind of dystopian arcology that needs paramilitary
> posses threatening people around every corner.
>
> <crazy old guy rant>There's TOO MUCH PROCESS going on in articles
> these days. Too many damn boxes!</rant>

[[WP:CVU]] are hadly process heavy. More and better vandles require
better tactics to deal with them. Nothing stopping you doing RC patrol
the old fashioned way.

--
geni


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Milos Rancic wrote:
> (I am going out of Belgrade for a couple of days and I would like to
> start this RFC, too. When I back to Belgrade (during the next week)
> I'll try to make proposals for mass content adding and this idea on
> Meta.)
>
> In this moment we (on sr:) are talking about mass content adding in
> Serbian Wikipedia. The main issue are 40.000 of French municipalities
> and around 60.000 of municipalities from former Yugoslavia. (As well
> as municipalities from the rest of the world.)
>
> Even this kind of articles will have a limited amount of information
> at the beginning, the amount of information can grow. For example: In
> this moment we have geographic and some demographic data. But, in the
> near future I can add some linguistic data, too (what dialect is
> spoken in what place; this can be very interesting because some
> dialectology atlases have a lot of information); as well as we can add
> a number of other information which are related to geography (time
> lines, ethnography, etc.).
>
Yes, and this information needs to be maintained on all the Wikipedias.
So when new demographic data becomes available how is this new data
propagated ? It makes for better information when figures like this are
maintained in one place. It also makes for better attribution of the
data. When data is copied from one wikipedia to the next, you cannot
find where the data came from. It is therefore lost that a set of data
was made available by organisations like the CBS (Centraal Bureau voor
de Statistiek).
> BUT, some people do not see Wikipedia as revolution encyclopedia. Some
> people want to work on a classic encyclopedias which are divided into
> general and special. In general, project Wikispecies is a try to make
> one specialized encyclopedia.
>
There is no point in making Wikispecies a specialized encyclopaedia.
There is however a point to having a separate database with specific
information like taxonomic information. When this information is
maintained in one place it makes better sense because who would be
interested both in the "Cactus opuntia L." and the "Opuntia opuntia
J.M.Coult." but someone interested in the taxonomy itself ?
> My suggestion is to resolve this conflict on software level: Like
> Wikispecies, we can have (subdomains) xx.geography.wikipedia.org,
> xx.astronomy.wikipedia.org, and even xx.economy.wikipedia.org,
> xx.history.wikipedia.org etc. Such subdomains, as well as Wikispecies
> would become categories inside of Wikipedia as well as separate sites
> which would have only articles from specific field.
>
It is indeed a good idea to resolve this conflict on a software level
but there is more point to using Wikidata to maintain information and
localise the information using standards like the CLDR for localisation
and use WiktionaryZ for the translation of terminology.

Thanks,
   GerardM


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
Personally, I think the CVU and semi-protection are great. I can't
stand reverting vandalism (could anything be more tedious than
cleaning up after annoying teenagers?), but I hate to see articles
I've worked on vandalised too.

If the CVU get off on cleaning it up and actually do something about it, great!

If semi-protection stops vandalism happening in the first place, great!

Process schmrocess.

Steve

On 2/3/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 2/3/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia's still great, I love it, but really. The Wikipedia Counter
> > Vandalism Unit?
> >
> > Let's just strap on the jackboots and start humming Beethoven's 5th.
> >
> > Silly, silly me, thinking the Wikipedia Militia was bad. They've even
> > got their own freaking logo! Which, if I'm not mistaken, is a gross
> > copyright vio.
> >
>
> Sure but we tend not to worry about that as long as it stays within
> wikimedia projects. Otherwise there are rather a lot of othr images
> that need to go.
>
> > "Semi-protection" is also something that bothers me no end. As does
> > the concept of needing to "semi-protect" talk pages.
> >
> > Wikipedia doesn't need protection. It needs participation. It's not a
> > piece of china, folks.
> >
>
> Ummm are you going to sit there refreshing your talk page once a
> second to catch all the vandalism at GWB?
>
> > Neither is it some kind of dystopian arcology that needs paramilitary
> > posses threatening people around every corner.
> >
> > <crazy old guy rant>There's TOO MUCH PROCESS going on in articles
> > these days. Too many damn boxes!</rant>
>
> [[WP:CVU]] are hadly process heavy. More and better vandles require
> better tactics to deal with them. Nothing stopping you doing RC patrol
> the old fashioned way.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Peter Mackay

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Stan Shebs

> Alas, now all the POV-pushers will point to this as evidence
> that every source they dislike must be in error.

Except for the article, I presume.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: edward

body:
Thanks very much for the help Rob, Tels and Steven. Ack, but yes of course, i
see i should have announced what the extensions are on mediawiki-l! Silly me.
I will do that.

thanks again,
Andrew.

On February 3, 2006 02:47 am, Rob Church wrote:
> Link to it, write about it, post the code...whatever. Adding a page
> about it, categorising it, and perhaps using it as a springboard to
> link to further discussions sounds good to me.
>
> Re mediawiki-l; I meant you ought to "announce" it and see what sort
> of emails come back. ;-)
>
>
> Rob Church
>
> On 02/02/06, edward <molasses-one at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > Thank you Rob. I suppose i'm not so sure what you meant by putting it on
> > Meta. Do you mean to post a link to my extensions on a Meta page that
> > describes extensions? But in any case, yup, i will post my question to
> > mediawiki-l.
> >
> > thanks,
> > Andrew.
> >
> > On February 2, 2006 08:34 pm, Rob Church wrote:
> > > Might I recommend posting on the mediawiki-l mailing list? Also put
> > > things like this on Meta, and announce it here if it might be useful
> > > to Wikimedia. :)
> > >
> > >
> > > Rob Church
> > >
> > > On 02/02/06, edward <molasses-one at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > > > Hello,
> > > >
> > > > I have developed a couple of MediaWiki extensions and I was wondering
> > > > how I would go about finding out if they would be useful to the
> > > > MediaWiki community, and if they are, how I might go about
> > > > contributing them to the MediaWiki project?
> > > >
> > > > thanks,
> > > > Andrew.
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Extension to allow editing only by AUTHORIZED
	USERS???

body:
Igor Chudov wrote:
> So. I would like to know if there is some extension that limits who
> can contribute, to, say, a list of sysops.

Have you read the FAQ?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
The Cunctator wrote:

>Wikipedia's still great, I love it, but really. The Wikipedia Counter
>Vandalism Unit?
>
Do you even look at RC, and not just work on one or two articles?
Vandalism is coming in the top, sides, bottom, front, and back, and
it's sucking up editor time that should be spent on actual content.
It's not just the popular GWB or the less-obvious-but-still-popular
"poop deck" that are the targets; there are hundreds of vandals
bashing on completely random pages, and inserting subtle errors as
well as obvious ones. As I mentioned on this mailing list not long
ago, a vandal erased a random chunk of an article while I wasn't
looking, the fair-use images in that part were declared orphans
and then deleted, all before I got back from vacation (good thing I
had my own backups).

If you have a solution that's not based on wishful thinking,
convince us that it's workable; in the meantime, please stop
throwing rocks at the people who are trying to keep this place
from turning into a graffiti-covered restroom.

Stan


body:
No one list is necessarily better than the other, but I'd be inclined
to recommend announcing on mediawiki-l regardless, since a MediaWiki
extension might be of use to several others using the software.

If you consider the extension is potentially useful to Wikimedia, or
you're announcing the update of one we already use, I'd be inclined to
advocate mentioning it here (wikitech-l) too.

The possibilities are endless when it comes to getting the message across.

Rob Church

On 03/02/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> Moin,
>
> On Thursday 02 February 2006 23:56, edward wrote:
> > Thank you Rob. I suppose i'm not so sure what you meant by putting it
> > on Meta. Do you mean to post a link to my extensions on a Meta page
> > that describes extensions? But in any case, yup, i will post my
> > question to mediawiki-l.
>
> Rob:
> I always posted announcements for my graph extension (low-frequency) to
> wikitech-l, is mediawiki-l better for that? Or is there an announcement
> list?
>
> Andrew:
>
> Look here:
>
>         http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mediawiki_Extensions
>
> Best wishes,
>
> tels
>
> --
>  Signed on Fri Feb  3 11:18:39 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
>  Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
>  PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.
>
>  "Let's say there are a thousand. But there are 284 million people in
>  this country. You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000
>  people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can't
>  do it that way." - Jack Valenty in http://tinyurl.com/2y65n
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Tels

body:
Moin,

On Thursday 02 February 2006 23:56, edward wrote:
> Thank you Rob. I suppose i'm not so sure what you meant by putting it
> on Meta. Do you mean to post a link to my extensions on a Meta page
> that describes extensions? But in any case, yup, i will post my
> question to mediawiki-l.

Rob:
I always posted announcements for my graph extension (low-frequency) to
wikitech-l, is mediawiki-l better for that? Or is there an announcement
list?

Andrew:

Look here:

	http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Mediawiki_Extensions

Best wishes,

tels

--
 Signed on Fri Feb  3 11:18:39 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Let's say there are a thousand. But there are 284 million people in
 this country. You can't have public policy that is aimed at 100,000
 people when the other multi-multi-millions are also involved. You can't
 do it that way." - Jack Valenty in http://tinyurl.com/2y65n

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