from_name: A. J. Torrepuerto

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitainment Guides

body:
I'm starting a Wiki similar to wikipedia in format but focused on
non-academic content.

I'm having trouble with the infobox templates. As you can see here:
http://189.151.13.252/Wikitainment/index.php/Super_Mario_Bros._3.  I already
created the template pages and instaled the Parse extention, but the
templates don't work fine.

Can somebody help me?

-Wikitainment Sysop

_________________________________________________________________
Prodigy/MSN. M?s ?til Cada D?a  http://www.prodigy.msn.com


list: commons-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: bawolff

subject: [Commons-l] Getting rid of "best before"

body:
I think if you made it so it deleted the image but not the image
description page, would be much preferable then deleting both. For
example, currently if something shows up as gone at commonsticker, its
a real hunt to find out what was wrong with the image. Sometimes you
get a good deletion summary, but most of the time you get something
like /speedy delete/ or /against policy/. Just based on that, I have
no details on what went wrong (besides that something did go wrong in
the upload). if you used a bot, the situation would get worse. However
if you deleted the image, and undeleted the page with a little
template that says something along the lines of, the image that used
to be here is gone because {{{1}}}. Info here no longer applies to
anything but is still kept. That way, its much more easy for me to try
to find the information for that picture needed, or fix it  in sme
other way. ~~~

-bawolff

On 11/15/06, Barcex <lv.cabc at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Magnus,
>
>   First let me say that I'm a big fan of the Bad Old Ones toy, and an
> everyday user of it.
>
>   My concern about the automated deletion of "bad old ones" is that
> sometimes I find that the nsd/nld templates were not well added to the
> image; i.e. there are no reasons to use that templates, the image can be
> saved with a simple edit completing the missing info, or the uploader has
> not been notified.
>
>   I wonder if an automated deletion based just on the existence of a
> template that anyone can add will delete valid pictures. Of course,
> deletions can be undone, but the error has to be detected, and will be
> difficult to know where was the image used at the time of deletion.
>
>   I think that the "burden of proof" on source and license is on the
> uploader, so it is valid pushing him to specify without ambiguity that data.
> But deleting images without at least a simple human review could not be
> convenient. Perhaps we can find an intermediate solution: reviewing with Bad
> Old Ones and when clicking "delete" on that tool having a bot delinking the
> image also.
>
> Barcex
>
> 2006/11/15, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com>:
> > When I just read about admins getting scolded for deleting an image
> > that was long past its "due date", I thought about the nature of the
> > templates and the message they convey.
> >
> > Currently, they say something like "this image needs more source info"
> > etc., and give the date the template was added. If nothing changes,
> > the image *may* be deleted after, what, a month? This would be the
> > equivalent of "best before" - in reality, it might last a lot longer
> > than that.
> >
> > What if the attitude of the templates were changed? "This image lacks
> > this and that. It will be deleted on XXXX-YY-ZZ unless this
> > information is provided." My tool [2] can be used to find images that
> > have reached their final use-by date, and could be deleted with good
> > reason.
> >
> > Theoretically, one could write a bot which could do the deletions, so
> > no admins get scolded. The idea of a deletion-bot with admin rights (a
> > virtual equivalent of [2];-) might sound scary, but setting it for "no
> > edits for a month since addition of the template", combined with the
> > image resurrection capability, should calm this.
> >
> > Magnus
> >
> >
> > [1] http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/bad_old_ones.php
> > [2]
> http://www.newlaunches.com/archives/samsung_develops_machine_gun_sentry_robot_costs_200k.php
> > _______________________________________________
> > Commons-l mailing list
> > Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
>


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Rules committee; was Sexual harassment in Wikipedia

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 11/10/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Essentially I agree. It all comes down to mature judgement, and who is
>>capable of exercising it.  We have a lot of people who can too easily
>>jump to conclusions.
>>
>>
>Yes. One question is whether we want every language and project
>community to develop its own policy on these matters, or whether this
>is an area where it makes sense to have a single policy that is
>localized. This goes for checkuser and oversight as well. Perhaps an
>in-between solution makes sense, where the WMF requires that local
>policies identify and propose a group that consists of the most
>trusted users before granting these privileges on a language/project
>level.
>
I can't address the technical requirements for someone with checkuser
capacity, but technical competence is only one side of the coin.  Good
judgement, trust and common sense are just as important.  The ideal
checkuser is effective in both respects.

Rule making on the wiki tends to be chaotic at best, to the point where
the best way to develop a rule can be to make a rule and hope that
nobody notices.  No-one can keep up with the process, or be certain of
the circumstances when a rule was adopted.  Proposing changes can be an
intimidating process.

I would llike to propose a Rules Committee on the following bases.

       1. Except for minor editorial changes the rules committee would
          not adopt the rules.  It could propose new rules, amendments,
          rule reviews, or repeals, but the actual adoption would be by
          the community affected.  It could develop a rational
          codification of the rules.
       2. The rule committee would be primarily a foundation level
          committee, but could draft rules for any single project or
          group of projects.
       3. Although membership at this stage would be relatively open, no
          person should be a member of the Rules Committee and any
          Arbitration Committee at the same time.  This parallels the
          separation of the legislative and judicial arms of
          governments.  While rule makers must be in a position to look
          at rules in broad terms, arbitrators must be concerned with
          applying existing rules to specific circumstances.
       4. In order to be effective the number of members on the rules
          committee would need to be limited, and equitable means of
          adding or replacing members would need to be developed.
       5. Where applicable the rules committee would need to work
          closely with the Translation Committee when a rule must be
          applied across multiple languages.
       6. Among the higher priorities for the Rule Committee would be
              * Developing the distinction between Foundation, policy
                that needs to be consistent between projects of the same
                type, policy that needs to be consistent between
                projects in the same language, and policy which each
                project may develop separately.
              * Developing a consistent policy on policy adoption.
              * Developing consistent formats for policies.
       7. Existing policies would be grandfathered until reviewed,
          replaced and readopted.

Initially, this committee would want a closed mailing list, and a number
of volunteers to see if this experiment is workable.

Any thoughts out there?.
Ec


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Fair use" images of living people

body:
On 11/15/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think that the vast majority of these 'fair use' images are not
> images in either problem category.  Most that I've seen are
> fundamentally images whose licenses/permission would permit them to be
> used on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Screenshots_of_films
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fair_use_posters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Screenshots_of_computer_and_video_games
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fair_use_event_posters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Album_covers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Book_covers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fair_use_magazine_covers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fair_use_stamp_images

Do you wish to rethink your position or do you have counter evidence?

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Java becomes Open Source, what next?

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

>On 11/14/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Sun Microsystems will make all the Java code they own available under the GPL:
>>
>>
>and on wikitech-l Erik wrote:
>
>
>>A community review process, where open source applets can be nominated
>>for inclusion in Wikimedia, or particular resources / applet authors
>>can be community-certified as trustworthy, with the final step being
>>implemented by a sysop or bureaucrat, strikes me as a reasonable
>>compromise between security and ease of inclusion.
>>
>>
>Check this out - I'm an English Wikiversity bureaucrat, and I haven't
>a clue about how any of this works or could/should be managed! In my
>opinion, in order to most productively conduct this conversation, we
>need to think of the people on the projects this will impact - by
>asking things like the following:
>
>*Is an "evil" java resource going to be easily spotted by a project
>sysop/bureaucrat? (How do you spot an "evil" or potentially evil
>resource?)
>*How would java resources be added to a project? The same as - or
>similar to - a file? Or simply through adding code into a page?
>(and consequently)
>*How much patrolling will this require?
>
Perhaps we need a good session at Wikimania on techniques for
technophobic administrators.  It could even coincide with hacking days,
but our techies may not like being drawn away from hacking days to teach
the clueless.

>I'd of course be incredibly excited to have engaging learning
>materials added to Wikiversity, as well as applications for all our
>projects. I'm just trying here to imagine how we would deal with this
>"in the trenches", so to speak.
>
A course about Java might be nice.

>Please pardon my war-like language here - must be a hangover from the
>[[w:Armistice]] weekend :-)
>
Not at all.  Under appropriate circumstances a little loyalty to King
George V is good for what ales you. :-)

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] mail.wikimedia.org down?

body:
On 11/15/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
> I get a timeout when connecting to mail.wikimedia.org / mail.wikipedia.org.
> All the other *.wiki*edia.org pages are up and running for me.
> Anything with the mail server?

It's down. A reboot request has been sent.

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


body:
On 11/16/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/15/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Do you wish to rethink your position or do you have counter evidence?
>
> :)
>
> Thanks Geni, although I'm not sure categories are the best way to
> demonstrate this... I believe (and hope) that in every category of
> 'fair use images' there are some images which are being used
> correctly. That is, the image is an excerpt of a copyrighted work
> which is being used in an article which is providing critical
> commentary of that work, and the excerpt is a necessary part of our
> ability to educate on the subject.
>

Then I would advise you not to look at the Album_covers category.

> Some categories are worse than others... Historically I found the
> magazine covers to be pretty bad... often our use of the cover images
> has been not to discuss the magazine but instead to compete with the
> magazine more successfully by using their images for our coverage of a
> common subject.
>

Magazine covers has largely been cleaned up these days.

> As an aside I find myself in an interesting position these days. I've
> been more active in the commons community where I find myself
> *defending* the concept of fair use images in Wikipedia, and then I
> walk into En and find myself lamenting enwiki's current fair use image
> status. :)
>

I generaly get round this by pointing out all the things that are
technicaly fair use even in free images.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Foundation logo : pain and suffering

body:
On 11/15/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> Hang on, I must contest all this! I see all the Wikimedia logos as
> being professional, memorable and simple; therefore effective. They
> also fit really well with the default monobook theme, IMO.
>
> S
>

I don't think the foundation owns the mediawiki logo. Copyright wise
it is in the public domain.

--
geni


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 11/16/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think you slightly misunderstood the point I was making, which is
> that vast proportions of the images on en: which are claimed as fair
> use are actually cases of making up fair use justifications for images
[snip]

Ah, well the categories the geni mentioned contain many tens of
thousands of images most  of which would not meet your criteria.

When you say 'vast', I'd generally take that to be something at least
approaching a majority.. and I'm pretty confident that that would be
incorrect.

[snip]
> In most of these cases, Wikipedia is not in itself in any legal risk -
> the free-content goals of the project may be at more risk, of course.

I think that outside of some disagreement over how many images we're
talking about, which I'm not sure how to settle since the tagging
won't always tell us, I think we agree.

Can you come up with somethings I could scan for in the text of the
description pages to identify fair use + unacceptable permission which
won't horribly under-report?

Another point: not only is failing the Free Content goals of Wikipedia
a risk that comes from accepting non-free works, but when we accept
non-free works which don't have rock solid fair use claims we risk our
neutrality:  After all, if we're only getting away with a usage
because we're in the owners good graces ... it creates a pressure
(perhaps more often subtle than overt) to avoid saying things they
dislike to avoid getting demands and legal threats over the images.

It swings both ways, "give us an image you like under a free license
so we can stop using this ugly one" has gotten us some freely licensed
images. :)


from_name: Matthew Brown

body:
On 11/15/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> When you say 'vast', I'd generally take that to be something at least
> approaching a majority.. and I'm pretty confident that that would be
> incorrect.

It's a majority of the fair use images I encounter.  Since I don't do
any kind of image patrol or whatnot, this represents the images I find
in the articles I tend to edit.  I don't deal much with popular
culture articles, which probably explains why I see the proportions I
do.

-Matt


from_name: Christophe Henner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
Good evening/morning

There's a discussion on the french speaking wikipedia about granted
some users the power to block vandals one day. Is that possible? I do
think right now it's not, but is it possible to create a new level
granted by bureaucrats that allows the user ONLY to use blocking for a
preset time? Those users wouldn't have access to delete and other
sysops abilities.

Before letting them going further into the organisation of this I
though it was better to have a technical answer about it.

Sorry to bother you

Have a nice day

--
schiste


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitainment Guides

body:
This site is indeed not related to wikipedia. I'm just looking for aid. I
don't know which extension to download or how to configure it to make its
infoboxes work. I asked for help in meta, but you know how slow things are
there. I think meta needs some serious publicity.

I still need help, I managed to configure it to create subpages, but the
templates aren't working right.

BTW, nice to read from you again, NSLE!

>From: "NSLE (Wikipedia)" <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikitainment Guides
>Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 09:24:57 +0800
>
>Probably totally unrelated, just a general comment and note, which should
>have no bearing on any response, that this user is currently
>[[User:T-man%2C_the_Wise_Scarecrow|indefinitely banned]] from Wikipedia.
>
>--Chacor
>
>On 16/11/06, A. J. Torrepuerto <ajtorrepuerto at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm starting a Wiki similar to wikipedia in format but focused on
> > non-academic content.
> >
> > I'm having trouble with the infobox templates. As you can see here:
> > http://189.151.13.252/Wikitainment/index.php/Super_Mario_Bros._3.  I
> > already
> > created the template pages and instaled the Parse extention, but the
> > templates don't work fine.
> >
> > Can somebody help me?
> >
> > -Wikitainment Sysop
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Prodigy/MSN. M?s ?til Cada D?a  http://www.prodigy.msn.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
> >
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

_________________________________________________________________
Moda para esta temporada. Ponte al d?a de todas las tendencias.
http://www.msn.es/Mujer/moda/default.asp


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Policy draft: Wikimedia projects are not the
	place for national constitution

body:
Yeah. Despite their constant assertions to the otherwise, I can
testify that Romanians are collectively Russophobic. I don't really
blame them, given the role Russia has had in their history.

Danutz claimed that it was a "coincidence" that they removed the
Cyrillic character from the ball in the logo to replace it with a
Romanian one, that they were just replacing a letter at random, not
because it was Cyrillic. But I do not believe this.

Certainly, it is a basic difficulty that most Romanians don't know
Cyrillic well enough to be able to write it, although they can
probably read it with some difficulty (just as someone who knew
Serbian Latin but not Cyrillic could eke their way through a text).

Presumably, though, it could be solved that editbox text, too, would
be converted.

But still, ro.wp would probably vote against the very idea of having
Cyrillic on their WP in any way, shape, or form. They've said some
pretty interesting stuff about it, like how badly it fits the
language, despite the fact that it is linguistically much
better-suited (more phonetic and has no digraphs, represents some
distinctions that Latin does not, and combines a couple of
diphthongs), and a hostile attitude in general through various
actions.

I'm guessing that a long-term solution (ie, when the internet comes to
Transnistria in its entirety) would be some form of a transliterating
portal, if not a separate WP. (likely the Romanian domination of power
would anger Nistrians regarding POV disputes)

Mark

On 15/11/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > As long as there is no automated lossless
> > > conversion from Latin to Cyrillic and from Cyrillic to Latin AND the
> > > orthography used, MediaWiki does not provide the required functionality
> > > for Romanian/Moldovan.
> >
> > That's a third thing, and an implementation detail for the given
> > language (eg, already implemented for Serbian, etc). Nor is it related
> > to the 'Multilingual MediaWiki' proposal.
>
> Usage of scripts in articles on Serbian Wikipedia are regulated by
> policy, not by software (if initial article is written in
> Latin-Iyekavian, it should stay Latin-Iyekavian) and we are not quite
> happy because of that (we want solution in which anyone may use it's
> own script and variant inside of the code). And what we want, it is
> necessary for Moldovan/Romanin case and for all other cases where
> differences between orthographies are not inside of one cultural
> space. (I.e., it is OK for Serbian Ekavian user to see Iyekavian text,
> but I don't think that it would be OK for some Romanian user to have
> to write in Moldovan Cyrillic ;) )
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Jacky PB

body:
--- Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah. Despite their constant assertions to the
> otherwise, I can
> testify that Romanians are collectively Russophobic.

What is this doing here?
I'm not sure that wikipedia-l is the place for
exposing your feelings about some nation or another.
User pages and blogs serve this purpose.

The argument here is about whether one *needs* two
fully independent wikipedias (ro and mo), or two
interfaces to a single code base, given that
1. the standard language is the same, as stated in
sources presented above, and accepted, for instance,
by GerardM.
2. wikipedia is about languages, not politics

And there is a second question: Is the second variant
feasible?

Dpotop

> I don't really
> blame them, given the role Russia has had in their
> history.
>
> Danutz claimed that it was a "coincidence" that they
> removed the
> Cyrillic character from the ball in the logo to
> replace it with a
> Romanian one, that they were just replacing a letter
> at random, not
> because it was Cyrillic. But I do not believe this.
>
> Certainly, it is a basic difficulty that most
> Romanians don't know
> Cyrillic well enough to be able to write it,
> although they can
> probably read it with some difficulty (just as
> someone who knew
> Serbian Latin but not Cyrillic could eke their way
> through a text).
>
> Presumably, though, it could be solved that editbox
> text, too, would
> be converted.
>
> But still, ro.wp would probably vote against the
> very idea of having
> Cyrillic on their WP in any way, shape, or form.
> They've said some
> pretty interesting stuff about it, like how badly it
> fits the
> language, despite the fact that it is linguistically
> much
> better-suited (more phonetic and has no digraphs,
> represents some
> distinctions that Latin does not, and combines a
> couple of
> diphthongs), and a hostile attitude in general
> through various
> actions.
>
> I'm guessing that a long-term solution (ie, when the
> internet comes to
> Transnistria in its entirety) would be some form of
> a transliterating
> portal, if not a separate WP. (likely the Romanian
> domination of power
> would anger Nistrians regarding POV disputes)
>
> Mark
>
> On 15/11/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 11/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > > As long as there is no automated lossless
> > > > conversion from Latin to Cyrillic and from
> Cyrillic to Latin AND the
> > > > orthography used, MediaWiki does not provide
> the required functionality
> > > > for Romanian/Moldovan.
> > >
> > > That's a third thing, and an implementation
> detail for the given
> > > language (eg, already implemented for Serbian,
> etc). Nor is it related
> > > to the 'Multilingual MediaWiki' proposal.
> >
> > Usage of scripts in articles on Serbian Wikipedia
> are regulated by
> > policy, not by software (if initial article is
> written in
> > Latin-Iyekavian, it should stay Latin-Iyekavian)
> and we are not quite
> > happy because of that (we want solution in which
> anyone may use it's
> > own script and variant inside of the code). And
> what we want, it is
> > necessary for Moldovan/Romanin case and for all
> other cases where
> > differences between orthographies are not inside
> of one cultural
> > space. (I.e., it is OK for Serbian Ekavian user to
> see Iyekavian text,
> > but I don't think that it would be OK for some
> Romanian user to have
> > to write in Moldovan Cyrillic ;) )
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

____________________________________________________________________________________
Sponsored Link

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$420k for $1,399/mo. Calculate new payment!
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body:
On 11/16/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Assuming we're getting copies of the correspondence, with headers etc,
> this shouldn't be a problem. Who's been telling you this, can you
> recall?

The issue with one was that it was not an email conversation so there
were no headers - I asked and was replied to via Flickr's internal
email system.  I imagine the same issue would present if permissions
were given via postal mail or fax.

I did include the full text of the conversation on both sides
including all from and to information.

I can't remember the reason for the other issue I encountered.

-Matt


subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
Would a dev mind doing it if the french community decide to organize it?
--
schiste


body:
> > Yeah. Despite their constant assertions to the
> > otherwise, I can
> > testify that Romanians are collectively Russophobic.
>
> What is this doing here?
> I'm not sure that wikipedia-l is the place for
> exposing your feelings about some nation or another.
> User pages and blogs serve this purpose.

Well, I'm sure that it is, when it's related to Wikipedia. And whether
or not Romanians are Russophobic (something you cannot deny --  while
your "public face" on Wikipedia-l makes nice, it's obvious from some
things you've said in Romanian that you don't like Russia one bit) is
certainly related to this issue.

> The argument here is about whether one *needs* two
> fully independent wikipedias (ro and mo), or two
> interfaces to a single code base, given that
> 1. the standard language is the same, as stated in
> sources presented above, and accepted, for instance,
> by GerardM.

If I recall correctly, GerardM *also* stated that both scripts *are*
used. RTFM please.

> 2. wikipedia is about languages, not politics

...your point being what? That's what I've been saying this whole thread.

> And there is a second question: Is the second variant
> feasible?

The second variant? You mean a conversion to Cyrillic? To a great
extent, it is. People have paraded around Bogdan's converter, but
really, it is, ahem, less than adequate. I actually sent him the
appropriate fixes, but he couldn't be bothered (just as he can't be
bothered to remove vandalism or block vandals on mo.wp).

If someone _really tried_, I'm sure it would be easy to come up with
something quite workable.

But would it be accepted by Romanians? Tell me. Would it? And don't
say "that doesn't even matter, the question is -- is it needed"
because I know that's what you would say. I want a real answer. Would
a Cyrillic converter be accepted by Romanians, yes or no? And after
you answer that question according to your own judgement, try to tell
me that they are not Russophobic.

And before you ask the question of is it needed, the answer is yes, it
is. You go around making all sorts of statements assuming that nothing
has changed. Well, it has, and the thing you said in the past isn't
true anymore. The vast majority of Transnistrians _use Cyrillic_ and
most (if not all) of them use it _by choice_.

The arguments usually given after this is established in any conversation are:

1) They are a separatist region. They don't matter.
-- Well, they may be separatist, and that may mean you want to ignore
their policy, but you can't ignore their people. And it's not just 1
or 2 people either.
2) Well, why don't we wait until they show up?
-- It's not as if they haven't already. And it's not as if more won't
in the future. Bonaparte has succeeded in scaring away the handful who
have actually ever indicated interest to me in that Wikipedia.
3) The vote on meta clearly showed we shouldn't have it.
-- Yes, a vote that was flashmobbed by Romanians and Russians, called
for separately by Constantzeanu, yourself, Bonaparte, and, I admit,
myself. Besides since when is Wikimedia a democracy? Actually, very
few political entities in the world use absolute democracy because
many of the eligible voters are not well educated enough on the issues
at hand. Show me a country that has all of its citizens simultaneously
as its heads of state and I will show you a Wikimedia where everything
is decided by a vote of the masses.
4) Moldovans clearly don't want it
-- How many Moldovans have we asked? And how did we even get them? If
I recall correctly, it was selectively by people like Bonaparte who
put messages everywhere in Romanian telling them that some American
bastard kid is trying to do blah blah blah and help us vote against
him blah blah blah. Doesn't seem likely to draw out the people who
would vote to keep that Wiki does it now? And besides, the Chisinau
elite cannot represent Nistrians.
5) It's an insult to all of those Romanians who died to write in the
Latin script
-- Doesn't even deserve a response.

And btw it happened and you didn't ;-p So either you weren't aware, or
you didn't mean it in the first place.

Mark

> Dpotop
>
>
> > I don't really
> > blame them, given the role Russia has had in their
> > history.
> >
> > Danutz claimed that it was a "coincidence" that they
> > removed the
> > Cyrillic character from the ball in the logo to
> > replace it with a
> > Romanian one, that they were just replacing a letter
> > at random, not
> > because it was Cyrillic. But I do not believe this.
> >
> > Certainly, it is a basic difficulty that most
> > Romanians don't know
> > Cyrillic well enough to be able to write it,
> > although they can
> > probably read it with some difficulty (just as
> > someone who knew
> > Serbian Latin but not Cyrillic could eke their way
> > through a text).
> >
> > Presumably, though, it could be solved that editbox
> > text, too, would
> > be converted.
> >
> > But still, ro.wp would probably vote against the
> > very idea of having
> > Cyrillic on their WP in any way, shape, or form.
> > They've said some
> > pretty interesting stuff about it, like how badly it
> > fits the
> > language, despite the fact that it is linguistically
> > much
> > better-suited (more phonetic and has no digraphs,
> > represents some
> > distinctions that Latin does not, and combines a
> > couple of
> > diphthongs), and a hostile attitude in general
> > through various
> > actions.
> >
> > I'm guessing that a long-term solution (ie, when the
> > internet comes to
> > Transnistria in its entirety) would be some form of
> > a transliterating
> > portal, if not a separate WP. (likely the Romanian
> > domination of power
> > would anger Nistrians regarding POV disputes)
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 15/11/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 11/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > > > > As long as there is no automated lossless
> > > > > conversion from Latin to Cyrillic and from
> > Cyrillic to Latin AND the
> > > > > orthography used, MediaWiki does not provide
> > the required functionality
> > > > > for Romanian/Moldovan.
> > > >
> > > > That's a third thing, and an implementation
> > detail for the given
> > > > language (eg, already implemented for Serbian,
> > etc). Nor is it related
> > > > to the 'Multilingual MediaWiki' proposal.
> > >
> > > Usage of scripts in articles on Serbian Wikipedia
> > are regulated by
> > > policy, not by software (if initial article is
> > written in
> > > Latin-Iyekavian, it should stay Latin-Iyekavian)
> > and we are not quite
> > > happy because of that (we want solution in which
> > anyone may use it's
> > > own script and variant inside of the code). And
> > what we want, it is
> > > necessary for Moldovan/Romanin case and for all
> > other cases where
> > > differences between orthographies are not inside
> > of one cultural
> > > space. (I.e., it is OK for Serbian Ekavian user to
> > see Iyekavian text,
> > > but I don't think that it would be OK for some
> > Romanian user to have
> > > to write in Moldovan Cyrillic ;) )
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > >
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
>
> ____________________________________________________________________________________
> Sponsored Link
>
> Mortgage rates near 39yr lows.
> $420k for $1,399/mo. Calculate new payment!
> www.LowerMyBills.com/lre
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Milos Rancic

body:
On 11/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > As long as there is no automated lossless
> > conversion from Latin to Cyrillic and from Cyrillic to Latin AND the
> > orthography used, MediaWiki does not provide the required functionality
> > for Romanian/Moldovan.
>
> That's a third thing, and an implementation detail for the given
> language (eg, already implemented for Serbian, etc). Nor is it related
> to the 'Multilingual MediaWiki' proposal.

Usage of scripts in articles on Serbian Wikipedia are regulated by
policy, not by software (if initial article is written in
Latin-Iyekavian, it should stay Latin-Iyekavian) and we are not quite
happy because of that (we want solution in which anyone may use it's
own script and variant inside of the code). And what we want, it is
necessary for Moldovan/Romanin case and for all other cases where
differences between orthographies are not inside of one cultural
space. (I.e., it is OK for Serbian Ekavian user to see Iyekavian text,
but I don't think that it would be OK for some Romanian user to have
to write in Moldovan Cyrillic ;) )


subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
Thanks for this answer. You might not be sorry as I was expecting an
answer like this one it was just to be sure and don't let the users
organizing new levels if devs can't make an extension for this.

Thank you again for your fast answer. :)

--
schiste


from_name: Florian Straub

body:
"bawolff" <bawolff+wn at gmail.com> wrote on Thursday, November 16, 2006 12:22
AM:

> if you used a bot, the situation would get worse.
One could tell the bot to write a decent summary like "been in nld since
...."

Regards,

Flo


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject:
[WikiEN-l] (semi-OT) What to do with old but not old enough
	encyclopedias?

body:
On Nov 16, 2006, at 3:36 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> A friend of mine has a 1980 set of Encyclopedia Britannica he's trying
> to get rid of. They're not going to be public domain in many of our
> lifetimes and the information will be out of date enough to be
> misleading in many ways - they would not be appropriate for a school.
>
> I see there's another 1980 EB on eBay right now that's had no bids.
> Nobody Cares (tm).
>
> Your suggestions are welcomed ...

They can be given away locally, shipping cost would exceed their
value. We have a free box where I live. Or to the land fill. I have a
set like that which I keep around, but in two years have only
consulted it a few times. I suppose a  Wikipedian could use it  to
fill in some gaps and for fact checking. Postage is about equal to
the value of the set, so you should offer it free.

Fred


from_name: Lino Dial

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New  Language

body:
November 16, 2006

  Yesterday I created a  new article in a new language.

  I noted that there are  250  languages on the list.

  The  new language should be  number  251.

  Name of the new language :   Botolan - Hambali.

  Where is it spoken :

  This languae is spoken by thousands of people in the  town of botolan,

  in the province of  Zambales in the country of the Philippines.

  There are many residents of the United States from Botolan, Zambales, Philippines.

  Many are professionals.  I for one is a licensed practicing physician in California.

  Another California licensed physician is in Central California and another one is

  a Physician teaching Anesthsiology at New York University.

  We also havee a dentist in San Francisco, CA  and an Accountant in Pennsylvania.

  We have numerous  persons who speak Botolan -  Hambali is in  United States Military

  especially the  U.S.  Navy  because there was a U.S.  Naval base in Zambales, Philippines

  for  more than  fifty  years.

       The article was a call for all of us who speak the language to communicate and

  exchange ideas and to preserve our heritage.   We also have an Orthopedic Surgeon

  who resides in  Baltimore - Washington, D.C. area  and we have several Attorneys.

  Sincerely,

  Dr.  Lino  Dial

  California - licensed  practicing physician.

  My  E - mail :    LinoADial2001 at yahoo.com


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Sarah wrote:
> So what kinds of publishers are the potential beneficiaries of our
> image policies?
>
The "future us", I'd say. All kinds of things could happen - Wikimedia
Foundation becomes a giant publishing conglomerate, record companies get
fair use outlawed, etc. Even images that got permission "for Wikipedia"
several years ago are now in a sticky position for use by Wikibooks,
Wikinews, and other projects that have come into existence since then.
Only with the free images can we be confident of being able to use them
in whatever new undertaking that we dream up.

Stan


from_name: Kraus, Alexander (KBV)

subject: [Wikitech-l] disabling namespace prefix at category pages

body:
Hi,

I'm using mediawiki 1.5.8.
At http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category#Category_page I read, that
from 1.5 on the namespace prefixes at the category pages are not longer
shown.
In my case the prefix is shown / and even at wikipedia.org it is shown.
How and where can I change that in the config, that this prefix isn't
shown any more?
And is ist possible to change the displayed text in that way, that the
namespace prefix is placed behind the Article name - for example
'myArticle (myNamespace)'

Thanks


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] OpenID (was Re:  AntiSpoof issues)

references:
<ej7f1l$9l7$1@sea.gmane.org><4557C162.3060807@tonal.clara.co.uk>
	<ej8rfq$vrt$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0611122134k37734bc5p67bd31f790d22556@mail.gmail.com>
	<ejd0fd$pug$1@sea.gmane.org> <ejdr4p$jcg$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ejfsl4$5hg$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<CEDC172B-F89F-4A4A-BFAC-9684E4D9FFC2@netmesh.us>

body:
On Wed, 2006-15-11 at 14:00 -0800, Johannes Ernst wrote:
> Is this a good time to mention that there's a very nice OpenID
> extension to MediaWiki?

It's _always_ a good time to compliment my code. Thanks!

If you need a better explanatory URL, the main homepage is here:

	http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/OpenID_Extension

> See in action here:
>      http://openid.net/wiki/

It's also in production on Wikitravel.

        http://wikitravel.org/en/Wikitravel:Single_sign-on_help

I don't think that OpenID is a realistic fix for username spoofing
(since there are at least half-a-dozen free OpenID identity services),
but it's always nice to mention.

Brion has said a few times that OpenID will be rolled out on Wikimedia
sites once the Single User Login is in place.

-Evan

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at prodromou.name>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
On 16/11/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:

> In part, it's a pretty long-standing request: bureaucrats should be
> able to assign more limited groups, such as users who can only roll
> back edits, not just sysop/bureaucrat.  It shouldn't be too hard to
> do, but none of us has done it yet, and several wikis have already
> asked.

There's Javascript that allows non-admins to do rollback in wide use
on en:wp - it's just another form of edit, after all. There's no need
to add a privilege level to MediaWiki.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] AntiSpoof issues

references:
<ej7f1l$9l7$1@sea.gmane.org> <4557C162.3060807@tonal.clara.co.uk>
	<ej8rfq$vrt$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0611122134k37734bc5p67bd31f790d22556@mail.gmail.com>
	<ejd0fd$pug$1@sea.gmane.org> <ejdr4p$jcg$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<ejfsl4$5hg$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e692861c0611151806h6f57f1c1h3c27b8265c0d4f18@mail.gmail.com>
	<455BE3A6.9080007@gmail.com>

body:
On 16/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:

> Could be useful on Commons. Also useful would be a "mark this image as
> being sane" function, with a queue, that would prevent it from being
> displayed to non-sysops until reviewed. End of image vandalism forever!
> End of horribly blatant copyvios too...

It's a good thing Commons has lots of sysops spare!

- d.


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
> > On 14/11/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > This has caused me pain and suffering for some time, ..

I both feel and share your pain, Sj :-)

..to which Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> replied:

> Ok Sam, you won, i'll be working on it shortly. Give me the week-end
> to issue all new official Wikimedia logos, if that be my swan's song.
>

Gadzooks! Delphine, please, any other song than a swan song!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan_song

Cormac


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
geni wrote:
> On 11/15/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
>
>> Hang on, I must contest all this! I see all the Wikimedia logos as
>> being professional, memorable and simple; therefore effective. They
>> also fit really well with the default monobook theme, IMO.
>>
>> S
>>
>>
>
> I don't think the foundation owns the mediawiki logo. Copyright wise
> it is in the public domain.
Hoi,
Given the age of the thing it cannot be PD yet. They are part of a
trademark and as such they are owned by the Foundation. They can if they
so choose license the logos. This is problematic because the rights that
are usual for other WMF content contrasts with the requirement of
maintaining the trademark.

This has all been said in the past often enough. Please do not spout
nonsense as if our logos are Public Domain.

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Semi-protection

body:
Semi protection and protections are use in totally different ways on
each project. I have made up this table of the 7 biggest wikipedia [1]
(exept en:).  It's just funny to see how different the percentage of
protection and semi protection could be totally different between two
projetcs.

[1] http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:Schiste/protection

--
schiste


subject: [Wikitech-l] Factual error on mediawiki.org

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> On 11/15/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> Not necessarily so. I was told that in the Netherlands it is not even
>> possible to irrevocably license something.
>>
>
> Yeah, that's probably true in a whole bunch of jurisdictions.  "Moral
> rights" (which generally don't exist in common-law jurisdictions but
> do in civil-law ones) are typically impossible to sign away.  And then
> maybe in some jurisdictions you have provisions like you have in US
> contract law, where you can't give away something for nothing . . . my
> impression is that that's not applicable under US *license* law, which
> for some reason is different, but I don't know if that's true
> everywhere.
>
> Anyway, the courts have upheld the GPL in the US, but I wouldn't be
> surprised if sometime soon it's struck down someplace in Europe or
> wherever.  So it goes.
Hoi,
The GPL has been upheld in Germany too. The issues were all where a
second party infringed on the rights under the license. This is
different from the GPL or GFDL license for that matter being withdrawn
by the copyright holder.

I hope we will never get to see such a sorry affair in court.
Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Implementing a licensing quiz on Commons

body:
On 11/16/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> It has been floated a few times that new users should have to go
> through a copyright or licensing quiz before uploading material to the
> Commons. If there was widespread community support to implement such a
> thing, would the developers be willing to code such a quiz into either
> Special:Createaccount or Special:Upload (for first time uploaders)?
>
> The type of quiz I mean is here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pfctdayelise/Licensing_quiz

Nice. And then what? Does a single wrong answer mean I can't upload to
the commons, ever? Or can I retry the question (in which case even
monkeys could pass it;-)?

If it's not a requirement but a "fun suggestion", it could go to an
external web site (toolserver!), which would avoid putting a quiz mode
into MediaWiki ;-)

OTOH, that could be a cool extension. Think determining something
based on a series on yes-no decisions - this is how you can identify
plants (using a book) or the car that matches you best (a German
newspaper does that every odd year or so). It could work with
specially prepared wiki pages. Oh, if I only had more time to code...

Magnus


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitainment Guides

body:
Probably totally unrelated, just a general comment and note, which should
have no bearing on any response, that this user is currently
[[User:T-man%2C_the_Wise_Scarecrow|indefinitely banned]] from Wikipedia.

--Chacor

On 16/11/06, A. J. Torrepuerto <ajtorrepuerto at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I'm starting a Wiki similar to wikipedia in format but focused on
> non-academic content.
>
> I'm having trouble with the infobox templates. As you can see here:
> http://189.151.13.252/Wikitainment/index.php/Super_Mario_Bros._3.  I
> already
> created the template pages and instaled the Parse extention, but the
> templates don't work fine.
>
> Can somebody help me?
>
> -Wikitainment Sysop
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Prodigy/MSN. M?s ?til Cada D?a  http://www.prodigy.msn.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: Puppy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitainment Guides

body:
A. J. Torrepuerto wrote:
> I'm starting a Wiki similar to wikipedia in format but focused on
> non-academic content.
>
> I'm having trouble with the infobox templates. As you can see here:
> http://189.151.13.252/Wikitainment/index.php/Super_Mario_Bros._3.  I already
> created the template pages and instaled the Parse extention, but the
> templates don't work fine.
>
> Can somebody help me?
>
> -Wikitainment Sysop
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Prodigy/MSN. M?s ?til Cada D?a  http://www.prodigy.msn.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
>
>
Be happy to, give me access or move to one-on-one email?
-kc-


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikitainment Guides

body:
thanks for the info - because I'm too lazy to look it up, why?

NSLE (Wikipedia) wrote:
> Probably totally unrelated, just a general comment and note, which should
> have no bearing on any response, that this user is currently
> [[User:T-man%2C_the_Wise_Scarecrow|indefinitely banned]] from Wikipedia.
>
> --Chacor
>
> On 16/11/06, A. J. Torrepuerto <ajtorrepuerto at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I'm starting a Wiki similar to wikipedia in format but focused on
>> non-academic content.
>>
>> I'm having trouble with the infobox templates. As you can see here:
>> http://189.151.13.252/Wikitainment/index.php/Super_Mario_Bros._3.  I
>> already
>> created the template pages and instaled the Parse extention, but the
>> templates don't work fine.
>>
>> Can somebody help me?
>>
>> -Wikitainment Sysop
>>
>> _________________________________________________________________
>>
>>
>
>


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Wikitech-l] mail.wikimedia.org down?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

Brion,

You can host the mail server at my place if you wish at no charge, and
I'll setup a dedicated server just for
that purpose.

Jeff

>Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>
>>On 11/15/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I get a timeout when connecting to mail.wikimedia.org / mail.wikipedia.org.
>>>All the other *.wiki*edia.org pages are up and running for me.
>>>Anything with the mail server?
>>>
>>>
>>It's down. A reboot request has been sent.
>>
>>
>
>Mail was down for two hours last night due to server crash (diagnosis
>uncertain; no panic info in syslog). It took a while to contact the DC
>to get it rebooted, longer than we wanted (unusually we got no response
>from their support e-mail, and the phone lines were busy; eventually we
>did get ahold of our main tech contact via IRC and someone was able to
>push the button.)
>
>We're going to want to migrate mail to a more reliable server soonish,
>it's died a few times lately and it's an older box without a
>remote-administration interface which we could have used to reboot it.
>
>By the way, asking on the mailing list doesn't really help when the mail
>server's down. ;)
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Wikitech-l] mail.wikimedia.org down?

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>>You can host the mail server at my place if you wish at no charge, and
>>I'll setup a dedicated server just for that purpose.
>>
>>
>
>Thanks, but not necessary.
>
>
ok.

Jeff

>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

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

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>On 11/15/06, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Personally, I dislike the new vision statement. The older one had the exact
>>same meaning, and was much "catchier"; the current proposal sounds too
>>corporate.
>>
>>
>There were two primary reasons for the changes:
>
>1) We're not only about access, but also about participation. A
>read-only wiki is not very interesting. We saw "share in" as a phrase
>that could transport many meanings.
>
A read-only wiki is not a wiki. :-)

>2) Florence and I saw "That's what we're doing" as potentially
>misleading for such an ambitious claim. Given how fucked up the
>situation still is in much of the developing world, we need to be
>careful not to come across as pretentious.
>
I agree.  When you begin by asking people to "imagine" precisely telling
them what to imagine seems to undermine the whole idea of imagination.
You really want people to sit back, close their eyes, and imagine.

Ec


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 16/11/06, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On the topic of OTRS, I had previously been in the habit of forwarding
> the text of permission emails, letters and so forth to the permissions
> queue.  Recently I've received several replies from people processing
> that queue ( which never seemed to happen before ) insisting that such
> permissions are invalid and it only counts if the OTRS person can
> email the person directly and confirm it.  This isn't the way it used
> to work, and it's annoying if I've received the permission in a way
> other than email.

Eh? This is new. I've always understood that permissions@ was for
"filing" such claims, as well as being a way to deal with people who
contact us directly.

Assuming we're getting copies of the correspondence, with headers etc,
this shouldn't be a problem. Who's been telling you this, can you
recall?

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


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

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Only one response so far? If there's no interest we might as well do
>without a public referendum.
>
Some of us take a couple of days to get to our e-mails.

To be more optimistic - maybe everyone is carefully deliberating on the
answers before giving them. ;-)

Ec


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
On 11/16/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16/11/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > In part, it's a pretty long-standing request: bureaucrats should be
> > able to assign more limited groups, such as users who can only roll
> > back edits, not just sysop/bureaucrat.  It shouldn't be too hard to
> > do, but none of us has done it yet, and several wikis have already
> > asked.
>
>
> There's Javascript that allows non-admins to do rollback in wide use
> on en:wp - it's just another form of edit, after all. There's no need
> to add a privilege level to MediaWiki.

That Javascript often fails and generates more load on servers than
does the internal rollback (IIRC it makes four page requests instead
of the one required by internal rollback).  There are good reasons for
providing broader access to the rollback button; please do not poopoo
such requests so lightly, especially when adding a rollback level to
MediaWiki is really very easy, and adding an interface to set it is a
rather simple modification to the existing "makebot" functionality
that already exists.

Kelly


body:
geni wrote:

>On 11/15/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>
>>== Vision Statement ==
>>
>>'''Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
>>in the sum of all knowledge.'''
>>
>>
>Involves a lot of running and screaming
>
Stark naked?

Ec


from_name: ATR

subject: [Foundation-l]  Foundation logo : pain and suffering

body:
|> > I don't think the foundation owns the mediawiki logo. Copyright wise
|> > it is in the public domain.
|> Hoi,
|> Given the age of the thing it cannot be PD yet. They are part of a
|> trademark and as such they are owned by the Foundation. They can if they
|> so choose license the logos. This is problematic because the rights that
|> are usual for other WMF content contrasts with the requirement of
|> maintaining the trademark.
|
|No, the MediaWiki one really is public domain.
|http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:MediaWiki-smaller-logo.png
|
|Whether or not it is also a trademark of the Foundation doesn't affect
|its copyright status.
|
|Angela.

Someone cannot declare a work PD just by copying it. It seems the
actual logo was created by Eric Moller, and it has always been the
understanding with all logos that they were "works made for hire" for
the foundation. This has been discussed previously and Jimbo can
back this up. Just because someone put a PD tag on the page at
Commons does not invalidate the Foundation's claim to this logo.

As far as the "trademark" status of the logo, the word MEDIAWIKI is
a registered mark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.. I know this because
I am the attorney of record on the USPTO file that granted this mark to
the foundation. Also the actual logo is also a mark of the Wikimedia
Foundation Inc., and is used to identify the MediaWiki software which
is released by the Foundation and is a foundation project.

Of course all trademarks can also be used based upon principles of
fair use that apply to trademarks in a similiar way as copyrights. The
important issue is that the mark is not used in a way to confuse the
public or dilute the brand which the mark represents as this is the kind
of protection that the law affords mark holders.

Alex T Roshuk
Attorney at law


subject: [Foundation-l] Rules committee

body:
On 16/11/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:

> > I would llike to propose a Rules Committee on the following bases.

> I have to disagree with the initial openness. We have too many process
> wonks who would jump at the chance, and we'll end up only being allowed
> to edit every second thursday when it's a prime number of days from the
> vernal equinox of Triton...

Proposal: a Rules Elimination Committee. They can only remove rules,
not put through new ones.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] Rules committee


body:
A friend of mine has a 1980 set of Encyclopedia Britannica he's trying
to get rid of. They're not going to be public domain in many of our
lifetimes and the information will be out of date enough to be
misleading in many ways - they would not be appropriate for a school.

I see there's another 1980 EB on eBay right now that's had no bids.
Nobody Cares (tm).

Your suggestions are welcomed ...

- d.


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

body:
> I think there is a desire among many of us to get rid of fair use
> altogether. However, that doesn't mean that it needs to be done here
> and now.  I think a gradual approach toward eliminating at least the
> vast majority of fair use on Wikipedia is the best approach.

A few weeks ago the french wikipedia adopted a general prohibition on fair use
images in all but a few specific cases. (What these specific cases are, that is
still a question.)

Not that we should (or can) do here what we do there, but it does mean *all* the
cool wikipediae have now gone this way. I'm just saying.

Trollerifically yours,
Dan


body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:

>>== Vision Statement ==
>>
>>'''Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
>>in the sum of all knowledge.'''
>>
>>Comment:
>>
>>One version from the Retreat contained the phrase "in their own
>>language" at the end, but we removed that later--I made the argument
>>that there are different ways to address language barriers, e.g. by
>>teaching another language like English and then giving access to
>>learning resources in that language. IMHO we should not explicitly
>>endorse or reject any particular _strategy_ of knowledge dissemination
>>in our vision statement.
>>
>>
>The principle of multilinguality is what really gives Wikimedia
>*global* participation and therefore WMF a global voice and global
>influence. That is something amazing that I am not really aware of
>anyone else... anywhere... doing on the same scale. It deserves proper
>recognition -- I think the "in their own language" should be
>re-appended.
>
As much as agreeing with the retreat cabal may be contrary to this
curmudgeon's world view, I think that leaving "in their own language"
out is best.  Nevertheless, I find Erik's rationale somewhat
condescending and misleading.  The vision statement is not about the
role or importance of English, or any other language.  The statement
will presumably be translated (both linguistically and culturally) into
as many languages as required, where it strikes me as normal that every
person will imagine in the context of a world vision unique his own
language and culture.  We want a Yaqui person to imagine within the
context of a world not too dissimilar to that described by Casta?eda.
Vision may not even be about language, so why restrict vision by
mentioning it.

In fact I would be inclined to shorten the statement even furtherr to

    '''Imagine a world in which every person can freely share all
    knowledge.'''

"Single", even if it's purpose is to be emphatic, is not necessary.
Some people could even draw the conclusion that marriage is the point in
life when we stop imagining. ;-)

"Person" strikes me as less coldly technical than "human being".

"The sum of" is a pointless redundancy and clich?.

Ec


from_name: Ligulem

subject: [Wikitech-l] idea: edit summary preview

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> On 11/15/06, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>> I realize full well that obsessing about one's edit summaries is
>> a sign of, well, obsession, and I'm not about to propose a way of
>> editing them, but given that their formatting rules are subtly
>> different from normal wikitext (special treatment of /* */,
>> evidently no treatment of ''...'', automagic insertion of
>> the ? character, etc.), it seems like it would be nice (but also
>> benign) to show a preview of the edit summary along with the rest
>> of the page when doing Show Preview.  Is this too goofy an idea?
>
> I just committed a change to do exactly that a couple of days ago.  It
> should go live within a few days, whenever someone decides to
> resynchronize the sites with the codebase.

\o/ superb! Thanks a lot.

--Ligulem


body:
On 16/11/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:

> While not PD for a long time, he could scan and auto-OCR it for copyvio checks.

Or someone else could! He's moving house and needs to get the heck rid
of these things ASAP ...

> And, of course, I would buy it for a reasonable amount of money.

He's in Australia. Shipping would be just a bit, but I'm pretty sure
you could have them for postage ;-)

The set on eBay is in the US and is starting at 99c for the set and
$95 shipping in the US.

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN:  [17714] trunk/phase3

body:
simetrical at svn.wikimedia.org wrote:
> (bug 6873) When viewing old revisions, add link to diff to current version.
[snip]
> -'old-revision-navigation' => 'Revision as of $1; $5
($6) $3 | $2 | $4 ($7)',
> +'old-revision-navigation' => 'Revision as of $1; $5
($6) $3 | $2 ($8) | $4 ($7)',

A note: changing the existing message this way means that customized
versions will not show the new functionality.

If it's important to add, it may be more appropriate to rename the message.

Actually this message should probably be broken up anyway; it seems
badly factored to me, mixing a line of text and what should probably be
a programmatic line of links into a single HTML message.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [Wikitech-l] [MediaWiki-CVS] SVN:  [17715] trunk/phase3

body:
simetrical at svn.wikimedia.org wrote:
> (bug 3315) Allow rollback directly from history page.
[snip]
> +			$extraRollback .= '&token=' . urlencode(
> +				$wgUser->editToken( array( $wgTitle->getPrefixedText(), $rev->getUserText() ) ) );
> +			$s .= ' ['. $this->mSkin->makeKnownLinkObj( $wgTitle,
> +			  	wfMsg('rollbacklink'),
> +			  	'action=rollback&from=' . $rev->getUserText() . $extraRollback ) .']';

Don't forget URL encoding; this will fail for usernames with various
special characters.

It might also be wise to refactor some of the rollback bits; if the edit
token usage for rollback is changed, for instance, we've got several
places it has to be tweaked.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
Anthere wrote:

>Brianna Laugher wrote:
>
>
>>Wouldn't this be a good time to expand on specific visions for each of
>>the projects? If not here, then where? Nowhere? Or each community can
>>come up with its own?
>>
>>
>Yes. Please develop charters for each project.
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Charte_Wikiquote_FR
>
No problem with this process in principle, but any formal adoption
should probably wait until the vision/mission proposal is more advanced.

>>Seems like MediaWiki software development would be worth mentioning as
>>well, considering how important it is to the projects...
>>
>>
>I am not convinced it should, given that MediaWiki developers wish to
>maintain a certain independance (whether they succeed doing that is
>another issue).
>
The words "essential infrastructure" would seem to already imply
adequate software development.

>>Anyway my main complaint is that I don't see how either of these
>>statements would prevent "wikistalk" being successfully proposed, or
>>how they explain why video game guides are inappropriate for
>>Wikibooks. Or why people shouldn't upload ten photos of their friends
>>and dog at Commons. Or why they shouldn't write about their school
>>teacher.
>>Needs some adjective somewhere like EDUCATIONAL.
>>
>>
>Ah...
>Look Brianna. In french, there is a saying "you can not have the butter
>and the money from the butter at the same time".
>
In English: "You can't have your cake and eat it too."

>Editors are telling us all the time that the editorial policy should be
>developped by community, NOT by the Foundation.
>If in its statement, which is recorded in its *bylaws* the Foundation
>somehow clarifies video games guides are not appropriate (I am forcing
>the point here on purpose), then, the Foundation is setting up the
>editorial policy.
>
>I do not think it should be this way. The way you ask is
>The Foundation decides to create a project and the project should follow
>these exact rules.
>
>Versus
>The community decides to create a project with this goal, and the
>Foundation likes the idea and decides to support it (or decide not to).
>
The problem is bigger than Wikimedia.  People are afraid that if they
reach for the brass ring they will fall off the merry-go-round horse.

Personally, I have no objection to video game guides, but would have
serious concerns about "Wikistalking" or personal photo albums.  The
point is not about any one of these, but about the fact that we all
think differently about what should be included and where.

Adding the adjective "educational" somewhere doesn't help because
opinions on just what is educational are likely to open a whole new
round of debate.

The mission statement is a big picture document.  It is about wishes and
possibilities, not about restrictions.  Where needed those restrictions
can come later.

>My suggestion (and this was a collective desire of board retreat
>participants) is that each project develop a very detailed charter. That
>this charter be adopted by all languages of this project. That new
>language starting should adopt this charter. And the Foundation agrees
>to support this project, with this charter.
>
I think it's a little early for a proposal of this kind.  While there is
some merit to such a charter, the greater the detail the greater the
difficulty in developing a common position.  This could easily be seen
as an attempt by the major languages to dominate the smaller.

Ec


from_name: Erik Moeller

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

body:
Only one response so far? If there's no interest we might as well do
without a public referendum.

On 11/15/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Organizations often have a "mission statement" and a "vision
> statement". For a typical distinction, see e.g.:
> http://www.cfbroward.org/new/tips/1.html
>
> At the Board Retreat in October, we revisited our existing "Vision",
> which is: "Imagine a world in which every single person is given free
> access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's what we're doing."
>
> We also developed a mission statement from scratch. What's the point?
> Aside from uniting behind a set of key goals, it helps us to decide
> which activities fall within our scope and which ones don't --
> something that is not always easy, given the diversity of our existing
> projects and communities. Should we launch a WikiFoo project, or is
> Foo not part of our mission? Both the vision and mission statement
> will be frequently cited in future discussions of this kind, so they
> are relevant, and not just organizational fluff.
>
> After some further discussion, the Board has come up with the
> following Mission and Vision statements. I would like to invite
> comments on these statements, and perhaps we can identify changes that
> we can all agree on. I would also like to encourage you to propose
> alternative statements on Meta (see URLs below).
>
> The idea is that, after a discussion and editing period of at least
> two weeks, the Board will choose a version of the M&V statements.
> These versions will then be put forward to the community, for a simple
> "up" or "down" vote. If a statement reaches at least a two thirds
> majority of support, it will be implemented as such. If it only
> reaches a simple majority, further discussion and potential revision
> may follow, at the Board's discretion. A statement that does not reach
> a majority will not become an official statement of the WMF. The usual
> voting restrictions will apply (minimum participation period etc.) and
> will be announced together with the vote.
>
> A general note: Our mission statement is perhaps longer than it needs
> to be, and our vision statement shorter. But in these matters, we can
> be flexible -- the most important question is whether both statements
> meet the specific needs of _our_ organization and community.
>
> == Vision Statement ==
>
> '''Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
> in the sum of all knowledge.'''
>
> Comment:
>
> One version from the Retreat contained the phrase "in their own
> language" at the end, but we removed that later--I made the argument
> that there are different ways to address language barriers, e.g. by
> teaching another language like English and then giving access to
> learning resources in that language. IMHO we should not explicitly
> endorse or reject any particular _strategy_ of knowledge dissemination
> in our vision statement. Rather, I suggested we could add a phrase
> such as "unimpeded by language barriers, socioeconomic status, or
> government censorship". This was seen as too negative. In any case, I
> feel that the simple adjective "freely" may be sufficient in order to
> convey the idea that we seek to make knowledge as widely available as
> possible.
>
> == Mission Statement ==
>
> '''The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage
> people around the world to collect and develop knowledge under a free
> license, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.'''
>
> '''In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation
> provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework
> for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and
> other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation is committed
> to making and keeping all information from its projects available on
> the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.'''
>
> Comment:
>
> This is a slightly edited version from the Retreat, see the URL below
> for the original. It was important to us to emphasize that the
> relationship between WMF and its chapters, in general practice, is
> more one of organizations with different scope working towards the
> same goals, rather than a top down chain of command. The last sentence
> seemed important to emphasize the distinction between "free licensing"
> and "free access", both of which we are equally committed to.
>
> == Comments & edits welcome ==
>
> In the spirit of "stable versions", the M&V statements above can be
> found, as protected pages, on
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision
>
> You can suggest changes in this thread, or edit the unstable versions:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mission/Unstable
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Vision/Unstable
>
> You are also encouraged to "fork" new versions if that becomes
> necessary due to lack of consensus on the wiki. Again, after at least
> two weeks, the Board will nominate the versions to be voted upon by
> the community. Let me know if you have any questions about this
> process.
>
> You are encouraged to translate the proposed Mission & Vision
> statements, and to carry this discussion into other languages -- see
> the language links at the top of the above-referenced pages to get
> started.
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees
>
> DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
> in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
> position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
>

--
Peace & Love,
Erik

Member, Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees

DISCLAIMER: Unless otherwise stated, all views or opinions expressed
in this message are solely my own and do not represent an official
position of the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 11/16/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Only one response so far? If there's no interest we might as well do
> without a public referendum.

Well, if you count my remark on the talk page of the Mission statement
- unstable version, that's two.

hehe.

Delphine
--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.


from_name: Mathias Schindler

body:
On 11/16/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> A friend of mine has a 1980 set of Encyclopedia Britannica he's trying
> to get rid of. They're not going to be public domain in many of our
> lifetimes and the information will be out of date enough to be
> misleading in many ways - they would not be appropriate for a school.
>
> I see there's another 1980 EB on eBay right now that's had no bids.
> Nobody Cares (tm).
>
> Your suggestions are welcomed ...

While not PD for a long time, he could scan and auto-OCR it for copyvio checks.

And, of course, I would buy it for a reasonable amount of money.

Mathias


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Policy draft: Wikimedia projects are not
 the	place for national constitution

body:
Hoi,
Please refrain from misrepresenting what I said. The notion of what is a
language has been often defined as "a dialect with a navy/army". Another
nice saying "To the victor all the spoils". I have already mentioned
that Cyrillic Moldovan /is /and /will /be continued to be supported as
being distinct from standard Romanian in future standards. This gives
ample scope for the continued existence of the http://mo.wikipedia.org.
This scope is strengthened by the continued harassment / aggression
against the contributors of this wikipedia.

When you want to achieve some sort of cooperation, /you /will first have
first to reach out with an olive branch of peace. You will have to
demonstrate your good intentions and disprove that the wish for
integration is political in word and deed. To make it a real challenge
not only you but the whole http://ro.wikipedia.org community has to
become inclusive. Having opportunities to integrate are imho unlikely to
be successful at this time because I would not hesitate to predict that
a forcefully combined "community" will find all kinds of "reasonable"
arguments to decide in majority and thereby prove to be anything but a
community that has come together in one project.

Thanks,
    GerardM

Jacky PB wrote:
> --- Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Yeah. Despite their constant assertions to the
>> otherwise, I can
>> testify that Romanians are collectively Russophobic.
>>
>
> What is this doing here?
> I'm not sure that wikipedia-l is the place for
> exposing your feelings about some nation or another.
> User pages and blogs serve this purpose.
>
> The argument here is about whether one *needs* two
> fully independent wikipedias (ro and mo), or two
> interfaces to a single code base, given that
> 1. the standard language is the same, as stated in
> sources presented above, and accepted, for instance,
> by GerardM.
> 2. wikipedia is about languages, not politics
>
> And there is a second question: Is the second variant
> feasible?
>
> Dpotop
>
>
>
>> I don't really
>> blame them, given the role Russia has had in their
>> history.
>>
>> Danutz claimed that it was a "coincidence" that they
>> removed the
>> Cyrillic character from the ball in the logo to
>> replace it with a
>> Romanian one, that they were just replacing a letter
>> at random, not
>> because it was Cyrillic. But I do not believe this.
>>
>> Certainly, it is a basic difficulty that most
>> Romanians don't know
>> Cyrillic well enough to be able to write it,
>> although they can
>> probably read it with some difficulty (just as
>> someone who knew
>> Serbian Latin but not Cyrillic could eke their way
>> through a text).
>>
>> Presumably, though, it could be solved that editbox
>> text, too, would
>> be converted.
>>
>> But still, ro.wp would probably vote against the
>> very idea of having
>> Cyrillic on their WP in any way, shape, or form.
>> They've said some
>> pretty interesting stuff about it, like how badly it
>> fits the
>> language, despite the fact that it is linguistically
>> much
>> better-suited (more phonetic and has no digraphs,
>> represents some
>> distinctions that Latin does not, and combines a
>> couple of
>> diphthongs), and a hostile attitude in general
>> through various
>> actions.
>>
>> I'm guessing that a long-term solution (ie, when the
>> internet comes to
>> Transnistria in its entirety) would be some form of
>> a transliterating
>> portal, if not a separate WP. (likely the Romanian
>> domination of power
>> would anger Nistrians regarding POV disputes)
>>
>> Mark
>>
>> On 15/11/06, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/15/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>> As long as there is no automated lossless
>>>>> conversion from Latin to Cyrillic and from
>>>>>
>> Cyrillic to Latin AND the
>>
>>>>> orthography used, MediaWiki does not provide
>>>>>
>> the required functionality
>>
>>>>> for Romanian/Moldovan.
>>>>>
>>>> That's a third thing, and an implementation
>>>>
>> detail for the given
>>
>>>> language (eg, already implemented for Serbian,
>>>>
>> etc). Nor is it related
>>
>>>> to the 'Multilingual MediaWiki' proposal.
>>>>
>>> Usage of scripts in articles on Serbian Wikipedia
>>>
>> are regulated by
>>
>>> policy, not by software (if initial article is
>>>
>> written in
>>
>>> Latin-Iyekavian, it should stay Latin-Iyekavian)
>>>
>> and we are not quite
>>
>>> happy because of that (we want solution in which
>>>
>> anyone may use it's
>>
>>> own script and variant inside of the code). And
>>>
>> what we want, it is
>>
>>> necessary for Moldovan/Romanin case and for all
>>>
>> other cases where
>>
>>> differences between orthographies are not inside
>>>
>> of one cultural
>>
>>> space. (I.e., it is OK for Serbian Ekavian user to
>>>
>> see Iyekavian text,
>>
>>> but I don't think that it would be OK for some
>>>
>> Romanian user to have
>>
>>> to write in Moldovan Cyrillic ;) )
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>>
>>>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>> --
>> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Jerome Banal

subject: [Foundation-l] Dual-Licensing Wiktionary :fr ?

body:
Salut,

Thanks for this detailed explanation Gerard.
So if I sum up the whole thing, actually, you can already grab a lot of
contents for wikt:fr, but changing the license would made grabbing
definitions somewhat safer, am I right?

Right now, reactions here seem pretty positive to try a license change and I
did not see someone from the board screaming at this idea :-) Nobody is
against starting a discussion/poll about this? A local one or a Meta one?

Thanks for any comment,
Jerome

2006/11/15, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> Hoi,
> A copyright holder can license his content. This is why several Open
> Source projects insist that any the ownership of a contribution that is
> to be merged  into the core of that project is to be transferred to the
> organisation that maintains the project. This way they can provide both
> free and proprietary services based on the same code-base. The Wikimedia
> projects are not the same. It is possible to write a quality NPOV
> Wikipedia article in many ways, just compare articles in different
> Wikipedias and you will see what I mean. Wiktionary is very much more
> factual; the translation for child in Dutch is kind. The gender is
> neutral, the plural is kinderen. You cannot copyright this. The
> information in WiktionaryZ and Wiktionary is very much like this. It is
> very much the reason why WiktionaryZ could be developed in this way.
>
> It is as you indicate, there are multiple copyrights involved. The
> MediaWiki is GPL. The database design is GPL. The database specific
> copyright is as indicated earlier with either with the Wikimedia
> Foundation or with the community of a Wiktionary project. It is not
> possible for a single person to lay claim to the whole of the collection.
>
> The WiktionaryZ project is completely differently organised from the
> Wiktionary projects; one is relational the other flat file organised.
> When it comes to the data itself, for Wiktionary an article exists for
> each each expression spelled in a particular way. In WiktionaryZ there
> is a record for each occurrence of the expression per language. It is
> therefore impossible for WiktionaryZ to "infringe" on the license held
> by Wiktionary in all the ways that you specify for the "database
> specific copyright".
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM
>
> Jerome Banal wrote:
> > Hello Gerard,
> >
> > Hmm, this is pretty adventurous, isn't it?
> > GPL is not compatible with GFDL and a poll to change a license of
> current
> > content is only valid if the license is entitled to the community as a
> > collaborative work and not to contributors like in the case of Wikimedia
> > projects. Otherwise, you should be only able to get edits made 100% by
> > people who agreed (but I guess, you know all that already).
> >
> > Also, in some countries (France for example), there is a
> "database-specific
> > copyright law" that may apply on dictionaries (a structured list of
> > synonyms, translations and all being nothing more than a database for
> the
> > law) and which basically forbids to copy a "substantial amount" -both in
> > term of data fields and entries- of a database (if you read some French:
> > http://www.murielle-cahen.com/p_base_de_donnees.asp).
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Jerome Banal
> >
> >
> > 2006/11/15, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com >:
> >
> >> Hoi,
> >> Let me explain why WiktionaryZ allows for what are in effect two
> >> licenses that are not compatible otherwise.
> >>
> >> It is not possible to copyright facts. It is however possible to
> >> copyright collections of facts. Every Wiktionary is a collection of
> >> facts but there is no single person who owns this copyright. At best
> >> there is a formal owner; the Wikimedia Foundation and there is a
> >> practical owner that is its community. There are arguments about
> >> definitions being copyrightable and there have been court cases about
> >> this. It was typically found that there is often only one way of
> >> defining certain things. This resulted in many dictionaries having
> bogus
> >> information that only aims to "prove" that when found, the content of
> >> their collection was illegally copied.
> >>
> >> For WiktionaryZ we have defined success as: "When people find an
> >> application for our data that we did not think about, that is success".
> >> The consequence is that the data has to be available for inclusions in
> >> applications. This means that we aim to provide the data in STANDARD
> >> export formats. The data has to be identifiable to be in a recognised
> >> language, a recognised script and a recognised orthography. There are
> >> few practical standards for this. We went on a limb by choosing
> >> ISO-639-3. This is the best currently available but this still does not
> >> provide sufficient granularity. This may only arrive with the
> ISO-639-6.
> >>
> >> When the data itself cannot be "protected" with licenses or copyright,
> >> the question is what is it that we want from the copyright, the
> license.
> >> What we want to make plane is that the data is available at WiktionaryZ
>
> >> for any purposes and that we REALLY want people to help us complete
> >> curate our data. This is what the CC-by allows us to do. It is possible
> >> to include the data necessary to build OpenOffice (or any other) spell
> >> checkers. These can be re-build every week. As long as the end-user
> >> knows how and where to fix errors and omissions, we have the
> >> functionality of our license. This is what mandatory attribution
> provides.
> >>
> >> When a Wiktionary community wants to /cooperate /with WiktionaryZ,
> there
> >> are several ways in which this can be done. We can have interwiki links
> >> on the Wiktionaries articles to WiktionaryZ. When people want to use
> the
> >> WZ content in Wiktionary they can. When a Wiktionary community wants to
> >> /integrate /their data in WiktionaryZ integrally, they can vote on
> this.
> >> >From the WZ point of view, if there is at least a 75% majority of the
> >> active community in favour, it should provide enough clarity required
> to
> >> investigate the integration of the data of that Wiktionary into
> >> WiktionaryZ. In the past several large collections under other licenses
>
> >> like the GPL have been integrated into the different Wiktionaries. The
> >> copyright holders of these collections may find it in themselves to
> >> grant WiktionaryZ this same privilege they gave to the Wiktionary
> >> projects.
> >>
> >> When people edit content in WiktionaryZ, these changes can be used
> under
> >> a less Free license, you only need to attribute.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>     GerardM
> >>
> >>
> >> Jerome Banal wrote:
> >>
> >>> Hello,
> >>>
> >>> We had a small chat at Wiktionary fr: since a few days about moving
> >>>
> >> /new/
> >>
> >>> edits made on Wiktionary fr (and others some other are interested) to
> >>>
> >> dual
> >>
> >>> licensing GFDL - CC-by. After a small discussion with Anthere about
> >>>
> >> whether
> >>
> >>> we could be allowed to do it and how, she advised me to come and talk
> >>>
> >> with
> >>
> >>> you all.
> >>>
> >>> So maybe a little explanation of the reasons and consequences would be
> >>> useful.
> >>>
> >>> The main reason we have in mind for discussing it is to have a better
> >>> cooperation with the project WiktionaryZ, which is dual-licensed as
> >>> specified above. It basically means that we can take its content under
> >>>
> >> GFDL
> >>
> >>> license, but that they can take only contents that are under GFDL and
> >>>
> >> CC-by
> >>
> >>> at the same time. Which is not our case.
> >>>
> >>> Some people thinks that helping WiktionaryZ reusing our content would
> >>>
> >> make
> >>
> >>> them progress faster, and in return, that their progresses would help
> us
> >>> making progress in the future in several possible ways (software part,
> >>>
> >> data
> >>
> >>> part...).
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> What would be the consequences about this license modification ?
> >>>
> >>> * A site license somewhat more complex. Edits prior to the date of
> >>>
> >> change
> >>
> >>> would have to remain GFDL only (unless specific agreement with users),
> >>>
> >> new
> >>
> >>> edits would be dual-licensed. This is not awful: people can still
> reuse
> >>>
> >> the
> >>
> >>> whole Wiktionary as if it was GFDL-only. CC-by is just a bonus.
> >>>
> >>> * As this is not a CC-by-SA (incompatible with WiktionaryZ),
> Wiktionary
> >>> content could be taken, possibly modified and redistributed under any
> >>> compatible licence with CC-by, which is about all as long as you give
> >>> attribution, including non-free licenses (but of course, the original
> >>> remains free so it should not be a big deal).
> >>>
> >>> * Import from Wikipedia and other GFDL-only projects will not be
> >>>
> >> possible
> >>
> >>> without prior agreement with past contributors. These imports are not
> >>> insignificant but remain limited in amount and often in quality.
> >>>
> >>> * If we have to negotiate importing external source, we would have to
> >>> request dual-licensing, as WiktionaryZ needs to, right now. CC-by is
> >>>
> >> more
> >>
> >>> free (I know, it's paradoxical; see it as "there are less
> restrictions,
> >>> including the one to keep derivative free") than GFDL so it may be
> more
> >>> difficult, as it is possible that the original authors can't get the
> >>> enhancements made by someone else back in their own work due to a
> >>>
> >> different
> >>
> >>> license choice.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> So there are good points (better collaborative work with WiktionaryZ)
> >>>
> >> and
> >>
> >>> bad points (probably more difficult reusing of some external sources
> >>>
> >> -like
> >>
> >>> some other GFDL dictionaries- which brought a good amount of articles
> in
> >>>
> >> the
> >>
> >>> past and of derivative works).
> >>>
> >>> OK, I think that's the picture. What do you think about it? Should
> >>> Wiktionary users start a poll on their projects? On Meta? Or does that
> >>>
> >> just
> >>
> >>> sound bad to you?
> >>>
> >>> Thanks all,
> >>> Jerome Banal
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/16/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Whether or not it is also a trademark of the Foundation doesn't affect
> its copyright status.

Incerdentaly do you know if it is a trademark of the foundation?

--
geni


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

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:

>On 17/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>Wouldn't this be a good time to expand on specific visions for each of
>>>the projects? If not here, then where? Nowhere? Or each community can
>>>come up with its own?
>>>
>>>
>>Yes. Please develop charters for each project.
>>
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Charte_Wikiquote_FR
>>
>>
>OK. I wasn't aware of this, but I think it's a great idea.
>
>By 'project' do we mean Wikiquote (all languages) or French Wikiquote, though?
>
There's a lot of ambiguity that has developed around the use of the term
"project".  Resolving this would be very helpful.

>>Editors are telling us all the time that the editorial policy should be
>>developped by community, NOT by the Foundation.
>>If in its statement, which is recorded in its *bylaws* the Foundation
>>somehow clarifies video games guides are not appropriate (I am forcing
>>the point here on purpose), then, the Foundation is setting up the
>>editorial policy.
>>
>>
>OK...but there is a long precedent of the Foundation (well, actually:
>Jimbo) setting editorial policy. Jimbo's opinion is frequently cited
>in all manner of discussions and it was his direct intervention in
>Wikibooks that WAS the whole videogame guides thing.
>
I believe that the Catholic Church should review the doctrine of papal
infalibility.  In theory it only applies when he speaks 'ex cathedra',.
but that is a difficult concept for the flock to grasp.

>>I do not think it should be this way. The way you ask is
>>The Foundation decides to create a project and the project should follow
>>these exact rules.
>>
>>Versus
>>The community decides to create a project with this goal, and the
>>Foundation likes the idea and decides to support it (or decide not to).
>>
>>
>
>So...one of these statements should be about what the Foundation is or
>is not willing to support, right?
>
>I am trying to tie these statements to Erik's statement that these are
>the things that would be cited in deciding if a new project should be
>supported or not.
>I think it would be not hard to get enough people to support a "Games
>guide wiki".  What, in these statements, explains why the WMF would
>not support it?
>
>What, in these statements, explains why the WMF would not support
>Wikistalk? ( http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Lookup_directory_wiki )
>
>What, in these statements, explains why WMF would not support
>Wikihowto, Wikipeople/Wikimorial , Wikiviews (opinions/reviews)? Is it
>*only* the lack of community support, or is there something I don't
>see in these statements?
>
I think you are reading far too much into Anthere's answer.  Where to
put a games guide is not a particularly important question.  The
important point now is how we decide.  Presuming that WMF would or would
not support a project, and using that to generalize a policy is not a
sound basis for developing policies.  What decides whether or not we
have Wikistalk as a project may be as simple as the common sense
judgement of the people who decide.  If any project proposal is really
new, how can there possibly be a pre-existing policy about it?

>>My suggestion (and this was a collective desire of board retreat
>>participants) is that each project develop a very detailed charter. That
>>this charter be adopted by all languages of this project. That new
>>language starting should adopt this charter. And the Foundation agrees
>>to support this project, with this charter.
>>
>>
>Are the existing projects exempt from this? I think that's a great
>idea (although I can see it being very difficult for Wikipedia). Are
>there guidelines for what a charter should cover?
>
You make it look like you are looking for answers from everyone else but
yourself.  If such a charter is a good idea, then maybe the niext step
could be to develop what it should contain.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikitech-l] Java becomes Open Source, what next?

body:
On 11/16/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Perhaps we need a good session at Wikimania on techniques for
> technophobic administrators.  It could even coincide with hacking days,
> but our techies may not like being drawn away from hacking days to teach
> the clueless.
>

Most admins do not go to Wikimania.

--
geni


body:
On 11/15/06, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> == Vision Statement ==
>
> '''Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
> in the sum of all knowledge.'''

Involves a lot of running and screaming

> == Mission Statement ==
>
> '''The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage
> people around the world to collect and develop knowledge under a free
> license, and to disseminate it effectively and globally.'''
>
> '''In collaboration with a network of chapters, the Foundation
> provides the essential infrastructure and an organizational framework
> for the support and development of multilingual wiki projects and
> other endeavors which serve this mission. The Foundation is committed
> to making and keeping all information from its projects available on
> the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity.'''
>

Not quite true. There are a number of bits of information from the
projects which the foundation generaly prevents from being freely
availible for obvious reasons. the deletion log to start with.

--
geni