body:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:

>
> Although I think the formal policies may be overdoing it, we do
> need to
> make some effort to change the culture. Can Susan be so certain of her
> twenty-years-ago memory that she can just  starting typing away with
> confidence? I would rather she make a library visit first, or simply
> leave a note on the talk page - several times I've been able to use
> somebody else's talk page note as a starting point  for doing a bit of
> research of my own, or triggered somebody else's further research by
> asking questions. We would also have a lot fewer edit wars if people
> didn't just wade in and start adding/deleting based on their faulty
> memory or understanding.

That's the thing, though - Wikipedia was built by Susan. She did the
heavy lifting to get Wikipedia to where it is today. We depend on Susan.

Now, we also depend on hardcore editors who deal with policy issues
and edit wars and get long-term involved - admins and future admins,
basically. These people clean up if Susan misremembers. As well as
doing a thousand other bigger tasks that Susan isn't interested in.

But we need to adamantly resist letting this second pool of users set
the rules in such a way that Susan gets squeezed out. Susan should be
able to do any small task on Wikipedia.

-Phil


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Steve Block

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:FA]]

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

> Pop onto AfD for a bit. Or to articles on popular culture. Or
> [[WP:FAC]].

There are issue within the featured article process, I'll grant you
that.  Apparently one of the issues with the Superman article is that
some citations are Harvard style and some are Wikipedia style.  I'm of
the opinion that the time spent discussing that would be better served
ignoring it or fixing it. But hey, it's just one more hoop.  Like I say,
some people jopin Wikipedia just to find new hoops.  I suppose it's a
logical progression.  You get all your featured articles to one state,
so then you look at how to move them on.  I'd say you're looking at the
wrong end of the telescope though.  You should get all your other
articles to FA state and then improve the standards.  What a hobby we
have, ladies and gentlemen.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.10/651 - Release Date: 24/01/07 18:48


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nuke [[WP:CITE]] and [[WP:RS]]

body:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:42 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:

>> If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.
>
> No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were
> reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used
> it for anything. That's no longer the case. If we want to be a
> credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources
> (citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the
> important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).
>
> There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A
> source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where
> the fact came from. Citing sources is easy, because you will always
> have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you
> don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you
> aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The
> problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem
> is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.

You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that
underly Wikipedia.

"You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the
key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the
thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.

-Phil


from_name: · Firefoxman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Change my name?

body:
I have been contributing for a while, and I wonder if I should change my
name since it is so simmilar to FireFox.

--
-Firefoxman


body:
Umm, am I missign somthing here? Who is "Susan"?

On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:36 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
>
> >
> > Although I think the formal policies may be overdoing it, we do
> > need to
> > make some effort to change the culture. Can Susan be so certain of her
> > twenty-years-ago memory that she can just  starting typing away with
> > confidence? I would rather she make a library visit first, or simply
> > leave a note on the talk page - several times I've been able to use
> > somebody else's talk page note as a starting point  for doing a bit of
> > research of my own, or triggered somebody else's further research by
> > asking questions. We would also have a lot fewer edit wars if people
> > didn't just wade in and start adding/deleting based on their faulty
> > memory or understanding.
>
> That's the thing, though - Wikipedia was built by Susan. She did the
> heavy lifting to get Wikipedia to where it is today. We depend on Susan.
>
> Now, we also depend on hardcore editors who deal with policy issues
> and edit wars and get long-term involved - admins and future admins,
> basically. These people clean up if Susan misremembers. As well as
> doing a thousand other bigger tasks that Susan isn't interested in.
>
> But we need to adamantly resist letting this second pool of users set
> the rules in such a way that Susan gets squeezed out. Susan should be
> able to do any small task on Wikipedia.
>
> -Phil
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Firefoxman


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

subject: [WikiEN-l] Criteria of notability for web

body:
I have an issue with the third criterium of notability for web content,
which IMO should not exist at all:

<<
Web-specific content is notable if it meets any one of the following criteria:

3) The content is distributed via a medium which is both well known and
independent of the creators, either through an online newspaper or
magazine, an online publisher, or an online broadcaster.
>>

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(web)

I have a blog on Blogger, which is a medium both well known and
independent of me.

According to the criterion, my blog is notable. Actually, all the
blogs from Blogger are notable, only the blogs hosted by their owners
fail this criterion of notability.

Notability only due to the medium which was published is not valid for
non-web content: not everyone who wrote an article for The Times or
NY Times is notable. Why should it be valid for web content?

The subject of the article should be notable BY ITSELF, not by
association.


body:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:53 PM, ? Firefoxman wrote:

> Umm, am I missign somthing here? Who is "Susan"?

Scroll up - she's a hypothetical stay-at-home mother with five
minutes to spend on a Wikipedia article. My contention is that we
need to avoid policies that prevent Susan from editing.

-Phil


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[WikiEN-l] How to stop Encyclopedia Dramatica from
 making	attack articles on us

body:
? Firefoxman wrote:
> Wouldent they deserve their own article?
>

The only NPOV statement I have in response to that is "go read the
Arbcom case".

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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 542 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20070125/52988043/attachment.pgp


from_name: George Herbert

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Well gee, abusive admins, abusive editors,
	and you don't care about the rules at all.

body:
On 1/25/07, Michael Smith <runechozo at gmail.com> wrote:
>  Gee - ZakuSage abuses me, and what happens when I respond? Assterion blocks
> me for 2 weeks, and his ass buddy Yamla locks my user page?
>
> You are a real fucking laugh riot, Zakusage I guess really owns that PSP
> page huh.
>
> RunedChozo

Last night, I and others asked you both nicely to take a wikibreak and
leave it alone.  Neither of you did that.

I'm going to go have some stern words with ZakuSage about wikistalking
people, but you need to take responsibility for having chosen to
continue engaging in a hostile, uncivil manner rather than back off
and calm down.  If you'd stopped last night this would be very
different today.

If you cannot control your temper enough to act in a reasonable and
civil manner even when someone is provoking you, you're going to get
yourself in trouble and thrown off Wikipedia sooner or later.  People
have told you this before.  Please listen this time.

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


body:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 2:51 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>> If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good. But if Susan has
>> to go Google the fact to find it somewhere else, we're already losing
>> precious seconds of Susan's time.
> But how does that work out overall, when you save seconds of Susan's
> time, and cost me a half-hour of research to figure out why an article
> is inconsistent with all the ones it links with? Scholarship is tricky
> enough on its own, we don't need to make it harder by mixing in a
> bunch
> of random half-remembered bits.

Simple. You're a different kind of editor than Susan. You're willing
to put long hours into Wikipedia. You care enough to join a mailing
list about Wikipedia. Accordingly, it's not the end of the world for
you to spend half an hour on a task like this. Because (and this is
important) most of the time it won't be wrong. Susan may not be 100%
reliable, but she's pretty good. How do we know this? Because she
wrote most of Wikipedia, and Wikipedia is pretty good.

The model is this: we have thousands of Susans. They do a lot of the
heavy lifting on Wikipedia. Then we have a few hundred hardcore users
who fix the problems left by the thousands of Susans - they check odd
facts that don't seem to jibe, they deal with malicious users, they
get involved with edit wars, they delete, they debate policy.

Susan does 90% of the work. The hardcore do about 10% of the work, a
lot of which is cleaning up after Susan. But that's still a massive
net amount of work being done by Susan. Who does not show up on this
mailing list to offer her viewpoint, which is why we need to take
care to stop and think about Susan (and, of course, the other
thousands of casual editors.)

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Change my name?

body:
> I have been contributing for a while, and I wonder if I should change my
name since it is so simmilar to FireFox.
>
> --
> -Firefoxman

You can if you want, but there's so many similar names there's no big hurry;
we have User:Firefox and User:FireFox as two separate people already.
--Mets501


subject: [WikiEN-l] Change my name?

body:
Thanks!

On 1/25/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I have been contributing for a while, and I wonder if I should change my
> name since it is so simmilar to FireFox.
> >
> > --
> > -Firefoxman
>
> You can if you want, but there's so many similar names there's no big
> hurry;
> we have User:Firefox and User:FireFox as two separate people already.
> --Mets501
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Firefoxman


body:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 2:56:11 PM, Jeff wrote:

>> I have a blog on Blogger, which is a medium both well known and
>> independent of me.
>>
>> According to the criterion, my blog is notable. Actually, all the
>> blogs from Blogger are notable, only the blogs hosted by their owners
>> fail this criterion of notability.

> The language probably needs to be tightened up a bit, but the intent and
> the way it's been read (and I don't disagree) is that "independent of
> the subject" means that the subject is controlled editorially somewhat
> from the place hosting it.  Thus, a blog on blogger isn't, but a
> webcomic on Keenspot generally is.

So, basically, all the blogs hosted by a provider which has some editorial
control (i.e. not allowing stupid/test/spam blogs) is notable?


from_name: Claus Färber

body:
Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> schrieb/
wrote:?
>| 3) The content is distributed via a medium which is both well known
>| and? independent of the creators, either through an online newspaper
>| or? magazine, an online publisher, or an online broadcaster.

> I have a blog on Blogger, which is a medium both well known and
> independent of me.

No, it is not independent of you. The material Blogger is hosting was
uploaded/written by you. In other words: No well-known third party
independently _decided_ to report about your blog.

Claus


list: commons-l

from_name: Jon Harald Søby

subject: [Commons-l] Login

body:
Hi! Mail mediawiki-l [1] for this kind of questions.

[1] http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

On 1/25/07, Jonathan Buck <jonathanpbuck at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have set up mediawiki locally, on sign-in the user is authenticated,
> however when navigating to any other page (my preferences, my watchlist,
> main page), the user is no longer logged in.  A cookie is being created and
> I have allowed all cookies.  My only guess is that the session is being lost
> somehow.  I am using the apache2 server on windows XP.  Any suggestions as
> to where this problem can be troubleshot from or what is going on?
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
>

--
Best regards,
Jon Harald S?by

Website - http://www.alqualonde.com/
Wikipedia - http://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruker:Jhs
MSN messenger - jhsoby at gmail.com
Skype - jon.harald.soby


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Jan 24, 2007, at 9:50 PM, geni wrote:
> >
> > That differes from our copyright policy how?
>
> Our copyright policy is mostly intuitive,

False.

It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their
construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface

> and can be explained in a
> sentence in such a way that an average person can understand it. It's
> slightly trickier with images, but only slightly since we've been
> cracking down pretty hard on "fair use" of late.

You have no idea do you? You really have no idea.

wil still have 100Ks of "fair use" images. Will have stuff under very
complex areas of copyright law and downright insane ones.

Do you know what the copyright status of Works of the Philippines
government really are? Image scans made in the UK? engravings under
crown copyright?

Did you follow the PD soviet debate?

The average person doesn't have a hope in Hades and we are forever
playing catchup.

> Copyvio is not
> nearly as widespread as lack of sourcing. Copyvio is not a newbie-
> unfriendly concept.

Oh but it is. oh but it is.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_with_unknown_copyright_status
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_with_no_copyright_tag
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Images_with_unknown_source
--
geni


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

body:
> From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very unreliable
> and may have plenty of wrong facts. Most of thse wrong facts are not
> added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were
> added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories,
> from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of
> accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
>

This may be true. But my sense is that most of the right facts were also added
the same way.

Similarly, most vandalism is done anonymously, but most anonymous edits are not
vandalism.

Dan


body:
>
> Similarly, most vandalism is done anonymously, but most anonymous edits are
> not vandalism.

Ah bloody hell. That was supposed to be my oh-so-smooth transition to an
obligatory bitch about anonymous page creation. So much for timing.

Anyway. Anon page creation, Susan gets confused and winds up at AfC, poor Susan,
salt of the earth, etc etc.

Dan


from_name: Robth

body:
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that
> underly Wikipedia.
>
> "You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the
> key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the
> thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.

Principles are different from methods, and this is a critical
distinction.  Accepting just about anything people are give us has
been a method of ours for a long time, and has worked its way deep
into our culture, but it isn't our principle--that's writing a great
free encyclopedia.  Today's tasks are different from the tasks of a
few years ago, and we shouldn't be afraid to reevaluate our methods if
necessary.

What we see here is a bit of a clash between two forms of quality; we
are proverbially good at one, and proverbially bad at the other.  The
first is size; we can tell you something about more topics than anyone
else.  We got here through the work of casual contributors (although
the five minute thing is nonsense--this model of articles improving in
tiny partial edits doesn't gibe with a reality in which, while the
bulk of our content is written by casual contributors, the casual
contributors in question are people who sit down and spend half an
hour or so adding a serious chunk of text).  The second form of
quality, the one we're proverbially bad at, is reliability.  When we
started out, we needed size, and our policies were designed
accordingly.  Now, we got size, but we still need reliability.  If we
can alter the system that's already made us big to focus on improving
the stuff we have, we should do it.

Nor do I think the change is that radical.  As I said above, I don't
put much stock by the five minute figure.  Articles don't grow in
smooth little increments; they balloon out of nowhere, then wait a
year, then expand rapidly again, as people come in, sit down, and
spend serious time writing something up; it's punctuated equilibrium,
not gradualism.  An encyclopedia is not written in five minute bursts,
no matter how many of them there are.  And for people who do sit down
to spend serious time on an article, grabbing a book, checking the
facts, and noting that they have done so isn't so great an additional
burden.

The image of "Susan" or someone like her has been a powerful one in
Wikipedia culture; there's this belief that we got to where we are
through countless tiny doses of effort and time, rather than a more
finite number of larger doses.  I have seen no evidence to support
this view, and plenty to suggest otherwise.  I think its time to
recognize this and do what we can to maximize the improvement that
occurs as a result of those larger doses.

--
Robth,
feeling somewhat like Comrade Gletkin


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
>
> Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg
>
What, having your copyrighted work introduced into a trial means your
lose all your rights to it? If so, that would be useful, since Disney
has been in court a few times. Maybe Mickey Mouse has been PD all this
time and we didn't even know it! And haven't there been a bunch of
movies involved in court cases too? Free movie uploads tonight!

:-)

Stan


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] school articles : enough

body:
> In any case, I think the Foundation should issue a clear statement that
> admins, especially from OTRS, can CSD:A7 school articles that do not
> demonstrate notability. Otherwise it's not manageable.

The purpose of CSD is to delete articles where there is already
established consensus to delete. There is definitely not an already
established consensus to delete school articles on nobility grounds -
there are plenty of people who feel "X is a school" is an assertion of
notability.

And as for the foundation dictating such a policy, I think you
misunderstand what the foundation exists for...


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] The downside of creating perfect articles

body:
Guettarda wrote:
> On 1/25/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 25/01/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > There are large swaths of technical topics which are not computer-geek
>> > technical stuff which are covered extremely poorly, if at all.
>> >
>> > Engineering materials, for example - aluminum, steel, composite
>> > materials, others.  I went through and it seemed like doubled the
>> > structural and aerospace materials article count 2-3 months ago, and I
>> > haven't even gotten started properly...
>> >
>> > Structural design concepts that anyone in an industry knows from
>> > school and are common professional knowledge, and still have no WP
>> > coverage.
>> >
>> > This is just off the top of my head.  I've got a to-do list somewhere
>> else.
>>
>> Mmm. Could you put it on-wiki? The enormous redlink farms are
>> occasionally a decent incentive to do something, and if nothing else
>> they help give an idea of what's still out there.

I just added about 20 to my userpage this morning.

Jeff
--
If you can read this, I'm not at home.


subject: [WikiEN-l] What is the fundamental goal of the project?

body:
Omegatron wrote:
> In Jimbo's 2005 "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" post, he described the
> purpose of the project:
>
>     Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a
>     free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single
>     person on the planet in their own language.
>
> Does this still hold true?  There have been a lot of major changes in
> policy in the months since, which, we all hope, are supportive of our
> fundamental goals.  I think almost everyone who contributes to the
> project agrees completely with this mission and wants to maintain it.
> But if you think about it, the statement actually contains several
> goals:
>
> * free
> * (create an) encyclopedia
> * of the highest possible quality
> * (distribute) to every single person on the planet
> * in their own language
>
> In fact, these goals occasionally conflict.  For instance, machine
> translations are considered "worse than nothing" because of their poor
> quality, so it would seem that "of the highest possible quality" is
> more important than "in their own language".
>
> If Jimbo's statement is still valid, which objectives override the
> others?  Can they be arranged (preferably by Jimbo) in order of
> priority?
>
> Can this statement or the principles it represents ever be repealed or
> changed?  Who has the power to change it?  Is this simply a top-down
> authoritarian mandate that can't be challenged, or do regular
> Wikipedians have a say when changes are made to the ultimate goals and
> priorities of the project?

I think you missed out a vital phrase, the term "effort to create and
distribute".  And I don't think the rest of the statement can be pulled
apart.  I'd imagine it's like JFK's statement "First, I believe that
this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this
decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to
the earth."  Did people ask if it was more important to come back safely
than to get there, or that the end of the decade was the goal, or that
dogs would suffice?  I think the goal is all of it.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.10/651 - Release Date: 24/01/07 18:48


list: foundation-l

from_name: M. Six Silberman

subject: [Foundation-l] Promotion of Indian languages

body:
> Mexico and Argentina both speak Spanish. There are significant
> cultural differences.
>
> So the idea that you need a unique language to have a unique culture
> is false. In the past where only a few communicated between states
> language differences were of little importance. Now communication is
> becoming more widespread and languages are becoming an increasingly
> significant barrier.

?although it seems reasonable to ask how the dynamics will change once
real-time machine translation becomes usable and portable?


list: wikimedia-l


body:
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
> >
> > Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg
> >
> What, having your copyrighted work introduced into a trial means your
> lose all your rights to it? If so, that would be useful, since Disney
> has been in court a few times. Maybe Mickey Mouse has been PD all this
> time and we didn't even know it! And haven't there been a bunch of
> movies involved in court cases too? Free movie uploads tonight!
>
> :-)

It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with
stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil
cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters
the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal
commentary and the like" realm.

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


from_name: Omegatron

body:
On 1/25/07, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia's purpose is not to be a wiki

Ummm...

On 1/25/07, Robth <robth1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> When we
> started out, we needed size, and our policies were designed
> accordingly.  Now, we got size, but we still need reliability.  If we
> can alter the system that's already made us big to focus on improving
> the stuff we have, we should do it.

If you want to fundamentally change the whole concept and policies of
the project, why not just start a fork?  Isn't that what Citizendium,
Wikinfo, Digital Universe, and so on are trying to do?


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 1/24/07, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/24/07, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
>
> > Always Leave Something Undone used to be a Rule To Consider, didn't it.
>
> Yes, but it got {{rejected}}.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Always_leave_something_undone

More evidence of Wikipedia's inexorably tendency towards lameness.

It may be getting better, but also more tediously humorless and
bureaucratic.

So goes the world...


from_name: Michael Smith

body:
 Gee - ZakuSage abuses me, and what happens when I respond? Assterion blocks
me for 2 weeks, and his ass buddy Yamla locks my user page?

You are a real fucking laugh riot, Zakusage I guess really owns that PSP
page huh.

RunedChozo


from_name: Sage Ross

body:
On 1/25/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> He isn't trying to change the policies. WP:CITE and WP:RS are current
> policies - it's the people that want to relax those policies that are
> trying the change policies. Perhaps they should fork?
>

Ahem... WP:CITE and WP:RS are guidelines.  But Robth puts it exactly
right.  There is pretty much a consensus that citations and the use of
reliable sources are good things that make Wikipedia better, ceteris
paribus.  It's an issue of emphasis.  No doubt CITE and RS, in some
cases, either turn potential contributors off of Wikipedia or inspire
the removal of valid information.  But they also inspire the addition
of sourcing (and perhaps the participation of editors who wouldn't
edit in project where sources carried less weight).  The goal in
writing or re-writing those guidelines should be to strike the optimal
balance between the positive effects and the negative effects.  But
both guidelines are central to the shift in Wikipedia culture over the
past year or so, in which we've seen drastic sourcing improvements to
the point where most editors realize that sources are expected, not
just encouraged.

-ragesoss


body:
On 1/25/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
>
> geni wrote:
>
> > False.
> >
> > It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their
> > construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the surface
>
> False.  Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.
>

No it isn't. In any case I wasn't talking about "fair use".

--
geni


body:
George Herbert wrote:
> On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>
>>> Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
>>>
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg
>>>
>>>
>> What, having your copyrighted work introduced into a trial means your
>> lose all your rights to it? If so, that would be useful, since Disney
>> has been in court a few times. Maybe Mickey Mouse has been PD all this
>> time and we didn't even know it! And haven't there been a bunch of
>> movies involved in court cases too? Free movie uploads tonight!
>>
>> :-)
>>
>
> It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with
> stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil
> cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters
> the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal
> commentary and the like" realm.
>
Which is fine, we have a whole set of rules for all that. The original
claim was that the picture was a production of the US government, for
which the main evidence seemed to be that it was introduced at a federal
trial. We still don't know whether the picture was taken by a random
person in the group or by a professional, and if the latter, who the
professional was working for. Copyright paranoia? Well, I would be
pretty angry if someone copied all of my photos, removed my name, and
declared them "PD-USGov" on some flimsy pretext.

Stan


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Raimond Spekking

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cite extension

body:
Looking through Cite.i18n.php of the cite extension I stumbled over
these messages:

'cite_references_link_many'  => '
? $2 $3
',
'cite_references_link_many_format' => '[[#$1|$2]]',

# An item from this set is passed as $3 in the message above
'cite_references_link_many_format_backlink_labels' => 'a b c d e f g h i
j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z',

Examples:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Raymond_de/ref shows the "old"
style (with 2.0 2.1 2.2...)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Raymond/ref2 shows the "new" style
(with a b c...)

Do we really still need/support $2 in
'cite_references_link_many_format'? Can't it be replaced by $3 by default?
'cite_references_link_many_format' => '[[#$1|$3]]'?

I am unsure about the usage. Or are both variants common?

Raymond.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 250 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/attachments/20070125/a7a4af1f/attachment.pgp>


from_name: Francis Tyers

body:
Some machine translation is good, unfortunately nothing that works
between English and any other language at the moment. Please don't tar
it all with the same brush though :)

Fran

On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 17:27 +0100, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> You could try a machine translation, but if the intended audience don't
> understand the article because it's badly translated you've achieved
> nothing. That's why we don't do it. It is worse than nothing, because it can
> confuse the reader.
>
> Mgm
>
>
> On 1/25/07, Omegatron <omegatron+wikienl at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > In Jimbo's 2005 "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" post, he described the
> > purpose of the project:
> >
> >    Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a
> >    free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single
> >    person on the planet in their own language.
> >
> > Does this still hold true?  There have been a lot of major changes in
> > policy in the months since, which, we all hope, are supportive of our
> > fundamental goals.  I think almost everyone who contributes to the
> > project agrees completely with this mission and wants to maintain it.
> > But if you think about it, the statement actually contains several
> > goals:
> >
> > * free
> > * (create an) encyclopedia
> > * of the highest possible quality
> > * (distribute) to every single person on the planet
> > * in their own language
> >
> > In fact, these goals occasionally conflict.  For instance, machine
> > translations are considered "worse than nothing" because of their poor
> > quality, so it would seem that "of the highest possible quality" is
> > more important than "in their own language".
> >
> > If Jimbo's statement is still valid, which objectives override the
> > others?  Can they be arranged (preferably by Jimbo) in order of
> > priority?
> >
> > Can this statement or the principles it represents ever be repealed or
> > changed?  Who has the power to change it?  Is this simply a top-down
> > authoritarian mandate that can't be challenged, or do regular
> > Wikipedians have a say when changes are made to the ultimate goals and
> > priorities of the project?
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Wikitech-l] License status of MW screenshots.

body:
On 1/24/07, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 05:45:51PM -0500, Anthony wrote:
> > > To use my example, above, my taking a photograph of an artist posing
> > > next to his painting does *not*, to me, seem to meet the description
> > > there, quoted from the statute, of a derivative work, as it's not
> > > *based* on the original painting: he could have been standing next to
> > > *anything*.
> > >
> > Whether or not it's a derivative work is largely irrelevant, because a
> > photograph of a painting definitely *is* a copy.
>
> Well, that's largely a strawman, since 3 lines earlier I made it clear
> that I was *not* discussing merely "a photograph of a painting" in the
> Bridgeman sense.
>
It doesn't matter if it's merely "a photograph of a painting" or if
it's "a photograph of a painting and some other stuff".  It's still a
copy.  Adding more stuff to the photo doesn't change that.

Anthony


from_name: George Herbert

body:
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with
> > stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil
> > cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters
> > the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal
> > commentary and the like" realm.
> >
> Which is fine, we have a whole set of rules for all that. The original
> claim was that the picture was a production of the US government, for
> which the main evidence seemed to be that it was introduced at a federal
> trial. We still don't know whether the picture was taken by a random
> person in the group or by a professional, and if the latter, who the
> professional was working for. Copyright paranoia? Well, I would be
> pretty angry if someone copied all of my photos, removed my name, and
> declared them "PD-USGov" on some flimsy pretext.

Yeah, I was responding in the general here.

I think it's fair use to use these, but they're clearly not PD-USGov;
someone took them, and unless they released them in a way we don't
know about, they're still private copyrighted photos.

It's copyright paranoia to say that there's no fair use to be found
here.  It's not copyright paranoia to take the PD-USGov tag off.  The
owner would have a perfect right to be upset over that.

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


body:
> While all policies can be abused, some are easier to abuse than others.
> Some are even attractive nuisances.

The only people who think that having to cite and verify articles with
reliable sources is "abuse" are the kind of people who think "oh no my
pokemans character studies are at risk again!"

Fran.


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
>
> Okay, so what's the right tag?
>
Strictly speaking, you'd have to ask the owner of the photo. Given the
specifics of that crowd, it wouldn't surprise me if they were planning
to make money selling it. :-) In practice, it's probably a "fairusein",
enumerating the articles for which you plan to use it. Lack of the
actual photographer's name is going to be a problem - without that, no
guarantee I wouldn't hit it with a "no source" tag should I run across
it in future.

Stan


body:
> There are plenty of wikis for obscure stuff which fail our current
> policies on verifiability.

Hear hear, this is an encyclopaedia, not a clown car.

Fran


body:
Liar.

ZakuSage stalked me all day. Called me a dick and worse. Lied about me. Put
attack pages in my user space.

What did you admins do? NOTHING.

I created a separate page to work on so I wouldn't have to deal with
ZakuSage's page owning bullshit issues. I invited people to come there. I
even invited ZAKUSAGE to come work on it and instead he just left insulting
messages on it.

What did I get? I got MORE stalking, MORE harassment from ZakuSage. He just
kept doing it and doing it and doing it.

You can look at the pages I've been on. When I made a mistake, I APOLOGIZED
FOR IT AND FIXED IT.

ZakuSage did nothing but keep harassing me, but who got attacked? Me.

You don't care about your so-called "rules" or making it a better
encyclopedia obviously.

On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/07, Michael Smith <runechozo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  Gee - ZakuSage abuses me, and what happens when I respond? Assterion
> blocks
> > me for 2 weeks, and his ass buddy Yamla locks my user page?
> >
> > You are a real fucking laugh riot, Zakusage I guess really owns that PSP
> > page huh.
> >
> > RunedChozo
>
> Last night, I and others asked you both nicely to take a wikibreak and
> leave it alone.  Neither of you did that.
>
> I'm going to go have some stern words with ZakuSage about wikistalking
> people, but you need to take responsibility for having chosen to
> continue engaging in a hostile, uncivil manner rather than back off
> and calm down.  If you'd stopped last night this would be very
> different today.
>
> If you cannot control your temper enough to act in a reasonable and
> civil manner even when someone is provoking you, you're going to get
> yourself in trouble and thrown off Wikipedia sooner or later.  People
> have told you this before.  Please listen this time.
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 1/25/07, Jeff Raymond <jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com> wrote:
> I will say, though, feedback has gotten to be the most frustrating
> experience I have.  My tendency of late has been to edit articles that few
> are interested in.  It took a really contentious FAC to get feedback on
> one FA I eventually finished up, and only because the three people who
> were so great to me during that process were great to me this time that
> another article I'm working on for FA has gotten any outside feedback.  I
> doubt it's just me, but if your areas of interest aren't in the
> mainstream, it's a constant struggle to even find someone to check your
> grammar, let alone improve something.

Yeah, I tend to be in obscure places too. Mostly because I start
articles when I see redlinks, so by definition if no one has created
an article in the 5+ years that Wikipedia has been going, it's going
to be fairly obscure.

> Peer review is fairly close to a waste,

Yeah, there are a few peer review systems and they don't seem to
operate well. Peer review for featured picture is another one.

>GA doesn't really review much of
> anything, and FAC is the only place I've ever gotten decent feedback from
> a group, and that's not what FAC is for.  Extremely frustrating.

Yeah, GA almost overnight turned from something useful into something
as bureaucratic as FA. Ultimately I guess feedback comes from large
numbers of people stumbling upon an article, and a lot more people
pass through FAC than other processes.

Often I don't even want proofing or feedback or whatever - but just
the occasional recognition that all the stubs or shortish articles
I've written are worth something. Or maybe I'm just gripey at people
who award dozens of barnstars for having a nice userpage while other
more constructive contributions get overlooked.

Steve


body:
On 1/25/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > > It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with
> > > > stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil
> > > > cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters
> > > > the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal
> > > > commentary and the like" realm.
> > > >
> > > Which is fine, we have a whole set of rules for all that. The original
> > > claim was that the picture was a production of the US government, for
> > > which the main evidence seemed to be that it was introduced at a federal
> > > trial. We still don't know whether the picture was taken by a random
> > > person in the group or by a professional, and if the latter, who the
> > > professional was working for. Copyright paranoia? Well, I would be
> > > pretty angry if someone copied all of my photos, removed my name, and
> > > declared them "PD-USGov" on some flimsy pretext.
> >
> > Yeah, I was responding in the general here.
> >
> > I think it's fair use to use these, but they're clearly not PD-USGov;
> > someone took them, and unless they released them in a way we don't
> > know about, they're still private copyrighted photos.
> >
> > It's copyright paranoia to say that there's no fair use to be found
> > here.  It's not copyright paranoia to take the PD-USGov tag off.  The
> > owner would have a perfect right to be upset over that.
>
>
> Okay, so what's the right tag?

We don't have enough tags, to be honest, in some cases because of
disagreement over what WP fair use policy is in a particular case.

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


body:
On 1/25/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> This makes it easier to understand the purpose of the old rule:  always
> leave something for others to do.

Yeah. Maybe I should make a point of making a glaring typo in the
first sentence or something ;)

Steve


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
You could try a machine translation, but if the intended audience don't
understand the article because it's badly translated you've achieved
nothing. That's why we don't do it. It is worse than nothing, because it can
confuse the reader.

Mgm

On 1/25/07, Omegatron <omegatron+wikienl at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> In Jimbo's 2005 "Wikipedia is an encyclopedia" post, he described the
> purpose of the project:
>
>    Wikipedia is first and foremost an effort to create and distribute a
>    free encyclopedia of the highest possible quality to every single
>    person on the planet in their own language.
>
> Does this still hold true?  There have been a lot of major changes in
> policy in the months since, which, we all hope, are supportive of our
> fundamental goals.  I think almost everyone who contributes to the
> project agrees completely with this mission and wants to maintain it.
> But if you think about it, the statement actually contains several
> goals:
>
> * free
> * (create an) encyclopedia
> * of the highest possible quality
> * (distribute) to every single person on the planet
> * in their own language
>
> In fact, these goals occasionally conflict.  For instance, machine
> translations are considered "worse than nothing" because of their poor
> quality, so it would seem that "of the highest possible quality" is
> more important than "in their own language".
>
> If Jimbo's statement is still valid, which objectives override the
> others?  Can they be arranged (preferably by Jimbo) in order of
> priority?
>
> Can this statement or the principles it represents ever be repealed or
> changed?  Who has the power to change it?  Is this simply a top-down
> authoritarian mandate that can't be challenged, or do regular
> Wikipedians have a say when changes are made to the ultimate goals and
> priorities of the project?
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 1/25/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Consider this another entry in that time-tested genre of "obviously
> futile suggestions to nuke things that nobody is ever going to nuke,
> but probably should anyway" posts. (The classic, of course, being
> Nuke AfD. Which we should still do.)

IMHO a tiny little "disputed" template would be more valuable than a
"citation needed" template. Theoretically *every* sentence needs a
citation. Most sentences are not disputed.

So I would rather see:

Seigenthaler shot JFK ^disputed^.

than:

Seigenthaler shot JFK ^citation needed^. Seigenthaler was born in
Houston ^citation needed^. Houston is in the USA ^citation needed^.

Steve


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
Just got my latest "Funny Times," which contains a cartoon by Andy
Singer... I can't find it online, sorry... it's headed "Alternative
Forms of Government," and one of the options is "Wikigovernment:"

"Anyone can appoint or fire government officials, online. But someone
else can undo those appointments, until the entire nation is mired in
internet voting gridlock." In the picture under the caption, a
smaling woman says "I was President for two minutes," and a grinning
man says "Now it's my turn!"


body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> The Cunctator wrote:
>>
>>> Okay, so what's the right tag?
>>>
>>>
>> Strictly speaking, you'd have to ask the owner of the photo. Given the
>> specifics of that crowd, it wouldn't surprise me if they were planning
>> to make money selling it. :-) In practice, it's probably a "fairusein",
>> enumerating the articles for which you plan to use it. Lack of the
>> actual photographer's name is going to be a problem - without that, no
>> guarantee I wouldn't hit it with a "no source" tag should I run across
>> it in future.
>>
>
>
> Nice to see you standing up for the rights of felons everywhere. :)
>
One never knows - haven't there been some convicted
writers/photographers who were ordered by the court to sell their work
so as to make restitutions from the proceeds?

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
Found it: http://peoplesgeography.com/files/2006/12/andy-singer-
corporatism-vs-wikigovernment.gif


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> I almost want to suggest a graduation system for articles; once it
> reaches a "good enough" level, then a different set of rules kick in,
> and changes are required to go through a more rigorous check system,
> citations become required, etc.  This might make a good fork, or could
> possibly be a change in how WP works.  Both reducing the vandalism and
> raising the expectations for rigorousness in edits, if and only if an
> article is at an appropriate level to start with.

Sort of like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:1.0/I, perhaps? ;-)

Kirill


body:
> I recently wrote a stub on [[Heliophorus]], a genus of butterflies. It
> links the existing article on its subfamily with the existing articles
> of the species. As the subfamily article only lists genera, my new
> article is the only way to go from the subfamily article to the
> individual species. It is therefore useful, even though it contains
> nothing more than a partial list of species.
>
> I created this list from wikipedia: it just contains all species that
> have an article. If I had to list my source, it would have been
> "Wikipedia", which is Not Acceptable, and would have been removed (I
> guess). So I left it unsourced.

Your article is basically a list - using Wikipedia as the source for a
list is generally accepted. As long as the articles you link to have
sources, then the sources don't need to be stated on the list.


from_name: Parker Peters

body:
George,

I find it funny that we have someone who's engaged in wikistalking who's not
blocked, while the victim is blocked for two weeks. It seems they have good
reason to complain.

Parker

On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/07, Michael Smith <runechozo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  Gee - ZakuSage abuses me, and what happens when I respond? Assterion
> blocks
> > me for 2 weeks, and his ass buddy Yamla locks my user page?
> >
> > You are a real fucking laugh riot, Zakusage I guess really owns that PSP
> > page huh.
> >
> > RunedChozo
>
> Last night, I and others asked you both nicely to take a wikibreak and
> leave it alone.  Neither of you did that.
>
> I'm going to go have some stern words with ZakuSage about wikistalking
> people, but you need to take responsibility for having chosen to
> continue engaging in a hostile, uncivil manner rather than back off
> and calm down.  If you'd stopped last night this would be very
> different today.
>
> If you cannot control your temper enough to act in a reasonable and
> civil manner even when someone is provoking you, you're going to get
> yourself in trouble and thrown off Wikipedia sooner or later.  People
> have told you this before.  Please listen this time.
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Oh, I get it now.

Assterion is lying now, I see his posts, he didn't pay any attention to the
case, if he did he'd have seen that the AIV filing was wrong, I fixed my own
mistake when I figured out what was going on AND I EVEN APOLOGIZED FOR IT ON
THE PAGE.

But you don't care about that. It's all about lying and beating people up
and making yourselves feel big. I get it.

Happy now? Fun to beat up on someone who can't fight back? Great. Fuck you
too.

On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/07, Michael Smith <runechozo at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  Gee - ZakuSage abuses me, and what happens when I respond? Assterion
> blocks
> > me for 2 weeks, and his ass buddy Yamla locks my user page?
> >
> > You are a real fucking laugh riot, Zakusage I guess really owns that PSP
> > page huh.
> >
> > RunedChozo
>
> Last night, I and others asked you both nicely to take a wikibreak and
> leave it alone.  Neither of you did that.
>
> I'm going to go have some stern words with ZakuSage about wikistalking
> people, but you need to take responsibility for having chosen to
> continue engaging in a hostile, uncivil manner rather than back off
> and calm down.  If you'd stopped last night this would be very
> different today.
>
> If you cannot control your temper enough to act in a reasonable and
> civil manner even when someone is provoking you, you're going to get
> yourself in trouble and thrown off Wikipedia sooner or later.  People
> have told you this before.  Please listen this time.
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
David Monniaux wrote:

> But there's no reason we should have an article on my neighbouring
> highschool, unless we also want articles on every company or organization...

However, this "unless" is problematic.  A printed encyclopedia in
20 volumes can only contain so many articles, and has to cut off
the long tail.  Wikipedia is far bigger and steadily growing.
Small towns with 25,000 inhabitants in Sweden would never have an
article in Encyclopaedia Britannica, but now have articles in the
English Wikipedia, and everybody seem to agree that they *are*
sufficiently notable.  So where is the limit drawn?  Should the
three schools in that town also have articles? Maybe the answer
is: Not now, when Wikipedia only has 1.6 million articles, because
these schools are not among the 1.6 million most notable objects
in this world.  But in five years time, when Wikipedia has 20
million articles, this might be different.

Maybe if the article is added now, and in five years time it is
still one of the least used ones, ranking not 1.6M but 20M, then
we know that now was not the right time to add this article? In
that case, notability is not a property of the topic itself, but
an issue in which order to add articles to Wikipedia.  But it is
difficult to assess today if a topic has rank 20M when Wikipedia
only has 1.6M articles.

Can we compute a rank of how much each article is used now, and
relate this to how many articles existed at the time when each
article was created?  Then we would know how premature the
addition of each article was.

Again, my position is not that of judging what should be included
now.  I'm only trying to understand the math behind this.

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


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough


from_name: David Goodman

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
On 1/25/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> The thing about high schools is that they have alumni. A particularly
> large high school could have, I don't know, maybe 50,000 alumni? How
> off am I?
>
> Anyhow, just because not that many people go to it *right now* does
> not mean it's not notable. Junior high schools, elementary schools,
> sure, but larger-volume schools that have upwards of 1000 students at
> any given time are certainly notable.
>
> We may not have someone to maintain them, but that's because while we
> have RamBot, we don't have SchoolBot. Maybe we should. (and unlike
> city/town articles, we'd also need a SchoolAntiVandalBot to monitor
> all the changes to those articles... the problem with high schools is
> that those most interested in them tend to be their current students,
> and their current students tend to include a large percentage of
> dipshit vandals).
>
> Mark
>
> On 25/01/07, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> > David Monniaux wrote:
> >
> > > But there's no reason we should have an article on my neighbouring
> > > highschool, unless we also want articles on every company or organization...
> >
> > However, this "unless" is problematic.  A printed encyclopedia in
> > 20 volumes can only contain so many articles, and has to cut off
> > the long tail.  Wikipedia is far bigger and steadily growing.
> > Small towns with 25,000 inhabitants in Sweden would never have an
> > article in Encyclopaedia Britannica, but now have articles in the
> > English Wikipedia, and everybody seem to agree that they *are*
> > sufficiently notable.  So where is the limit drawn?  Should the
> > three schools in that town also have articles? Maybe the answer
> > is: Not now, when Wikipedia only has 1.6 million articles, because
> > these schools are not among the 1.6 million most notable objects
> > in this world.  But in five years time, when Wikipedia has 20
> > million articles, this might be different.
> >
> > Maybe if the article is added now, and in five years time it is
> > still one of the least used ones, ranking not 1.6M but 20M, then
> > we know that now was not the right time to add this article? In
> > that case, notability is not a property of the topic itself, but
> > an issue in which order to add articles to Wikipedia.  But it is
> > difficult to assess today if a topic has rank 20M when Wikipedia
> > only has 1.6M articles.
> >
> > Can we compute a rank of how much each article is used now, and
> > relate this to how many articles existed at the time when each
> > article was created?  Then we would know how premature the
> > addition of each article was.
> >
> > Again, my position is not that of judging what should be included
> > now.  I'm only trying to understand the math behind this.
> >
> >
> > --
> >   Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
> >   Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

As it seems, there is no consensus, even among the few of us in this
exchange, because i do not think size is enough to make a school
notable. What makes it notable is either things that may have happened
there, or notable alumni.  Notable events are the same standard as any
other N or  N-news.  For most, it will be alumni, and the practical
question comes down to: how many- (of course it also depends who they
are--One Nobel prize winner is enough) ). AfD seems to be deleting
high school  articles with only 1 notable alumnus and no other special
features.  I am not sure what the attitude would be towards 2, 3, etc.
I am not even sure where I would draw the line.

Intermediate and elementary schools are another matter; I wouldn't use
the alumni criterion here for anyone less than the President, and
there are rarely news events.

The suggestion of giving each of the schools in a town section in a
longer article is workable, though there be problems with cities.

I recognize, however, that in much of the US, high schools, and
especially high school athletic teams, may be the center of community
life. So merging a single town school in with the article for the town
is another possibility.

--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Francis Tyers wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-01-25 at 14:16 +0100, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>> If people cited their sources in the first place, there wouldn't be any
>> abuse by people using that fact to get it deleted. Any abuse with these
>> policies can be prevented if people just made the effort. I think I'm going
>> to reread those pages and think about rewriting them.
>>
>> Mgm
>
> Agree. If there is a problem with things being deleted, it isn't a
> problem with policy, but with the people writing them without specifying
> a source.

This is oversimplified, though. I first started editing Wikipedia back
in mid 2001 and for a long time there was no "standard" approach to
citing sources, or any formal guideline suggesting that everything had
to be cited (as far as I can recall it was enough that things could be
verified in principle). Whenever I made major additions to an article
I'd try to remember to cite the source in the edit summary, or if the
source had more information in it than could be put into the article
itself I'd add an external link at the bottom ("external links" and
"references" are still often blended together willy-nilly to this day,
which can result in references getting removed because external link
standards get applied to them instead), but that was just me and I
wasn't rigorous about it. There's a lot of perfectly good content out
there on Wikipedia that lacks references for legacy reasons. There is
also a lot of stuff that doesn't get cited nowadays because the editors
that added them consider them too trivial or too obvious to be worth
citing, and a good case can be made that there's nothing wrong with
doing this. It's not perfect, but "not perfect" can still be better than
"bad".

Personally, I'm hoping for the day when version flagging arrives to
transport us all to a utopia where Eventualist, Immediatist, Deletionist
and Inclusionist can all see only their own preferred aspect of
Wikipedia and work together in harmony. :)


from_name: Pilotguy

subject: [WikiEN-l] Change my name?

body:
It shouldn't be a problem, there are users with much more similar names than
that. If you want, you might also want to do what User:Gracenotes has done
(he has left a note at the top of his page indicating he is not User:Grace
Note), but since FireFox hasn't been too active recently I don't see the
real issue. Do what you wish.

On 1/25/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think Firefox and FireFox are much more of a "similar name problem". I
> wouldn't worry unless too many people make the mistake.
>
> Mgm
>
>
> On 1/25/07, ? Firefoxman <enwpmail at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > On 1/25/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > I have been contributing for a while, and I wonder if I should
> change
> > my
> > > name since it is so simmilar to FireFox.
> > > >
> > > > --
> > > > -Firefoxman
> > >
> > > You can if you want, but there's so many similar names there's no big
> > > hurry;
> > > we have User:Firefox and User:FireFox as two separate people already.
> > > --Mets501
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > -Firefoxman
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Pilotguy
pilotguy.wikipedia at gmail.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pilotguy

http://pilotguy.wordpress.com


body:
On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/07, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > Hash: SHA1
> >
> > Jeff Raymond stated for the record:
> > > geni wrote:
> > >
> > >> False.
> > >>
> > >> It includes elements of law so beautifully complex in their
> > >> construction that a lifetime of study would hardly scratch the
> surface
> > >
> > > False.  Our fair use policy is rooted in copyright paranoia.
> > >
> > > -Jeff
> >
> > False. It is rooted in free redistributability.
>
> I think both are true.  The goal from the organizational point is both
> to be able to redistribute the content without any concern for what's
> in it, and avoid people filing complaints (or worse, suits) about
> copyright violation.
>
> The enforcement seems more rooted in copyright paranoia, from my
> experience.  Not the "ok, you stole this image" part, where whapping
> people over the head is appropriate, but "this is a fair use of the
> image" is legally true (in the US at least) for a lot of things where
> the current policy as enforced is removing them.  And would be true
> for anyone else who downloaded and redistributed a copy of the WP
> article and images.

Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

body:
Steve Bennett schreef:
> It's more than just that. I recently wrote a stub on [[Wingan Inlet]].
> I know the place exists: I went there. Do I have a source? No. Am I
> confident that a source exists? Yes. Would I rather create an
> unsourced stub, or leave a hole in our encyclopaedia? Unsourced stub,
> with fries.

I recently wrote a stub on [[Heliophorus]], a genus of butterflies. It
links the existing article on its subfamily with the existing articles
of the species. As the subfamily article only lists genera, my new
article is the only way to go from the subfamily article to the
individual species. It is therefore useful, even though it contains
nothing more than a partial list of species.

I created this list from wikipedia: it just contains all species that
have an article. If I had to list my source, it would have been
"Wikipedia", which is Not Acceptable, and would have been removed (I
guess). So I left it unsourced.

Does this make it a worse article than, say, [[Heliophorus brahma]],
which has 6 sources (5 books, 1 journal article)? Note that that article
is 1 sentence long. What do you think is more likely; that this one
sentence is the only information found about the species by someone who
has checked those 5 books; or that the references section has been
copied from some other article, and is therefore more or less worthless?

I hope that someone will some day add useful information to my stub, and
with a bit of luck, he'll add his sources too. But the extra info is
woth much more than the sources, IMHO.

Adding unsourced information is a good thing.

Eugene


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body: Is this really a Foundation-level issue?


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> In theory: yes. In practice: would everyone recognize it as such? (Hint:
> it now has a {{unreferenced}} box, for those viewers that have not
> disabled them in their personal Monobook.css.)

Remove the {{unreferenced}} box and explain in the edit summary that
it's a list and the sources are on the individual articles.


body:
Thomas Dalton schreef:
> > I recently wrote a stub on [[Heliophorus]] ... it contains
> > nothing more than a partial list of species.
>
> Your article is basically a list - using Wikipedia as the source for a
> list is generally accepted. As long as the articles you link to have
> sources, then the sources don't need to be stated on the list.

In theory: yes. In practice: would everyone recognize it as such? (Hint:
it now has a {{unreferenced}} box, for those viewers that have not
disabled them in their personal Monobook.css.)

Eugene


body:
On 1/25/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Michael Hopcroft wrote:
> > It is probably time we recognized that the very concept of Wikipedia --
> > "An encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that will become the best
> > encyclopedia in the world" is utterly self-contradictory and therefore
> > impossible to achieve.
>
> It's probably a good thing we didn't recognize this was impossible
> before we went ahead and actually achieved it.
>
> Seriously, by a number of quite reasonable standards Wikipedia already
> _has_ become the best encyclopedia in the world. It's got more breadth,
> it's cheaper, its IP rights are more flexible, and it's probably more
> widely used than the old standbys like Britannica or World Book. It even
> has comparable levels of accuracy. I'm very, very happy with what
> Wikipedia has made of itself and have no desire to throw out any bits of
> baby on account of the bathwater that's still mixed in with it.

Yeah,  "Just" having created what's arguably the world's best, and at
least competitively good encyclopedia in a few years, from scratch,
with essentially no budget other than operations, is good enough for
me.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Aieee ... Insidious cruft

body:
This is an article on my watch list, that I thought I was watching
closely.  Apparently not closely enough...

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Delta_Force&diff=103293398&oldid=103236890

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


body:
Michael Hopcroft wrote:
> It is probably time we recognized that the very concept of Wikipedia --
> "An encyclopedia that anyone can edit, that will become the best
> encyclopedia in the world" is utterly self-contradictory and therefore
> impossible to achieve.

It's probably a good thing we didn't recognize this was impossible
before we went ahead and actually achieved it.

Seriously, by a number of quite reasonable standards Wikipedia already
_has_ become the best encyclopedia in the world. It's got more breadth,
it's cheaper, its IP rights are more flexible, and it's probably more
widely used than the old standbys like Britannica or World Book. It even
has comparable levels of accuracy. I'm very, very happy with what
Wikipedia has made of itself and have no desire to throw out any bits of
baby on account of the bathwater that's still mixed in with it.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Jan 25, 2007, at 6:13 PM, Steve Block wrote:

>
> No and stop being stupid is sadly unworkable, because you get told not
> to be stupid back.  And I don't see why we can't have an article on
> Moon
> Knight's throwing arrows if you throw WP:CITE and WP:RS out.  I don't
> see why we can't have an article on anything then.  You need to
> come up
> with something better than telling people not to be stupid.
>

Yes. But we have over and over again seen that policy can never cure
stupidity. The stupid will break things with or without policy. And
policy has usually been largely ineffectual in fixing the stupid.
What fixes the stupid is having multiple people going "No, that's
stupid" and reverting the changes. That's always been our main line
of defense. And the thing is, it works just as well if there's a
policy that says "revert the changes" as if there's not.
>
> No Phil, I'm just aware that a lot of people currently attempting to
> edit Wikipedia are, to borrow your phrase, dithering idiots.  I
> make no
> assertion that WP:RS is the source of common sense and judgement.
> It is
> simply somethin that can be pointed to.  I'm already having issues
> over
> whether a fansite is a reliable source or not because RS doesn't
> mention
> fansites.  There is an indication of what the problem will be if we do
> away with this.  Look, I honestly don't care what the rules say, I'm
> hopeful I'm pragmatic to make the right call in different
> circumstances,
> but I see too many people who seem unable to work out how to best
> compromise.  Good articles get deleted, bad articles get kept, people
> get tied up in process when they should be editing, Wikipedia has
> become
> a game.
>

And the best way to stop the idiotic Wikinomic is to take away the
process. The main thing that process does is it makes it so that only
process wonks get involved. Take away the process, take away the
stupid junk.
>
> WP:RS and WP:CITE are valuable.  Remove WP:RS and WP:V loses half its
> meaning.  What you are railing against is not two pages, but the
> cluelessness of many wikipedians.  Sadly, we can't say that on
> Wikipedia
> because we have civility policies.  The people who invest time
> gardening
> at the process pages or using them as deletion tools are the problem,
> not the people using them to create and improve articles.

Exactly. And the problem is that the people take the process pages
and bite the newbies. Elsewhere in this thread I used the
hypothetical example of Susan:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
User:Phil_Sandifer/Susan

That's the question here. How can we take away the ability of the
clueless to bite the newbies.

I suspect the easiest answer would be an arbcom with the balls to
give a complete pass to a rogue admin who went and nuked about there
dozen pages in a two minute time period, and to pass a finding
"Admin's actions were completely right, and none of these pages
should be recreated." Make the place hostile to the process junkies
and get them to fork.

Actually, that would be a good policy page. [[Wikipedia:Bite the
process junkies]]

-Phil


from_name: Bogdan Giusca

body:
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 6:25:38 PM, Ken wrote:

> WP:CITE and WP:RS are unreasonably easy to abuse

What you call "abuse", others call improval of the sourcing and
of the verifiability, and of therefore the credibility of Wikipedia.


from_name: Christopher Thieme

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forget worries about [[WP:RS]] and [[WP:CITE]]...

body:
...NUKE [[WP:CIVIL]] as it's unworkable, increases uncivil conduct, and
encourages hypocrisy.

And I am serious.  I also think [[WP:GA]] is incorrigible and unredeemable,
that is has lost it's credibility and is better put out of its misery
instead of remaining a mockery of its good intentions.

Regards,
Christopher D. Thieme


from_name: Omegatron

body:
On 1/25/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> ...NUKE [[WP:CIVIL]] as it's unworkable, increases uncivil conduct, and
> encourages hypocrisy.

How does it increase uncivil conduct?  Compare Wikipedia talk pages with
*any* discussion forum or bulletin board.

When aggression exists, [[WP:CIVIL]] does turn it into this snide
through-the-teeth aggression.  "Thank you for contributing to our project
(fuckhead)!  We really appreciate your contributions, but we've deleted them
all (because you're an idiot).  Please read through all our policies before
making further contributions (because you're clearly too dense to have
absorbed them the first time)."

But it's still better than the unmoderated flamewars you'll find on any
other site.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 25/01/07, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
> Thursday, January 25, 2007, 6:25:38 PM, Ken wrote:

> > WP:CITE and WP:RS are unreasonably easy to abuse

> What you call "abuse", others call improval of the sourcing and
> of the verifiability, and of therefore the credibility of Wikipedia.

No. Guidelines on sourcing and citing are good. The actual present
content of WP:RS is completely counterproductive shite.

- d.


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hello,

I just came back from a 3 weeks trip to India, where I got the
opportunity for doing research for Wikimedia on two subjects:

> 1. Recruiting new volunteers for Indian languages projects, mainly Hindi
> and Gujarati languages.

My tentative to recruit new volunteers directly was not very successful,
so it leads me to look for new ways of promotion. However I had a nice
wikimeet with three Wikimedians in Ahmedadad. All three are computer
students and only edit the English Wikipedia. Hopefully direct contact
will enable us to work better together on a promotion campaign.

Instead on a bottom-up approach, I would like to try a top-down
tentative, writing to officials in universities, goovernments and
medias. I already started a page for coordinating this:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Promoting_the_South_Asian_languages_projects/Gujarati
I would like to write an letter in behalf of the Foundation requesting
people to spread the word about Indian languages projects. A draft is
available on the page above. Suggestions and feedback are welcome.

I was also able to meet people from Blossom Charitable Trust, an NGO
doing computer education in rural areas (see http://blossomedua.org).
They translated computer manuals in Gujarati, the local language, which
not very common, but they still use Windows in English. They would like
to be part of the One Laptop Per Child project (see
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Home). So we talked about content, free
software and using software in local languages. Interesting developments
will certainly come here.

> 2. Contacting organisations and people who have some data which may be
> suitable for Wikimedia projects, mainly Commons and Wikisource.

I was able to get some documents on Gandhi not available outside India:
a copy of the "Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi" (100 volumes!) and
multimedia CDROMs.
See http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Collected_Works_of_Mahatma_Gandhi

More important, I met people who might be able to give publication
permissions for these documents and others. I was confirmed that the
images and sound recordings of Gandhi published on Commons are in the
public domain and that the claims of the Gandhiserve Foundation are
bullshit.
See http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi

Regards,

Yann


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Remote Loader: The Gainesville Sun

body:
The Gainsville (Florida) Sun [1] is remote loading English Wikipedia
content. [2] The Sun is serving up these pages using "pbcs.dll", which I
see installed at a lot of U.S. newspaper websites. However, prodding
around other websites that use this DLL only yields error messages, so I
suppose this "wiki template" is just an extension that the Sun happened
to be using.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gainesville_Sun
[2]
http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?template=wiki&text=Special:Recentchanges

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


body:
On 25/01/07, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

> Instead on a bottom-up approach, I would like to try a top-down
> tentative, writing to officials in universities, goovernments and
> medias. I already started a page for coordinating this:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Promoting_the_South_Asian_languages_projects/Gujarati
> I would like to write an letter in behalf of the Foundation requesting
> people to spread the word about Indian languages projects. A draft is
> available on the page above. Suggestions and feedback are welcome.

I can't find the exact source, but Alan Cox, the Linux kernel
developer, said that he was learning Welsh because "in fifty years,
languages that aren't on computers won't exist." I suggest that
applies to languages without Wikipedias too. Do you think this can be
leveraged to invoke some local linguistic pride and work?

- d.


body:
On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > The Cunctator wrote:
> > >
> > > Some people are definitely descending into copyright paranoia...
> > >
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Abramoff_scotland_small.jpg
> > >
> > What, having your copyrighted work introduced into a trial means your
> > lose all your rights to it? If so, that would be useful, since Disney
> > has been in court a few times. Maybe Mickey Mouse has been PD all this
> > time and we didn't even know it! And haven't there been a bunch of
> > movies involved in court cases too? Free movie uploads tonight!
> >
> > :-)
>
> It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with
> stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil
> cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters
> the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal
> commentary and the like" realm.

Which if I put on my copyright-paranoid hat I would say is insufficient for
Wikipedia (aka "FAIR USE ISN'T FREE USE") but taking it off and being a
practical Wikipedia I would say is plenty sufficient.

In other words I don't think Wikipedia should (in this regard) hold itself
to a higher copyright standard than the New York Times.


from_name: Ilia Alshanetsky

subject: [Wikitech-l] PHP 5.2.1RC4 testing

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

Hello!

You are receiving this email because your project has been select to
take part in a new effort by the PHP QA Team to make sure that your
project still works with PHP versions to-be-released. With this we
hope to make sure that you are either aware of things that might
break, or to make sure we don't introduce any strange regressions.
With this effort we hope to build a better relation between the PHP
Team and the major projects.

If you do not want to receive these heads-up emails, please reply to
me personally and I will remove you from the list; but, we hope that
you want to actively help us making PHP a better and more stable tool.

The final release candidate of PHP 5.2.1 was released today, it can
be downloaded from http://downloads.php.net/ilia/. We don't
anticipate any regressions, however if you spot any or come across
new bugs, please notify PHP's QA team at "php-qa at lists.php.net".
Given that this is the last RC, testing to identify any missed
regression is critical, if you have not tested any previous RCs,
please take the time to test this one to ensure 5.2.1 is as stable
and bug free as possible.

In case you think that other projects should also receive this kinds
of emails, please let me know privately, and I will add them to the
list of projects to contact.

Best Regards,

Ilia Alshanetsky
5.2 Release Master

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (Darwin)

iD8DBQFFuUzWLKekh381/CERAhi7AJ9QPMq5J7qYdzpYiRlssXnewwg0qACeIkKr
UuM0jD6XPUoHzL1fJREs3NU=
=lXwn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/25/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can't find the exact source, but Alan Cox, the Linux kernel
> developer, said that he was learning Welsh because "in fifty years,
> languages that aren't on computers won't exist." I suggest that
> applies to languages without Wikipedias too. Do you think this can be
> leveraged to invoke some local linguistic pride and work?
>

After the Montenegrin mess do you really want to risk the forces of
linguistic pride getting involved?

In any case it isn't true. With have the data storage capacity today
to make sure lanaguages don't cease to exist but the internet pushes
us towards the situtation where they will be only one living language.
Personaly I don't have a problem with this.

--
geni


body:
> If Susan can make the edit from memory, we're good.

No, we're not good. That's the whole point. People's memories were
reliable enough when Wikipedia first started and nobody actually used
it for anything. That's no longer the case. If we want to be a
credible encyclopedia, we need our facts to come from reliable sources
(citing them isn't the important part, that's just a way to prove the
important bit - that the fact came from a reliable source).

There seems to be a serious misunderstanding of what "source" means. A
source isn't somewhere people can go to verify the fact, it is where
the fact came from. Citing sources is easy, because you will always
have the source with you when you write the article (if you think you
don't, then it means the source is your memory, in which case you
aren't using a reliable source and shouldn't add the fact). The
problem isn't that people aren't citing reliable sources, the problem
is that they aren't *using* reliable sources.


body:
On 25/01/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/25/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I can't find the exact source, but Alan Cox, the Linux kernel
> > developer, said that he was learning Welsh because "in fifty years,
> > languages that aren't on computers won't exist." I suggest that
> > applies to languages without Wikipedias too. Do you think this can be
> > leveraged to invoke some local linguistic pride and work?

> After the Montenegrin mess do you really want to risk the forces of
> linguistic pride getting involved?

I think applying it places outside the Balkans is fine. They would be
an example of an edge case making a bad rule, and I would invoke "no,
don't be dicks."

> In any case it isn't true. With have the data storage capacity today
> to make sure lanaguages don't cease to exist but the internet pushes
> us towards the situtation where they will be only one living language.
> Personaly I don't have a problem with this.

I'd think quite a lot of people here would ...

- d.


from_name: · Firefoxman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
Correct link is
this<http://peoplesgeography.com/files/2006/12/andy-singer-corporatism-vs-wikigovernment>

On 1/25/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
>
> Found it: http://peoplesgeography.com/files/2006/12/andy-singer-
> corporatism-vs-wikigovernment.gif
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
-Firefoxman


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikigovernment

body:
Wait, still wrong. Try
http://peoplesgeography.com/files/2006/12/andy-singer-corporatism-vs-wikigovernment.gif

On 1/25/07, ? Firefoxman <enwpmail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Correct link is this<http://peoplesgeography.com/files/2006/12/andy-singer-corporatism-vs-wikigovernment>
>
> On 1/25/07, Daniel P. B. Smith < wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> >
> > Found it: http://peoplesgeography.com/files/2006/12/andy-singer-
> > corporatism-vs-wikigovernment.gif
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> -Firefoxman

--
-Firefoxman


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Bug 8630] generateSitemap.php option documentation

body:
Dan Jacobson wrote:
> My problem is these sitemaps are only for Google. If one wants a
> sitemap for a visitor to browse, one has to make one by hand. The code
> doesn't mention what to do if one wants a traditional sitemap.

Please post bug comments using the web interface at
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org, do not send them to wikitech-l.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 1/25/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > It's been established in the US that you lose trade secret status with
> > > stuff in open court filings (hence a lot of sealed filings in civil
> > > cases), and that copyrighted stuff doesn't lose copyright but enters
> > > the "suitable for fair use in coverage in the media and legal
> > > commentary and the like" realm.
> > >
> > Which is fine, we have a whole set of rules for all that. The original
> > claim was that the picture was a production of the US government, for
> > which the main evidence seemed to be that it was introduced at a federal
> > trial. We still don't know whether the picture was taken by a random
> > person in the group or by a professional, and if the latter, who the
> > professional was working for. Copyright paranoia? Well, I would be
> > pretty angry if someone copied all of my photos, removed my name, and
> > declared them "PD-USGov" on some flimsy pretext.
>
> Yeah, I was responding in the general here.
>
> I think it's fair use to use these, but they're clearly not PD-USGov;
> someone took them, and unless they released them in a way we don't
> know about, they're still private copyrighted photos.
>
> It's copyright paranoia to say that there's no fair use to be found
> here.  It's not copyright paranoia to take the PD-USGov tag off.  The
> owner would have a perfect right to be upset over that.

Okay, so what's the right tag?


from_name: Ryzvel at 3mail.com

body:
I'm afraid that sources like the Brittanica are not free of this. Tim . . .
Thursday, January 25, 2007, 9:38:50 PM, George wrote:

> Here's the problem.  Academic rigor - which I understand, having done
> refereed papers for conferences and such - is all fine and good for
> scholarly original research papers.

> For an encyclopedia, the vast bulk of what we're trying to do is to
> simply convey the top level survey of a field to the general public.

You are arguing that for an encyclopedia, unlike for the academia,
reliability and fact-checking are not important.

The academic rigor exists not just due to their elitism: that's how
the Academia mentains their high standards of its publications.


body:
> You are advocating the complete abandonment of the principles that
> underly Wikipedia.
>
> "You can edit this page right now." That's the mantra. That's the
> key. That's what got us where we are. It's foolish to give up on the
> thing that made us succeed where other things (Nupedia) failed.

The key underlying principle is making a free encyclopedia available
to everyone. "Anyone can edit" is simply a means to an end - it is
secondary to the goal of making an encyclopedia.

We should be working to make things better for the readers, not the
contributors. Relaxing our rules on using reliable sources would be
great for the contributors, but makes the website pretty much useless
for the readers.


from_name: Steve Block

body:
Omegatron wrote:
> On 1/25/07, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
>> I think you missed out a vital phrase, the term "effort to create and
>> distribute".
>
>
> I included it, actually.  It's right there.  "To create and distribute"
> means nothing by itself.  "Create" is tied to "encyclopedia" and
> "distribute" is tied to "every single person on the planet"...  as I said.
> Feel free to break it up differently if you think it should be.

I don't think it can be broken up, and no, when you broke it up you
missed the word "effort", which contextualises the whole statement.  And
those readings are your readings, not mine.

>
> And I don't think the rest of the statement can be pulled
>> apart.
>
>
> Did you read my example of a case in which it conflicts with itself?  There
> are many others.

I read your opinion on how it conflicts with itself.  Since I don't see
on what basis the statement can be pulled apart, I'm not sure how it can
be described as self-contradictory.  Did you happen to read the rest of
my post?

Steve block

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.10/651 - Release Date: 24/01/07 18:48


body:
On 1/25/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> The Cunctator wrote:
> >
> > Okay, so what's the right tag?
> >
> Strictly speaking, you'd have to ask the owner of the photo. Given the
> specifics of that crowd, it wouldn't surprise me if they were planning
> to make money selling it. :-) In practice, it's probably a "fairusein",
> enumerating the articles for which you plan to use it. Lack of the
> actual photographer's name is going to be a problem - without that, no
> guarantee I wouldn't hit it with a "no source" tag should I run across
> it in future.

Nice to see you standing up for the rights of felons everywhere. :)


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 25/01/07, Bogdan Giusca <liste at dapyx.com> wrote:
>
>> I have an issue with the third criterium of notability for web content,
>> which IMO should not exist at all:
>> from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(web)
>
>
> The "notability" criteria are fundamentally subjective and arbitrary
> rubbish written to appease definition obsessives from AFD.

No they aren't, but this post from David meets some of that description.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.10/651 - Release Date: 24/01/07 18:48


body:
> Citations, fact checking, and minor corrections are EXCELLENT things
> to leave for others, or for later review by yourself.

Leaving citations for someone else is complete nonsense. It shows that
you didn't understand the paragraph of mine you quoted. A citation
says where you got the source from. If you write and article, and then
I come along, I have no idea where you got the source from, it is
impossible for me to add the citation. I can add a link to somewhere
that says the same thing, but that's not citing sources, because
whatever I link to probably wasn't actually the source. Me adding
sources to your article is basically me rewriting the article - your
work becomes nothing more than copyediting that happened to be done
before I wrote the article (and yes, that doesn't make sense - that's
the point I'm trying to make).


body:
Bogdan Giusca wrote:
> I have an issue with the third criterium of notability for web content,
> which IMO should not exist at all:
>
> <<
> Web-specific content is notable if it meets any one of the following criteria:
>
> 3) The content is distributed via a medium which is both well known and
> independent of the creators, either through an online newspaper or
> magazine, an online publisher, or an online broadcaster.
>
> from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(web)
>
> I have a blog on Blogger, which is a medium both well known and
> independent of me.
>
> According to the criterion, my blog is notable. Actually, all the
> blogs from Blogger are notable, only the blogs hosted by their owners
> fail this criterion of notability.

It helps when you include the footnote:

Content that is distributed by independent online sites will almost
certainly satisfy the first criterion. However, this criterion ensures
that our coverage of such content will be complete regardless. For
example, Ricky Gervais had a podcast distributed by The Guardian. Such
distributions should be nontrivial. Although GeoCities and Newgrounds
are exceedingly well known, hosting content on them is trivial.

Care to make an argument that distribution via Blogger is non-trivial?

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.17.10/651 - Release Date: 24/01/07 18:48


body:
> > From my experience on Wikipedia, unsourced articles are very unreliable
> > and may have plenty of wrong facts. Most of thse wrong facts are not
> > added due to malice (though that is not uncommon), but they were
> > added by people either from their (inevitable unreliable) memories,
> > from blogs and forums, which, on average have an awful lack of
> > accuracy or they are simply misinterpretations.
>
> From my experience with Wikipedia, unsourced articles are generally
> very accurate and moderately precise.  When I find them in areas for
> which I'm familiar with the body of knowledge and reliable sources, I
> will spend time to go find the appropriate citations and sources as
> time allows, to "back up" the already existing content with
> appropriate references.

"Accurate" and "reliable" are not synonymous. Just because the article
happens to have everything right does not make it reliable, because
there is no way for you to know that it has everything right.


from_name: peter green

subject: [Commons-l] Login

body:
> I have set up mediawiki locally, on sign-in the user is
> authenticated, however when navigating to any other page (my
> preferences, my watchlist, main page), the user is no longer
> logged in.  A cookie is being created and I have allowed all
> cookies.  My only guess is that the session is being lost
> somehow.  I am using the apache2 server on windows XP.  Any
> suggestions as to where this problem can be troubleshot from or
> what is going on?
check timezone settings, a common problem with cookies is to set the clock to correct local time but get the timezone setting wrong. This means your system ends up with the wrong idea of what universal time isand that sometimes seems to break cookies.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Foundation-l] The Ideal Wiki Software

body:
On 24/01/07, Tangotango <tangotango at wikignome.net> wrote:
> Ironically, I'm currently in the process of developing a full-text (i.e.,
> image titles and descriptions) gallery-based search engine for images on
> Commons. The code and interface has been there since December, it just needs
> frequent updating of the index and moving to the toolserver, and a few more
> tweaks. Although I can't make any promises, I expect the tool to be up and
> running by mid-February.

A lot of attention suddenly. :) Any chance you could make it a
full-blown extension rather than a toolserver job? (
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=8738 )

We already have a lot of super-useful/critical tools relying on the
toolserver, and as we can well see, it's not always so
reliable...anything super-useful/critical is best off ultimately as
part of MediaWiki.

Wait, that was the original point to my post! ;)

Anyway I and the other Commoners will await such developments with interest.

cheers,
Brianna


subject: [Foundation-l] The Ideal Wiki Software


body:
On 1/25/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think applying it places outside the Balkans is fine. They would be
> an example of an edge case making a bad rule, and I would invoke "no,
> don't be dicks."

India has issues with hindu nationalism. While I don't think this has
spilt over into language politics yet it is not a risk I would like to
take

>
> I'd think quite a lot of people here would ...

People had problems with decimalisation back in the day. In any case
it doesn't matter. While goverments may be able to slow the things
stopping them in a free societly will be near imposible.

Viva la weekend

--
geni


body:
On 1/25/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> The refusal of the Montenegrin was not a mess. Furthermore this matter
> is not closed with the denial of this project.
>

It wasn't exactly tidy either.

> I sincerely hope that your vision of the future will never happen. To me
> is is a horrible view of the future. One single language with many
> cultures doomed as a result. No thanks. NB where to go on a holiday,
> every thing is the same ... BRRRR
>

Mexico and Argentina both speak Spanish. There are significant
cultural differences.

So the idea that you need a unique language to have a unique culture
is false. In the past where only a few communicated between states
language differences were of little importance. Now communication is
becoming more widespread and languages are becoming an increasingly
significant barrier.

--
geni