from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

body:
On 9/14/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Now I don't know what it's *copyright* status is -- is it a work of
> the federal government and thus in the public domain, or is it
> considered an exception? -- but it seems clear to me, anyway, that it
> is not "free" in the sense required to be listed on Wikipedia Commons.
> In the United States its usage is restricted fairly heavily, including
> the "non-commercial" bugaboo. It looks to me like, in effect, this
> would be a "copyrighted with permission but no commercial use" tag.
> Which, as I understand it, is verboten.

That restriction is *not* a copyright restriction.  The logo is
clearly in the public domain under the federal work doctrine.  The
rules in question are closer to trademark restrictions than copyright
restrictions; their main purpose is to prohibit fraudulent
representation, and as such are direct restrictions on speech.  The
main targets of these laws are (a) people who try to forge credentials
to appear to be CIA agents (or whatever) and (b) people who send out
phony solicitations using such logos to give their solicitations added
weight.  Since the laws in question are direct speech restrictions,
their enforcement is narrowly drawn; they cannot be enforced in
borderline situations without running smack dab into a First Amendment
challenge.  You most certainly can use the CIA logo in an article
ABOUT the CIA in a commercial context, as long as you don't imply that
the CIA has endorsed the contents of the article.

I don't think that the mere storage of the logo in a repository
"implies endorsement" and so I don't see it as making the logo unfree
for the purposes of the Commons.  However, editors in the United
States need to exercise care in the use of this logo (as well as all
other protected logos, including not only those of many federal
agencies, but also most military insignia and the logos of the USOC,
IOC, Red Cross/Red Crescent, and IIRC the Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts)
to avoid federal criminal liability for unauthorized use.  Most states
have similar laws relating to the use of their various state logos and
insignia.

Kelly


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
On 9/14/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Didn't we already discuss this when Pioneer-12 wanted to retain
> copyright to his user and talk page postings?  Didn't we already
> decide that anything more restrictive than GFDL on Wikipedia would be
> license hell and not worth the trouble to administer?  Didn't we
> already decide that the submit button was equivalent to a digital
> signature agreeing to the terms and conditions of submission?
>
> I thought we already did.  I hold the view that the allowable licenses
> should be consistent across the entire Wikipedia site, and that people
> should know and follow the rules in all Wikipedia locations.  This
> includes user pages, and certainly includes images submitted as well.

This is what I was thinking. The User namespace doesn't really change
the licensing situation at all. We're not actually offering people a
little piece of the web to call their own -- we are not a free hosting
site. (I'm pretty sure that's written in WP:WWIN somewhere)

I also think it's important that people KNOW that the User namespace
could easily be re-used as well as any other, so that the whole
"you're an editor on the Nazi encyclopedia" scenario doesn't seem so
invasive and awful when it inevitably happens, and people realize that
if they post pictures of themselves and their dog on a site which
purports to be free for reuse, it might just get reused! Unless we
specifically say that User pages are licensed in some other way --
which I'm not necessarily opposed to, because they're not really meant
to be part of the "encyclopedia" -- I don't think we should allow
people to have the impression that they are.

FF


subject: [WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

body:
Arf arf! No, no that kind of seal...

There are a number of U.S. federal agencies which have seals the
usages of which are restricted by federal law. For example, about the
seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):

Use of the Central Intelligence Agency Seal
Federal law prohibits use of the words Central Intelligence Agency,
the initials CIA, the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, or any
colorable imitation of such words, initials, or seal in connection
with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial
activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression
that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central
Intelligence Agency.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/notices.html#seal

Now I don't know what it's *copyright* status is -- is it a work of
the federal government and thus in the public domain, or is it
considered an exception? -- but it seems clear to me, anyway, that it
is not "free" in the sense required to be listed on Wikipedia Commons.
In the United States its usage is restricted fairly heavily, including
the "non-commercial" bugaboo. It looks to me like, in effect, this
would be a "copyrighted with permission but no commercial use" tag.
Which, as I understand it, is verboten.

Of course, when I raise things like this on Commons, I seem to incite
a lot of ire from people who want to pick nits about whether or not
its usage is limited because of its *copyright* or because of federal
laws. I have to admit, for a place which is supposed to care so much
about whether or not things are actually free, people seem to think
deleting images is the worst thing in the world, even if there is
little compelling reason to think they are truly in the public domain.
Personally, I'd shoot at first suspicion that something was not really
in the public domain -- there would be nothing worse for Commons than
to be in continual doubt whether or not its licensing information was
correct, it would defeat the entire point -- but that's just me.

Any ideas? I tend to think that any image with this sort of legal
restriction does NOT qualify as "free" in the sense required by
Commons and is antithetical to its purpose -- to provide a repository
of "free" images.

FF


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Article deletion (proposed 1 month hiatus)

body:
geni wrote:

>On 9/14/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>
>>He just said that he's not, at least when it comes to dealing with
>>copyright problems. You're the only one I've seen in this thread who's
>>suggesting that PWD would be used that way. Why can't VfD and CP use
>>different ways of deleting pages?
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>Because accuseing something of being a copyvio will become a lot more
>common rather than being a tectic of last resort.
>
>
I'm unable to follow the logic here. Why does this follow? And why would
it make a difference, since non-copyvios would be rejected by the CP
process anyway? If a page is a copyvio then it _should_ go on CP, if
it's not a copyvio then it shouldn't. The means used to remove the
articles don't matter.

I'm not sure what you mean by "tactic of last resort", either. Do you
mean that people who are dead-set on deleting an article will try
accusing it of being a copyvio if a VfD fails to remove it, even if it's
not? That's bad behavior, again regardless of the means used to remove
the articles.


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Why changing the deletion process is a bad idea

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Do you realize how much disk space an article takes?
>
>
> Deleting an article actually increases the amount of disk space required.
>

I thought disk space was unlimited! :P

--
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Seals and Commons

body:
On 9/14/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Use of the Central Intelligence Agency Seal
> Federal law prohibits use of the words Central Intelligence Agency,
> the initials CIA, the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, or any
> colorable imitation of such words, initials, or seal in connection
> with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial
> activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression
> that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central
> Intelligence Agency.
> http://www.cia.gov/cia/notices.html#seal

Of course, in all fairness, I might also point out that it could just
be that in this instance I'm misreading this clause -- perhaps it is
only saying that you can't use it in a commercial situation IF it is
implying endorsement. I'm somewhat unclear on what we should regard
the copyright status of logos of federal agencies, because they often
seem to be handled differently than "materials produced by" those
agencies in question -- much more restricted and regulated, not
"public domain" in the sense that you can use and re-use and produce
your own copyrights with them.

FF


body:
Sam Korn wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Hey, I've got this really great idea! Let's make everything static HTML,
>>and have a 12-step review stage through an academic committee before
>>anything gets changed! Some sort of New Encyclopedia!
>
>
> Yeah, good idea!  Let's be all modern and textish with the name as
> well!  This is going to be such a success!
>

Ooh! Maybe we can call it "Nupedia"!

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposed handling of cumbersome "disambiguation"

body:
steve v wrote:
> Fair enough, but I was responding more to an apparent
> trend to use disambiguations as hatnotes - above
> article notes which say things like 'this article is
> about the bar with the fubbly fub, know as foo. For
> the fub with the bubbly bar, see [[Barfoo]].' etc.
>
> A short 'for other uses, see [[Foo (disambiguation)]]
> should always suffice, and if there is only one thing
> to link to, then that should be in a section. It costs
> an extra click, but spares us article clutter, which I
> really dislike.
>

I concur. It's just like top posting on mailing lists. You have to read
too much crap to work out the context.

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
>>> Revert wars wouldn't get very far due to the 3RR - it would force
>>> people to come to a *consensus* over whether or not to include an
>>> article, rather than just voting. I bet most deletions wouldn't be
>>> controversial (just as a lot of AfD listings aren't opposed). I don't
>>> see how having vandalism in page histories is a problem.
>>>
>>> Dan
>>>
>>
>> The 3RR is not massively effective in stoping revert wars. if you have
>> an article that runs down the fault line between inclusionist and
>> deletionist camps then it will have no effect whatsoever (well in
>> theory it could turn wikipedia into a straight democracy).
>>
> Thee we have it!  Democracy cannot be gay. :-)
>

Can it at least be happy then? :P

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list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for ASL/English

body:
HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us wrote:
<snip>
>         You should also know:
>
>         The average deaf adult reads at about the 4th grade level
>         http://gri.gallaudet.edu/Literacy/#reading . Thus much of the
>         internet  and encyclopedias in general are inaccessible to these
>         users due to the level of reading required.

No, that data is for 17-year-olds and the 18-year-olds - and they took
the median, without even mentioning the mean. Statistics can say
anything you want them to say, if you use the right statistic.

Do you have any data on countries other than the US?

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from_name: HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for AS/English Wikipedia

body:
Some of you have mentioned SignWriting   (at www.signwriting.org) as a
textual way of displaying ASL. The problem is less than a handful of people
know SignWriting. Video of ASL is needed to  make a true ASL wikipedia


body:
On 9/14/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> It reduces the credibility of the project.

That's a highly disputable claim for which I doubt you can produce
much in the way of support.

Kelly


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
JAY JG wrote:

>
> One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken
> seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a
> reliable (or even acceptable) source.  Credibility is also the thing
> other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on.  Credibility also
> brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.

Hmm, I'd think if we weren't being taken seriously as a reference work,
the servers wouldn't be getting slowly crushed under the ever-growing
weight of readers...

At WP's current size, the chances of finding a random vanity article is
minuscule - in fact, the critiques of WP's credibility by outside people
have been based on points of factual detail in existing articles on
familiar subjects, not on whether an "unencyclopedic" article exists or
not (which shouldn't be too surprising, since no one will go looking for
them in the first place).

Note that I'm not opposed to scrubbing out borderline material, I just
don't see a red-alert-the-encyclopedia-is-decaying-right-before-our-eyes
situation that requires instant reaction. Our credibility is much more
dependent on accuracy and completeness of the high-visibility articles,
and energy spent on the marginal is energy taken away from the important.

Stan


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
>
>On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote: But
> > keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
>
>Does it? How?

It reduces the credibility of the project.

Jay.


from_name: Snowspinner

body:
On Sep 14, 2005, at 11:23 AM, JAY JG wrote:

>> From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
>>
>> On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote: But
>> > keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
>>
>> Does it? How?
>>
>
> It reduces the credibility of the project.
>
> Jay.

I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering
amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has
some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete
encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.

-Snowspinner


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Mulambo

subject: [Wikitech-l] create new articles from the search form

body:
Quick (or not so) question;

I want to add a link to create a new article from the search page when
there are no matches returned for the search, i've gone over and
echoed what is stated in
http://www.wikicities.com/wiki/Help:Searching#Create_new_articles_from_the_search_form
but I get nothing on the search page after, anybody have any ideas?

thanks!


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

body:
Fastfission wrote:

>Arf arf! No, no that kind of seal...
>
>There are a number of U.S. federal agencies which have seals the
>usages of which are restricted by federal law. For example, about the
>seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):
>
>Use of the Central Intelligence Agency Seal
>Federal law prohibits use of the words Central Intelligence Agency,
>the initials CIA, the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, or any
>colorable imitation of such words, initials, or seal in connection
>with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial
>activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression
>that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central
>Intelligence Agency.
>http://www.cia.gov/cia/notices.html#seal
>
>Now I don't know what it's *copyright* status is -- is it a work of
>the federal government and thus in the public domain, or is it
>considered an exception? -- but it seems clear to me, anyway, that it
>is not "free" in the sense required to be listed on Wikipedia Commons.
>In the United States its usage is restricted fairly heavily, including
>the "non-commercial" bugaboo. It looks to me like, in effect, this
>would be a "copyrighted with permission but no commercial use" tag.
>Which, as I understand it, is verboten.
>
>Any ideas? I tend to think that any image with this sort of legal
>restriction does NOT qualify as "free" in the sense required by
>Commons and is antithetical to its purpose -- to provide a repository
>of "free" images.
>
>
I generally concur that their prohibition in more in the nature of a
trademark restriction than a copyright restriction.  It all depends on
how you interpret the word "use"

We may very well be more centrally intelligent, but it could be a
problem if we started calling ourselves the Centrally Intelligent
Association.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Images on user pages

body:
Fastfission wrote:
> Actually, add on to this another question: What about "limited licensed"
> images on user pages? For example, "A picture of me and my dog. For use on
> my user page on Wikipedia only." Obviously this wouldn't work on any article
> page, but do we care if such images are used on user pages?
>
> I'd tend to lead towards "no", simply because user pages must follow
> Wikipedia license guidelines, I'd assume.
>

Some people have suggested putting userspace pages under "Wikipedia
only" licenses by default as a solution to forks and mirrors taking user
pages and the like. *If* that happened, then "limited license" images
would be OK on user pages. But that's a mighty big *if*.

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from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Site search

body:
We also get continued requests, now even through the info-en
mailinglist for the cursor to be automatically put in the search box.

Personally, I don't like it, but maybe it can be made optional?

--Mgm


body:
On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:

> On 9/14/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering
>> amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has
>> some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete
>> encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
>>
> Isn't that exactly why we exist?
>

I always thought so.

-Snowspinner


body:
Worldtraveller wrote:

>I'd support that position.  How could having unencyclopaedic articles not
>damage the credibility of an encyclopaedia?
>
>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Kelly Martin [mailto:kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com]
>>
>>On 9/14/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>It reduces the credibility of the project.
>>>
>>>
>>That's a highly disputable claim for which I doubt you can produce
>>much in the way of support.
>>
The burden of proof lies with the person making the hypothesis, not the
person opposing it.

The claim is "Unencyclopedic articles reduce the credibility of the
encyclopedia"  To put the burden on the person denying the claim would
have him running around looking for information which he believes does
not exist; it would require him to act irrationally.

Speculation is not proof.  The "Guinness Book of World Records" has been
consistent best seller in the past century, as was Joseph P. Haydn's
"Dictionary of Dates" during the previous century.  Both contained an
enormous amount of trivia.

Ec


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
--- Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I also think it's important that people KNOW that the User namespace
> could easily be re-used as well as any other, so that the whole
> "you're an editor on the Nazi encyclopedia" scenario doesn't seem so
> invasive and awful when it inevitably happens, and people realize that
> if they post pictures of themselves and their dog on a site which
> purports to be free for reuse, it might just get reused! Unless we
> specifically say that User pages are licensed in some other way --
> which I'm not necessarily opposed to, because they're not really meant
> to be part of the "encyclopedia" -- I don't think we should allow
> people to have the impression that they are.

It is still perfectly reasonable for a person to naturally want to show an
image of themselves or other Wikipedias at say a WikiMeet without having to
release those images under a license that would allow for extensive reuse. Out
of respect to users, who contribute without pay and just for the fun of it, we
have always been a bit lax on what users do with their user pages.

Again, the *reason* the image use copyright policy forbids NC and special use
images is that having those images in articles makes reuse needlessly difficult
(even though such use is perfectly fine under GNU FDL). So given that, and the
fact that user pages are not part of the encyclopedia, I think we should allow
some image licenses for images on user pages and even the Wikipedia namespace
that we would not allow in the article namespace.

The only issue as I see it, is that we don?t give reusers the option to not
download user pages and other Wikipedia-specific pages. But that is a current
technical problem; not a valid reason to forever forbid NC and special use
images in the user or Wikipedia namespaces.

Forbidding such images for no practical reason smacks of fascism to me. So once
the technical issue I mentioned is fixed, I see no valid reason for us to not
be more permissive on image licensing in the user namespace (within the limits
of WP:NOT a personal web page provider)

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Ros’ Haruo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l Digest, Vol 26, Issue 22

body:
> Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 18:53:56 +0200
> From: Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia page protection report
>
>[...]
>
> This is only true if there is no social norm forbidding a sysop to edit
> a protected page. At least, on the english and french wikipedia, I do
> think the rule of no-edit on a protected page exist.

As an example of a minor edit that was allowed, during the recent
brouhaha over Pat Robertson's suggestion that Hugo Ch?vez be
assassinated, the English "Pat Robertson" article was protected, but a
sysop there implemented my request that a link to the corresponding
Esperanto article be added to the set of interwikis.

Haruo


from_name: uninvited at nerstrand.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Vandalism concerns with commons images

body:
In an effort to start some serious discussion on this, I present
herewith some pros and cons of granting some form of commons adminship
to wikipedia admins (including en, de, fr, and possibly other large
wikipedis).

Pros

1.  The wikipedias would benefit from better handling of commons
vandalism that affects them.  In particular, prominent non-main page
vandalism could be addressed more quickly.
2.  Commons would benefit from an influx of editors.  Wikipedia editors
would be more willing to become involved in commons knowing that they
need not spend some weeks or months "paying their dues" as a non-admin
editor.
3.  The process of transfering suitable images to commons may go faster,
benefitting all projects, due to an atmosphere of increased trust.
4.  Wikipedia editors would become more aware of other languages and
sister projects by virtue of working with their peers from these
projects at commons.
5.  I believe that there would be more rapid growth at commons, which I
believe would be a good thing.

Cons

1.  Some care would have to be taken to be sure that wikipedia admins
are familiar with the differences between their wikipedia and commons,
particularly the multilingual environment and the more restrictive
copyright policy.  A page on the differences between commons and each
of the major wikipedias could be written to address this, much as was
once done for h2g2 an Everything2 authors joining Wikipedia.
2.  Some existing commons admins don't support the idea.
3.  The "small wiki" culture at commons would change, and some people
who moved to commons due to frustration with the size of their home
Wikipedia may find that discouraging.

uc


from_name: Ryan Norton

body:
>>
>
> The issue isn't just silly articles; that said things like our Ashlee
> Simpson coverage have already been the subject of public ridicule, and
> those articles are some of our best written trivia.
>

I've actually heard mostly good things about it... just the quote from
the yahoo blog about it being better than 95% of the current world
leaders or whatever is a little silly.

Thanks,
RN


body:
Snowspinner wrote:

> On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:
>
>> On 9/14/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering
>>> amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has
>>> some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete
>>> encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
>>
>> Isn't that exactly why we exist?
>
> I always thought so.

In the world of encyclopedic Darwinism Britannica has ceased being
competitive.

Ec


body:
>
> We exist to create a great encyclopedia.  I don't see how an
> encyclopedia filled with, as you put it, "silly articles", can ever be
> considered "great".
>

What's "silly" to one person is serious to another, my friend.

Also, if this is the case, wikipedia will never be considered "great"
in this logic.

Thanks,
RN


body:
>
>
>> At WP's current size, the chances of finding a random vanity article
>> is
>> minuscule - in fact, the critiques of WP's credibility by outside
>> people
>> have been based on points of factual detail in existing articles on
>> familiar subjects, not on whether an "unencyclopedic" article exists
>> or
>> not (which shouldn't be too surprising, since no one will go looking
>> for
>> them in the first place).
>
> Critics will.
>
>

The same critics that doomed wikipedia and claimed britannica will
always be better?

Thanks,
RN


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
I always thought it was improper that the exports
contain our userpages. A simple script could replace
all of these with a hardlink to the proper wikipedia
page, with a disclaimer.

SV

--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I also think it's important that people KNOW that
> the User namespace
> > could easily be re-used as well as any other, so
> that the whole
> > "you're an editor on the Nazi encyclopedia"
> scenario doesn't seem so
> > invasive and awful when it inevitably happens, and
> people realize that
> > if they post pictures of themselves and their dog
> on a site which
> > purports to be free for reuse, it might just get
> reused! Unless we
> > specifically say that User pages are licensed in
> some other way --
> > which I'm not necessarily opposed to, because
> they're not really meant
> > to be part of the "encyclopedia" -- I don't think
> we should allow
> > people to have the impression that they are.
>
> It is still perfectly reasonable for a person to
> naturally want to show an
> image of themselves or other Wikipedias at say a
> WikiMeet without having to
> release those images under a license that would
> allow for extensive reuse. Out
> of respect to users, who contribute without pay and
> just for the fun of it, we
> have always been a bit lax on what users do with
> their user pages.
>
> Again, the *reason* the image use copyright policy
> forbids NC and special use
> images is that having those images in articles makes
> reuse needlessly difficult
> (even though such use is perfectly fine under GNU
> FDL). So given that, and the
> fact that user pages are not part of the
> encyclopedia, I think we should allow
> some image licenses for images on user pages and
> even the Wikipedia namespace
> that we would not allow in the article namespace.
>
> The only issue as I see it, is that we don?t give
> reusers the option to not
> download user pages and other Wikipedia-specific
> pages. But that is a current
> technical problem; not a valid reason to forever
> forbid NC and special use
> images in the user or Wikipedia namespaces.
>
> Forbidding such images for no practical reason
> smacks of fascism to me. So once
> the technical issue I mentioned is fixed, I see no
> valid reason for us to not
> be more permissive on image licensing in the user
> namespace (within the limits
> of WP:NOT a personal web page provider)
>
> -- mav
>
>
>
> __________________________________
> Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Hatnotes policy

body:
Ive written up a new policy that defines what hatnotes
are, relative to disambiguations and footnotes, and
recommendations for how to properly and speedily
destroy them:

Wikipedia:Hatnotes

:)
SV

__________________________________________________
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http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Measure

subject: [WikiEN-l] Site search

body:
Google indexes redirect pages? Could something be added to the code of
redirect pages to tell the search engine spiders to skip over them?
Would this make searching for pages on Wiki through google work
better?

On 9/13/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/13/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Indeed. Personally, I only use Google site search on Wikipedia (which,
> > incidently, had [[Sheep shearer]] as the first result for "Blade
> > shears").
> >
> > I've noticed that Wikicities has a google search box below the
> > built-in search. I wonder if we could have the same?
>
>
> Considering it pops a Google search box in whenever the search function has
> been disabled, the code for this must already be out there.
>
> The only problem I have with Wiki-via-Google is that Google also indexes
> redirect pages. Not the end of the world, but it always looks a little
> sloppy, but it's not really Google's fault.
>
> I'm not sure what the effect would be of having redirects add a meta robots
> noindex tag to them, but it might be worth thinking about.
>
> FF
> _______________________________________________
> 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] Indefinite Bans with No Oversight

body:
As a general note, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of a ban,
nobody who says""This
place is a joke. It's too bad, because it had possibilities before
all you fucking Jews came along ..." will ever actually strike me as
worth the effort of loading the webpage to unblock them. Which I
think remains the best test for a ban against policy. If nobody cares
enough to fix it, it must have been right.

-Snowspinner


body:
On Wednesday, September 14, 2005, at 12:28  PM, Delirium wrote:

> JAY JG wrote:
>
>> One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken
>> seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a
>> reliable (or even acceptable) source.  Credibility is also the thing
>> other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on.  Credibility also
>> brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
>>
>> We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we
>> do I think we're sticking our heads in the sand.
>
> I think this is an issue better solved by the validation project
> that's being planned for some time now.

That process is called FAC :). You could have something like "Featured
Article Review" that periodically goes over the FAs to make sure they
meet the standard etc...

Thanks,
RN


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrongly deleted articles

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote this:

"Name one article that was wrongly deleted in the past 3 days."

Oh I haven't done speedy patrol for a while, so I thought I'd take a quick
look for you and see what I could find.  I only looked at the first page
of the log,

FTSEurofirst 80: "FTS Eurofirst 80 Index is a stock index of European
stocks."

And there's a link.

Plenty of context, infinitely expandable--you can add the history, who
compiles it, who uses it, compare it to other indexes of this type in the
same and other markets, and so on.  Excellent encyclopedia-fodder.

A brief google search shows that this index is cited by the OECD, so it's
unlikely to be a hoax or vanity--and even if it were it would be a AfD
candidate.

A similar article, FTSEurofirst 100, was also deleted.

Here's another:

Buffalo Lake, Alberta: "Buffalo Lake is the fourth biggest lake in Alberta."

Short and sweet. Pop that on AfD and you'll have a decent article in no
time.  If anyone says "no context" I shall scream. It's the fourth biggest
lake in Alberta, for heaven's sake!  If it is we need an article on it,
and if it isn't we'll find out soon enough.

13th key: "13th Key is a RPG mage using RPG Maker by Matthew Smith. It is
a combination of A bad game and a good game in terms of grphics and
gameplay."

Well a bit POV but not speediable.  Of course I know who Matthew Smith is
and the deleter didn't.  He could have checked, though.    He's the guy
who wrote Manic Miner for the Spectrum as a seventeen-year-old, and he has
a Wikipedia article.

Are these articles worth bothering about?  Possibly.  Depends what kind of
mood I'm in.  At the very worst, each one of these is AfD territory, not a
speedy---as far as twelve hours ago--and I only looked at speedies by one
particular RC patroller.


body:
>From: <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
>
>On 9/13/05, Zephram Stark <zephramstark at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > It is not usually my nature to bring others into my problems, but I
>think this has gone too far.  People are effectively being banned
>indefinitely without any oversight, in order to associate their misdeeds
>with me.
>
>
>Zephram Stark is trolling and everyone's tired of him, except for his
>many anonymous fans around the world who instinctively know when to
>turn up to revert to his preferred version.
>
>At [[Terrorism]], he inserted a bunch of made-up and bizarre
>definitions of terrorism, claiming he'd been working on that version
>(the consensus version, as he called it) for over a month with other
>editors, none of whom he could name; and when he was reverted, used
>several sockpuppet accounts and about a dozen open proxies to keep
>reverting, which he then cited as evidence that ordinary readers from
>around the planet supported him. Jpgordon protected the page, but the
>trolling continued on the talk page,  with him holding forth,
>organizing polls, insulting people etc. He was opposed by Carbonite,
>Commodore Sloat, Jayjg, Calton, Humus Sapiens, Brandon Yusuf Toropov,
>Smyth, and others, and Smyth filed an RFC about him, which 17 editors
>have certified or endorsed.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Zephram_Stark
>
>Ed blocked him twice on Sept 4 and 5 for personal attacks and legal
>threats, then I blocked him on Sept 8 for three hours for disruption,
>after which he made an edit to his talk page with the summary: "This
>place is a joke. It's too bad, because it had possibilities before all
>you fucking Jews came along ..."
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AZephram_Stark&diff=22814466&oldid=22814157
>Trilobite blocked him for 48 hours for that comment. During the block,
>Zeph created [[User:Go Cowboys]], who starting posting the same
>nonsense at [[Talk:Terrorism]], so I blocked that account indefinitely
>and extended Zeph's block by 48 hours for block evasion. Then
>[[user:Felice L'Angleterre]] turned up on several pages, including
>[[Talk:Terrorism]], claiming to be a major publisher and the editor of
>two newspapers which were investigating Wikipedia.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ATerrorism&diff=23063599&oldid=23031192
>It was clearly Zeph, so Felice got blocked too. Zeph's block was
>extended by another 48 hours, and I've told him if he does it again,
>I'll block him indefinitely.
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AZephram_Stark&diff=23073044&oldid=23061910
>
>That's about it, but it's hopefully enough.
>
>Sarah

Well, almost enough.  In addition to Sarah's cogent summary, I should add
that Zephram Stark has been at this for over two months now, and that David
Gerard was consulted regarding "Go Cowboys" and "Felice L'Angleterre", and
he stated that the technical information available to him also confirmed
their obvious sockpuppet status, and expressed support that they be blocked.

Jay.


from_name: Geoff Burling

body:
On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, JAY JG wrote:

> >From: Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com>
> >
> >On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:
> >
> >>On 9/14/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>>I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering
> >>>amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has
> >>>some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete
> >>>encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
> >>>
> >>Isn't that exactly why we exist?
> >>
> >
> >I always thought so.
>
> We exist to create a great encyclopedia.  I don't see how an encyclopedia
> filled with, as you put it, "silly articles", can ever be considered
> "great".
>
I agree with Jay here (& I hope that doesn't surprise him too much ;).

Consider Wikipedia is a form of publication: currently we have the
lowest threshold I can imagine for acceptance of any publication. All
you have to do is submit an article that contains information that is
somehow useful. (Please ignore any need to define "useful" for the
moment.)

By establishing a threshold, we end up rejecting material -- for
good or bad reasons -- which will inevitably result in hurt feelings.
(That is why in the publishing world rejection slips are so impersonal.)
Hurt feelings -- & the fact a certain percentage of submissions are
simply dreadful, unusable or submitted as a joke -- result in the
"toxic atmosphere" of the deletion process.

And we can't rely on only a "Speedy Delete" process: there will always
be cases that fall into the grey area, if for no other reason than the
need for a second opinion. And, as Tony Sideway pointed out above, some
items are incorrectly placed into CSD -- for whatever reason.

The only solution to this is to COMPLETELY ABOLISH this threshold:
either we have one or we don't have one. However, if we have no
threshold, then we have to deal with unuseful articles full of gibberish,
unfixable POV rants, hoaxes, & biographical entries that contain nothing
more than a date of birth, details of education, & details of personality.
Perhaps because we can somehow hide them in Wikipedia, we can argue that
they aren't a problem -- but left unchecked, these unuseful articles
will accumulate & grow into a problem.

Although I believe we need a threshold for Wikipedia, we also should
acknowledge that in most cases an article was submitted with the best
of intentions: since we are knifing someone's baby, there is no need
to express glee while doing so. It appears to me that there is a
consensus that the words "cruft" & "notable" should not be used in AfD:
would anyone object if I edit the opening page & explain that use of
either of these words will result with the nomination being immediately
closed as a Speedy Keep?

Geoff


from_name: Pawe³ Dembowski

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Treat like Hieroglyphics (was Re: new request
	for ASL/English wikipedia)

body:
> SignWriting looks like the best system as far as intelligibility goes, but
> isn't it copyrighted?  I mean, I know that the creator has made it free for
> use and all (see
> http://signwriting.org/about/questions/quest0004.html ),
> but doesn't that still make it ineligible for use in a Wikimedia project?
> It would be like using a special copyrighted ortography for English, or a
> copyrighted conlang (Toki Pona, anyone?).
> Yet another issue that must be addressed, I suppose.
> Cheers,
> - Craig [[en:Lankiveil]]

We could always ask...

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: SPUI

body:
Phroziac wrote:

> As for the delete warring, there's no reason an admin couldn't come
> around, protect the page, and use {{deletedpage}}, like we already do
> when people try to repeatedly re-create deleted materials, or protect
> it on an undeleted version, like we already do when people vandalize
> articles heavily.

So instead of the supposed consensus on VFD, which in reality at least
lets all people have a say, we have one admin (in theory all admins)
deciding whether an article is "notable" enough to be protected as
deleted or not. I fail to see how this is an improvement. As an
inclusionist, PWDS sounds somewhat appealing until we get to cases like
this. Though I guess I could get it from the history and "merge" it with
an existing somewhat-related article until the protection is removed.


from_name: Zephram Stark

body:
JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>Well, almost enough.  In addition to Sarah's cogent summary,
>I should add that Zephram Stark has been at this for over two
>months now, and that David Gerard was consulted regarding
>"Go Cowboys" and "Felice L'Angleterre", and he stated that
>the technical information available to him also confirmed their
>obvious sockpuppet status, and expressed support that they
>be blocked.
>Jay.

I think you should let David Gerard speak for himself, Jay.  I have made no sockpuppets.  Proof that I have absolutely does not exist.  Please try to stay to the facts.  If you and SlimVirgin want to quote me, please quote in context.

Thanks,
Zephram

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from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Print Interface

body:
Doug wrote:

>I have been tasked with making a print interface for MediaWiki.  The user
>would select and article and specifiy how many internal links deep to print.
>
>How can I do this?
>
>
I'd suggest repeatedly querying the links table in the database to get
the list of (potential) articles to print.

I would strongly suggest a special page "in between", where above list
is shown, and the user can (un)check the pages (s)he likes.

Then, generates a temporary article text, consisting of the following:

title1

{{:title1}}

title2

{{:title2}}

and so forth. Then run it through the parser, return the page and
JavaScript-run the print dialog.

My 2 cents.

Magnus
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: Differential storage

body:
Netocrat wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Sep 2005 14:22:42 +0100, Rowan Collins wrote:
>>You can use the Special:Export page to export the complete histories
>>of individual pages, so you could pick a few which seemed suitably
>>representative and play with them.
>
>
> The complete history option doesn't have any affect on the articles I
> tried on wikipedia although it works on my server - is it disabled?

Yeah, that's temporarily disabled as it tends to die on very long pages
and that was causing some problems. Needs some work...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: David Benbennick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

body:
On 9/14/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> considered an exception? -- but it seems clear to me, anyway, that it
> is not "free" in the sense required to be listed on Wikipedia Commons.
> In the United States its usage is restricted fairly heavily, including
> the "non-commercial" bugaboo. It looks to me like, in effect, this
> would be a "copyrighted with permission but no commercial use" tag.
> Which, as I understand it, is verboten.

This is something to discuss on the Commons, or on commons-l.  I don't
see that a discussion of the Commons' policies can possibly be
relevent on wikien-l.

> Personally, I'd shoot at first suspicion that something was not really
> in the public domain

Perhaps that's why you aren't given a gun.


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Differencing Engine

body:
> I tried to use Algorithm::Diff on split("",$str)'ed contents of 2 revisions,
> and for bigger (like 30kB) pages it takes a few minutes. This is weird.
>
> How is MediaWiki doing it ? Does it try to find longest common subsequence
> of lines or characters ?

Well, MediaWiki surely doesn't consider each character singly, but
rather whole words. I don't know if that's it, but seeing as the
algorithm is O(n*m), it seems to make some sense.


from_name: Delirium

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Treat like Hieroglyphics (was Re: new request
	for	ASL/English wikipedia)

body:
Craig Franklin wrote:

>SignWriting looks like the best system as far as intelligibility goes, but
>isn't it copyrighted?  I mean, I know that the creator has made it free for
>use and all (see http://signwriting.org/about/questions/quest0004.html ),
>but doesn't that still make it ineligible for use in a Wikimedia project?
>It would be like using a special copyrighted ortography for English, or a
>copyrighted conlang (Toki Pona, anyone?).
>
>
He seems to say in that link that he *doesn't* claim any ownership of
the writing system itself.  In any case, the free to use for anybody
sort of license is basically like the "BSD-style" licenses (or cc-by
without -sa), which is compatible with both the GFDL and the general
free-content philosophy.

-Mark


body:
> Stokoe and HamNoSys are very easy to write using computers, and can
> use fonts and normal text rather than special markup languages.
> (clustering "sig" characters in Stokoe present a difficulty, but not
> an impossibility, for the average font-founder)

Why not write in any of those, and generate any of the SignWriting
ones? Or user's choice and conversion, like Simplified/Traditional
Chinese? Anyway, using written English is probably the worst option.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: "James D. Forrester" <james at jdforrester.org>
>
>JAY JG wrote:
> > > From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
> > >
> > > On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > But keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
> > >
> > > Does it? How?
> >
> > It reduces the credibility of the project.
>
>In whose eyes? And why should we care what other people think of how
>credible our project is in the short term? We're going to be here for
>centuries hence.

One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as
an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even
acceptable) source.  Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e.
Britannica) harp on.  Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of
support and funding.

We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do I
think we're sticking our heads in the sand.

Jay.


body:
>From: Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com>
>
>On Sep 14, 2005, at 11:23 AM, JAY JG wrote:
>
>>>From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
>>>
>>>On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote: But
>>> > keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
>>>
>>>Does it? How?
>>>
>>
>>It reduces the credibility of the project.
>>
>>Jay.
>
>I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering  amount of
>information but that some people dismiss because it has  some silly
>articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete  encyclopedia. If I
>wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
>

The issue isn't just silly articles; that said things like our Ashlee
Simpson coverage have already been the subject of public ridicule, and those
articles are some of our best written trivia.

Jay.


body:
>From: Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com>
>
>On Sep 14, 2005, at 12:09 PM, Phroziac wrote:
>
>>On 9/14/05, Snowspinner <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>I would rather have an encyclopedia that has a truly staggering
>>>amount of information but that some people dismiss because it has
>>>some silly articles than a well-respected but heavily incomplete
>>>encyclopedia. If I wanted that, I'd just go to Britannica.
>>>
>>Isn't that exactly why we exist?
>>
>
>I always thought so.

We exist to create a great encyclopedia.  I don't see how an encyclopedia
filled with, as you put it, "silly articles", can ever be considered
"great".

Jay.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia page protection report

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> I can see three immediate ways to address the issue, by increasing
> complexity:
>
> * limit protections by policy
> * add an automated or template-based visible marker to protections in
> the article namespace
> * add an "expiry" feature for page protection similar to blocks
>
> I am merely reporting this issue and will leave it to others to deal with.

Perhaps using Salvatore Ingala's validation feature would help. After
all, he did design it with the aim of reducing page protection.

http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-July/030898.html

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Phroziac

subject: [WikiEN-l] Seals and Commons

body:
Zomgwtfbbq! Wikimedia on Wheels!

On 9/14/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Fastfission wrote:
> > Arf arf! No, no that kind of seal...
> >
> > There are a number of U.S. federal agencies which have seals the
> > usages of which are restricted by federal law. For example, about the
> > seal of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA):
> >
> > Use of the Central Intelligence Agency Seal
> > Federal law prohibits use of the words Central Intelligence Agency,
> > the initials CIA, the seal of the Central Intelligence Agency, or any
> > colorable imitation of such words, initials, or seal in connection
> > with any merchandise, impersonation, solicitation, or commercial
> > activity in a manner reasonably calculated to convey the impression
> > that such use is approved, endorsed, or authorized by the Central
> > Intelligence Agency.
> > http://www.cia.gov/cia/notices.html#seal
> >
> > Now I don't know what it's *copyright* status is -- is it a work of
> > the federal government and thus in the public domain, or is it
> > considered an exception? -- but it seems clear to me, anyway, that it
> > is not "free" in the sense required to be listed on Wikipedia Commons.
> > In the United States its usage is restricted fairly heavily, including
> > the "non-commercial" bugaboo. It looks to me like, in effect, this
> > would be a "copyrighted with permission but no commercial use" tag.
> > Which, as I understand it, is verboten.
> >
> > Of course, when I raise things like this on Commons, I seem to incite
> > a lot of ire from people who want to pick nits about whether or not
> > its usage is limited because of its *copyright* or because of federal
> > laws. I have to admit, for a place which is supposed to care so much
> > about whether or not things are actually free, people seem to think
> > deleting images is the worst thing in the world, even if there is
> > little compelling reason to think they are truly in the public domain.
> > Personally, I'd shoot at first suspicion that something was not really
> > in the public domain -- there would be nothing worse for Commons than
> > to be in continual doubt whether or not its licensing information was
> > correct, it would defeat the entire point -- but that's just me.
> >
> > Any ideas? I tend to think that any image with this sort of legal
> > restriction does NOT qualify as "free" in the sense required by
> > Commons and is antithetical to its purpose -- to provide a repository
> > of "free" images.
> >
> >
>
> So they will SUE US IN A COURT OF LAW IN TRENTON, NEW JERSEY? :)
>
> It's only illegal to use their image if you impersonate them. The
> copyright of the image itself is that the image is in the public domain.
> Effectively, it's a Trademark (albeit one without copyright), the
> misrepresentation of which may render one liable to prosecution.
>
> And if they want to stop us, fsck them. We'll move the media servers to
> Paris or Amsterdam, on wheels if needs be.
>
> --
> Alphax                      |   /"\
> Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
> OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
> http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Netocrat

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Differential storage

body:
Modified repost: 1st msg apparently reached moderator as I received an
email but never appeared on gmane nor did I receive a rejection email.

On Mon, 12 Sep 2005 22:51:28 +0200, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 13, 2005 at 12:24:27AM +1000, Netocrat wrote:
>> I have ideas, I may do that at some point.  My instinct is that a diff
>> scheme that took account of intra-line changes as well as block text moves
>> would result in the most compression; and that if that alone didn't, then
>> compressing that diff scheme in the way that the entire revision set
>> currently is, would.  The question I haven't delved into is: how difficult
>> would it be to do that and how computation-intensive compared to what is
>> currently done?
>
> Maybe download a dump and try with xdelta ?

Looks promising.  xdelta stores an md5 sum in the differential but xdelta3
allows this to be omitted which for very small changes makes a big
difference.  There seems to be a bit of other extraneous stuff included
(e.g. reconstructed filename) that perhaps can be avoided through using
the api instead of the command line.  Other than that it does more or less
what I described, although it produces binary output and it compromises on
optimality for speed.

A preliminary test on *very* limited data shows that it may be a fair
improvement over gzip for space.

xdelta3 supports internally compressing the diff with a method such as
gzip, which again yields improvements but does not seem to be worth the
(significant) extra time required - if this were to be done it should be
done on a group of diffs rather than individually.  Testing shows that
this group approach offers a huge improvement in compression and
performance over the one-at-a-time approach.  It also, as I expected,
again hugely reduces final space requirements compared to the current
gzip-a-set-of-revisions approach.

In terms of speed, in the case of a single revision it slightly
outperforms gzip at compression.  Given that from what I understand
(and I may have this wrong) under the current approach gzip must
decompress an entire set of revisions and then add the latest revision to
that set and recompress it; whereas xdelta3 need compress only the latest
revision, this would probably yield an overall improvement.

For decompression speed, xdelta3 again is faster in the case of 1
revision.  Here though, the fact that gzip works on multiple sets
of revisions at a time goes in its favour.  On average gzip would be
faster since xdelta3 must perform multiple sequential operations to get at
an arbitrary revision but gzip only requires one.

The other related issue that Tim Starling raised - that of accessing all
the data in one query - remains open.  A stored procedure seems
appropriate - I know the MySQL team have proposed them but I don't know if
they've yet materialised.  The other option is as I described above - gzip
a set of xdelta3 diffs.  This is the most space-efficient method but also
the most computation-intensive (aside from the
compress-each-individual-diff approach).

So overall there's potential, but I need to work on some representative
data to present a proper summary of the pros and cons.  Which presents a
David and Goliath problem... 56k dial-up vs 31G xml download. Can anyone
suggest a source for a smaller data set in English with some
representative multiple-revision articles, preferably a few edit wars etc.

--
http://members.dodo.com.au/~netocrat


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
On 9/14/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's what I see as a good thing. By involving people in the
> discussion who are not emotionally attached to the subject being
> discussed we can get views from outside the field of "fanatics" (sorry
> for not knowing a better word here).
>
> I always try to back up my vote with some point of policy or research
> (see the photographer on AFD today). More people should base their
> votes off facts instead of "Keep, X is good/encyclopedic/verifiable".
> They should address the policy point that's being addressed. I.e "What
> do you mean not-notable? They were the main guest on Oprah last week
> and they have a top 100  Amazon sales rank." instead of "Writers are
> notable".
>
> You could change the deletion process a thousand times, but if people
> put their own feelings of what should be included in the discussion
> (and preferably immediately). We'd agree on stuff a lot easier.

Perhaps closing admins should simply ignore opinions of the form "nn,
delete" and "Keep all schools".  People will stop offering such such
bland opinions if they realize that their input is being ignored and
will instead offer more useful commentary.

I'm also entirely in favor of speedy closing any listing where the
nomination offers no more than "nn, delete" or the equivalent.
Subsequent opiners can merely be indicating their support for the
nominator's argument, but at least the nominator is and ought to be
obliged to make a non-facile argument for the deletion of the article.

Kelly


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia API?

body:
Michal Migurski wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm new to the list and somewhat-new to Mediawiki.
>
> I am trying set up some wrapper code that automates certain MediaWiki
> functions, such as page creation or renaming. For example, an  external
> application would attempt to create a new article in MW. It  might check
> to see whether the article exists, and create it if it  does not. It
> might append some content to the article text. It might  move the
> article, or set up a redirect. At the moment, I'm  accomplishing this by
> issuing HTTP sub-requests to MediaWiki and  interpreting the response.
>
> MediaWiki does not seem to have a public-facing API, is that right?

Yes

> Are there any F/OSS projects that provide such functionality without
> requiring screen-scraping?

No, although the best-maintained screen-scraping product is
pywikipediabot, it has many of the functions you want.

> Alternatively, is there any way to  interface
> with the internals of the MW, *without* invoking an entire  request,
> i.e. the stuff that requires the MEDIAWIKI constant?

No, not really. It'd only save you 20ms and you'd end up rewriting half
the stuff that's inside the MEDIAWIKI sections.

> Failing  *that*,
> does documentation exist that explains MW's DB schema so I  can begin to
> write my own?

Oh, so you want to rewrite it in some other language? Have fun, the
documentation is in tables.sql.

> I'm using the current-stable version, 1.4.9, if that matters.

You should probably upgrade to 1.5, 1.4.x will be obsolete soon.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Sam Korn wrote:

>On 9/14/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>No, the real claim is "AfD is damaging the project and should be deleted".
>>The burden of proof is on those who make that claim.
>>
>
>Quite so.  I have seen scores of posts to this list that claim that
>AfD damages Wikipedia and its culture, but never actually any
>_evidence_.
>
What do you think constitutes evidence? I've already said that I'm
not lending my experience and knowledge of WP to evaluating the
worthiness of articles because of the way the process works. I'm not
so egotistical as to claim that my absence from AfD materially
damages WP, but the last time I looked (a while ago) people were
making mistakes that I could have corrected.

Stan


from_name: Michael Turley

body:
On 9/14/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: "James D. Forrester" <james at jdforrester.org>
> >
> >JAY JG wrote:
> > > > From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
> > > >
> > > > On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > But keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
> > > >
> > > > Does it? How?
> > >
> > > It reduces the credibility of the project.
> >
> >In whose eyes? And why should we care what other people think of how
> >credible our project is in the short term? We're going to be here for
> >centuries hence.
>
> One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as
> an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even
> acceptable) source.  Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e.
> Britannica) harp on.  Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of
> support and funding.
>
> We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do I
> think we're sticking our heads in the sand.

I think your classification of getting taken seriously as "one of
Wikipedia's biggest issues" is a POV, and personally, I don't agree
with it.

Reliability and credibility have absolutely nothing to do with the
selection of article topics.  R&C are a function of quality and
quantity of references and citations used within the individual
articles.  Quality of coverage gets us respect, but breadth of
coverage gets us admiration for our unique ability in the world of
encyclopedias to cover more than anyone else.  Any educator who finds
a properly sourced and cited article in Wikipedia will respect it,
however, educators who find the best written prose in the world in
articles that lack cited references won't respect that article.

Wikipedia will never be the monolithic "respected source" that some
seem to want it to be as long as it remains a wiki.  Individual
articles will be respected sources, and bring respect to the project,
and if we fork upward with a selection of our best cited and sourced
articles, we'll have a monolithic "respected source" within the
project, but the wiki-ness of the main prevents it from ever serving
this role.  There are just too many rough edges in a wiki

I can write you a reliable and credible article on virtually any
topic, but many of those topics will be excluded from Wikipedia
because a consensus considers them to be "unencyclopedic" and I simply
accept that as part of the project.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On 14/09/05, Netocrat <netocrat at dodo.com.au> wrote:
> So overall there's potential, but I need to work on some representative
> data to present a proper summary of the pros and cons.  Which presents a
> David and Goliath problem... 56k dial-up vs 31G xml download. Can anyone
> suggest a source for a smaller data set in English with some
> representative multiple-revision articles, preferably a few edit wars etc.

You can use the Special:Export page to export the complete histories
of individual pages, so you could pick a few which seemed suitably
representative and play with them.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
>From: Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com>
>
>JAY JG wrote:
>
>>
>>One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously
>>as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even
>>acceptable) source.  Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias
>>(i.e. Britannica) harp on.  Credibility also brings donations and other
>>kinds of support and funding.
>
>Hmm, I'd think if we weren't being taken seriously as a reference work,
>the servers wouldn't be getting slowly crushed under the ever-growing
>weight of readers...

There's a difference between broad popularity and being taken seriously.
Wikipedia is free and huge, that alone makes it popular.

>At WP's current size, the chances of finding a random vanity article is
>minuscule - in fact, the critiques of WP's credibility by outside people
>have been based on points of factual detail in existing articles on
>familiar subjects, not on whether an "unencyclopedic" article exists or
>not (which shouldn't be too surprising, since no one will go looking for
>them in the first place).

Critics will.

>Note that I'm not opposed to scrubbing out borderline material, I just
>don't see a red-alert-the-encyclopedia-is-decaying-right-before-our-eyes
>situation that requires instant reaction. Our credibility is much more
>dependent on accuracy and completeness of the high-visibility articles,
>and energy spent on the marginal is energy taken away from the important.

You have a good point, though I'm not suggesting that there is any "red
alert" situation".  However, as has also been pointed out, the issue is not
just vanity articles and silly articles, but also with the 95% of articles
placed on AfD which violate WP:NOT.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrongly deleted articles

body:
On 9/14/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Oh I haven't done speedy patrol for a while, so I thought I'd take a quick
> look for you and see what I could find.  I only looked at the first page
> of the log,
>
>
> FTSEurofirst 80: "FTS Eurofirst 80 Index is a stock index of European
> stocks."
>
> And there's a link.
>
>
> Plenty of context, infinitely expandable--you can add the history, who
> compiles it, who uses it, compare it to other indexes of this type in the
> same and other markets, and so on.  Excellent encyclopedia-fodder.
>
That sounds like it would *barely* pass context standards to me..
>
(snip)
>
> Here's another:
>
> Buffalo Lake, Alberta: "Buffalo Lake is the fourth biggest lake in Alberta."
>
> Short and sweet. Pop that on AfD and you'll have a decent article in no
> time.  If anyone says "no context" I shall scream. It's the fourth biggest
> lake in Alberta, for heaven's sake!  If it is we need an article on it,
> and if it isn't we'll find out soon enough.

Speedy undeleted and stub tagged. That's longer then most of our
stubs! But, it's not like it would have been hard to re-write into a
perfect stub. And, more information would have kept it from being
speedied..

> 13th key: "13th Key is a RPG mage using RPG Maker by Matthew Smith. It is
> a combination of A bad game and a good game in terms of grphics and
> gameplay."
>
>
> Well a bit POV but not speediable.  Of course I know who Matthew Smith is
> and the deleter didn't.  He could have checked, though.    He's the guy
> who wrote Manic Miner for the Spectrum as a seventeen-year-old, and he has
> a Wikipedia article.
Uhm...that *REALLY* sounds like something that some 15 year old made
when he was bored, but if you know who he is, then I guess it's not.
More information would have kept it from being speedied. I wouldn't
object if you wrote a new stub for it.

>
> Are these articles worth bothering about?  Possibly.  Depends what kind of
> mood I'm in.  At the very worst, each one of these is AfD territory, not a
> speedy---as far as twelve hours ago--and I only looked at speedies by one
> particular RC patroller.

They're halfway decent stubs, but we really don't need a lot of one
line articles, and we probably really didn't loose anything by
deleting them.


body:
On 9/14/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/14/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > >From: "James D. Forrester" <james at jdforrester.org>
> > >
> > >JAY JG wrote:
> > > > > From: Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com>
> > > > >
> > > > > On 13/09/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > > But keeping unencyclopedic ones hurts Wikipedia too.
> > > > >
> > > > > Does it? How?
> > > >
> > > > It reduces the credibility of the project.
> > >
> > >In whose eyes? And why should we care what other people think of how
> > >credible our project is in the short term? We're going to be here for
> > >centuries hence.
> >
> > One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken seriously as
> > an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a reliable (or even
> > acceptable) source.  Credibility is also the thing other encyclopedias (i.e.
> > Britannica) harp on.  Credibility also brings donations and other kinds of
> > support and funding.
> >
> > We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do I
> > think we're sticking our heads in the sand.
>
> I think your classification of getting taken seriously as "one of
> Wikipedia's biggest issues" is a POV, and personally, I don't agree
> with it.
>
> Reliability and credibility have absolutely nothing to do with the
> selection of article topics.  R&C are a function of quality and
> quantity of references and citations used within the individual
> articles.  Quality of coverage gets us respect, but breadth of
> coverage gets us admiration for our unique ability in the world of
> encyclopedias to cover more than anyone else.  Any educator who finds
> a properly sourced and cited article in Wikipedia will respect it,
> however, educators who find the best written prose in the world in
> articles that lack cited references won't respect that article.
>
> Wikipedia will never be the monolithic "respected source" that some
> seem to want it to be as long as it remains a wiki.  Individual
> articles will be respected sources, and bring respect to the project,
> and if we fork upward with a selection of our best cited and sourced
> articles, we'll have a monolithic "respected source" within the
> project, but the wiki-ness of the main prevents it from ever serving
> this role.  There are just too many rough edges in a wiki
>
> I can write you a reliable and credible article on virtually any
> topic, but many of those topics will be excluded from Wikipedia
> because a consensus considers them to be "unencyclopedic" and I simply
> accept that as part of the project.

I wanted to add to my own post that Britannica and Encarta and similar
others can get away with far fewer references and sources is because
they aren't wikis.  Everyone working on the publicly visible portions
of product are paid professionals who lose their paychecks if they're
not reliable and credible.  We don't have that particular "luxury", so
we need to cite sources and provide references.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Michal Migurski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia API?

body:
>>>>> Are there any F/OSS projects that provide such functionality
>>>>> without
>>>>> requiring screen-scraping?
>>>>
>>>> No, although the best-maintained screen-scraping product is
>>>> pywikipediabot, it has many of the functions you want.
>>>
>>> I'll look into it... though Python isn't really an option for now.
>>> I'm using PHP.
>>
>> I see I'm not the only crazy guy who uses PHP for a bot. Good to
>> know that.
>
> I have the feeling that Michal is not actually trying to write a
> bot. Looking at his original posting, my interpretation suggests
> that he has already written a bot but is unhappy with it because he
> has direct access to the DB and there should therefore be better/
> cleaner ways of achieving the effects he wants.

That's right, yes - I'm trying to treat MW as a library for use in a
larger project. The wiki is intended to act as an annotation service
for other resources. Pages are created on the fly when users want to
make shared notes about a resource.

> Michal, if I'm right, then I guess the best way would be to try to
> use the functions in the MediaWiki code. Yes, some of it uses
> globals, but there are scripts in the 'maintenance' directory that
> use the MediaWiki code to accomplish things outside an HTTP
> request. You might want to have a look at those.

Good pointer, I'll do this.
I realize I'm asking RTFM-type questions here - mainly I'm looking
for advice on which FM to R.
Dariusz, I'll also have a look at your PHP bot.

-mike.

----------------------------------------------------------------
michal migurski- mike at stamen.com
                  415.558.1610


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrongly deleted articles

body:
So perhaps some people were a bit trigger happy with speedying, but
non of that proves AfD isn't working like it should, which is why I
asked for such a wrongly deleted article.

Let me rephrase: "Is there any article that was wrongly deleted within
the past 3 days as a result of ignorance of the nominator or sheep
voting by others without check the article and possible sources?"

Highly controversial articles like schools and roads, should be kept
out of this particular list, because whether their deletion was wrong
depends on whatever POV you hold on the issue.

--Mgm


body:
On 9/14/05, HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us <HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us> wrote:
>
> Some of you have mentioned SignWriting   (at www.signwriting.org) as a
> textual way of displaying ASL. The problem is less than a handful of people
> know SignWriting. Video of ASL is needed to  make a true ASL wikipedia
How exactly do you edit a video like wikitext?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Vandalism concerns with commons images

body:
On 9/14/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> This would be a good candidate for a technical solution, specifically
> using the MediaWiki feature of user access levels. If the only adminship
> function you need on Commons is protection, for the purpose of
> protecting another project from vandalism, then it should be routine to
> grant (only) that function to anyone who's an admin on said project. It
> might even be possible to make this automatically part of adminship once
> single login is implemented, but at that point I feel like I'm wandering
> into pipe dream territory.

Automatic? Hmm, I don't think the software should do it. If you mean
automatic as in someone sets you up, sure


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
--- Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Practical reason #1: The submit button and accompanying text referring
> to the licensing of submissions are identical.  We'll have to change
> those.

And that would be hard??

> #2: Inertia and lack of differentiation between user space and
> the rest of Wikipedia.  People already expect to be able to take items
> from all of Wikipedia under GFDL license.

Why would reusers even want or need to also have user pages? Also, from my
experience, users in general do not like to have their user pages on other
websites. So keeping user pages in the same database dump that reusers use has
no practical benefit to anybody except maybe the person who creates the
database dumps (exporting everything and only having one dump is easier).

> #3: License hell as described in the next paragraph.
>
> If we make an arbitrary exception, I think it could ONLY apply from
> whatever point we choose going forward.  Current content has already
> been submitted under the old terms.

The old terms, as you put it, do not allow any NC or special use images. So
what is your point? Do you mean to say that all NC and special use images now
marked for deletion be deleted regardless of what namespace they were displayed
from?

-- mav

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikipedia API?

body:
Michal Migurski wrote:
> I realize I'm asking RTFM-type questions here - mainly I'm looking  for
> advice on which FM to R.

There aren't too many Ms to R, F or otherwise. :)

Insofar as there is documentation, it's probably mostly going to be the
comments in the source code. (There are phpdoc comments on most method
headers, though not all complete.)

The internal API has changed significantly over time and remains
unstable, but you can look at the existing source code to see how things
are currently done.

(Some of the maintenance scripts however are out of date or unmaintained
because we don't use them much ourselves.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Arbeo M

subject: [Wikitech-l] Request for the creation of a Neapolitan Wikipedia

body:
Hi everybody!

As most of you probably know there are quite a few
requests for Wikipedias in new languages to be
created. Many of them are still discussed
controversially. Others are not but are unequivocally
welcomed. Nevertheless, no new Wikipedias have been
set up for about three months now and we might lose
potential new contributors if we leave them on
stand-by for too long.

The most clear-cut case seems to be the Neapolitan
Wikipedia. Matter of fact, a large number of
Wikipedians are supporting the idea, noboby opposes it
and several native speakers are willing to contribute
and waiting to get under way.

I know you guys are extremely busy. Could someone
please find the time to take of this and install a new
wiki for Neapolitan? I'd love to do this myself but
unfortunatly can't.

Details are here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages

Regards,

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
--- Rowan Collins <rowan.collins at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, http://download.wikimedia.org *does* now carry filtered
> dumps which don't carry User: and Wikipedia: pages.

Ah - That needs to be made much more explicit. Titles like all_titles_in_ns0.gz
are buried in a rather long list at
http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/ and are fairly cryptic to anybody
not familiar with MediaWiki.

> But this doesn't
> solve the problem in hand, because we don't currently filter the
> *image* dumps in any way. This is actually a big problem for all sorts
> of licensing issues, because all the hard work of permission tagging
> is likely to be lost in transmission.

If the images are dissociated from their image description pages, then *all* of
them are legally useless regardless of license.

> But one very relevant implication is that images will be redistributed
> even if they're not used *anywhere*, let alone if they're only used on
> user pages. Remember: images are not attached to pages, they are just
> referenced from them.

Any use would need to follow the license on the image description page. If the
GNU FDL is used, then the reuser would need to follow that license, if the
CC-BY/SA is used, then the reuser would need to follow that license, if the
CC-BY/NC is used, then the reuser would have to follow that license, and if the
image can only be used on Wikipedia, then the reuser can't use it at all. The
point is that downloading the image database en masse means that the reuser
will need to follow the license of each image individually regardless of the
presence of NC and used with permission images.

Recap: Since we allow multiple licenses anyway, any reuser would need to follow
a whole bunch of different licenses. Adding NC and used with permission in ways
that do not infect encyclopedia articles would not be an undue burden or really
be anything special given that fact. So I don't see your point.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
> I always try to back up my vote with some point of policy or research
> (see the photographer on AFD today). More people should base their
> votes off facts instead of "Keep, X is good/encyclopedic/verifiable".
> They should address the policy point that's being addressed. I.e "What
> do you mean not-notable? They were the main guest on Oprah last week
> and they have a top 100  Amazon sales rank." instead of "Writers are
> notable".

I believe that all state highways (at least in most states) are
"notable", just as with state parks and such. Using any other argument
that may apply to the current article on VFD just makes it more likely
that someone will go and VFD a different one that doesn't match that
argument.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Article deletion

body:
Kelly Martin wrote:
> Perhaps closing admins should simply ignore opinions of the form "nn,
> delete" and "Keep all schools".  People will stop offering such such
> bland opinions if they realize that their input is being ignored and
> will instead offer more useful commentary.

What if "keep all schools" is the reason the person is voting to keep?
There are many that feel that all X for some X are "notable".


body:
>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>
>Worldtraveller wrote:
>
>>I'd support that position.  How could having unencyclopaedic articles not
>>damage the credibility of an encyclopaedia?
>>
>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: Kelly Martin [mailto:kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com]
>>>
>>>On 9/14/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>It reduces the credibility of the project.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>That's a highly disputable claim for which I doubt you can produce
>>>much in the way of support.
>>>
>The burden of proof lies with the person making the hypothesis, not the
>person opposing it.
>
>The claim is "Unencyclopedic articles reduce the credibility of the
>encyclopedia"  To put the burden on the person denying the claim would have
>him running around looking for information which he believes does not
>exist; it would require him to act irrationally.

No, the real claim is "AfD is damaging the project and should be deleted".
The burden of proof is on those who make that claim.

Jay.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Images on user pages

body:
--- Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
> NC or special use?  Please clarify further, as I want to be certain to
> answer the question you're asking rather than one I think you're
> asking.

NC = Non Commercial
Special use = can only be used on Wikipedia (or similar restrictions).

I agree that neither of the above are acceptable for images displayed in
articles, but I maintain that both of the above are fine in the user and
Wikipedia namespace. Reasons:
*Our mission is to make encyclopedic content that is easily redistributable.
*Making Wikipedia-specific content (aka details of the sausage factory) just as
redistributable serves very little purpose.
*There is very little value outside of Wikipedia for Wikipedian-specific
images.
*Private individuals have the right to restrict use of images of themselves and
their friends. Not allowing users to do this will result in less sharing of
these type of images in the community.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


body:
Michael Turley wrote:

>I wanted to add to my own post that Britannica and Encarta and similar
>others can get away with far fewer references and sources is because
>they aren't wikis.  Everyone working on the publicly visible portions
>of product are paid professionals who lose their paychecks if they're
>not reliable and credible.  We don't have that particular "luxury", so
>we need to cite sources and provide references.
>
>
That's certainly true, but references are also useful in their own
right---providing references is a great way to point people to further
reading.  Even if I trusted 100% that the fact were correct and so
didn't need a reference to verify it, it'd still be nice to know where
it came from.

-Mark


body:
JAY JG wrote:

> One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken
> seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a
> reliable (or even acceptable) source.  Credibility is also the thing
> other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on.  Credibility also
> brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
>
> We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we do
> I think we're sticking our heads in the sand.

I think this is an issue better solved by the validation project that's
being planned for some time now.  Once we start tagging particular
revisions of articles as checked by at least someone, we can build a
reliable subset without deleting anything from the wider encyclopedia.
It's also easier to keep an opt-in subset reliable than to insist on
stemming the tide of new articles with an opt-out deletion process.

(I do agree that some articles simply should be deleted, like a lot of
the crap that gets speedy-deleted, and even some that doesn't, but I
don't think this is the main way to improve reliability.)

-Mark


from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Differencing Engine

body:
On Wed, Sep 14, 2005 at 11:04:17PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> The LCS algorithm operates on arrays, it's called an array of lines
> internally but it could be pretty much anything, all you need is a valid
> comparison operator. The formatter first does a line level diff, to
> identify paragraphs which have been moved or deleted. It identifies
> which lines have been changed, for some definition of changed. Then it
> splits each of the changed lines into words (or characters, in the case
> of Chinese and Japanese), and does a diff on the word arrays.
>
> An important exception which I implemented a couple of weeks ago, is to
> impose a maximum line length. Lines above the maximum are treated as a
> single word. Some kinds of vandalism involve very long lines (~1 MB),
> and these diffs used to fail. Brion ported this change to the C++
> module, since both versions suffered from the same problem. Except the
> C++ version segfaulted whereas the PHP version just gave an out of
> memory error.
>
> It would be nice to have a second exception for a large number of lines
> requiring word-level diffs: this case also causes the current PHP
> algorithm to fail.

I'm doing character-level diffs in my bot, for deep reverts,
and I found that printing two revisions to files, one character per line
(escaped of course), running GNU diff, and parsing the result,
is extremely fast.

It took Algorithm::Diff about 7 minutes to do what GNU diff did
in less than 1 second.

So GNU diff must be doing the right thing that we should simply copy,
instead of recoding Algorithm::Diff in C++.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jelle Zijlstra

subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: FishBase and a Wikipedia

body:
Hello all,

I asked FishBase (http://www.fishbase.org; there are articles about it in
nl:, en: and de:) to share their data with us to write articles.

I think we can have a productive cooperation, but I'm not sure yet about the
exact things. I forward their mail for your information.

Cheers,

Jelle Zijlstra
(Ucucha from nl.wikipedia)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Rainer Froese <rfroese at ifm-geomar.de>
Date: Sep 14, 2005 9:34 AM
Subject: RE: FishBase and a Wikipedia
To: jelle.zijlstra at gmail.com
Cc: "Pablico, Grace (WorldFish)" <g.pablico at cgiar.org>, Nicolas Bailly <
n.bailly at cgiar.org>, "Sven Kullander (Sven Kullander)" <ve-sven at nrm.se>,
"Eli Agbayani (Agbayani, Eli)" <e.agbayani at cgiar.org>, Sven Mohr <
sven.mohr at web.de>

 Dear Jelle S. Zijlstra,

Collaboration between FishBase and Wikipedia is indeed a good idea. As a
first step we can deep-link from FishBase to all pages in Wikipedia that
contain information on fishes. All we need for this is a list of the
scientific names and the respective Wikipedia URLs. We would expect similar
links from Wikipedia into FishBase. We can provide a respective list of
scientific names and FishBase URLs. I am not sure how that would then be
implemented in Wikipedia. Given that we are talking about 29,000 species
manual editing is not an option.

 A next step would be to create new species pages directly from FishBase as
new postings in Wikipedia. We can create a routine that would put together
the respective information. Again I am not sure how that would then be
incorporated in Wikipedia, as again manual entry is not an option. Maybe you
can establish contact to colleagues who have direct access to the database
behind Wikipedia?

 I copy this to some colleagues who may have additional ideas or
suggestions.

 Greetings

Rainer

 Dr. Rainer Froese
Leibniz-Institut f?r Meereswissenschaften
IfM-GEOMAR
D?sternbrooker Weg 20
24105 Kiel
Germany
Tel. +49 431 600 4579
Fax +49 431 600 1699
rfroese at ifm-geomar.de
www.fishbase.org <http://www.fishbase.org>
http://filaman.uni-kiel.de/ifm-geomar/rfroese/

   -----Original Message-----
*From:* Jelle Zijlstra [mailto:jelle.zijlstra at gmail.com]
*Posted At:* Saturday, 2005 September 10 3:18 AM
*Posted To:* fishbase_cgiar_org
*Conversation:* FishBase and a Wikipedia
*Subject:* FishBase and a Wikipedia

Hello,

I am user Ucucha from the Dutch Wikipedia (http://nl.wikipedia.org).
Wikipedia, as you may know, is an online encyclopedia under GNU-FDL that can
be edited by anyone.

I think we have too few articles about fish in our encyclopedia. I think it
might be possible to make pages automatically from the FishBase database.

Such a page should not include too much information, I think. A good start
would be a taxobox (see for example
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zwarte_dwergmeerval), author, distribution, and
a link to the full record in FishBase.

It's my opinion that this will be good for both FishBase and Wikipedia. For
FishBase, because this will make FishBase better known under our many
visitors. For Wikipedia, because it's important for us to have articles
about all subjects, so that we can cover a broad range of subjects.
Furthermore, this will make these fish species better known, which is
probably a common goal of ours, isn't it?

Yours sincerely,

Jelle S. Zijlstra
jelle.zijlstra at gmail.com
Oegstgeest, The Netherlands


list: wikimedia-l


body:
Ryan Norton wrote:

>
> On Wednesday, September 14, 2005, at 12:28  PM, Delirium wrote:
>
>> JAY JG wrote:
>>
>>> One of Wikipedia's biggest issues has always been getting taken
>>> seriously as an encyclopedia, or being accepted by educators as a
>>> reliable (or even acceptable) source.  Credibility is also the thing
>>> other encyclopedias (i.e. Britannica) harp on.  Credibility also
>>> brings donations and other kinds of support and funding.
>>>
>>> We can pretend it doesn't matter what people think of us, but if we
>>> do I think we're sticking our heads in the sand.
>>
>>
>> I think this is an issue better solved by the validation project
>> that's being planned for some time now.
>
>
> That process is called FAC :). You could have something like "Featured
> Article Review" that periodically goes over the FAs to make sure they
> meet the standard etc...

Well, I meant the broader validation project that's been discussed on
and off.  FAC is a somewhat high standard; there are plenty of other
Wikipedia articles not up to that standard that are still good and
reliable (but incomplete) sources of information.  Ideally we could have
a few grades ("unreviewed", "not crap", "pretty good", "featured" or
something).  In addition, it'd be nice to tag particular
revisions---there's currently no guarantee that the current version of a
featured article isn't filled with recently-inserted errors.

-Mark


body:
On 9/14/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/14/05, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > geni wrote:
> > >>...And WP:CP could still take use of the admin deletion features...
> > >not if you are aiming for PWD.
> > >
> > He just said that he's not, at least when it comes to dealing with
> > copyright problems. You're the only one I've seen in this thread who's
> > suggesting that PWD would be used that way. Why can't VfD and CP use
> > different ways of deleting pages?
>
> Because accuseing something of being a copyvio will become a lot more
> common rather than being a tectic of last resort.

We don't just delete copyvios because they're accused of it. We tend
to delete them when they're properly accused of it, tagged (with a
link of where it's from), rot on [[WP:CP]] for a month or so, and if
it's really a copyvio (or just nobody figures out it isn't..), it's
deleted. With PWD being used for regular deletions, theoretically we
could have more admins to work on [[WP:CP]].

As for the delete warring, there's no reason an admin couldn't come
around, protect the page, and use {{deletedpage}}, like we already do
when people try to repeatedly re-create deleted materials, or protect
it on an undeleted version, like we already do when people vandalize
articles heavily.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] new request for sign language Wikipedia

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>>Ok, thanks for explaining that. Is Braille a language or an orthography?
>>
>>
>
>Braille is a tactile writing system which is used to write spoken
>languages. So basically, it's an orthography. Sometimes, though,
>different languages use different tactile alphabets.
>

It could be used as such, but in practice it's usually used as a tactile
writing system to write *written* languages.  For example, English
braille is a direct transcription of written English between alphabets,
including all the orthographic oddities of written English; it's not an
independent representation of spoken English.  It's so direct a
transliteration of spoken English that Latin-alphabet English can be
transliterated to English Braille by means of a very short computer program.

-Mark


body:
On 9/14/05, uninvited at nerstrand.net <uninvited at nerstrand.net> wrote:
> In an effort to start some serious discussion on this, I present
> herewith some pros and cons of granting some form of commons adminship
> to wikipedia admins (including en, de, fr, and possibly other large
> wikipedis).

Being granted administrator access is a sign of community respect,
earned within the community.  If you want the respect of other related
project communities, participate in those other communities.  I expect
members of other Wikimedia communities to establish themselves at
Wikipedia-EN before they get admin access.

If you don't like the requirements that each of the other communities
establishes, don't try to short circuit their processes through
discussion on the "parent project".  Go there, and convince them it is
in their best interest to grant common adminship.  Don't start here
and say "Hey, they should grant me adminship upon arrival".  Here, I
think the only appropriate discussion is whether Wikipedia-EN grants
other projects' admins immediate access to our admin toolbox upon
arrival.  Just as they have no business telling us who to grant
adminship to, we have no business telling them.

Even though adminship is supposed to be "no big deal", I'm opposed to
any form of automatic common adminship on Wikipedia-EN for other
project admins.  If it truly is no big deal, then it should be no big
deal to establish yourself anywhere you'd like to have admin tools.  I
just don't like the idea of getting additional access by peerage.  It
doesn't recognize the will of the individual communities involved.

The exception I see is for those who are personally chosen by Jimbo or
a quorum of the Board for any reason they see fit.
--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Request for AS/English Wikipedia

body:
Have you read my e-mails at all?

There's already technology which converts HamNoSys or Stokoe to video.

Mark

On 14/09/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Phroziac wrote:
> > On 9/14/05, HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us <HHamilto at doe.k12.ga.us> wrote:
> >
> >>Some of you have mentioned SignWriting   (at www.signwriting.org) as a
> >>textual way of displaying ASL. The problem is less than a handful of people
> >>know SignWriting. Video of ASL is needed to  make a true ASL wikipedia
> >
> > How exactly do you edit a video like wikitext?
>
> Maybe a sign language Wikipedia should wait until technology exists to
> automatically convert SignWriting, or any other form of writing sign
> languages, to video.
>
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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