from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am Danny

body:
Hi

Having read through these long posts, I thought I would introduce myself  for
those who do not know me, and tell you a little bit about what I do.

My name is Danny Wool. I am 42 years old. I am one of two and a half
employees of the Foundation--the others are Brion, who deals with hardware and
software issues, and Monica, an intern, who assists me in the office. In past
incarnations of my career, I have worked as a writer (I have a book coming out  in
a few months) and as staff in a New York City Museum. I have considerable
experience in the not for profit sector.

I am also active in various Wikipedia projects, and have been for a rather
long time. Officially, my user ID is in the 500's though I made anon edits
before getting an ID. I have about 30,000 edits in the Wikipedia namespace. I
have also been involved in some of the high profile Wikipedia policy cases,
including helping to lift a life ban against one user, who is now  contributing
rather amicably to Wikipedia. I can usually be found in mIRC on  #wikimedia,
and I occasionally pop in to #wikipedia where my moniker is usally  dannyisme. I
also contribute to several other languages, some more than others,  and to
some of the other projects as well, most recently to Wikisource.

Officially I work five days a week, though I am usually in the office at
some point or another seven days a week. On a standard weekday, I arrive in  the
office at 8 am and leave sometime after 6. Of that, at least one-third of my
time is spent answering phone calls, between six and ten an hour. People who
are  involved in OTRS (the system by which the Foundation responds to email
complaints) will have some idea of the kind of phone calls I receive. It is
really a mixed bag, and some of them are quite funny. They include people trying
to contact celebrities (no, I do not have Vana White's home phone number), to
 people mistaking us for various companies (no, we cannot supply a new
carburetor  for your Ford Pinto in Swaziland), to people asking for advice (no, I do
not  know how you can get the coyotes out of your backyard), to "eccentrics"
(no, I do not know what God meant when he spoke to you this morning)--all of
these are real phone calls--to press (lots and lots and lots of those).

There are two additional types of call that I get. One type is from people
concerned about their articles. In these cases, I will attempt to assist the
person myself, or ideally, to find someone on IRC who can assist them, though
there are also times when I am forced to tell people that we cannot help them.
 Sometimes, they get upset. This happened most recently on Friday when a PR
firm  called to insist that we allow them to put up press releases about their
clients  as protected wikipedia articles. I said no. They said yes. Etc. Often
there are  very happy results, as happened with a prominent television
commentator, who is  now an ally of Wikipedia--I will not give names, but it was
worth the half hour  I spent with him on the phone. This kind of phone call
happened all the more  frequently when the Senate story was brewing.

Finally, there are the legal phone calls. These come in two varieties.
People I can speak with, understand their problem, and resolve it, and people  that
I cannot help. Of the latter kind, one good indicator is when people call
and say "What is your fax number." I ask them why and they tell me that they are
 sending us a fax. I tell them I would like to know who they are before they
send  us a fax, and they tell me that they do not want to say who they are. I
then  tell them that I cannot give them our fax number. That is when they
identify  themselves as a lawyer and they are suing us. As instructed by our own
lawyers,  I tell them that our fax number can be obtained from our website--we
are not  obligated to make it easy for people to sue us. The discussion
begins.

Above my desk is a Roy Liechtenstein picture of a woman crying with a
caption that reads "I should have called my lawyer." The Wikimedia Foundation  has
outstanding legal counsel, and my job is the first level of triage. In most
cases, I will call or email our attorney and provide him with as much
information as I can, including name, phone number, contact info, etc. He then
responds accordingly, sometimes with instructions for me as to what should  happen
next.

So, why all the detail? Because this is exactly what happened in several
instances. In fact, this happens about twice a day minimum. It is a credit to
our attorney that we do not use WP:OFFICE more frequently, and he should be
congratulated for this.

Anyways, this is a long email. I just wanted to introduce myself--I do lots
of other things besides--and give you some idea of how the legal triage works
from the office. I also want to thank a lot of amazing Wikipedians who step
in to handle these problems quietly and discreetly, and especially all of the
people who spend hours on OTRS, answering the endless queries by email, just
as  I am doing by phone. If I were to name them all, this email would be twice
as  long. I really believe that it is because of them that Wikipedia is such
a  huge success.

Danny
[[User:Danny]]


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anders Wegge Jakobsen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Please enable bot filtering on en.wp watchlists

body:
Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> writes:

> Brian wrote:
> > One of the groups of pages on my watchlist is a large number of year
> > articles. My watchlist has been constantly flooded with bots adding
> > interwiki links to these pages. Out of the 122 items on the first page
> > of my watchlist, 77 are Chobot year edits.
> >
> > According to "Wegge", da.wp has run fine for 8 months with
> > $wgFilterRobotsWL = true;
> >
> > Can someone please enable this on en.wp?

> I've chatted a bit with various people demanding my blood if I don't
> turn this on; one wee problem is that the feature is currently a bit
> broken.

 ...

> (I'd bet this doesn't happen so much in sleepy, picturesque Denmark
> as it will on bustlin', head-slammin' en.wikipedia.)

 Zzzz :-)

> With 'enhanced recent changes' on it doesn't look as bad, since
> multiple edits to a page fold up, but on default settings it seems
> maybe not so cool.

 Yes, that's a problem. When I made the change, I hadn't really
thought that one through.

> I vaguely remember talking to Wegge about this some time ago but I
> guess neither of us got around to patching it up. I still think it's
> a silly option, but I'm willing to go ahead and turn it on if
> somebody's willing to fix it to work right... :)

 It is easy enough to fix. It's a two-line fix, which will bring the
watchlist back to only shoing the latest edit. What the change will
*NOT* do, is showing the last edit by a non-robot editor. So I'm
afraid that this will not be usefull.

 In order to implement this properly, I think it would be better to
add another filter to Recent changes, "Hide non-watched items", but
adding yet another filter to that list will make that list rather complex.

// Wegge


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthere

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny
	under any circumstances

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> On 3/10/06, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>On 3/10/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Is there any particular reason you're putting this on the mailing list?
>>
>>
>>Because he wants to see if you really will oppose or challenge absolutely
>>anything anyone does, ever.
>>
>>Experiment over.
>
>
> Huh? I really suspect David has better things to do with his time than that.

To look like he is in the loop :-)

----------

More seriously, I think Carl Furstenberg and Steve Bennet questions are
the most important ones to focus on and deal with.

And nobody answered them yet.

Wait a bit more and some will also ask who is Jimbo ;-)

Ant


from_name: Franz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Back-Up of a wiki --> some problems with mysqldump

body:
Franz schrieb:

> I own the WikiSysop-Account of this wiki:
> http://wikinition.common-culture.net/index.php/Hauptseite
>
> I would like to make a Back-Up of it.
>
> I've got this command:
> mysqldump --host=hostname --user=username --password=userpassword --opt
> name-of-database
>
> I've put in:
> mysqldump --host="http://wikinition.common-culture.net/index.php/Hauptseite"
> --user="WikiSysop"
> --password="mypwd"
> --opt all-databases
>
> nothing happens. I get a message how to use mysqldump. Any help?

Does maybe someone know a site where all surrounding structurs of wiki
are described? how to acces them. I've got primary interest for the
databases.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny

body:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 10:52:20 -0700, you wrote:

>Deleting and starting over implies writing off the previous work. In
>fact, the it'd be really complicated to do otherwise since the GFDL
>requires attribution and in the case of deletion the edit history for
>the previous version is gone.

No, because the people doing the job are all admins so if something
does get deleted (rather than blanked) it can get undeleted when the
facts become clear, and everything should be visible to an admin in
the deleted history.

If people need data and citations from the deleted history of an
article I for one am quite happy to help.  But I've only seen one
example where a complete rewrite was necessary, and in that case what
was deleted was grossly inaccurate as well as defamatory: a blank
sheet was a better starting point.

Do you have an example to hand where an Office action has resulted in
permanent loss of good content?
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:21:03 -0500, you wrote:

>Wikipedia isn't Microsoft.  There's a big difference between running a
>non-profit organization and running a for-profit corporation.  Even
>then, Wikipedia isn't really either.  Wikipedia, after all, has been
>around before the foundation was even created.  It is in essence a
>community of people, which can and will exist with or without the
>foundation.  Lawsuits aren't going to tear apart Wikipedia, not unless
>the community gives itself over to the foundation.

How sure are you of this?  If the foundation and its assets were
closed down tomorrow, how long would it take to rebuild Wikipedia from
mirrors and rebuild the community?

The h2g2 project never really recovered from "Rupert", the enforced
shutdown between TDV and BBC hosting - the community changed
irrevocably.

It strikes me that the foundation stands between the community and
hostile reactions to what the community says and does.  I've seen at
least one case where people tried to use Wikipedia to further a
grievance, and in that case killing the content was entirely correct:
subsequent investigation showed that it bore only the most tenuous
relationship to the truth.

I understand there is an issue with the Justin Berry article right
now.  People are jumping up and down over it, it seems - why?  It's
only been a couple of days.  It's like the whole Brian Peppers thing;
in the end life's too short to worry about the *temporary* absence of
something on Wikipedia, just go out and write an article on something
else :-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: john ask me later

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR abuse by Pathoschild

body:
After making two reverts to "list of countries with nuclear weapons" page
,in the course of constantley adding to the page as attested by the history
page, i had my local dynamic ip 24.165.28.52 blocked by Pathoschild. After
making a quick of the page i noted that the only two making more than three
reverts were "AdamJacobMuller" and "Eliezer" . If the rules are a funtion of
who are and not what you do then wiki is not the future but a throw back to
something dark and primitive. I have attempted to add constructively to wiki
and to seek dialogue with does who disagree with me to discover a consensus
view. if that is not what wiki is about then i regret the free time i
squandered on this endeavor. Thank you for your time

                                            --Bockspur


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am Danny

body:
Thank you so much for that intro.

One question: are calls to the Foundation considered confidential? What is
the standard policy for disclosing the reasons for actions taken by
employees of the Foundation with respect to content on Wikipedia?

My understanding from the above is that people who pick up the phone to get
things edited on Wikipedia get to operate under a different set of
guidelines from all other contributors.

How much does the lawyer bill, by the way?


from_name: Gordon Joly

body:
At 18:32 +0100 11/3/06, Carl F?rstenberg wrote:
>I think the problem people have with this policy, is that few know who Danny
>is (who is Danny?)
>_______________________________________________

Jimbo's familiar.

--
Gordo (aka LoopZilla)
gordon.joly at pobox.com
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
http://www.loopzilla.org/


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny
 under any circumstances

body:
>
>
>----------
>
>More seriously, I think Carl Furstenberg and Steve Bennet questions are
>the most important ones to focus on and deal with.
>
>And nobody answered them yet.
>
>Wait a bit more and some will also ask who is Jimbo ;-)
>
>Ant
>

Yes, Ant, exactly. If this project is to be *inclusive*, then
everybody who joins has to be brought up to speed.

I have a picture of Danny in my head from Wikimania 2005, but I
struggle to recall his surname.

Using first names (or handles or nicknames) only is a method to keep
the "in crowd" in, and the "out crowd" excluded.

Some, like David Gerard, use real names almost everywhere in Wikipedia.

David started this thread, BTW.

BCNU.... and  YMMV as always,
--
Gordo (aka LoopZilla)
gordon.joly at pobox.com
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
http://www.loopzilla.org/


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] RFC: Principles of mass content adding on small
	Wikipedias

body:
I think countries of teh world would be a fine place to start. There are
already good tables in the major languages that can be translated easily.

The various elements would be another godo place to start, or the planets,
all of which have similar tables and basic formats.

Some advantages to all of this is that these are articles that every
language should have, they are neutral, and they are similarly formatted. They  are
also finite, so that there is a sense of accomplishment when they are done.

Danny


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> What is *their* tone normally like? Is it primarily "uh, there seems
> to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24
> hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door
> step"?

Well there is no public data on this but here is what one email may have been:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Jack_Thompson_%28attorney%29#Here.27s_Why_It_Was_Blanked

--
geni


body:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Delirium wrote:
> > I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of
> > political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to
> > get staff to complain to us.  Some Chinese leader?  Sure, criticize
> > him.  But Harry Reid?  Hands off!
>
> Not at all.  Harry Reid?  Edit it.

Um no. It was formaly protected under WP:OFFICE and was never
unprotected by them.

That is why I suspected that Danny may forget about cases (hardly
uncommon admins offen forget what they have protected).

--
geni


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Can you tell me about the "needlessly aggressive posture"?  Can you tell
> me exactly what you would like to know, such that you feel that you're
> not being told what's going on?

Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of these numbers of angry
phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a
week, or ten a day?

What is *their* tone normally like? Is it primarily "uh, there seems
to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24
hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door
step"?

How much time does it take to deal with a single one of these queries,
in following up with the aggrieved person, buying them lunch or
whatever?

These kinds of things would help us understand the plight of the
foundation office.

Steve


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 3/11/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
> At 18:32 +0100 11/3/06, Carl F?rstenberg wrote:
> >I think the problem people have with this policy, is that few know who Danny
> >is (who is Danny?)
> >_______________________________________________
>
> Jimbo's familiar.

My master through his art foresees the danger
That you, his friend, are in; and sends me forth--
For else his project dies--to keep thee living.


body:
On 3/11/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> >
> And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases?  Does the power
> and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it?  It does seem
> that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere
> peons when they complain...

Going by the Brian Peppers case, wealth and status are not the determinants.


body:
On 3/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm having a little trouble picturing situations where one could
> become corrupt from this awesome power of telling people to blank
> pages and start again. Other than that, I agreed with your post :)
>
> Steve

Information is power. Organised information more so. Being able to
control the flow of organised information is a considerable power.

--
geni


body:
On 3/11/06, Carl F?rstenberg <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
> I can understand your point of view. But lets take an hypothetically
> example: What if George W. Bush called and required that the article about
> him is to be removed indefinently, would that be possible?

Oh for fuck's sake.  Is that a serious question, or is this thread to
descend to naked trolling?


body:
On 3/11/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:

> In that case, one of the overtly stated reasons for removing the article
> was that it could bring Wikipedia bad publicity.  So, while the subject
> may not be powerful, apparently there was a fear that it would offend
> other people who are.
>
> -Mark

No the last formal reason given was that it was deleted in line with
an AFD descision.
--
geni


body:
On 3/11/06, Carl F?rstenberg <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation
> could handle the worst case senarion (it could happen sooner or later, so I
> think it's better to be prepared)
>

It's not a likely senario. A more likely one is that a large number of
mid level politcians (ie the ones for whome wikipedia is the top hit
on google) figure out they can have anything embarising knocked out of
wikipedia for say the week before the election.

--
geni


body:
On 3/11/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, Danny is also [[User:Danny]], and he makes it clear who he
> is on his userpage(s). So I don't think using his first name is
> intended to keep anyone out at all; unless you want to say "Danny
> Wool, Wikimedia Foundation staff" every time you refer to him I think
> that's the clearest way to refer to him among Wikimedians.

It probably *is* the clearest way to refer to him in general missives
to the general masses, such as this email thread, or [[WP:OFFICE]]
(since updated to explain who he is - good work :)).

Steve


body:
On 3/11/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> What we should do, of course, is what we always do.  Someone should tell
> us *what* the complaints are, and we should fix the article.  Blanking
> and deleting the article should only be the done in the most extreme
> cases where there is absolutely nothing useful or salvageable about it.

That's not a reasonable request. The Jack Thomspon email is pretty
instructive. Seems like the story goes like this:

1. Wikipedia community writes an article on famous person X
2. X's lawyers write to the Wikimedia foundation, citing vague
"errors" and "defamatory material", and threatening to sue the arse
off it if the article is not deleted instantly.
3. Wikimedia foundation is supposed to cite the specific errors in the
article, so they can be edited out, and thus play chicken with X's
lawyers?

The point is: you delete the page, the problem goes away. Any other
solution, and the problem - X's lawyers - is still there. You can
argue that your page is NPOV and not defamatory. But you won't be
doing it in court - the Wikimedia Foundation will be. So, from that
point of view, it's totally their call what to do about it.

> I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of
> political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to
> get staff to complain to us.

Sure, but that's life. There is a lot of stuff to write about in
Wikipedia. If some articles about living people with lawyers are kept
a bit shorter and less comprehensive, well it's not a great loss, in
perspective...

Steve


body:
On 3/11/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> As it's been said, "power corrupts; absolute power corrupts
> absolutely"; also, "with great power comes great responsibility."
> Such is the philosophy one can learn from comic books... :-) The sort
> of power where a central "office" can make arbitrary, unexplained
> changes and lock them down without regard to community consensus,
> while it's absolutely needed in certain situations (legal
> liabilities, etc.) is also capable of enormous potential of abuse; if
> the position of making and enforcing such decrees ever falls into the
> hands of somebody who's just a power freak who enjoys imposing things
> on people for no good reason, such powers would be greatly enjoyable
> to that person at the expense of everybody else.  "Governments like
> emergency powers; that's why they create emergencies!"

I'm having a little trouble picturing situations where one could
become corrupt from this awesome power of telling people to blank
pages and start again. Other than that, I agreed with your post :)

Steve


from_name: Carl Fûrstenberg

body:
Time for another fund raize? the foundation needs a stable of loyars. :)

On 3/11/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/11/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> > What we should do, of course, is what we always do.  Someone should tell
> > us *what* the complaints are, and we should fix the article.  Blanking
> > and deleting the article should only be the done in the most extreme
> > cases where there is absolutely nothing useful or salvageable about it.
>
> That's not a reasonable request. The Jack Thomspon email is pretty
> instructive. Seems like the story goes like this:
>
> 1. Wikipedia community writes an article on famous person X
> 2. X's lawyers write to the Wikimedia foundation, citing vague
> "errors" and "defamatory material", and threatening to sue the arse
> off it if the article is not deleted instantly.
> 3. Wikimedia foundation is supposed to cite the specific errors in the
> article, so they can be edited out, and thus play chicken with X's
> lawyers?
>
> The point is: you delete the page, the problem goes away. Any other
> solution, and the problem - X's lawyers - is still there. You can
> argue that your page is NPOV and not defamatory. But you won't be
> doing it in court - the Wikimedia Foundation will be. So, from that
> point of view, it's totally their call what to do about it.
>
> > I feel the current policy is striking a strong bias against criticism of
> > political figures in proportion to how much money and time they have to
> > get staff to complain to us.
>
> Sure, but that's life. There is a lot of stuff to write about in
> Wikipedia. If some articles about living people with lawyers are kept
> a bit shorter and less comprehensive, well it's not a great loss, in
> perspective...
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Download history tool?

body:
Hi again,
  Ok I had my own attempt at adding "group edits". It works, but has
the obvious limitation that displaying the diff across a group of
collapsed diffs shows not quite what you're expecting. In other words:

Time t0  User A comment1
Time t1  User A
Time t2  User A comment2
Time t3  User B comment 3

It shows this as
Time t0 User A comment1//---//comment2
Time t3 User B

So if you attempt to compare between t0 and t3, you of course get all
the changes made in t1, t2 and t3, whereas you probably just wanted
t3. Not sure how to deal with that one.

Anyway, feel free to use this code if at all helpful.

Also...I'm sure by now we're on the wrong list. What's the right one? wikitech?

Steve

// ==UserScript==

// @name           Compress history

// @namespace      stevage

// @description    Collapses consecutive edits from the same person into one

// @include        *.wikipedia.org/*action=history

// ==/UserScript==

var hist;
hist = document.getElementById('pagehistory');

if (hist) {
  var diffs;
  diffs = document.evaluate(
    "LI",
    hist,
    null,
    XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
    null
  );
  var last='*x!', prevdiffcomment;

  for (var i = 0; i < diffs.snapshotLength; i++) {

    var diff = diffs.snapshotItem(i);
    var comment = document.evaluate(
      'SPAN[@class="comment"]',
      diff,
      null,
      XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
      null
    ).snapshotItem(0);
    //GM_log(comment.innerHTML);
    var a = document.evaluate(
      "SPAN/A",
      diff,
      null,
      XPathResult.UNORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,
      null
    );
    eacha = a.snapshotItem(0);
    if (eacha.title==last) {
      if (comment) {
        prevdiffcomment.innerHTML = prevdiffcomment.innerHTML + '//'
+comment.innerHTML;
      } else {
        prevdiffcomment.innerHTML = prevdiffcomment.innerHTML + '//---';
      }
      diff.parentNode.removeChild(diff);
    } else {
      last = eacha.title;
      if (!comment) {
        comment = document.createElement('SPAN');
        comment.className='comment';
        comment.innerHTML=' ---';
        diff.insertBefore(comment, null);
      }
      prevdiffcomment = comment;
    }
  }
}

On 3/11/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
> It has been updated to animate and export a basic Excel xml:
> http://dzonux.net/wikipedia-animate-hack.user.js
>
> "Group edits" is not finished.
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> >On 3/10/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I started to fix the script:
> >>http://dzonux.net/wikipedia-animate-hack.user.js
> >>
> >>It shows the basic layout, but it stops right before it animates.
> >>
> >>Steve, are there are any other features you would like?
> >>
> >>Jonathan
> >>
> >>
> >
> >Ooh, interesting question :) I can now get that script to activate,
> >but yeah, doesn't do much useful yet.
> >
> >Hard to ask for *more* features when I haven't seen what it does yet.
> >But things that would be useful would be grouping all subsequent edits
> >by a single editor (would be useful in general in Wikipedia), and,
> >yeah like my original quest, somehow being able to download a list of
> >all changes into Excel or something (with dates and URLs would be
> >brilliant...)
> >
> >Steve
> >_______________________________________________
> >WikiEN-l mailing list
> >WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> >To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
> >
> >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> > And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases?  Does the power
> > and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it?  It does seem
> > that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere
> > peons when they complain...
...
> No, powerful people are *not* given more deference.  If anything, people
> who are *not* powerful are given more deference.

Heh, true, the most deference ever given to the subject of an article
lives in a nursing home and hadn't even complained!

Steve


body:
I can understand your point of view. But lets take an hypothetically
example: What if George W. Bush called and required that the article about
him is to be removed indefinently, would that be possible?

On 3/11/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> Delirium wrote:
> > And how does WP:OFFICE distinguish between these cases?  Does the power
> > and wealth of the person complaining have an effect on it?  It does seem
> > that powerful people like Harry Reid are given more deference than mere
> > peons when they complain...
>
> And it seems that you are making assertions with absolutely no facts to
> back them up.
>
> No, powerful people are *not* given more deference.  If anything, people
> who are *not* powerful are given more deference.
>
> If you want to be angry just for the sake of being angry, I can't stop
> you, but what I can do is stop responding to comments like this.
>
> --Jimbo
>
>
>
> --
> #######################################################################
> #    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
> #    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
> #######################################################################
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>


body:
It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation
could handle the worst case senarion (it could happen sooner or later, so I
think it's better to be prepared)

On 3/11/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/11/06, Carl F?rstenberg <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I can understand your point of view. But lets take an hypothetically
> > example: What if George W. Bush called and required that the article
> about
> > him is to be removed indefinently, would that be possible?
>
> Oh for fuck's sake.  Is that a serious question, or is this thread to
> descend to naked trolling?
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Ok, I'll bite - my pure speculation, obviously not the foundation's.
If that happened, the right thing to do would be to take down the
article, report the request to the media, and watch the fallout.

Steve

On 3/11/06, Carl F?rstenberg <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation
> could handle the worst case senarion (it could happen sooner or later, so I
> think it's better to be prepared)


from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] What variant to use for Irish,
	Scottish and Welsh localities?

body:
On 3/11/06, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/11/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > For purely practical considerations, I would suggest using the English
> > name for a Romanian audience. Chances are, if they have happened to
> > hear of these places before, they would be more familiar with the
> > English name, and, in addition to that, English pronunciation is more
> > intuitive when reading Romanian than that of most Celtic languages --
> > imagine how horribly most Romanians would mangle Caerdydd, An Uaimh,
> > or Corcaigh.
> >
> > Mark
>
>
> To be honest, I agree - that's what I was thinking too.
>
> Cormac

But the weird thing is that the Irish name will have to be listed first in
the infobox, since it's the first official verison. In that case, won't it
be a bit odd to use the English variant for the title, which is really the
"secondary" variant?

So far, most admins on the Romanian Wikipedia seem to favour English names.
I do see their point of view. I've had many personal experiences where I've
told Romanians about visiting "Caerdydd" and they correct me "Cardiff", as
if I didn't know how to pronounce English! My point was that such ignorance
is really unfortunate, and should be reversed in such way. I'm not saying
that Wikipedia should become a hotbed of Gaelic revivalist rhetoric, but we
can at least try and teach people that there's more to these regions than
just English!

Another thing - could someone please do some recordings of Irish names.
Celtic languages are really hard to pronounce, but they are really beautiful
and unique languages. It would really help a lot if people could just go to
Wikipedia to find out how to pronounce key Irish (Welsh, Scottish) toponyms.
Hopefully we'll come back in 20 years and see a great deal more use of these
languages.

Go raibh maith agaibh!

Ronline

PS: Another can of worms is created by Basque toponyms. For example, should
one use San Sebastian, Donostia, or San Sebastian-Donostia for that
respective Basque city? How about Catalan toponyms? I think most Wikipedias
have just taken the easy way out and chosen Spanish names, but to me at
least, that sounds awfully superficial and ignorant.


from_name: Patrick Hall

body:
Hi all,

> I think countries of teh world would be a fine place to start. There are
> already good tables in the major languages that can be translated easily.

I've not seen this resource mentioned yet in this thread, so I thought
I'd throw out a link:

http://unicode.org/cldr/data/common/main/

As you may know, CLDR (Common Locale Data Repository) is a project
that's hosted on unicode.org. It has xml files with lots of
localization data for various languages. (I believe there is also a
process for contributing information for languages that haven't yet
been added -- if it's possible to share this info with that project,
it would also be a good way to promote those languages on the web. I
don't have anything to do with CLDR myself, by the way, I just think
it's a cool project.)

Most of this data has been vetted, and data that hasn't been is tagged
with draft="true"

Some specific files to look at (you can load the files directly in
Firefox, I'm not sure about other browsers):

http://unicode.org/cldr/data/common/main/sw.xml Kiswahili (Swahili) -
79 territories
http://unicode.org/cldr/data/common/main/am.xml ???? (Amharic) - 255
http://unicode.org/cldr/data/common/main/ka.xml ??????? (Georgian) - 191
http://unicode.org/cldr/data/common/main/ms.xml Bahasa Melayu (Malay) - 239

For some languages there isn't much there currently:

http://unicode.org/cldr/data/common/main/ur.xml Urdu - 1 territory
http://unicode.org/cldr/data/common/main/az.xml Azeri - 1 territory
http://unicode.org/cldr/data/common/main/ml.xml Malayalam - 1 territory

And for others there's not even a file -- unfortunately, Udmurt,
Ossetian, and Chuvash are in this group -- but this might change in
the future. Perhaps it would be easier, also, for these speakers to
translate from the Russian file?

These files also contain these other categories (again, with varying
degrees of completeness):

* language names
* currencies
* "exemplar characters" -- potentially the basis for an entry on the
writing systems of various languages
* calendar information -- months, days, stuff like that

I've already started writing some Python scripts for extracting info
from the CLDR, I'd be happy to try to generating stuff with them in
whatever formats people need, etc.

Well, there's my several cents =)

Best regards,

Patrick Hall


from_name: CHARTER HSI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Im Blocked

body:
I deleted the article relating to Lipscomb,AL , It is been
incorporated into Birminham, AL. I thought it should be deleted. I
DID NOT VANDALIZE IT, if you could not see that, then you have a
problem. The problem is, is that Lipscomb is non existent any more.!!


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 3/11/06, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> We're no longer talking about correcting errors in
> the interest of accuracy---we're talking about mollifying angry
> complaintants, preventing bad publicity for the foundation, and other
> such things that are not equivalent to writing a factually accurate
> encyclopedia.

Not wholly true, I believe.  I don't think the intention is to
permanently remove information that is accurate; rather, it's to
remove possibly inaccurate info until it can be checked against
sources, tightly worded, and made as correct as we can have it.

Yes, it IS a process different than the standard.

-Matt


list: foundation-l

from_name: michael_irwin at verizon.net

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images

body:
>It's the UPLOADER'S duty to make sure he/she is
>meeting license requirements, if they aren't met the image should go.  It
>shouldn't be the duty of the reviewer to prove it and that's usually the
>perception.
>
>
I agree strongly with the above argument.

lazyquasar


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 3/8/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Hoi,
>>Your plea is not well targeted. Commons our principal resource for the
>>storage of media does not allow for "fair use" images. You describe a
>>problem that is different depending what resource you target, many
>>projects have different rules as to "fair use". The rules of new and
>>the existence of "fair use" material differ as well. These rules have
>>changed over time consequently pictures that complied with the rules
>>at that time would not comply anymore.
>>
>>
So I guess the need for some kind of targetted rules based ecp or
workflow modification review is emerging?

This can possibly be prototyped manually via procedures before beginning
the mind boggling programming and adminstrative challenge of upgrading
or shifting the entire knowledge base to the new system.   Wikiversity
is a good place for prototyping because it is new and emerging and as
soon as we get approvel from the Board for separate xx.wikiverity.org
knowledge base namespaces we will be faced with transition to the
initial agreed environment within a knowledge base creeping
incrementally toward the Wikibooks host mandated guidlines.

If anyone is interested I can review some U.S. mil-stds to see if there
is applicable material that might provide insight or I can step up my
recruiting efforts for experience field or grid engineer and
technicians.  These people do a range of stuff  (manual ... to self
aware self adaptive software) and could show us while setting up their
field/discpline/company/guild/association useful training materials.
Obviously the free developers and wiki administrators would still have
final say so and responsibility because I am finding these people in
fields I have cited are typically very busy in demand experts.  They
will assist with volunteered effort on a prioritized basis but initial
effects will be slow and accelerate only at a glacial pace as we begin
to refine our research issues and effective prototyping and operational
methods.

I will be offline for a couple of weeks.  So this is a perfect example
of calender impacts from localized space/time/life events.  I realize
everyone is unique in their interface with our unique knowledge pages.
I am happy to see significant progess being made in all steps of the
initially identified requirements.

lazyquasar

lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-03-12

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

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Basic section headings... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Handling of sections up to level 6 and beyond... FAILED!
Running test Resolving duplicate section names... FAILED!
Running test Template with sections, __NOTOC__... FAILED!
Running test Link inside a section heading... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Parser hook: static parser hook inside a comment... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 266 of 288 tests (92.36%) FAILED!


list: textbook-l

subject: [Textbook-l] major WikiBooks cleanup

body:
Karl Wick wrote:

>Help!
>
>Wikibooks in in disarray, and we need to work together to make it
>presentable, if we really want anyone to ever use it.
>
>We have been working on the (English) main page for the last week, getting
>rid of the bunches of dead links, organizing the information, and makin' it
>look purty. But there is still work to be done there. Especially making sure
>that all of the links that are there take people right to the information
>that will be most helpful to them, and eliminating or consolidating all
>other options.
>
>And there is still a lot of work to be done to the pages that are linked
>from the front page, as these are the first and most important pages that
>newcomers will find. (Especially Wikibooks:About; Welcome, newcomers;
>Wikibooks:FAQ; etc.)
>
>It is time to begin to elect a couple of books that we can take as far as
>possible, to ready them for actual real-world use. It is much better to have
>one great example than have 1,000 bad, mediocre, or half-done examples.
>
>
>

Karl,  please be cautious in pruning.  We are finally beginning to see
real experts and enthusiast show up to begin filling in the fractal
knowledge base.  Unfortunately, a zeal to look professional to potential
students may backfire.

Is it better to attract two thousand highly qualified individuals to
write high quality books or a million volunteer students from all walks
of life to initialize Wikiversity?

I favor the latter.  It is fine with me if material is moved away from
the inital portals easy to find by newly arriving wiki neophytes but
deleting or excessive pruning is inevitably going to lead to massive
conflict as local owners of polished materials competitively discourage
newcomers who threaten their dominance from intialization efforts of
what everyone hopes will become a massive pivot point for human
attention worldwide.

Consider an embryo growing in the womb.  Excessive pruning of initial
scaffolding to the discouragement of later arriving protein folders
probably contributes to defect or abortion ??????

I am not a biologist, physiolist, or medical person.  Perhaps we should
seek JWSurf's assessment of you and I's inverted images of the best way
to proceed?

piles to integrate eventually  or high quality singular or low integer
count correct complete final files?

Can both paths coexist peacefully or could Wikibooks take one and
Wikiversity support the other (among many others obviously).

lazyquasar


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mo/Ro

body:
Again, Anthere, the main problem with the vote is the definition of
"community". How many of the voters edited the mo.wikipedia at all
other than to vote? Very few.

Mark

On 11/03/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Mark Ryan wrote:
> > This looks like a good time for the list moderator to step in. Who is
> > currently administering this mailing list?
> >
> > ~Mark Ryan
>
>
> Brion... you know, the guy who will freeze the Moldovan wikipedia and
> wiktionary as soon as he gets the time :-)
>
> Right.
>
>
> 1) Agreement to close the project.
>
> The community voted on the issue. Even if I might agree with Node that
> there might be some issues in the vote, I think that there was a rather
> straigthforward feedback.
>
> Angela and Jimbo are both agreeing the projects in mo should be closed.
> We agreed that if there is a re-opening one day, it will be per board
> decision (or any person or committee with a delegation to approve new
> language opening). But right now, let the discussion on the matter be
> *closed*. Give us all a break please.
>
>
> 2) Closing the project
>
> We are waiting from Brion to freeze them. This is not urgent, not a
> matter of vandalism.  If not done in a couple of days, please remind
> Brion :-)
>
>
> 3) Vandalism
>
> I would prefer that Mark stop editing the project. Now, let us be fair,
> creating a bunch of articles is not vandalism. It will not either
> benefit, nor hurt the project if a couple of additional pages are added
> before it is closed. If you mind, just blank or delete them. More
> wisely, just do not pay attention. It is no big deal.
>
>
> 4) Civility
>
> Future civilization, the tone of your emails is not making people happy
> on the list. I can not say if Node is making personal attack on the wiki
> (I am not convinced, usually Mark is civil), but what you do here is
> *exactly* personal attacks. This is not acceptable. You are on moderation.
>
>
> Anthere
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
I agree with Olve on all counts, however, I'm worried about something:

What will be the reaction if the Romanian Wikipedia converts
automatically to Cyrillic? Not just among Wikipedians, but among
Romanians in general.

Mark

On 11/03/06, Olve Utne <olve.utne at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> First of all: Don't worry -- this is my one and only posting on this topic.
>
> The vote, while being clear in itself, has some VERY troublesome
> aspects to it. And it doesn't seem to address what ought to be the
> primary concern, namely to provide information to those
> Moldovan-speakers who read Cyrillic script better than Latin script.
>
> With the risk of being called names by some (please don't), I make
> the following honest proposal:
>
> 1) Let the Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia be locked *but accessible* for now.
>
> 2) Install a Latin--Cyrillic converter similar to the one on SR:WP on
> RO:WP. It does NOT need to be perfect, but it should render the text
> REASONABLY intelligible in Cyrillic. It also (at least for now) needs
> to work only from Latin to Cyrillic, since the editors seem to work
> almost exclusively in Latin script.
>
> 3) Make a little snippet on the main page of :ro: to note that one
> can view this WP in Cyrillic for the benefit of people in
> Transdnistria and whoever else might prefer viewing the contents in Cyrillic.
>
> 4) Then -- and ONLY then --, archive the Cyrillic version and make it
> an automatic redirect to :ro:.
>
>
> This will *respect the decision* made in the vote, while it also
> takes care of an important aspect which was left out of the process
> -- namely, making the information available to ALL
> Romanian-/Moldavian-speakers -- and especially those who may need
> such information the most...
>
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Olve Utne
>
> (from the admin team on Nynorsk Wikipedia)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Jacky PB

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
There is a slight problem with your proposal: no Moldovan speaker ever asked for a Moldovan wikipedia. And, even more funny, there is no wikipedia user registered as Moldovan speaker (at any level) on meta.wiki, en.wiki, and ro.wiki. On mo.wiki, someone created the category, but it's void.  I suggest you all go and look for yourselves.

So, aren't you trying to solve a non-problem?

You know, just because Mark Williamson cries something strong enough does not mean he is right. Unfortunately, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that Mark actually represents an endangered minority. The problem is that he is this minority. Alone. I asked him several times before to post a list of Moldovan supporters. Or at least one. But he avoided the question.

And there is a second problem. He is not really part of the minority he claims to protect. And this is the real problem -- the fact that he hijacked the name of an existing people in order to promote some personal political beliefs that hurt the actual people he is claiming to defend.

Yours,
[[:en:Dpotop]], [[:ro:Dpotop]], [[:mo:Dpotop]]

Olve Utne <olve.utne at gmail.com> wrote: Hello everyone,

First of all: Don't worry -- this is my one and only posting on this topic.

The vote, while being clear in itself, has some VERY troublesome
aspects to it. And it doesn't seem to address what ought to be the
primary concern, namely to provide information to those
Moldovan-speakers who read Cyrillic script better than Latin script.

With the risk of being called names by some (please don't), I make
the following honest proposal:

1) Let the Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia be locked *but accessible* for now.

2) Install a Latin--Cyrillic converter similar to the one on SR:WP on
RO:WP. It does NOT need to be perfect, but it should render the text
REASONABLY intelligible in Cyrillic. It also (at least for now) needs
to work only from Latin to Cyrillic, since the editors seem to work
almost exclusively in Latin script.

3) Make a little snippet on the main page of :ro: to note that one
can view this WP in Cyrillic for the benefit of people in
Transdnistria and whoever else might prefer viewing the contents in Cyrillic.

4) Then -- and ONLY then --, archive the Cyrillic version and make it
an automatic redirect to :ro:.

This will *respect the decision* made in the vote, while it also
takes care of an important aspect which was left out of the process
-- namely, making the information available to ALL
Romanian-/Moldavian-speakers -- and especially those who may need
such information the most...

Respectfully,

Olve Utne

(from the admin team on Nynorsk Wikipedia)

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

---------------------------------
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from_name: W. Guy Finley

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images

body:
On 3/9/06 11:08 AM, "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> W. Guy Finley wrote:
>
>> I think the first step is that any unlicensed image being uploaded as fair
>> use and does not have a source and fair use rationale should be speedied.  I
>> bet that's more than half of them right there.  The process of tagging them
>> as no source and then waiting a week is just way too long and too
>> susceptible to error.  It's the UPLOADER'S duty to make sure he/she is
>> meeting license requirements, if they aren't met the image should go.  It
>> shouldn't be the duty of the reviewer to prove it and that's usually the
>> perception.
>>
> When you consider that some of these have already been here for a long
> time without attracting attention, one more week is obviously a very
> short time to wait.  It avoids the error of creating unnecessary
> confusion.  Nobody's challenging the uploader's duty, or passing that
> duty on to the reviewer; your unique perception does not make it so.
> There's no reason to panic about this.
>
> Ec

Peruse IFD or CP lately Ray?  Have fun wading through it.  Nobody is
panicking, I think those who are trying to police images are getting worn
out.  After all, you make so many friends doing it.

To many editors "fair use" is "it's cool and I want to use it, that's fair"
and so they steal it and use it.  You put the blatant copyvio image up for
IFD and the uploader objects, no one else votes (because IFD is already full
of scores of copyvio images already, who wants to go and review them all
every day to vote on IFD) and the thing gets kept.

Even better, there are many editors who think that citing a website that is
a repository of copyvio and unlicensed images qualifies as the image's
source, it does not.

Asserting "fair use" of an image is a nuanced legal concept that many
editors cannot grasp so I feel something is needed to help rectify the
situation.

--Guy  (User:Wgfinley)


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
On 3/11/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> What will be the reaction if the Romanian Wikipedia converts
> automatically to Cyrillic? Not just among Wikipedians, but among
> Romanians in general.

Anyone who reacts negatively is being frankly ridiculous.  Not that
such behaviour is unlikely, of course.

These seem to be the facts as I see them: (let me know if I get anything wrong)

1. There are some people who speak a language that is essentially a
version of Romanian (whether under that name, Moldovan, or whatever)
but read and write it in Cyrillic characters.  These include some
people unable to read Romanian in Latin script, and others who would
prefer to read it in Cyrillic because they're more familiar with it
that way.
2. There has proven to be, currently, insufficient contributors
interested in producing a Cyrillic-script Wikipedia in this language
to make it a truly vibrant and alive project.
3. It is possible to transliterate latin-script Romanian into cyrillic
script in an automated fashion with few errors.  Some words etc. have
to be special-cased because it isn't always a 1:1 transliteration, but
it's certainly feasible.

It seems to me that having a Romanian latin-script source base with
automated transliteration into Cyrillic should keep most practical
people in all communities happy.  The source text base being in Latin
script should satisfy most Romanian nationalists, since it puts latin
script in the primary position and ensures that all new Wikipedia
developments in the language are written in that version.

Having an automated transliteration into Cyrillic script should not be
seen as a bad thing even from that perspective - but rather
acknowledging the simple fact that some people would be unable to use
a Latin-script Romanian project.  Indeed, it could be seen from the
Romanian-nationalist perspective as actually encouraging those people
to learn or the Latin-script version in baby steps, since to
contribute they'd have to learn it.

While this solution doesn't allow people to contribute in Cyrillic
script, it acknowledges the fact that there seems to be little editor
base to work on a Cyrillic script Moldovan wikipedia.  A read-only but
more complete and useful Cyrillic version obtainable by
machine-transliteration from the Latin script would serve readers and
users better than a Cyrillic-only but tiny project.

-Matt


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 3/9/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Absolutely.  Fair use should be abandoned in favor of allowing
>>CC-BY-ND.  I just found out that CC-BY-ND allows "the right to make
>>such modifications as are technically necessary to exercise the rights
>>in other media and formats", so use of such a license is much better
>>than relying on fair use.
>>
>>
>
>I don't agree at all.  Our goal is to make a free content
>encyclopedia. When we speak of free we mean freedom and not cost.  ND
>content is not free.
>
>We can broadly split media we would like to include in Wikipedia into
>two classes: Illustrations and other media and used to explain or
>decorate our articles, and excerpts of works which we have included in
>order to discuss the works.
>
>In the first case, barring certain silly corner cases, it is always
>possible to have a free version because a Wikipedia contributor could
>create one.
>
>In the second case, a replacement is simply not possible because the
>replacement wouldn't be the work we were discussing.  So, our ability
>to obtain a free copy is entirely at the whim of the copyright holder,
>and in some cases it may even be very difficult for us to contact the
>copyright holder.
>
>Fair use law (and similar constructs in some other countries) exists
>specifically for the second case. The goal of fair use is to prevent
>copyright from completely stifling criticism and intellectual
>discussion.
>
>It is likely that in the case of 'fair use' the content would remain
>fair use for a large majority of the downstream uses for content on
>Wikipedia. Furthermore, the decision to include fair use is almost
>always a choice between the fair use image and no image at all.   Our
>choice with fair use content is to allow it, where it is easy for
>downstream users to remove, or have nothing at all.  A downstream user
>who can't accept unfree content is in the same position either way.
>Nothing is lost by allowing clear and legitimate fair use, and our
>goal of being an encyclopedia is enhanced in a way which is pretty
>much not possible without fair use.
>
>By allowing ND images we would be in a position of three
>possibilities: no image, a free image, or an ND image which is 'free
>enough' to post on our website but fails our goal of producing free
>content. If we allow ND images it will specifically be at the expense
>of free images. A downstream users who can't accept unfree content
>will be in a worse position if we were to make that decision.
>
>
>
>>Of course the major disadvantage is that people have to be convinced
>>to release their image under the license.  But right now it's not even
>>an option.
>>
>>
>
>Who are you expecting to convince?   The impact on the real commercial
>value of the work between GFDL and a ND license is minimal. ND
>licenses primarily appeal to the vanity of artists who are not
>sufficiently satisfied by mere attribution.
>
>The lack of ND images has, no doubt, cost us some images on the short
>term... but we could equally say that our failure to illegally copy
>current edition Britannica articles has also cost us some level of
>coverage.  Fundamentally if someone isn't interested in creating a
>*free* encyclopedia then they aren't interested in helping us.   Yes,
>we'll sometimes include the copyrighted works of others... but with
>fair use we can do that whether they like it or not.
>
>It isn't acceptable to give up freedom to gain a little more quality content.
>
>The loss of natural freedom in the embodiment of ideas has been a huge
>burden on our civilization, at least since computing put publication
>in the hands of almost every person. This burden will continue until
>we unify to remove it; It will continue until we create enough free
>content that the artificial social and economic imposition created by
>copyright is longer an impediment to the flow of knowledge to the
>people who want and need it most.
>
>This isn't going to happen quickly, but it can't happen at all if we
>compromise unnecessarily.
>
>We can afford to wait:
>  Wikipedia is forever.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
>
I have to study the creative license more carefully before I fully
understand the argument underway above but I currently tend to agree
with Gregory Maxwell in spades for Wikiversity.   That debate is
curently starting to intensify as Wikibooks community gets more adamant
about mandating universeral standards for our temporary prototyping
space that looks downright restrictive of potential learning processes
and materials.

We may need to allow Wikivsersity to stratify and use redundant data
under different licenses to keep confusion to a minimum among students
and non legal specialists.  Obviously we will need to implement some
grid technologies so the exponential curves accelerated by assistance
from Wikipedia's obvious existence and success (nothing shuts up a
naysayer like an existing freight train roaring through the station
every few minutes in the background .... our train can never get started
leavi .... SWOOSH!

I have limited time and energy at moment but if the argument becomes
pandemic we can check some archives for dire predictions early in
Wikipedia's uncertain future when large numbers of regular contributors
often despaired of ever attracting sufficient non trollish newcomers to
keep the database useful enough to attract the labor to polish it up.

So far, so good.  You wikipedians did a helluva job prototyping my
future free engineer projects for me.  I thank you one and all, and yes,
even good cop godling and bad copy screecher.

Could we have some public feedback regarding en.wikiversity.org now or
shall we recruit a gullible software developer to acquire enough trusted
status to add our namespace?   Pesonally I suspect we can have
en.wikiversity.org link operational within 12-14 months, just in time
for some serious ribbon cutting on crude course outlines interesting to
active students worldwide.

MFinney (fire school developer at Wikiversity) has suggested and I may
eventually agree that we may need to join the formal committee process
now being established.   I personally will not participate in the
committee as a formal member as I can identify no rational delegation of
sovereignty under any ideology I am capable currently of integrating my
view of the universe as self evidently the allmighty.

Since only the senior projects seem of concern to anyone at the
foundation or the board level, I would like to note that an abandonment
of the fire school would likely greatly slow and reduce the available
technical expertise applicable to improving and keeping Wikipedia's fire
related terms, discusssions, etc. etc. accurate and useful to the
general public.

lazyquasar


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
Dear Matt,

You correctly understood the situation, but just a part of it. The fact that Romanian can be transliterated into cyrillic was already known, but there is also the question of where to put this tool.

Leaving it at mo.wiki proved to be useless/bad, for it gathered no further support, and at the same time managed to stir nationalisms. Putting it at mo-cyr may be an idea, although giving a wiki domain to a bot may seem an overkill. Finally, putting it on ro.wiki as a full-fledged script raises another question: The current moldovan cyrillic script is a Soviet invention. When Romanian was written in cyrillic script (until mid-19th century) another cyrillic alphabet was in use.

Please, advise,
Dpotop

Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote: On 3/11/06, Mark Williamson  wrote:
> What will be the reaction if the Romanian Wikipedia converts
> automatically to Cyrillic? Not just among Wikipedians, but among
> Romanians in general.

Anyone who reacts negatively is being frankly ridiculous.  Not that
such behaviour is unlikely, of course.

These seem to be the facts as I see them: (let me know if I get anything wrong)

1. There are some people who speak a language that is essentially a
version of Romanian (whether under that name, Moldovan, or whatever)
but read and write it in Cyrillic characters.  These include some
people unable to read Romanian in Latin script, and others who would
prefer to read it in Cyrillic because they're more familiar with it
that way.
2. There has proven to be, currently, insufficient contributors
interested in producing a Cyrillic-script Wikipedia in this language
to make it a truly vibrant and alive project.
3. It is possible to transliterate latin-script Romanian into cyrillic
script in an automated fashion with few errors.  Some words etc. have
to be special-cased because it isn't always a 1:1 transliteration, but
it's certainly feasible.

It seems to me that having a Romanian latin-script source base with
automated transliteration into Cyrillic should keep most practical
people in all communities happy.  The source text base being in Latin
script should satisfy most Romanian nationalists, since it puts latin
script in the primary position and ensures that all new Wikipedia
developments in the language are written in that version.

Having an automated transliteration into Cyrillic script should not be
seen as a bad thing even from that perspective - but rather
acknowledging the simple fact that some people would be unable to use
a Latin-script Romanian project.  Indeed, it could be seen from the
Romanian-nationalist perspective as actually encouraging those people
to learn or the Latin-script version in baby steps, since to
contribute they'd have to learn it.

While this solution doesn't allow people to contribute in Cyrillic
script, it acknowledges the fact that there seems to be little editor
base to work on a Cyrillic script Moldovan wikipedia.  A read-only but
more complete and useful Cyrillic version obtainable by
machine-transliteration from the Latin script would serve readers and
users better than a Cyrillic-only but tiny project.

-Matt
_______________________________________________
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Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

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subject: [Textbook-l] Cooperation between Wikipedia and Wikibooks

body:
Kernigh wrote:

>Phil Boswell wrote:
>
>
>
>>I am not aware of the history of this cooperative venture, but I am
>>somewhat disturbed by the fact that a group of people at Wikibooks are
>>trying to have this feature removed without apparently letting anybody at
>>Wikipedia know. ...
>>
>>
>
>When I encounter a book at Wikibooks, such as
>http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Errata, I do not know if it is linked from
>Wikipedia. The Special:Whatlinkshere pages do not show links from other
>wikis. It is not easy to manually search Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikiquote,
>Wiktionary, ... for links to particular books at Wikibooks, so I normally
>do not do this.
>
>
>
Uh Oh!  This has critical policy implications.   Perhaps that no good
nick has set us up for a See? when we whine at a "Jimmy says" decree
regarding  stealthy en.wikiversity.org  wiki creation.   Perhaps I shall
suspend my aggressive presention of certain verifiable facts until I can
consult Erik, who if I recall correctly, was probably the developer who
setup de.wikiversity.org.

Maybe I will call think.  As German speaking canuk with some old
computers, professional engagement  in medical informatics, a math
degree and an artists flair for resolving firmware conflicts .... forget
it.  He is obviously GWs inside informant who down the Airport
Operations efforts with the buglock conspiracy.

Ah well, what the hell.  That play was long ago.  I will call him soon
and find out for sure whether is a real German Wikiversity or if it is
just a spoofer link.

Back to mission critical business.  This would be an ugly ugly impact if
developing texts for developing course were deleted in middle of long
term asynchronous courses.   It could potentially destabilize the course
and make it appear of no interest when in fact it is of no use and
current users declined to start over from zero after deletion day had
arrived.  This of course impact any free space technology research in
progress who assisted with setting up the course to leverage scarce
funded experienced handson expertise at NASA in response to that known
ALLEGED WAR CRIMINAL's propensity for apparent underfunding of NATO's
super cosmic no alternative alien access allowed mission critical
technology.

Perhaps this is related to plausible deniability.  No money, no Mars
landing, Virgina.   Honestly!  Despite widely available miltitary grade
trainers such as Battle Zone we honestly never engage in any secret war
on Mars or the Moon.

We could call this circular saw advertising to attract the lotto crowd
at the Mill Casino in Coos Bay Oregon.  Watch out for the loggers.  They
tend to count on their fingers and thus can be hard to 3F (flim flam
fandago) for the mango juice.

lazyquasar


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
Dpotop is spreading FUD. Please, re-read Olve Utne's original e-mail.
He does not mention Moldovans, or me, or Moldovan speakers. He simply
mentions the real people who use Cyrillic, and they do exist.

Mark

On 12/03/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> There is a slight problem with your proposal: no Moldovan speaker ever asked for a Moldovan wikipedia. And, even more funny, there is no wikipedia user registered as Moldovan speaker (at any level) on meta.wiki, en.wiki, and ro.wiki. On mo.wiki, someone created the category, but it's void.  I suggest you all go and look for yourselves.
>
> So, aren't you trying to solve a non-problem?
>
> You know, just because Mark Williamson cries something strong enough does not mean he is right. Unfortunately, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that Mark actually represents an endangered minority. The problem is that he is this minority. Alone. I asked him several times before to post a list of Moldovan supporters. Or at least one. But he avoided the question.
>
> And there is a second problem. He is not really part of the minority he claims to protect. And this is the real problem -- the fact that he hijacked the name of an existing people in order to promote some personal political beliefs that hurt the actual people he is claiming to defend.
>
> Yours,
> [[:en:Dpotop]], [[:ro:Dpotop]], [[:mo:Dpotop]]
>
>
> Olve Utne <olve.utne at gmail.com> wrote: Hello everyone,
>
> First of all: Don't worry -- this is my one and only posting on this topic.
>
> The vote, while being clear in itself, has some VERY troublesome
> aspects to it. And it doesn't seem to address what ought to be the
> primary concern, namely to provide information to those
> Moldovan-speakers who read Cyrillic script better than Latin script.
>
> With the risk of being called names by some (please don't), I make
> the following honest proposal:
>
> 1) Let the Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia be locked *but accessible* for now.
>
> 2) Install a Latin--Cyrillic converter similar to the one on SR:WP on
> RO:WP. It does NOT need to be perfect, but it should render the text
> REASONABLY intelligible in Cyrillic. It also (at least for now) needs
> to work only from Latin to Cyrillic, since the editors seem to work
> almost exclusively in Latin script.
>
> 3) Make a little snippet on the main page of :ro: to note that one
> can view this WP in Cyrillic for the benefit of people in
> Transdnistria and whoever else might prefer viewing the contents in Cyrillic.
>
> 4) Then -- and ONLY then --, archive the Cyrillic version and make it
> an automatic redirect to :ro:.
>
>
> This will *respect the decision* made in the vote, while it also
> takes care of an important aspect which was left out of the process
> -- namely, making the information available to ALL
> Romanian-/Moldavian-speakers -- and especially those who may need
> such information the most...
>
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Olve Utne
>
> (from the admin team on Nynorsk Wikipedia)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Relax. Yahoo! Mail virus scanning helps detect nasty viruses!
> _______________________________________________
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> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
Oh, and I did post a list. You must've ignored it.

Mark

On 12/03/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> There is a slight problem with your proposal: no Moldovan speaker ever asked for a Moldovan wikipedia. And, even more funny, there is no wikipedia user registered as Moldovan speaker (at any level) on meta.wiki, en.wiki, and ro.wiki. On mo.wiki, someone created the category, but it's void.  I suggest you all go and look for yourselves.
>
> So, aren't you trying to solve a non-problem?
>
> You know, just because Mark Williamson cries something strong enough does not mean he is right. Unfortunately, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that Mark actually represents an endangered minority. The problem is that he is this minority. Alone. I asked him several times before to post a list of Moldovan supporters. Or at least one. But he avoided the question.
>
> And there is a second problem. He is not really part of the minority he claims to protect. And this is the real problem -- the fact that he hijacked the name of an existing people in order to promote some personal political beliefs that hurt the actual people he is claiming to defend.
>
> Yours,
> [[:en:Dpotop]], [[:ro:Dpotop]], [[:mo:Dpotop]]
>
>
> Olve Utne <olve.utne at gmail.com> wrote: Hello everyone,
>
> First of all: Don't worry -- this is my one and only posting on this topic.
>
> The vote, while being clear in itself, has some VERY troublesome
> aspects to it. And it doesn't seem to address what ought to be the
> primary concern, namely to provide information to those
> Moldovan-speakers who read Cyrillic script better than Latin script.
>
> With the risk of being called names by some (please don't), I make
> the following honest proposal:
>
> 1) Let the Moldovan Cyrillic Wikipedia be locked *but accessible* for now.
>
> 2) Install a Latin--Cyrillic converter similar to the one on SR:WP on
> RO:WP. It does NOT need to be perfect, but it should render the text
> REASONABLY intelligible in Cyrillic. It also (at least for now) needs
> to work only from Latin to Cyrillic, since the editors seem to work
> almost exclusively in Latin script.
>
> 3) Make a little snippet on the main page of :ro: to note that one
> can view this WP in Cyrillic for the benefit of people in
> Transdnistria and whoever else might prefer viewing the contents in Cyrillic.
>
> 4) Then -- and ONLY then --, archive the Cyrillic version and make it
> an automatic redirect to :ro:.
>
>
> This will *respect the decision* made in the vote, while it also
> takes care of an important aspect which was left out of the process
> -- namely, making the information available to ALL
> Romanian-/Moldavian-speakers -- and especially those who may need
> such information the most...
>
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Olve Utne
>
> (from the admin team on Nynorsk Wikipedia)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Relax. Yahoo! Mail virus scanning helps detect nasty viruses!
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Delirium

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:

>Please, Mark.  You're quite capable of making bloody good arguments; we
>all seen you!  But this is just sad.  It doesn't matter what Jimbo will
>say, does it?  No matter what, he's the pawn of corporate aggression ...
>
>
I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's
assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either.  I'm just
worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the
head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which
then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias
into the encyclopedia.

I'm certainly not opposed to people pointing out errors, and I'm not
opposed to the Foundation having some sort of team that facilitates
communication between complaintants and editors.  That's not what's at
issue here, though.  We're no longer talking about correcting errors in
the interest of accuracy---we're talking about mollifying angry
complaintants, preventing bad publicity for the foundation, and other
such things that are not equivalent to writing a factually accurate
encyclopedia.  This leads to some articles having different policies
than other articles, based on who complains and which articles are
likely to lead to publicity.  The more such ancillary concerns influence
things, the worse for the content, in my opinion.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
If you agree that minorities should be catered to, but you don't
believe ro.wiki is the appropriate location, then what IS the
appropriate location?

Mark

On 12/03/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sorry to say this, but I think that any form of Latin --> Cyrillic
> conversion would be most unacceptable for the Romanian Wikipedia. Unlike
> Serbian (and Tatar, for example), Romanian is not a biscriptal language - it
> is a language written in the Latin script. Making ro.wiki similar to
> sr.wikimakes it seem as if the Cyrillic script is a script in which
> Romanian can be
> written as well, which is not true. The Cyrillic script for Moldovan is
> being used in Transnistria only, and while there may be a need to cater for
> content in that variant, mixing it up with the Romanian Wikipedia is, IMO,
> much too contoversial. In total, only about 1% of total Romanian or Moldovan
> speakers write in Cyrillic, and an increasingly large amount of them know
> Latin as well.
>
> People here know my viewpoints on such issues (I am very pro-minority
> rights), but I personally find this proposal much too controversial. It
> risks putting an end to the Romanian Wikipedia community.
>
> Ronline
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


subject:
[WikiEN-l] errors versus errors (was: Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag
 put there by Danny)

body:
Delirium wrote:

>The more such ancillary concerns influence things, the worse for the content, in my opinion.
>
>

I thought I'd elaborate a bit on this, because I think various people
are operating under fundamentally different assumptions of how Wikipedia
should operate, and how its operation affects things outside itself.

 From my perspective, the sole goal of Wikipedia should be to produce an
encyclopedia that is as complete and accurate as possible.  Any policy
changes that contribute to that are welcome.  For example, we could
decide that Wikipedia is getting big enough to warrant being more
judicious about what we write: require more stringent referencing, and
remove (at least temporarily) unreferenced facts, especially ones that
seem questionable.  That's starting to happen already.  We could also
better label how good specific articles (and revisions) are.  That would
allow us to have good articles interspersed with work-in-progress
articles, while keeping errors in the work-in-progress versions from
being too damaging to the overall trustworthiness of our information
(because those articles would be clearly marked as "in progress").  We
have tags that do that to some extent (dispute tags, references-needed
tags, etc.), and the long-anticipated sifter project (or whatever it's
called now) would do it to a greater extent.

There is another viewpoint: that we should take into account concerns
other than the overall accuracy of the encyclopedia.  On this account,
inaccurate negative information about living people is worse than other
types of inaccurate information, and so should be treated specially.  I
disagree with that.  It's certainly a direct case where harm could come
about, but there are many other cases where much more harm could come
about.  Yes, if it's inaccurate, someone could read our article on
[[Jack Thompson (lawyer)]] and get unwarranted negative views of him.
But if we have inaccurate articles, someone could also read our articles
on the Israeli-Arab conflict and come away with unwarranted views of
*that*.  The latter sort of inaccuracy has the potential to have a much
greater negative effect on many more people than defaming Jack Thompson
ever could.

There are a lot more examples, but the main point is that there are a
*lot* of potential errors that could cause real-world problems if people
read them and believe them.  Defamatory information on specific
individuals is neither the only nor the most problematic type of error.
Therefore, trying to make fine-grained decisions about which errors are
worse than others, and setting up special processes to deal with the
ones deemed to be worse, is entirely the wrong approach, and likely to
lead *neither* to a more accurate encyclopedia on the whole, *nor* to a
reduction in the negative effects inaccuracies in Wikipedia have on real
people.  A better approach, in my view, is to attack the problem directly.

We don't want errors at all.  Referencing standards and the like attack
this problem, and perhaps there are additional things we could change.
Since a work-in-progress is rarely error-free, we also want to better
mark how trustworthy particular revisions should be considered, which
will reduce the negative impact of any inaccuracies in the versions
clearly marked "hey this might not be right!".  Various tags and a
future sifter project address this issue.  And, finally, we want a
streamlined way to vet facts.  A number of things address this problem:
a more intuitive referencing system (with references attached to
specific bits of information); community culture about referencing and
dealing with controversies; facilitation by the Foundation to pass along
inaccuracies reported by people who don't edit Wikipedia; and so on.

Of course, legal issues may intervene in some cases; if the Foundation
is the target of legal threats or lawsuits, then they can do what their
lawyers advise them.  The main issue at hand, though, is what we should
do in other cases.

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
I think it's more accurate to say that far too much energy has been
put into this case to attempt to NOT cater for a use.

All of the energy that has been focused on closing mowiki would have
been much more constructive if focused on OPENING WPs for minority
languages of Romania.

Mark

On 12/03/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/12/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > If you agree that minorities should be catered to, but you don't
> > believe ro.wiki is the appropriate location, then what IS the
> > appropriate location?
> >
> > Mark
>
>
> A subdomain, such as mo-cyr:.
> At the moment, however, there doesn't seem to be the demand for that.
> But I think far too much energy has been put into this case to cater for a
> use that at the moment isn't even there, when other Wikipedias, such as
> Romany, which have active users willing to contribute and many potential
> readers, sit in waiting.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


body:
I would be interested in an article creation bot like that. For year
creation on many WPs, also for each day of the year, countries,
cities, pianets.

Mark

On 12/03/06, A. Decorte <klenje at adriacom.it> wrote:
> Hi I'm following with interest the discussion on this topic as admin in
> Friulian wikipedia. I think it would be useful to add things like the
> countries of the worlds or the planets, since these may attract the
> attention of new contributors. About villages, we had actually already
> begun a project to insert Friulian communes in the wikipedia; we already
> have a list which links Friulian and Italian names, but we didn't have a
> bot to actually do the work
> (http://fur.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichipedie:Progjet_comuns).
> Since someone also mentioned Unicode CLDR,  I'm adding in this period
> data for Friulian, therefore I guess that when it will be ready these
> informations could be used also  in Wikipedia
> Regards
> Klenje
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: V. Ivanov

body:
Will it be easy enough to use the tables like
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mass_content_adding/Geographic_data/Using_NGA_data/Localization/Country_codes/English
in bot processing? Maybe some other format is preferable? Should I
just translate the table as it is or we can make out a special format
for such localizations?

Another question is: what should be our primary goal? What we are
going to start with? Countries of the world? Surely, if we have a not
so broad direction to start with, we'll have  the results sooner.

I've recently announced about the project at a Internet news-service
controlled by me: http://www.e-novosti.info/blog/04.03.2006/1 (in
Russian).

2006/3/9, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org>:
> On 3/9/06, V. Ivanov <amikeco at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2006/3/4, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org>:
> > > 2) General translation: After that, we need translation/transcription
> > > of the names of the countries, cities, languages etc.
> >
> > How can I pass the names to you? We have some ready lists by now:
> > * Larger islands:
> > * Countries:
> > * Languages that use(d) Cyrillic script:
> > * Lists of some countries' towns:
>
> The main page for localization is
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mass_content_adding/Localization
>
> You can see how did I start localization process for some NGA data
> (for example: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mass_content_adding/Geographic_data/Using_NGA_data/Localization/Country_codes).
>
> But, just use namespace like:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mass_content_adding/Localization/Geography/Countries
> or whatever you think that it is the best. I opened this issue and I
> am a participant, but I don't think that I should make explicit rules
> there alone :) When enough people start to work in this project, we
> will be able to make more strictly rules.
>
> I am preparing some more infrastructure for the project and I'll write
> to this list when I make something.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Esperu cxiam!


subject: [WikiEN-l] I am Danny

body:
Fuck.  Bet most people reading this didn't even know Danny existed.
But he does.  Thanks, Danny.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
Indeed, Mark. Why don't you champion the rights of actual minorities (such as the roms) instead of promoting conservative stalinist ideas with your mo.wiki?

Ceterum censeo, you still haven't provided the list of Moldovan users supporting your hobby mo.wiki.

Dpotop

Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote: I think it's more accurate to say that far too much energy has been
put into this case to attempt to NOT cater for a use.

All of the energy that has been focused on closing mowiki would have
been much more constructive if focused on OPENING WPs for minority
languages of Romania.

Mark

On 12/03/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)  wrote:
> On 3/12/06, Mark Williamson  wrote:
> >
> > If you agree that minorities should be catered to, but you don't
> > believe ro.wiki is the appropriate location, then what IS the
> > appropriate location?
> >
> > Mark
>
>
> A subdomain, such as mo-cyr:.
> At the moment, however, there doesn't seem to be the demand for that.
> But I think far too much energy has been put into this case to cater for a
> use that at the moment isn't even there, when other Wikipedias, such as
> Romany, which have active users willing to contribute and many potential
> readers, sit in waiting.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
Hello,

I feel that I need a clarification on wikipedia policies related to hobby wikipedias.

Consider the case of the Moldovan language. The Moldovan wikipedia has been created and administered by Mark Williamson, which does not speak the language correctly. He copied (and replaced the latin script with cyrillic) a lot articles from ro.wiki, just to create what looks like a viable wikipedia. I presume exotic languages are a hobby for him, I have no problem with this. Even originality is not a problem, given that the purpose of wiki is to inform.

However, the Moldovan language is not extinct, so the oppinion of native speakers should count. The problem being that no Moldovan-speaking wikipedia user supports Mark Williamson. And when I say no user, I really mean that there is none. Actually, most Moldovan users dislike the existence of this wiki, because the Moldovan language is actually a creation of the Soviet authorities. To support this affirmation, note that there is no registered Moldovan user on en.wiki, meta.wiki, and not even mo.wiki. :)

So, given that this hobby wikipedia actually hurts the very people it was intended  to help, is it normal that it remains online? I remind you once more that no actual Moldovan supports it. By Moldovan speaker I mean a person able to
write Moldovan correctly.

I mean, if wikipedia policy is to grant users hobby wikipedias, Mark should get his, but maybe not using the official ISO code.

Yours,
Dpotop

PS: I am sorry for bugging you with this, but some things discussed here must be clearly said.

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from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Phone calls

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
One question: are calls to the Foundation considered confidential? What is
the standard policy for disclosing the reasons for actions taken by employees
of  the Foundation with respect to content on  Wikipedia? My understanding
from the above is that people  who pick up the phone to get things edited on
Wikipedia get to operate under a  different set of
guidelines from all other contributors.

Danny answers:
    There is no set answer--it all depends on  circumstances. For instance, I
received a call from a Senator's office  complaining that the number of
grandchildren he had was 8, not 6. It was fixed.  No need for discussion. No need
to make a big deal out of it. On the other  hand, I received a call from a
popular singer that information is misstated-it  is fixed quietly, without
attracting trolls by announcing it.I receive a call  from a lawyer--the same. I will
however add this: I spend at least one-third of  my time just answering the
calls. It is very time consuming, and they come in at  all hours of the day,
interrupting what I am otherwise doing (donor management,  for instance). I
CANNOT spend another one-third or more of my time explaining  every phone call to
the community. There are too many other things that have to  be done. And no,
phone calls are not treated differently from regular  edits. BUT these are not
discussions by the community. They are often valid  issues raised by the
people we write about. I will NOT tell a senator, artist,  news-figure, etc. to
GOFIXIT. It is our responsibility, not theirs, to get  the information correct.
These are not contributors--they are the subjects of  whom our contributors
write.

Danny


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Phone calls

body:
On 3/12/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
> One question: are calls to the Foundation considered confidential? What is
> the standard policy for disclosing the reasons for actions taken by employees
> of  the Foundation with respect to content on  Wikipedia? My understanding
> from the above is that people  who pick up the phone to get things edited on
> Wikipedia get to operate under a  different set of
> guidelines from all other contributors.
>
> Danny answers:
>     There is no set answer--it all depends on  circumstances. For instance, I
> received a call from a Senator's office  complaining that the number of
> grandchildren he had was 8, not 6. It was fixed.  No need for discussion. No need
> to make a big deal out of it. On the other  hand, I received a call from a
> popular singer that information is misstated-it  is fixed quietly, without
> attracting trolls by announcing it.I receive a call  from a lawyer--the same. I will
> however add this: I spend at least one-third of  my time just answering the
> calls. It is very time consuming, and they come in at  all hours of the day,
> interrupting what I am otherwise doing (donor management,  for instance). I
> CANNOT spend another one-third or more of my time explaining  every phone call to
> the community. There are too many other things that have to  be done. And no,
> phone calls are not treated differently from regular  edits. BUT these are not
> discussions by the community. They are often valid  issues raised by the
> people we write about. I will NOT tell a senator, artist,  news-figure, etc. to
> GOFIXIT. It is our responsibility, not theirs, to get  the information correct.
> These are not contributors--they are the subjects of  whom our contributors
> write.

That doesn't seem like a particularly scalable policy.


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 3/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sat, 11 Mar 2006 15:51:11 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >Foundations with their assets don't close overnight.  Maybe the
> >website might go down, but that'd be a government action, a foundation
> >(board) action, or a computer glitch - a lawsuit would take at least a
> >few days before an injunction was issued.  That said, a replacement
> >site could be put up within hours.  The community might become
> >somewhat fragmented, though, although I could see some ways in which
> >that is actually a good thing.  In the long run a peer-to-peer system
> >is probably what's best for Wikipedia.
>
> Any corporate entity can close down overnight if the money dries up.
> Lawsuits are a great way to get rid of large amounts of money very
> fast - actually I wonder if organised crime has ever thought of that?
> Set up a law office as a shell company and just watch the money
> chugging down the drain :-)  But seriously...
>
C'mon now, even Enron didn't close "overnight", and I would think the
Wikimedia foundation has much more accurate books than they do.  If
the foundation ran out of money, it would be clear a long time
beforehand.  And even if they did run out of money, there are lots of
servers that could be sold and/or used as collateral for loans to pay
for the bandwidth while the encyclopedia gets copied to others and the
"no, we're really broke, send us money or we disappear" message goes
out).

> >> The h2g2 project never really recovered from "Rupert", the enforced
> >> shutdown between TDV and BBC hosting - the community changed
> >> irrevocably.
>
> >I'm sorry that I have no idea of the facts surrounding that situation,
> >so I can't comment.  Was h2g2 released under a free license?
>
> No, it was a community of people drawn to the idea of an online
> encyclopaedia inspired by the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.  It
> was started by Douglas Adams in 1999, and a lot of the people who
> joined were fans, and also committed to the idea of contributing to
> the Guide (much like Wikipedia).  All rights were released to the
> project, but being British in origin nobody cared over much that the
> license was not open.  The biggest difference between h2g2 and WP for
> me is that on H2G2 an article had to go through peer review before it
> became part of the "edited guide".  You could have as many articles as
> you liked, but only the ones which had been vetted by the community
> were formally endorsed.  Otherwise many common themes - user spaces,
> Talk threads on every article, an aim to be accurate.  Differences too
> - lighter tone, no anonymous posting.
>
> Anyway, TDV was Adams' company and it went titsup.com during the .com
> crash.  The project was offline for well over a month (it seemed like
> forever at the time) and when it came back a lot of the old
> contributors had gone.
>
> Anyway, the point is, Wikipedia is the content, but also the
> community.  Would it survive the period required to assemble new
> hosting hardware, a backer for the necessary infrastructure and so on,
> if the foundation was shut down by a court injunction?
>
> In the end I think that having the project matters more than having
> any one individual article at any one time.
> Guy (JzG)

I'd be so bold as to say that having the project is a negative in and
of itself.  We don't have an "Internet Foundation" where anyone can
call to get some allegedly biased website shut down, do we?

I suppose in the short term the foundation is a useful entity to
collect money from the public to buy some servers and pay for the
bandwidth.  So far the rest hasn't really panned out.  In theory I
suppose some of the money could be used to hire people to create
content, but instead that extra money is being used to hire someone to
delete content.

Anthony