from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
On 8/15/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
>
> On 15-Aug-06, at 1:14 AM, Cormac Lawler wrote:
>
> > I very much agree with what I think Elian was saying, in that I think
> > NPOV is a useless concept when applied to research. If we stick to the
> > concept of NPOV (in all its ambiguity and complexity) we get nowhere
> > in actually allowing someone to test and apply their learning about
> > the world in an academic context. NPOV works for an encyclopedia - it
> > will not work (or, at least, not the same way) for a place of
> > learning.
> >
> > I don't know what kind of NPOV in research you were referring to,
> > Amgine - there is a whole range of complexity on doing and writing
> > research - and all academic research should be structured in a way
> > that does not compromise ethics, with a methodology that can be
> > justified, and be grounded in the appropriate literature (hopefully to
> > make some contribution to that literature). That's good research
> > practice - not NPOV. But yes, what we need to do, over the coming
> > months, is to create a framework and guidelines for good practice in
> > research, including ethical and methodological guidelines. That will
> > determine what kind of research will be hosted and what we are to do
> > with/about it.
>
>
> A research proposal or report will address the current state of the
> literature, presenting all relevant views on a given topic as well as
> the current scientific consensus. It will present its hypothesis or
> problem statement in a neutral manner, and justify the research. This
> includes research survey articles.
>
> After that it will explain how the research will be/was conducted,
> justifying the methodology. If it is a report it will then present
> the primary findings of the research, both predicted and unexpected,
> and in observational research it will discuss additional findings not
> part of the original hypothesis that were found while conducting the
> research.
>
> The conclusions drawn from the research in reports are carefully
> presented with arguments to justify them.
>
> In all of these elements of research NPOV is clearly an element of
> good research. It may not be explicit as it is in en.Wikipedia, but
> non-neutral research does not generally survive peer review at
> journals which is, after all, very much like a wiki.
>

Yes, your outline of research (and good practice) is fine - until the
assumption that all of that good practice constitutes NPOV. I
absolutely agree (not many wouldn't) that research needs to be
justified, but I have a problem (possibly simply semantic) with
requiring that research be "neutral". Even though a piece of research
needs to be grounded in what other people have done, it can take a
provocative stance, advocate that a system needs changing etc.
Furthermore, it is very much written from a point of view - a whole
set of assumptions about how the world works. Maybe I'm arguing for
something quite particular here, but most of the research i immerse
myself in does not exactly subscribe to a view of the world which can
be objectively described - or even, that the researcher is somehow
able to present the research or their methodology as somehow
"neutral". I have difficulties with the notion of "neutrality" in
Wikipedia (though it works well enough), but I have even more of a
problem with it when applied to research.

However, i appreciate what you are arguing for, and i fully agree with
it. We eventually need a system of peer review of research to be
hosted on wikiversity, as well as a community of researchers who are
prepared to provide constructive criticism on each others work. We
also need guidelines to help people starting out, as to what they
should be thinking about throughout their research planning and
fieldwork. If we need some sort of concept that equates with NPOV,
then we should think about that concept and give it meaning (as Jimbo
said, during Wikimania, that we have done with NPOV itself).

So, my parting thought is: What is that concept? What is Wikiversity's NPOV?

Cormac


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
James Hare wrote:
> We can develop Creationism instruction material as well as Science
> instruction material, can't we? As long as we have interested parties?

Information that lets people learn, neutrally, information _about_
Creationism, sounds great.  Courses advocating creationism, no.

--Jimbo


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


list: commons-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Commons-l] Editorial use vs commercial exploitation

body:
"David Monniaux" a ?crit:
> In some instances, this is a case of protection of image: they don't
> want their image to be associated with products or political campaigns
> without their authorisation, and it's much easier for them to act on
> grounds of copyright infringement than on other grounds (especially
> since in some cases they cannot claim trademark protection).

GFDL is in fact really strong. If a GFDL image was used to advertise Coke,
then the whole advertisement could be claimed to be under GFDL. Now think
about the legal issues a company could have putting their logo next to the
GFDL image... I highly doubt to found in my snail mail an ad saying "Buy
XYZ", with three GFDL pages appended. Would be a nice paper to keep though
;)

It's more a matter of license-knowing, so instead of accepting material
under such _irregular_ license (what would decide the use limits?), it'd
better to inform the copyright holders and ask them to free it. Plus, not
allowing fair use, thus saying "the only way to have this on wikipedia" is
also a good wayy of receiving images that would be otherwise forced to the
fair use.


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
We can develop Creationism instruction material as well as Science
instruction material, can't we? As long as we have interested parties?

On 8/15/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On 8/15/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > > --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > NPOV does apply to Wikiversity, but of course
> > > > context matters in how we
> > > > understand and apply it.
> > > >
> > > > For example, a course which is highly biased and
> > > > pushing some POV should
> > > > be fixed, as we would quite
> > > > properly consider it to be broken.
> > > >
> > > > But of course, as Cormac points out, some of
> > what
> > > > Wikiversity is going
> > > > to be about is explorations of
> > > > research, etc.  As Amgine put it, even here NPOV
> > > > applies, but it applies
> > > > in a way that makes sense for this
> > > > type of content.
> > > >
> > > > The danger of saying too quickly "NPOV does not
> > > > apply" is that we would
> > > > thereby open the door to lunatics
> > > > (and there are lunatics!) trying to push
> > extremely
> > > > biased courses.  We
> > > > can do better than that.
> > > >
> > > > --Jimbo
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > I think everyone is not quite on the same page
> > here.
> > > Although neutrality is going to be an important
> > aspect
> > > of Wikiversity.  WP:NPOV is not going to be the
> > policy
> > > in use there.  Mainly this is becuse Wikiversity
> > is
> > > not writiing encyclopedia articles.  Bias will
> > take a
> > > subtley different form on that project.  Just like
> > > bias rears its' head on Wikisource in the form of
> > > altered texts.  I do not believe it was something
> > > people thought of early on at Wikisource, but it
> > is
> > > certainly what has transpired.  I am just trying
> > to
> > > guess as to how bias will try and work its way
> > into
> > > Wikiversity.  It may not be possible, we might
> > have to
> > > wait and find out when it happens.  WP:NPOV is
> > about
> > > how to counteract bias on WP.  I do not believe
> > anyone
> > > is suggesting counteracting bias at WV is not of
> > the
> > > utmost importance, just that WV will have approach
> > it
> > > in a unique way.
> > >
> > > Birgitte SB
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > Yes, I think you've got me, Birgitte :-). I just
> > think that NPOV (as I
> > conceptualise it) is not a useful concept to apply
> > to Wikiversity.
> > Don't get me wrong - I wince just as much as anyone
> > if someone will
> > try to teach people that the world began 10,000
> > years ago ;-), but
> > surely the point of education is to try to get
> > people to think for
> > themselves? I see no problem with provocative, even
> > biased,
> > educational materials - so long as people are given
> > the wherewithal to
> > critically evaluate them. I think we need an analogy
> > to NPOV -
> > "completeness" sounds better, but just not catchy
> > enough :-)
> >
> > Cormac
> >
>
> Yes I agree and your response just sparked in my mind
> a very realistic example.  I always thought WV would
> find an audience developing homeschooling materials.
> Now in the US many people who homeschool do this
> because they do not like the lack of religion in
> public schools.  How will WV handle the develpoment of
> science teaching materials for homeschoolers which are
> based in "creationism"?
>
> Birgitte SB
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

body:
On 15/08/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:

> >There are various tools around that will automatically monitor the
> >pages of your choice on the web, wherever they are. I think there are
> >even tools that turn those changes into an RSS thread.
> >Actually, for that matter, I have a vague recollection MediaWiki can
> >generate an RSS feed from changes to pages, but I can't find any more
> >info on that atm.

> I suspect that this idea may be easier to implement once single sign-on
> is active.  This should not prevent us from having separate talk pages
> on each project that interests us.

Mm. I tend to note on my talk pages elsewhere to leave me messages on
my en: talk page so I'll ever see them.

Wikia has almost-single-signon, I think - most of the Wikias share a
login database. Uncyclopedia is separate, I think Memory Alpha is
separate.

This is one for wikitech. Hey, is there any likelihood of RSS feeds or
email being switched on any time, just in case you feel like there
isn't enough smoke coming out of the servers?

- d.


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki

body:
On 8/14/06, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> Well: let's make some practical point: people on the nap.wikipedia are
> driven away because they have to use workarounds for '' - that is '
> in whatever combination - we now uwse '' for '' to have a unique
> way to identify words and word combinations if some day we should need
> to use replace.py. Many now create non-standard artilces using the
> accent of ? or ? that it ` or ? to create articles ... inserting spaces
> where they are not needed etc. (all sorts of strange solutions to avoid
> to see all in italics afterwards) before the &# thingie we needed to use
> <nowiki> to get things right. It is an annoyance to have continuously
> use workarounds - now I am quite "wikiphile" I'd say, being able to
> install my own wikis + extensions and create sometimes quite complicated
> templates ... imagine how someone feels who has no clue at all about
> wikis - someone who would like to start a first article and then,
> clicking on save gets weird stuff and therefore does not come back to
> edit again, because editing is "too difficult". I have also plenty of
> colleagues who maybe would like to help, but simply don't want to loose
> the time to learn wiki, because donating a translation is already a lot
> considering how much they would earn if they did translation jobs instead.
>
> Next thingie - the |  sign - you don't have it on the German keyboard -
> and it gets even worse if you have a laptop keyboard like I have - there
> is no way to reproduce it easily with alt+<numeric code> like I could do
> it on a normal keyboard.

In Latin America a similar problem occurs with < and >. While those keys
are present on Spanish keyboards, a very large number of computers
actually use American keyboards with fewer keys. And guess which keys
are missing? Fortunately these are not required so frequently in wiki syntax.

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

> How I work on the nap.wikipedia? Well there are two things to it: I
> first write in OOo or Word, then I subsitute all '' with the numeric
> code with search and replace and I avoid to create wiki-links, because I
> am simply very annoyed (better I remain with nice words...)  to copy and
> paste it here and there. Or I write the article on the wiki and then
> substitute the parts needed - both ways require loads of time more.
>
> At least the {{ [[ are on the keyboard - so normal wiki-links are not
> much of an issue - for Wiktionary that works fine - but not for
> wikipedia where you have declensed forms of a word.
>
> I find wikis great - but they are not suitable for the biggest part of
> potential contributors - maybe to 5% of them. See: I already said this
> last time I wrote about these issues here ... if Mediawiki was not
> developed by English sepaking people, but maybe by people speaking some
> kind of "strange" language - if it was not developed for the English
> speaking market only we would have more contributors in the regional
> editions it would be different - more conscious about such issues - no,
> please don't object - if people do things most of them only think about
> the English wikipedia - the other projects might exist, but are
> considered to be some kind of fun-stuff ... instead many of the small
> wikipedias are very serious projects - much more serious than anyone of
> you can imagine, they face many more problems you could ever imagine - a
> good software approach would help many of us to grow a better community
> and to be able to create more articles instead of having to re-read and
> adapt every article to our standards (' is some kind of standard for
> nap now) and people, who already have difficulties in writing local
> languages, yes we have an alphabetization rate of approx 2 to 4%, would
> not have to concentrate on multiple issues at a time, they could
> concentrate on the text they are writing ... that would be great ...
> that would be really a step ahead ... that would mean "think about the
> users" not "for the majority it's fine ... so who cares ..."
>
> I am sorry that I have to write this ... it should not be necessary.
>
> I'll post this mail also on my blog in order to have it accessible to
> more people.
>
> Thank you for taking the time to read ... well I hope one day I will be
> able to say "thank you for caring about the small communities".
>
> Best, Sabine
>
>
> *****
> Sabine Cretella
> Translations IT-DE, EN-DE
> Evangelist for WiktionaryZ
> s.cretella at wordsandmore.it
> skype: sabinecretella
> phone +39-340-1809828
> http://sabinecretella.blogspot.com
> Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
>  http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] News.com: Teen's warning on the gospel of Wikipedia

body:
On 8/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 15/08/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Great news.com commentary piece on WP, humorous and serious at the same
> time:
> >
> http://news.com.com/Teens+warning+on+the+gospel+of+Wikipedia/2010-1038_3-6104446.html?tag=fd_carsl
> > "Of course, for students, Wikipedia is the miracle cure for
> > procrastination (and there's science to back that up; a recent poll
> > showed that nine out of 10 doctors suggested Wikipedia as a cure to
> > putting homework off. The other 10 percent were too busy uploading
> > spurious entries to participate in the poll)."
>
>
> Good. I feel like half my talking to the press is getting across that
> we're fallible and we do our best, but it's a perpetual working draft
> and this is a feature rather than a problem - and there's no
> substitute for thinking.
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Scanning through the "talkback" from that article, I was somewhat amazed at
the several, seemingly genuine notes of thanks to the author from high
school students who hadn't realized the "limitations" of Wikipedia.

As much as I was irritated by Colbert's stunt, perhaps it had some
beneficial results if it has the effect of helping high school students
understand why using a single source, especially WIkipedia, is not
appropriate for serious research.

-Rich
[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Invited by admin to leave en if concerned about free
 reusability

body:
G'day Matt,

> On 8/14/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>We do. People keep trying to neutralise it but the comunity is a pain
>>to go against.
>
> Exactly - while a group of 50 admins could get away with quite a lot
> in terms of rewriting policy, say, it would be hard to impose it on
> the community, woudln't it?

Not necessarily.  If you aim right, you can get the community to screw
*itself*.  We already see it on a smaller (and less severe, since there
are very few admins involved[0]) scale when it comes to things like:

* Speedy deletion (it's vanity!  You must speedy it!)
* Image copyright (if you tag it as "fair use" it can't be deleted!)
* Edit warring (Ha ha, you reverted four times but I can stop at three
   and you'll be blocked!)

Let's say we have four users: A, B, C, and D.  User A makes some stupid
shit up[1].  User B hears him, and adopts it, thinking it's policy.
User C does something different, and is attacked by User B for
contravening policy.  User D, an admin, then comes along and does the
Right Thing, according to policy, common sense, God, and apple pie, and
gets abused by B and C.  This can happen over a stretch of a year or so,
in which time B and C have had time to spread the Bad Word to E, F, G,
and H.  We're at the stage, now, where B can run for adminship --- *on
his policy knowledge* --- and pass!

Witness, for example, the "Administrator Discretion Zone".  I've seen
two admins recently (within a month or two) close an AfD along the lines
of "the tally is only 60%, so that falls under my discretion, and I vote
delete".  This is wrong for more reasons than I could count (if I was of
a mind to count, and when it comes to AfD I don't do *any* counting),
but I've got a smart-arsed chap on DRV who thinks he's a policy wonk
telling me that referring to the ADZ is perfectly justified and I'm an
ignoramus for claiming otherwise.  Now, I've been very busy in the last
few weeks and my egg-sucking abilities may not be up to their usual
standards, but I submit that the mere fact that someone can honestly
believe this crap *and* be one hell of a smug bastard in the meantime
shows that people can spread misinformation about policy quite easily
just be getting the wrong idea in their heads and having other editors
copy them.

Now, imagine what fifty people with admin status and powers could do if
they really wanted to fuck things up.  They wouldn't need to head out
there and re-write policy by fiat or anything like that.  They'd just
need to convince enough of us that 2 + 2 = 5, and we'd fuck *ourselves*
up.  Hint: CVU are a powerful tool for anyone attempting this[2].

[0] Someone who spreads misinformation about the blocking policy is not
     as big a problem as someone who spreads misinformation about the
     blocking policy *and* uses their blocking powers to back that up.

[1] Bad faith isn't necessarily the cause of our problems.  Chinese
     Whispers is far more common; however, that requires more than four
     users :-)

[2] Kids!  Don't try this at home!

--
Mark Gallagher
"I was neat, clean, shaved and sober, and I didn't care who knew it."
(Raymond Chandler, /The Big Sleep/)


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
I don't know if it's a matter for NPOV, because I believe we've questioned
if NPOV is an appropriate policy for Wikiversity. The hard part is finding
an apt variant.

Wikiversity should be based on research projects by contributors, with the
end product of instruction material and possibly an accompanying wikibook.
That's the plan of "Bibliography and Research Methods" -- it'll start off as
research on how to appropriately do research, then once we get the idea of
what the answer is, we'll put together instruction material.

On 8/15/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/16/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> > James Hare wrote:
> > > We can develop Creationism instruction material as well as Science
> > > instruction material, can't we? As long as we have interested parties?
> >
> > How about someone creating instruction material which teaches the
> > superiority of the aryan race? Or schoolbooks in turkish which explain
> > that there was never such thing as an armenian genocide? Where's the
> border?
> >
> > In my western ignorant mindframe I'd say that we need a common ethical
> > ground for those projects to which NPOV doesn't and can't apply.
>
> None of the examples you cite are NPOV. They are, in fact, distinctly
> POV. Treating these topics in an NPOV manner requires us to clearly
> state that "there was never such a thing as an Armenian genocide" is a
> fringe theory which has a significant number of adherents only in
> Turkey.
>
> [[Creationism]] is clearly labeled as pseudoscience in the English
> Wikipedia right now. I have no problem with Wikiversity instructional
> materials that treat it as such. The scope of the project should be
> "educational materials with a scientific grounding"; there may be a
> need for additional ethical principles, but this is not it.
>
> Research is another story. Some research may only be a cover for
> propaganda. But the principle of open collaboration might be enough to
> discourage crackpots, who will find their nonsense ideas dismantled
> before they have even started putting them together. We've mostly been
> able to deal with propaganda on Wikinews so far, which encourages
> original reporting, comparable to original research.
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


body:
On 8/14/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> > How I work on the nap.wikipedia? Well there are two things to it: I
> > first write in OOo or Word, then I subsitute all '' with the numeric
> > code with search and replace and I avoid to create wiki-links, because I
> > am simply very annoyed (better I remain with nice words...)  to copy and
> > paste it here and there. Or I write the article on the wiki and then
> > substitute the parts needed - both ways require loads of time more.

This kind of thing interests me greatly. I just did some Google searches
for Neapolitan OR napolitano with alphabet OR spelling OR orthography OR
apostrophe OR quote. I couldn't find anything. So instead I'll ask here
in which kinds of cases this occurs. Does it represent a certain sound or
omitted letters?

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

> Would it not be possible to add some javascript to the monobook.css at
> nap to do some substitution? Pick some character sequence that users
> will use to enter non-italic text (or even better, a character
> sequence for italics, and make '' natural). Then, when they go to edit
> text, substitute all the text as it apperas from the wiki. When they
> save, substitute it back. So, two solutions:
>
> I think using // instead of '' would be cleaner for italics, but would
> be harder to implement, as you would need to substitute as follows:
> 1. When the edit box appears:
> * Substitute '' (when not enclosed in <nowiki>...) with //.
> * Substitute all instances of '' '' and '' with ''
> 2. When saving:
> * Substitute all non-escaped '' with ''
> * Susbitute all // with ''
>
> A bit of tricky parsing involved, I suspect...
>
> Maybe something similar would work for | for Germans?
>
> The problem with simply saying "this punctuation is no good because
> there exists a language for which it doesn't work" is that it's
> probably next to impossible to find a syntax that is acceptable for
> *all* languages, present and future.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Statistics?

body:
On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 03:50:25PM +0200, Jan Kulveit wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 02:04:37PM +0200, Jens Frank wrote:
>
> Than, there must be some flaw in the implementation. Othervise the method
> (running some client-side javascript contacting statistics server) is
> industry standard (e.g. Google Analytics works this way).
>
> Moreover, it could be easily done with modest hardware and existing
> statistics software.  It's unnecessary to process the whole huge dataset -
> it would be enough to process random selection. Which can be easily done
> with JS ... the JS code would contact the statics server if some $random>0.999
> for example.

That's exactly how the JS for the German wiki works and that's also why
it doesn't work. With only a few requests you can fake the statistics,
since every hit on the statistics server counts as 1000 page views.

Regards,

	jens


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wysiwyg debate

body:
On 8/15/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Why? I can't think why. Of course, the software would have to
> automatically renumber them if references get deleted or moved around.

I said why in my last post:

> The advantages of having the full reference in the
> text are that it works with section editing, and the ref doesn't break
> invisibly if someone transplants the section or whatever without
> thinking to move the refs as well.  Trust me, that's constant and
> horrible with the {{ref}} style: I've had to spend half an hour or
> more on more than one occasion digging through page histories to
> figure out where the references disappeared.

I stressed the second point, but the first is important as well: to
add something with a source, you have to either make two edits or do a
full-page edit rather than a section edit, either of which is
annoying.  Both styles are imperfect; I would guess that Avar tried
out the inline one because people complained about the flaws of the
then existing ref-at-end style.  I still prefer the inline style
overall, if those are the only two choices, because you don't get
horrible numbers of broken refs with that.


body:
On 15/08/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

> Great news.com commentary piece on WP, humorous and serious at the same time:
> http://news.com.com/Teens+warning+on+the+gospel+of+Wikipedia/2010-1038_3-6104446.html?tag=fd_carsl
> "Of course, for students, Wikipedia is the miracle cure for
> procrastination (and there's science to back that up; a recent poll
> showed that nine out of 10 doctors suggested Wikipedia as a cure to
> putting homework off. The other 10 percent were too busy uploading
> spurious entries to participate in the poll)."

Good. I feel like half my talking to the press is getting across that
we're fallible and we do our best, but it's a perpetual working draft
and this is a feature rather than a problem - and there's no
substitute for thinking.

- d.


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Cherokee Sidebar Translation for
	http://chr.wikipedia.org

body:
A user asked about the broken sidebar translation at chr.cherokee.org. I
don't have the ability to alter the site. Here is what's there now:

?? ???? ??? - nav nunadalv nahnai "community places" (wrong syntax - in
this usage should be "nav nunadalvyi" - "place of the communities"
nahnai can be used but its not as concise. Community Portal is more
correct and translates better)
??? - ditsei "news" OK
??????? ????? - diganetliyvsdi tlayigohigi "it changes recently"
(perhaps OK, but I don't talk this way)
?????? - alisdelvdi "support" OK
??????? - alisgolvdodi "donate" OK

Here's a translation of all of it with modern words in use to describe
website links, etc.

== Cherokee Sidebar Translation ==

????? ?? (navigate)

* ???? ????? (main page)
* ????????? (goings-on/events)
* ???? ??? (all pages)
* Wikimedia ??? (Wikimedia news)
* ?? ???? ?????? (community portal)
* ????? ???? ????????? (current events)
* ??? ??????? (recent changes)
* ?????? ???? (mystery (random) page)
* ?????? (help)
* ?????? (donations)

???? (search)
* ????? (go, do it, execute)
* ???? (search)

???? ?????? ???? (box of tools)

* ?? ??? ????? ??? (what links here)
* ???? ????? ??????? (related changes)
* ??????? ??????? (user contributions)
* ????? ???? ???? (upload file)
* ???? ???? (special pages)
* ??????? ??? ???? (send user an email)
* ???? ?????? (print edition)
* ???? ???? (permanent link)

????? ?? ??????? (other languages)

You guys make the call.

Jeff


subject:
[Foundation-l] Cherokee Sidebar Translation
	for	http://chr.wikipedia.org

body:
Angela wrote:

>On 8/16/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>
>
>>A user asked about the broken sidebar translation at chr.cherokee.org. I
>>don't have the ability to alter the site. Here is what's there now:
>>
>>
>
>This is not relevant to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you want to
>discuss an external cherokee project, please get your own mailing list
>for that.
>
>Angela.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
How do I do that? Link please?

Jeff


subject:
[Foundation-l] Cherokee Sidebar
	Translation	for	http://chr.wikipedia.org

body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>Angela wrote:
>
>
>
>>On 8/16/06, Jeffrey V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>A user asked about the broken sidebar translation at chr.cherokee.org. I
>>>don't have the ability to alter the site. Here is what's there now:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>This is not relevant to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you want to
>>discuss an external cherokee project, please get your own mailing list
>>for that.
>>
>>Angela.
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>How do I do that? Link please?
>
>Jeff
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
Oh I see, Angela note the link in the Message header
http://chr.wikipedia.org. Isn't this a Wikimedia Project or is there a
separate list for this site? I have not seen a Cherokee mailing list for
the Foundation, and if there were one, I'd be the only one on it since I
am the onyl active Cherokee Speaker working on Wikipedia, so that would
be pretty useless. Do you have another suggestion?

Jeff

Jeff


body:
Angela wrote:

>>Angela wrote:
>>
>>
>>>This is not relevant to the Wikimedia Foundation. If you want to
>>>discuss an external cherokee project, please get your own mailing list
>>>for that.
>>>
>>>
>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>>How do I do that? Link please?
>>
>>
>
>http://www.google.com/search?q=mailing+list+hosting
>
>Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:
>
>
>>Oh I see, Angela note the link in the Message header
>>http://chr.wikipedia.org. Isn't this a Wikimedia Project or is there a
>>separate list for this site?
>>
>>
>
>chr.wikipedia.org is a Wikimedia project. The thing you keep spamming
>this list about at chr.cherokee.org is not a Wikimedia project and I
>would prefer if you would refrain from misleading people into thinking
>it is.
>
>Angela
>
>
WP:ASSUME. It was a typo. My apologies. So where is the correct list to
discuss the Cherokee Wikipedia Sidebar. It's gone unanswered on the site
for some time. So who should I forward this to?

Jeff

>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 8/15/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>chr.wikipedia.org is a Wikimedia project. The thing you keep spamming
>>this list about at chr.cherokee.org is not a Wikimedia project and I
>>would prefer if you would refrain from misleading people into thinking
>>it is.
>>
>>
>
>Excuse me?
>
>Jeff obviously just pasted the wrong URL in the body. It was correct
>in his subject line, and the translations he provided were obviously
>for our site.
>
>Jeff, I'll find someone who's an admin there and can merge in your
>translations. Thanks.
>
>
Thanks Greg,

If they want the full translations for the entire messages files for
Syllabary, they can be found at

ftp.wikigadugi.org/wiki/MediaWiki

Have them email or call me directly (probably easier) and I need to
enable english and put Cherokee Messages in the right context.

Jeff

>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
Jeffrey V. Merkey wrote:

>Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
>
>
>>On 8/15/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>chr.wikipedia.org is a Wikimedia project. The thing you keep spamming
>>>this list about at chr.cherokee.org is not a Wikimedia project and I
>>>would prefer if you would refrain from misleading people into thinking
>>>it is.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>Excuse me?
>>
>>Jeff obviously just pasted the wrong URL in the body. It was correct
>>in his subject line, and the translations he provided were obviously
>>for our site.
>>
>>Jeff, I'll find someone who's an admin there and can merge in your
>>translations. Thanks.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>Thanks Greg,
>
>If they want the full translations for the entire messages files for
>Syllabary, they can be found at
>
>ftp.wikigadugi.org/wiki/MediaWiki
>
>Have them email or call me directly (probably easier)
>

801-427-3547 (cell) Call anytime.

>and I need to
>enable english and put Cherokee Messages in the right context.
>
>Jeff
>
>
>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>It seems that Mr. Merkey is pointing to some corrections that need to be
>made to the sidebar of chr.wikipedia.org. If that is the case, then it seems to
>be something relevant to Foundation.
>
>Danny
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
Thanks Danny,

Also,

If the Foundation would consider integrating the Chr2syl program will
make editing on the site A LOT easier for Cherokee editors and
will allow me to get other Cherokee to the site working on it as editors
since they will be able to edit it without special tools and software.

It's at:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chr2syl

Jeff


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

body:
On 15/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/08/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> > >There are various tools around that will automatically monitor the
> > >pages of your choice on the web, wherever they are. I think there are
> > >even tools that turn those changes into an RSS thread.
> > >Actually, for that matter, I have a vague recollection MediaWiki can
> > >generate an RSS feed from changes to pages, but I can't find any more
> > >info on that atm.
>
> > I suspect that this idea may be easier to implement once single sign-on
> > is active.  This should not prevent us from having separate talk pages
> > on each project that interests us.
>
>
> Mm. I tend to note on my talk pages elsewhere to leave me messages on
> my en: talk page so I'll ever see them.
>
> Wikia has almost-single-signon, I think - most of the Wikias share a
> login database. Uncyclopedia is separate, I think Memory Alpha is
> separate.

I thought Uncyclopedia and Memory Alpha were non-Wikia?

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


body:
On 8/15/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/15/06, Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com> wrote:
> > In Latin America a similar problem occurs with < and >. While those keys
> > are present on Spanish keyboards, a very large number of computers
> > actually use American keyboards with fewer keys. And guess which keys
> > are missing? Fortunately these are not required so frequently in wiki syntax.
>
> Hang on, in Latin America, people often use American keyboards which
> for some reason are missing the < and > keys? That sounds weird - do
> you have any more info on them? I notice
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout doesn't have any
> information on Spanish keyboards (or US keyboards in Latin America...)

I just got back 4 weeks ago from a 12-month trip from Mexico to Panama and
back again. Being an Internet and wiki junky I used dozens of different internet
cafes in this time. The Spanish keyboard has a smaller left shift key and a
smaller enter key. There is an extra key between the left shift key and the z
key which has < and > - one is accessed by holding the shift key. With a US
keyboard this key is absent and neither character is possible. I even tried to
add them to MediaWiki:Edittools but they produced < and > so I had to
resort to cut and paste!

Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)

> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikibooks texts and Wikiversity

body:
That's what I was thinking: Wikiversity hosts the lesson plans, and the
lesson plans are based on books (courtesy of Wikibooks).

On 8/15/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Amgine wrote:
> > A comment in IRC yesterday raised a concern for me which I would like
> > to see addressed.
> >
> > Cormac mentioned that he and Mr Horning had discussed moving  textbooks
> > and curricula from en.Wikibooks to en.Wikiversity. He was  unsure if
> > this meant the textbooks would be deleted from  en.Wikibooks, but he was
> > sure any contributors who preferred working  on en.Wikibooks would be
> > able to copy them back to that project.
> >
> > This seems extremely odd to me, that deleting a textbook from  Wikibooks
> > would even be contemplated. Educational materials are,  after all, the
> > mission of the project. And dividing a textbook  between projects seems
> > to be forking, both of the book in question  and the potential
> > contributors as well, again something which should  not even be
> > contemplated in my opinion.
> >
> > Could the Wikiversity project please clarify this?
>
> Amgine is correct.
>
> The point of reference in the future should be this one :
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal
>
> This proposal was the one which was approved for the creation of
> Wikiversity. This proposal makes it clear that both projects should try
> their best to cohabit in peace. Wikiversity should not become the new
> host provider of wikibooks content, but aim at building a collection of
> references for one topic.
>
> For example : textbook, lesson plans, lecture notes, presentation
> slides, memory flash cards, listening exercises, educational video etc...
>
> This does not mean that all these materials will be hosted on
> Wikiversity. Some may but other material may be found at wikipedia, or
> wikibooks and wikisource etc...
> For each topic, Wikiversity will be the central place where someone may
> find the material available for a topic. If the material is on
> Wikibooks, then Wikiversity should only link to the Wikibooks content.
>
> If Wikiversity wishes to double host the content, fine (though it seems
>   unecessary), but it is excluded that Wikibooks should lose its content
> because of Wikiversity activity.
>
> This is within that spirit that the special project committee
> recommanded the creation of Wikiversity project.
>
> Anthere
>
>
> > Amgine
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andrew Garrett

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Special:Desysop

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hi there,

I've today developed an extension based on Special:Makesysop that may be a
solution to the problems (at least on en: ) with the process of gaining
adminship. Part of the problem with adminship is that it is somewhat
difficult to remove. This extension may change that. The extension, as
currently configured, allows local bureaucrats to desysop a user. I believe
that this is sensible. If we can trust bureaucrats to set the sysop bit, why
shouldn't we trust them to remove it? Additionally, desysopping is quite a
political issue, and generally requires the intervention of somebody
*familiar with the situation*, not an outsider who has simply been informed.
Therefore, I suggest that we use this extension to allow Bureaucrats to
desysop users in serious cases of abuse of powers. A different process for
desysopping may need to be developed to accompany this - and a policy on
when bureaucrats may use this ability.

Questions, comments and requests for demonstrations are more than welcome.

Andrew Garrett (Werdna)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFE4aI7ehR2FitQhwARAmX5AKCtfLYt961WAwv0rikgfmbbqqP9SwCgo/0P
UHgmSXxVjXYcgxG5H+AS5qA=
=9mLX
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Desysop


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
On 8/15/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> My understanding is that chapter membership is only treated as
> equivalent to membership in the Foundation if the bylaws specifically
> state this.  I'm not really sure if this is a good idea or not - I
> tend to think it isn't.

What problems could be caused by writing this into the bylaws, if it
is indeed legally possible?

> In case it was just in my mind and not in my writing, the plan would be
> that members would have to pay dues annually or meet the activity
> requirements to have dues waived.

Regular reconfirmation of membership, especially before important
votes, may be sufficient. If membership can easily be regained,
expiring member accounts who do not reconfirm shouldn't be too much of
a problem.

> I definitely think participation in the committees should require
> membership.

I do think volunteer or advisory participation in open committee
meetings and discussions should not require membership. Legal
committee membership is a different story.

> As Michael Snow said, and I'll add that this is under Florida law,
> they have to be available to the other members, so they're essentially
> public.

That would give people who are the target of campaigns by the likes of
Brandt a reason not to become members. You're right that a user's edit
history can give many hints to their identity. But when you have a
list of 20 potential "candidates" you could match to a particular user
ID, then verifying the member roster would be a way to complete the
match.

I think people who have reasons not to become members should still
have as many venues of participation as possible.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
There might be already a discussion about this somewhere, dunno:

Before wikiversity really starts, it might make sense to think	about the
license. There could be better choices than GFDL for such a project.

greetings,
elian


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


body:
Angela wrote:

>>Jeff obviously just pasted the wrong URL in the body. It was correct
>>in his subject line, and the translations he provided were obviously
>>for our site.
>>
>>
>
>No, that wasn't obvious considering he's working on an external
>Cherokee machine translated project and not on Wikipedia.
>
>
Well, you're completely wrong about that. I upload translated and
verified articles every day.

Angela, I'll interface with Danny, Brad, and Mr. Wales if I need to
address the Board of Trustees. Thanks for
your views. I respectfully am in total disagreement with your opinions
here, and I'll leave it at that. I was simply asking
who to contact, and those questions were answered. Have a great evening.

Thanks

Jeff

>Either way, mediawiki interface translations are not relevant to this
>Wikimedia Foundation mailing list.
>
>Angela
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Watching multiple talk pages

body:
On 15/08/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 15/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Wikia has almost-single-signon, I think - most of the Wikias share a
> > login database. Uncyclopedia is separate, I think Memory Alpha is
> > separate.

> I thought Uncyclopedia and Memory Alpha were non-Wikia?

Uncyclopedia is now owned by Wikia (Chronarion finally sold Wikia the
domain name and whatever rights attach to the uncyclopedia.org
trademark - though the word "uncyclopedia" may not be TMed and the
puzzle potato logo is someone else's, and etc and blah, it's all
pretty vexed, see http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/DUMP for unedifying
heat rather than light). It's been hosted by Wikia since mid last
year, and now it's officially part of Wikia. But it still operates
pretty much separately as a community, so it's kept its own user
database and search database.

- d.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Special:Desysop

body:
On 15/08/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> I still prefer my syntax for deciding assignment rights, namely
>
> $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['sysop'] = true;
> $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['bureaucrat'] = true;
> $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['bot'] = true;
> $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['remgroup']['bot'] = true;

I don't, it's too easily confused with $wgGroupPermissions and the two
aren't compatible. However, rename the variable to something
appropriate, e.g. $wgRightsManipulation (ick, someone think of a
better phrase) and the format makes some sort of sense, although of
course, we could then switch the middle portion to be "add" or
"remove".

One thought that's fairly negligible at this stage, and kinda obvious,
but if $wgRightsManipulation, or whatever, was not set, or set to
false or null (and that'd be the default), then any user with the
"userrights" permission could use the form, as it is now.

I still feel this kind of complicated control is better off as an
extension, let's face it; who's going to want to use it besides
Wikimedia and a couple of other large installs? Best to keep the core
implementation simple, I think. If people want it, it can be added.

I'm not convinced of the need for a "remote" permission. If access is
available and $wgAlternateMaster or whatever is set, then fine, it
happens, otherwise it doesn't.

Rob Church


body:
On 15/08/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/15/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 15/08/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I still prefer my syntax for deciding assignment rights, namely
> > >
> > > $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['sysop'] = true;
> > > $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['bureaucrat'] = true;
> > > $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['bot'] = true;
> > > $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['remgroup']['bot'] = true;
> >
> > I don't, it's too easily confused with $wgGroupPermissions and the two
> > aren't compatible.
>
> D'oh.  I *meant* $wgGroupPermissions.  That is, 'addgroup' and
> 'remgroup' would be group permissions.

That will confuse the existing code handling it. I maintain it would
be better to split up the variables; the purpose is too broadened
otherwise.

Rob Church


from_name: Felipe Sanches

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Save Draft button

body:
> Don't we have edit conflicts already? How would these be significantly
> different?

because edit branches would take longer. Think about hours/days before
"commiting" the draft...


from_name: Michael R. Irwin

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

references:
<44DC5C85.7030405@wikia.com>
	<NMENLBGDKAFGBDHEPOBNKEKPDCAA.erikzachte@infodisiac.com>
	<44DCD134.5030800@yahoo.com>
	<38a7bf7c0608111207j5f37fd52h6847e3e2d87a196f@mail.gmail.com>
	<44DCE1B4.5020101@wikia.com>	<44DCE4DC.5070309@wikia.com>
	<38a7bf7c0608111333i2e002033sba9c53ad136c1736@mail.gmail.com>
	<ebivm4$lf4$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:

>If it comes to the point in this until now hypothetical situation that
>to get a lot of money the independence of the WMF is affected by selling
>a place on the board then advertisement should be reconsidered.
>
>Myspace.com , Alexa ranking global the 7th place has made a deal with
>google for advertisement for the amount of at least 900 million dollar
>for 3 years. $ 900.000.000.  That is a lot.
>
>Wikipedia is now on the 16th place. I have no idea how much money the
>WMF could get form a deal with google or yahoo, even if it where a
>limited amount of adds and not (to) annoying. But it can not be anything
>other then a very impressive large pile of money.
>
>The Wikimedia projects are ad free. That is fantastic. I wonder on what
>ranking place the next ad free website is listed. The wikimedia websites
>are probably unique in that aspect. It could have been something form a
>Seince Fiction movie about a paralleluniversum where there are not ads
>on the internet.
>
>Nevertheless it is so that Wikimedia has a gold mine. The gold is not
>used out of principle. Instead of living in a castle the WMF lives in
>very modest house but can manage by donations of visitors. And things
>are going better. There is some money in the savings account. There are
>no loans to pay off. There is hope to get some new money without strings
>on. (grands)  And the WMF is still independent. If very large amounts of
>money could go to the WMF but by accepting so the WMF would lose part of
>its independence then I believe putting pride aside and selling some ads
>is much better then selling your soul.
>
>Ofcource this is all hypothetical. There is (so far I know) no offer
>from Bill Gates or similar to give a large truck load of money with a
>end-user-agreement attached to it.
>
>
>
Two points to consider:

1.  The Wikimedia Foundation is not independent.  It has a stacked Board
designed by Jimbo to allow him to maintain personal control.   In the
unlikely event that the Wikimedia Foundation sold an additional Board
slot it would break Jimbo's control to a possible 50/50 split.   More
"independence" not less.  Three unaffiliated Board Members could
deadlock the previously stacked Board anytime they chose.

2.   Jimbo made the committment very early in the project history in
response to queries from the community creating the initial critical
momentum and verifiable feasibility at en.wikipedia.   It is very
possible that there is no gold mine.  Many people enjoy access to
information without the advertisement and behavior tracking cookies and
spyware routinely used at commercial sites.  It is very possible that a
resort to advertisement against Jimbo's steadfast committment to no
advertising would destroy Wikimedia's largest projects as high volume
attractions on the internet.   I have seen it alleged that rumours of
discussions of advertising helped inspire the Spanish Fork.

Personally I suspect one of the major reasons for Wikimedia's projects
rapid and continuous climb in viewership and editorship is the lack of
paid advertising.   Nor is it obvious that Wikimedia could try selling
advertising and then revert if it damaged the site's popularity.   The
current community of editors has Jimbo's assurance that he will not
resort to selling advertising.   Grow by word of mouth, die by word of
mouth.   One of the most effective forms of advertising known even
though no money changes hands.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Desysop

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-
> bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Phil Boswell
> Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 8:56 PM
> To: wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Special:Desysop
>
>
> > Phil, MediaWiki contains a built-in rights management interface.
> > It makes more sense to me if we fixed up one extension for Wikimedia
> > which combined Makesysop, Makebot, Giverollback and now
> > this...thing...into something manageable and useful. Configuration can
> > determine what groups can grant and revoke which rights.
> > Four different pages to do similar tasks is pushing the boundaries.
Well... No promises, but I can say I'm interested in giving that a go. I
suppose we could write a "watered down" version that allows the setting of
certain rights that are set up with the extension.

> --
> Phil
> PS Good to hear from you, even if you are rightfully chastising me for my
> woeful ignorance ;-)
That goes from me, too. I haven't seen you around in a while and it's good to
see you still exist :)
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Special%3ADesysop-
> tf2108462.html#a5812151
> Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFE4aolehR2FitQhwARAi/GAJ0Vmz8nTB9oP1h/q6LMuY+MsH7khQCgsq7e
t5Bzw9g9haLs4e7ry/Pb3PI=
=kc2n
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
*phew* that's a relief.

On 8/15/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> James Hare wrote:
> > We can develop Creationism instruction material as well as Science
> > instruction material, can't we? As long as we have interested parties?
>
> Information that lets people learn, neutrally, information _about_
> Creationism, sounds great.  Courses advocating creationism, no.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
Andrew Dunbar schrieb:
> On 8/14/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 8/14/06, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
>>
>>> How I work on the nap.wikipedia? Well there are two things to it: I
>>> first write in OOo or Word, then I subsitute all '' with the numeric
>>> code with search and replace and I avoid to create wiki-links, because I
>>> am simply very annoyed (better I remain with nice words...)  to copy and
>>> paste it here and there. Or I write the article on the wiki and then
>>> substitute the parts needed - both ways require loads of time more.
>>>
>
> This kind of thing interests me greatly. I just did some Google searches
> for Neapolitan OR napolitano with alphabet OR spelling OR orthography OR
> apostrophe OR quote. I couldn't find anything. So instead I'll ask here
> in which kinds of cases this occurs. Does it represent a certain sound or
> omitted letters?
>
> Andrew Dunbar (hippietrail)
>
>
>
This happens quite frequently with d''a d''o

which is a combination of the preposition + the article

People on the nap wikipedia, to avoid the mess or stop editing or use
all sorts of strange combinations that shows correct but is wrong - some
put a space inbetween, others use ?? `` - well these are accents and
even if they "show up" like this in a research they do not give good
results. I cannot even handle the proof-reading of that stuff alone,
because there is too much already in there. And we cannot do it with the
bot since it would anyway not find all of them and also substitute
occurances where these signs might be needed.

We had that discussion more than once.

http://nap.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napule is an article where I corrected it
halfway through - it is on my todo list - but there are thousands of
things to care about and so these often remain there, because I am
waiting for the right person who takes over the job (this could be done
by many ... it is just caring about some simple rules) - we are just two
or three people working regularly on nap - so at a certain stage you
have to choose what to do and what must wait.

The use of wrong characters is of course an error, but there are for now
other things to be created and cleaned up. For now we have to live with
it :-(

Best, Sabine
Chiacchiera con i tuoi amici in tempo reale!
 http://it.yahoo.com/mail_it/foot/*http://it.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: Julien Lemoine

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hello,

I totally rewrote the compiler to works with the XML format of
download.wikipedia.org. You will need to download two files from
download.wikipedia.org to use it: xxx-all-titles-in-ns0 and
xxx-pages-articles.xml.
After giving this two files as arguments of Analyzer, you will have the
compiled output for query tools.
With this modification, you will be able to use wikipedia-suggest on any
project using MediaWiki. I downloaded the last dump and updated my
website for the ten most popular languages of Wikipedia.

I released these modifications as wikipedia-suggest-0.4, here is the
change log :
== Version 0.4, released 15-Aug-2006 ==

* Rewrote Analyzer (trie compiler) in order to read files from
  download.wikipedia.org instead of home made xml format.
  You can now easily use wikipedia-suggest for project that use MediaWiki.
* Replaced libicu by glib to improve performance (glib is really faster for
  utf-8 case conversions).
* Included Last contribution of Nick Jenckins :
  http://files.nickj.org/MediaWiki/wikipedia-suggest-0.31-diff.txt
* Replaced escape by encodeURI because escape use %uXXX synthax which is
  not understood by MediaWiki (for exemple %u044 and MediaWiki wait %C5%85)

I hope you will find these modifications useful.
Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine


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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-
> bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Filip Maljkovic
> Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 9:14 PM
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] [Wikipedia-l] Special:Desysop
> Well, Werdna also displayed interest, so you just might be off the hook
> for now.
>
> But this whole thing got me thinking: what we basically want is what
> already exists: Special:Userrights, where bureaucrats can give/revoke
> every userright possible.
This is what I'm interested in doing. Just add a configurable list of rights
that can be given by this watered-down version, and there you go.
>
> Now if you/anyone finetune(s) that special page, and Brion gives
> consent, voila!
>
> Filip
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Andrew Garrett (Werdna)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFE4a3TehR2FitQhwARAskTAJwKPBTMU2SUaaKHc8VQOHYlRwAZJgCfU7+7
mgQjDCzuCJnnGuaq0cOXK/U=
=faZ/
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Cormac Lawler

body:
On 8/15/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:
>
> On 15-Aug-06, at 12:24 PM, Craig Spurrier wrote:
>
> > I would assume that they were referring to moving the content in the
> > Wikiversity namespace (http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikiversity).
> > There
> > is plenty of content that is not appropriate for Wikibooks in this
> > namespace. AFAIK no one wants to delete actual textbooks from
> > Wikibooks.
>
> Thanks for clarifying that. I note, however, that this is not what
> was said in IRC. Specifically, the discussion was about textbooks on
> Wikibooks. It was not about project pages, or the Wikiversity namespace.
>
> Amgine
>

So, what was said on IRC was the following (edited):

[5:26pm] cormaggio: Amgine - wikibooks wikiversity content will be
moved (in as much as is possible and least damaging to wikibooks)
[5:27pm] Amgine: Why would you move content *from* wikibooks, which is
a project where it belongs?
[5:29pm] cormaggio: Amgine - that is the idea, yes - to move the
content to Wikiversity. If people want to move their content back to
wikibooks, to develop textbooks, they are free to do so. We have a
Wikibooks admin prepared to help us with this (Robert_Horning)
[5:29pm] Amgine: I'm sorry: are you going to be *removing* content
from Wikibooks?
[5:30pm] Amgine: Just need that clarified.
[5:30pm] cormaggio: I thought that was what Robert had in mind, yes.
[5:30pm] Amgine: I will be adamantly opposed to removing textbook
content from wikibooks.
[5:31pm] cormaggio: hmmm, but Wikiversity content is not all textbook oriented
[5:33pm] Amgine: Cormaggio: I agree entirely. I would suggest
Wikiversity focus primarily on non-textbook items, and support
Wikibooks's mission for the actual textbooks.
[5:33pm] cormaggio: absolutely Amgine
[5:35pm] NotACow: i see no reason to remove textbook content from wikibooks.
[5:35pm] cormaggio: NotACow - no, we will not be moving textbook content

So, maybe I was misinterpreted, but what I meant was that much of
Wikibooks:Wikiversity content would be moved to Wikiversity. This
would be done providing it was *not* textbook content.

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] board, babysitting, speaking engagements, etc.

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>snip
>

>14. Upon submission of receipts, the written report, and ancillary
>materials--and only upon their submission--the speaker will be reimbursed for  any
>out-of-pocket expenses.
>
>
>
You may wish to consider advancing a substantial percentage of estimated
reasonable costs to the speaker.  This was done as typical practice by
the U.S.G. when I was a junior engineer there.

I found it a useful practice to follow when I operated my own computer
consulting firm.

Many people do not have a cash reserve of up to several thousand dollars
sitting around conveniently.  Often they have not started serious
savings yet for retirement, purchase of a house or car, or a child's
college.   Very often their personal net worth is tied up in long term
or scheduled investments.

It complicates the bookkeeping just a tiny bit and yes there is the
chance of getting stiffed by non submittal of appropriate receipts in
which case you write off the advance as the complete expense and decline
to advance money to that person again without an overriding reason.

The bottom line is in a reimbursable situation like this the person is
presumably traveling for the benefit of the organization.  It is in the
organization's best interest that it be able to convince people to
travel even if they do not have large personal cash reserves or credit
lines to use for the organization's benefit until reimbursement.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license

body:
On 8/15/06, Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net> wrote:

> "I now understand why the GFDL is a bad license." Eben Moglen,
> Wikimania 2006

Which doesn't mean that it cannot be improved. There's a real effort
underway to do so.

I'm not sure GFDL is the best license for Wikiversity. It depends on
the amount of content mixing with other projects that is desired. I
suspect that imports from other projects will be likely to create
educational materials of different kinds, such as instructional
devices embedding Wikipedia articles. From that perspective, the
compatibility advantage of GFDL could be a compelling argument.

I do agree that the Wikiversity community should discuss the issue, in
a similar way it was discussed on Wikinews after the project was set
up.

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity license


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] MeatballWiki down, needs cached files

body:
On 8/15/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl
>
> They're not asking for money, but for cached copies of files, should
> you have stopped by there lately.
>
>
> - d.

They must've forgotten to store the meatballs in the refrigerator and
that's how they got corrupted and rotten.

~maru


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

snip

>My first general observation about this set of by-laws is that they
>should not contain what does not need to be contained.  By-laws are
>about establishing a structure that allows an organization to function.
>Beginning with the first section, what's the purpose of showing the web
>address in the by-laws?  References to any websites should not be in the
>by-laws since these are subject to often daily change.  A look at the
>edit history of [[Wiki]] will be enough to substantiate that.
>
>The Statement of Purpose needs to be greatly simplified.  Many of the
>details here can be expected to change over time.  Why not simply say
>something like:
>
>    * The purpose of The Foundation is to promote and institute the
>      universal free access to all knowledge based on the principles of
>      mutual respect of editors, neutral point of view and respect for
>      copyright.
>
>
>
Perhaps "all knowledge" should be amended to "all free knowledge" or "
the entire knowledge commons of humanity" or something with similar
implications.

Surely we are not intending to publish proprietary trade secrets or data
classified as national secrets such as the design or performance
specifications of the highly rumored B-3 project?

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Special:Desysop

body:
On 8/15/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
> <snip>
> I'll support a move towards allowing bureaucrats to desysop people on a
> project-by-project basis, but I'd like to make sure it's well informed
> by knowledge of the likely social consequences.
>

I'd be in favour of a policy (or even a technical limitation) that requires
two bureaucrats to agree to desysop someone before it takes effect or is
allowed.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Honorarium (was Re: [Found>,
	> This conversation had jumped back and forth ....)

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 8/12/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
>>Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't these honoraria essentially Jimmy's only
>>means of income? I don't know if he draws a salary from Wikia, but I'm
>>fairly sure that the company is not yet turning a profit. He works almost
>>full-time publicising Wikimedia. It would seem very strange to me to deny
>>him this one small token of our appreciation.
>>
>>
>
>Imagine for a moment a world where demand for official Wikimedia talks
>is so great that they fetch prices of upwards of $20,000 each.
>Wouldn't it make more sense to have such speakers on our payroll at
>that point? ;)
>
>In any case, so long as a speakers isn't using the foundation's
>trademarks, or otherwise deriving  revenue from directly from our
>collected goodwill then there isn't a darn thing we could do to stop
>them.  The question of "if the money should go to the foundation" in
>such cases is thus immaterial.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
Perhaps it is immaterial to Jimbo or his selected Board members.   It
surely is not immaterial to anyone who might choose to stand for
election or re-election for a future term in one of the limited Board
memberships subjected to selection by the unwashed masses.

It would be very helpful to have clear useful policy in place as soon as
possible such that a person standing for election can coherently defend
his past actions to potential voters.

regards,
lazyquasar


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> A problem with Rotem's implementation is that it allows at most two
> levels of privilege assignment: one that abides by the permissions
> whitelists, and one that doesn't.  If you want another level, that's
> impossible.
>
> I still prefer my syntax for deciding assignment rights, namely
>
> $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['sysop'] = true;
> $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['bureaucrat'] = true;
> $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['addgroup']['bot'] = true;
> $wgUserPermissions['bureaucrat']['remgroup']['bot'] = true;
>
> or something to that effect.  It's completely flexible, and
> significantly simpler (if I do say so myself) than Titoxd's.  If for
> one or more groups of the current user 'addgroup' or 'remgroup' is
> non-false, then Special:Userrights would become available; to
> determine what groups are available on each side, you'd merge the
> arrays from all the user's groups (conflict for a key would default to
> true) on each side and then foreach.  The 'userrights' permission
> would remain, and would have the same function as now.  Rotem's
> 'userrights_remote' would also be present, but his other three would
> be redundant.
>
> Thoughts?
How about completely rewriting the permissions system? I mean, while
you're doing all of this, you might as well do something a bit harder,
but better (in wider perspective). The current system can lead to
confusion and it has some setbacks (e.g. rights are additive) and the
new system would be totally flexible and prone to all variations. If I
knew PHP, I'd write it ;)

Filip


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] Challenge: explain NPOV in a sentence.

body:
--- Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:

> [Something funny, but cumbersome.]

Nice try, though.
Crack et moi: (Ill maybe try for humour later.)

 Wikipedia's NPOV policy is a re-codification of philosophical objectivity *
 (as found in professional journalism and encyclopediae), which stands as the
 unique permanent principle which governs all purpose, process, and working
 culture therein.

~ ga sp ~

* or "objectivism"[sic]

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


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [Wikitech-l] database weirdness just now? (en.wiktionary)

body:
I just made two different changes that didn't "stick".
One didn't show up on the page after I submitted, but when I went
to the edit page and resubmitted, I got an edit conflict, i.e. my
previous change showed via the action=edit, but not action=view.
Refreshing the edit page and making another, minor change made
the first change show up.

Then I made a change to a different page, and it did show up, but
disappeared (i.e. silently reverted) a few minutes later, not
even showing in history.

(If it matters, the two pages were
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Beer_parlour and
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Scs.)


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ignoring AfD results / Redirection and deletion

body:
An article named [[Characters in the Animal Crossing series]], which
was crufty and about characters in a Nintendo video game, got listed
in June for deletion by [[User:A Man In Black]]. That user cited its
game-guide nature as a reason for its deletion. The article passed the
AfD with a consensus to "keep", about 7 users to 2.

Less than a month later, [[User:Aaron Brenneman]] replaced the
article's contents with a redirect to [[Animal Crossing]], the article
on the first game in the series. He cited on the talk page his reasons
for doing this as being: "no sources, multiple clean up tags, better
dealt with in parent article, unencyclopedic tone".

This redirection was left alone for almost a month, until [[User:A
Link to the Past]], one of the voters in the AfD, noticed the
redirection and reverted it. This led to a revert war with the
original deletion nominator, A Man In Black, who seemed keen to
enforce this redirection which had accomplished what his failed AfD
did not.

Upon my questioning of him about it, A Man In Black seemed nonchalant
about this redirection ignoring consensus reached on the AfD, saying
that the article is substandard (etc) and the AfD consensus should be
effectively ignored, in favour of his own personal opinion about its
encyclopedic nature (or lack thereof). I encouraged him to start
another AfD, but he said he did not want it to be deleted, simply
redirected.

Which brings me to the main reason for this email (thank you for
reading this far, all 3 of you!). Deleting an article with a strong
"keep" AfD vote is clearly against consensus and therefore a violation
of deletion policy. But is changing the article into a redirect to be
considered effectively the same as a deletion, for these purposes?

Stories about AfDs failing (for no consensus) because votes are evenly
split between "redirect" and "delete" are absurd, because all of the
voters clearly do not want the article to continue to exist in its
present form.

Surely the opposite can also be said of a "keep" consensus AfD: most
of the voters plainly want the article to continue to exist as an
article, not as a redirect and not deleted.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
On 8/15/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/15/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> > My understanding is that chapter membership is only treated as
> > equivalent to membership in the Foundation if the bylaws specifically
> > state this.  I'm not really sure if this is a good idea or not - I
> > tend to think it isn't.
>
> What problems could be caused by writing this into the bylaws, if it
> is indeed legally possible?
>
I really can't answer this question.  The reason I tend to think it
isn't good to mention chapters in the bylaws is because I think it's a
good idea to give the chapters leeway to organize themselves in the
way they see best.  But maybe there is some happy medium there.  I
don't know.

> > In case it was just in my mind and not in my writing, the plan would be
> > that members would have to pay dues annually or meet the activity
> > requirements to have dues waived.
>
> Regular reconfirmation of membership, especially before important
> votes, may be sufficient. If membership can easily be regained,
> expiring member accounts who do not reconfirm shouldn't be too much of
> a problem.
>
This seems reasonable to me.

> > I definitely think participation in the committees should require
> > membership.
>
> I do think volunteer or advisory participation in open committee
> meetings and discussions should not require membership. Legal
> committee membership is a different story.
>
I agree with this.  In fact, I think whenever feasible meetings and
discussions on all levels should be open to as many people as
possible.

> > As Michael Snow said, and I'll add that this is under Florida law,
> > they [the member lists] have to be available to the other members, so they're essentially
> > public.
>
> That would give people who are the target of campaigns by the likes of
> Brandt a reason not to become members. You're right that a user's edit
> history can give many hints to their identity. But when you have a
> list of 20 potential "candidates" you could match to a particular user
> ID, then verifying the member roster would be a way to complete the
> match.
>
You make an excellent point there that I really hadn't considered.
It'd be difficult for someone who wanted to "out" a particular user
(or group of user) to go through all the formal processes - to become
a member, obtain the lists, and then tie them to the user(s).  But
it'd probably be possible.

> I think people who have reasons not to become members should still
> have as many venues of participation as possible.
>
Participation definitely.  Whether or not to give them an actual vote
is trickier.  I still lean toward having real legal members, even if
it means reincorporating in another jurisdiction, but I could be
convinced otherwise.

I think Birgitte had an excellent idea to think about things without
thinking in terms of members or non-members first.  Pushing aside the
membership concept, I think what's important is that there is a group
of individuals who have decided specifically to become Wikimedians
(not just who are thrown into it from being involved with other
projects).  The board should represent this group of individuals.
They should elect at least a majority of the board, and they should be
consulted before changes can be made to the bylaws which would take
that power away.

If by some miracle the board could be convinced to allow this to
happen, then it wouldn't really matter if this group of individuals
were called members.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 8/15/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> chr.wikipedia.org is a Wikimedia project. The thing you keep spamming
> this list about at chr.cherokee.org is not a Wikimedia project and I
> would prefer if you would refrain from misleading people into thinking
> it is.

Excuse me?

Jeff obviously just pasted the wrong URL in the body. It was correct
in his subject line, and the translations he provided were obviously
for our site.

Jeff, I'll find someone who's an admin there and can merge in your
translations. Thanks.


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

body:
It seems that Mr. Merkey is pointing to some corrections that need to be
made to the sidebar of chr.wikipedia.org. If that is the case, then it seems to
be something relevant to Foundation.

Danny


from_name: Fastfission

body:
On 8/14/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> Note that we already have "free" content on the Commons that is, really,
> unfree to use in some ways for reasons other than copyright. For
> instance, take a free photograph of somebody and use it in an
> advertisement; in many countries, you can get sued for abusive use of
> that person's image.

The problem is that accepting this sort of restriction without a very
clearly spelled out license is bad news. Copyleft licenses should not
be usable by people to enact legal retribution if they do not approve
of the use. As you've noted, usage is regulated in many places by
other laws, which is just fine. We should not allow extensions of that
sort of regulation into the realm of copyright, though -- it is not an
appropriate place for it, and it makes it a risky license addition,
IMO.

> Whether content free for educational and informational usage but not for
> advertisement should be accepted on commons is a different question from
> whether they should be accepted in the projects. My personal point of
> view is that the projects should accept such content, for this content
> is on a much sounder legal ground than a lot of our "fair use" claims.

Yes but you're mixing apples and oranges. Non-free licenses are
unacceptable because they are non-free, not because they have shakey
legal grounds. Whether fair use is really "free" is debateable (I go
back and forth on this), and much of that distinction depends on
whether you are considering "free" in a prescriptive sense or a de
facto sense.

The strangest phenomena IMO is when the non-commercial are converted
to fair use tagging. It's clearly just an artifact of the image
policies, and is completely unrelated to their copyright status. "We
at Wikipedia believe that we can use this image freely and disregard
its license, even though we know damn well that we are within the
terms of its license. In fact, we just put up 'fair use' here because
that's what a commercial re-user would have to claim. We're not
actually claiming that ourselves, since we are still in the terms of
the license." I mean, saying that you're going to ignore a license
even though you know you're following it to the letter seems like
somewhat of a joke to me.

FF
(Hi all. I finally joined this list. Thought I'd just jump right in...)


from_name: Timwi

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Using a template to set some character formatting
 to several blocks of text

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>However, obviously, it is entirely possible to
>>add a feature to MediaWiki that allows the inclusion of certain CSS on a
>>specific page. One could even have the parser pick out all the 'class'
>>attributes and include all the necessary CSS for those automatically.
>
> Have you opened a bug on it?  It sounds like an interesting project.

I don't need it, so no. If you want it, you do that.


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
geni wrote:

>On 8/13/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>There is nothing wrong with having some office staff. Of course, as we
>>scale up more remote workers will make sense... no one has argued
>>otherwise.
>>
>>
>
>Remote workers could result in you haveing assets within the
>juristiction of legal systems less friendly than the US.
>
>
>
>

The greatest majority of our "assets" are our volunteers who create the
free information we distribute.  These are already distributed worldwide
and should further distribute naturally as the use of the internet does.

Distributed assets will help keep the U.S. power brokers remain
"friendly".   Grabbing servers to interrupt information flows percieved
as irritating or dangerous to themselves, their agenda, or their sworn
duties is a useless action if some of the servers are outside
geographical boundaries where specific power can be applied.  In an
efffectively distributed infrastructure any such misuse of specific
power is merely free publicity unless local staff are injured.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Wed, Aug 16, 2006 at 09:05:26AM +1000, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> On 8/16/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 07:27:40PM +1000, Andrew Dunbar wrote:
> > > This kind of thing interests me greatly. I just did some Google searches
> > > for Neapolitan OR napolitano with alphabet OR spelling OR orthography OR
> > > apostrophe OR quote. I couldn't find anything. So instead I'll ask here
> > > in which kinds of cases this occurs. Does it represent a certain sound or
> > > omitted letters?
> >
> > Check the archive, last month; there was an *extensive* thread on this.
>
> I took part in that thread and then, as now, as have not received a definitive
> answer and certainly no references at all to explain the orthography or the
> grammatical reasons for it.

Oh.  Ok.

Shuttin' up now.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject:
[Wikitech-l] 404 on en.wikipedia.org: Server-side HTTP header
 instead of client-side meta-refresh?

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>>a) It hard redirects you, and there's absolutely no link back to where
>>>you came from. Very bad for maintenance, working on the redirect
>>>itself etc.
>>>b) It redirects you, but leaves the link back to the original
>>>redirecting page.
>>
>>or (c) It hard redirects you, and there's a link back to where you came
>>from.
>
> Ok, what do "hard direct" and "soft redirect" mean in this context
> exactly? Let's take some page A which redirects to page B. They're
> hosted directly at wiki.org.
>
> Currently wiki.org/A shows the content of wiki.org/B, but with a link
> back to A. The URL shows wiki.org/A.
>
> You're proposing that wiki.org/A force a (server-side?) redirect to
> wiki.org/B, display the content of B, with a link back to A, and yet
> the URL shows wiki.org/B? The question is, how does MediaWiki know to
> show the link back if the URL is only wiki.org/B, and not
> wiki.org/B&red=A or something?

My personally preferred way is to simply redirect to B, and at the same
time make it much easier than currently to get a list of "what redirects
here" (and whatever other subsets of "what links here" you can imagine).
Thus, the answer to your question is: You get the link to A because A
redirects to B and you get the list of all titles that redirect to B.

> Forgive my ignorance, I have absolutely no idea how server side
> redirects work.

The term "server-side" is a bit misleading here. Even the term
"redirect" is confusing because what _MediaWiki_ calls a "redirect" is
not actually a HTTP or HTML redirect at all.

The thing you get when you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/Article (i.e.
with the /wiki missing) is an HTML redirect or "soft redirect", i.e. a
<meta> tag that redirects after a set number of seconds.

The thing you get when you go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/article
(notice the lower-case "a") is an HTTP redirect or "hard redirect", i.e.
an HTTP response with status code "301" and a Location header.

The thing you get when you go to a page title that is a MediaWiki
redirect, is a pageview. ;-)

Timwi


body:
On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 11:36:27PM +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> > The problem, Lars, is that several of the partisans on the "WYSIWYG
> > should take over the world" side of the argument are framing approaches
> > that would, in fact, force us -- practically -- to use WYSIWYG editing:
>
> Come on, if anybody is proposing that, they are either trolling or
> completely naive people, and either way they're not going to have
> any real influence at all.  You and mboverlord are the only two
> people who don't get that this is a big joke.  You are feeding
> these trolls. Can't you just ignore this, so we can get back to
> discussing technical issues?

If that was trolling; a) I'm impressed, b) I'm not the only fish they
caught.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>
>I have yet to see a clear rationale for a memberless Foundation.  In
>some jurisdictions such a concept is unthinkable.
>
>
I think the rationale is that this is what we have.  Our process from
the start was the mailing list advised Mr. Wales who decided as he
pleased.   Given a stacked Board, a case can be made that this is
effectively still the Wikimedia Foundation process.    Obviously it will
become the standard process indefinitely if the Foundation is made
memberless.  If membership has priveleges and responsibilities,
obviously nonmembers have none.   We remain a mob shouting at the
God-King (or his employees) for attention and in his wisdom he does as
he pleases or sees fit.

regards,
lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Andrew Garrett

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

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org [mailto:wikitech-l-
> bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rotem Liss
> Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2006 10:27 PM
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Subject: [Wikitech-l] Proposal for an improved user rights page
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> In the previous discussion (about Special:Desysop), it was proposed to
> merge the user rights pages (Special:Userrights, Special:Makesysop,
> Special:Makebot, Special:GiveRollback, and now also Special:Desysop)
> into the page Special:Userrights, using configuration settings. It seems
> to be a good time to propose it:
>
> I've merged these special pages to Special:Userrights using
> configuration settings in
> http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/branches/rotem/userrights ,
> which is an improved user rights page.
>
> This proposed system adds the following features to Special:Userrights:
> * Flexible configuration settings for a limited interface - for example,
> you can allow bureaucrats to grant only these permissions and revoke
> only those permissions, and allow the stewards to do everything.
> * Checkboxes instead of lists, mainly because it's possible to disable
> them separately while it's not possible in lists.
> * Changing the permissions of remote users for stewards, controllable by
> a permission ("userrights_remote"), like in the stewards interface of
> Special:Makesysop.
> * Log comment, to explain the change, like in Makebot.
>
> You can either download and test it directly, or watch the following
> images:
>
> http://img150.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mediawikinewuserrightsbureaucrats
> lm9.png
> The limited interface for bureaucrats, like it can be set in Wikimedia
> sites.
>
> http://img84.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mediawikinewuserrightsstewardsgg7.
> png
> The full interface for stewards, like it can be set in Wikimedia sites,
> editing a remote user.
>
> This change should deprecate Makesysop, Makebot, GiveRollback and
> Desysop and make them implementable by using only configuration
> settings. However, these extensions may be kept for old versions, and
> for sites which were not updated. (There seems to be a compatibility
> issue with Special:Makesysop because one of its core functions
> (HTMLSelectGroups) was removed, but it can be defined in
> SpecialMakesysop.php or SpecialMakesysop_body.php as a class function.)
>
> Additional technical information may be found in
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Rotemliss/User_rights_suggestion#How_to
> _use_it
> . You can also read the other parts of the page, but it's a bit old and
> not updated in some parts. You can also ask here about anything unclear.
>
> What do you think about this implementation? Which changes should be
> done? Do you think some features should be added, or dropped?
>
> Thank you very much for the feedback.
>
> - --
> #define Name RotemLiss
> #define Mail mail-AT-rotemliss-DOT-com
> #define Site www.rotemliss.com
>
> #define KeyFingerPrint 4AFD 8579 A449 4267 BED9 38E5 6EF8 5B1F EBDE 7AC0
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFE4b2abvhbH+veesARApwWAKCq1TGg1zVjTIjwDiH3f7AVe0sbGQCfV7hJ
> NCU2Uwu1nrCv9ReNhVtaIxw=
> =CBQh
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Ouch. My dreams of appearing on Special:Version are vanishing.

Seriously, though. Nice work.

Andrew Garrett (Werdna)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.4 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFE4b45ehR2FitQhwARAqtGAKCNnP+9MF2NrRTlQCZR8yp3Yre5/wCfTmgK
Zl5MPZEJv3O+se+Ob86RB2A=
=bSB1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 8/15/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> If that was trolling

It was not.


body:
On Tue, Aug 15, 2006 at 10:29:59PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/15/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > If that was trolling
>
> It was not.

I thought not, but didn't want to speak for you.

Bad Lars; no donut.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity

body:
On 8/15/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> > NPOV does apply to Wikiversity, but of course
> > context matters in how we
> > understand and apply it.
> >
> > For example, a course which is highly biased and
> > pushing some POV should
> > be fixed, as we would quite
> > properly consider it to be broken.
> >
> > But of course, as Cormac points out, some of what
> > Wikiversity is going
> > to be about is explorations of
> > research, etc.  As Amgine put it, even here NPOV
> > applies, but it applies
> > in a way that makes sense for this
> > type of content.
> >
> > The danger of saying too quickly "NPOV does not
> > apply" is that we would
> > thereby open the door to lunatics
> > (and there are lunatics!) trying to push extremely
> > biased courses.  We
> > can do better than that.
> >
> > --Jimbo
> >
>
>
> I think everyone is not quite on the same page here.
> Although neutrality is going to be an important aspect
> of Wikiversity.  WP:NPOV is not going to be the policy
> in use there.  Mainly this is becuse Wikiversity is
> not writiing encyclopedia articles.  Bias will take a
> subtley different form on that project.  Just like
> bias rears its' head on Wikisource in the form of
> altered texts.  I do not believe it was something
> people thought of early on at Wikisource, but it is
> certainly what has transpired.  I am just trying to
> guess as to how bias will try and work its way into
> Wikiversity.  It may not be possible, we might have to
> wait and find out when it happens.  WP:NPOV is about
> how to counteract bias on WP.  I do not believe anyone
> is suggesting counteracting bias at WV is not of the
> utmost importance, just that WV will have approach it
> in a unique way.
>
> Birgitte SB
>
>

Yes, I think you've got me, Birgitte :-). I just think that NPOV (as I
conceptualise it) is not a useful concept to apply to Wikiversity.
Don't get me wrong - I wince just as much as anyone if someone will
try to teach people that the world began 10,000 years ago ;-), but
surely the point of education is to try to get people to think for
themselves? I see no problem with provocative, even biased,
educational materials - so long as people are given the wherewithal to
critically evaluate them. I think we need an analogy to NPOV -
"completeness" sounds better, but just not catchy enough :-)

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] Wikiversity


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wysiwyg debate

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>>If the person designing the references syntax had thought about this a
>>bit more, these severe problems should have been apparent to them. A
>>much more sensible thing would be to use [1], [2] etc. in the text, and
>>define the references in the place where they are actually displayed --
>>the References section. (Duh.)
>
> We used to have a system (or 3) like that. It was crap. Hard numbering
> footnotes is an awful solution.

Why? I can't think why. Of course, the software would have to
automatically renumber them if references get deleted or moved around.

> The only thing I can think of that would work is that a person can add
> a footnote like this:
>
> Sometext<ref> a reference in the good old style</ref>...some more text.
>
> ....which the software would actually move down to the references section.

That's another possibility, of course -- although I would still contend
that something like [1], or even if it needs to be [ref:1], is much
better (easier to read, easier to ignore, easier to type, easier to type
without mistakes) than <ref name="ref1"/>.

Timwi


from_name: Platonides

subject:
[Wikitech-l] 404 on en.wikipedia.org: Server-side HTTP
	headerinstead of client-side meta-refresh?

body:
"Steve Bennett" wrote:
> You're proposing that wiki.org/A force a (server-side?) redirect to
> wiki.org/B, display the content of B, with a link back to A, and yet
> the URL shows wiki.org/B? The question is, how does MediaWiki know to
> show the link back if the URL is only wiki.org/B, and not
> wiki.org/B&red=A or something?

There is another option to have the link back that nobody said, and is using
the Referer: header the user-agent gives. That would give enough information
to make the link back while avoiding the ?ugly=url. The risk is not showing
the back link to all the clients, as we're relying on the information they
gave before, though most common browsers give it.


subject: [WikiEN-l] accessing Wiki on cellphone

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
>
> If we could auto-detect these by User-Agent string, and use a custom
> skin for these clients, we could greatly improve the experience for
> small-screen users.

Did you try the "Chick" skin? It is designed for hand-held devices.
Well, more precisely, I originally designed it for Pocket IE, the
Internet Explorer version on Pocket PC PDAs.

Timwi