subject: [WikiEN-l] Requiring sources

body:
> > On Dec 25, 2005, at 12:05 PM, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > That Jerusalem was occupied by Isreal and Jordan from 1947 to 1967,
> > and by Israel ever since the Six Day War, is a historical fact that
> > should not be removed from an article.

On 12/25/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> But that is just you and me and all the rest of the world's opinion.

Just because most people regard Jerusalem and the West Bank as
occupied doesn't mean the word has to be mentioned at each and every
opportunity. It could have been included somewhere in the article, but
it isn't part of Jerusalem's name, as the anon added.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Divine_Intervention_%28film%29&diff=27076942&oldid=24606478
Naomi Campbell may be beautiful, but we don't call her Beautiful Naomi
Campbell.

Sarah


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requiring sources

body:
Not really; no edit wars about that, no complaints in Talk: about that, no
sources "removed" regarding that.  The alleged issue is removal of "sources"
regarding the movie and the Academy of Motion Pictures.

Jay.

On 12/25/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> No, they involved that.
>
> Fred
>
> On Dec 25, 2005, at 12:49 PM, jayjg wrote:
>
> > On 12/25/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> That Jerusalem was occupied by Isreal and Jordan from 1947 to 1967,
> >> and by Israel ever since the Six Day War, is a historical fact that
> >> should not be removed from an article.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Neither the dispute nor the finding were about that.
> >
> > Jay.
> > _______________________________________________
>
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] GFDL violation in the Wikimedia database dumps

body:
On 12/25/05, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> The license and the way it is interpreted has been discussed and
> explained to the people that are involved with the license. The GPL is
> first going to be amended and then it will be the GFDL that will be
> modernised. The reason why is simple; the GFDL was not created with
> projects like Wikipedia in mind, it was intended for documentation
> associated with GPL software.

Perhaps it will, but the foundation will not be able steal credit from
the actual authors of the works in Wikipedia for itself, at least not
without a legal fight. Most quality works in Wikipedia are the work of
a small number of authors per work, not these massively collaborative
efforts as has been misrepresented to the free software foundation.

As such it would be ill advised to suggest to people that they do not
need to provide attribution, so if thats what you were implying with
you message I suggest you amend your words.  Wikipedia will not fall
under CC wiki like terms so long as I and others who care about the
moral rights of authors have the financial means to prevent it.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Deleted history view permissions

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>A couple months ago the software got tweaked to display history info
>(but not contained text) of deleted revisions to any and all random
>visitors. In the last few weeks we've gotten a rash of complaints
>about edits being made with private, embarrassing, vandalistic,
>libelous, etc stuff in the edit summaries etc, and of course deleting
>the revisions from the wiki still shows them to everybody.
>
>For the moment I'm shutting off this ability (restoring the pre-August
>behavior) until we get more fine-grained revision deletion / scrubbing
>in place. I've added a permission key to control it, 'deletedhistory',
>so if there's a need to turn it back on this can just be added to the
>'*' pseudogroup in the config to restore the previous behavior.
>
For me what is perhaps a tangential issue relates to articles that are
transwikied to Wiktionary from Wikipedia.  These are sometimes
accompanied by long edit histories copied onto the talk page which are
nothing more than user names and date/time marks, but no indication
about whether these edits had anything to do with what we use on
Wiktionary.  It follows from the principle that Wiktionary is not an
encyclopedia that Wiktionary accepts many articles that would be
rejected as stubs by Wikipedia.  Is there any way to know just what each
of those edits were?

Personally, if I adapt a transwikied article I will completely rewrite
it using independant source information, assuming that the information
was sourced at all, but some others are content to just use the move
function to adopt articles.  I regard transwikied articles as being in a
sort of limbo, where one cannot accept that Wikipedia is a proper
soource for these, especially if the Wikipedia decision was to delete
the article.

Ec


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] A simple vandalism analysis tool

body:
On 12/25/05, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems to find no vandalism earlier than February 2004 in any of the
> very high visibility articles I checked.  Was there a change in
> Wikipedia custom and/or rollback functionality at that time, or is
> something going wrong with your counter?
>
> In any case, good work.
>

Well spotted. It looks as if the rollback text changed that month from
"Reverted to last edit by..." to "Reverted edits by...to last version
by."  I've added that pattern to the recogniser.  Now it goes back as
far as April, 2003.  I suspect that the administrator rollback
originated about that time, because even on one of our most vandalized
articles has no recognisable rollbacks before that date.  The editing
rate was only one-hundredth of its current level at that date.


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requiring sources

body:
On 12/25/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> The proposed decision says that if you are just using a request for
> sources as a tactic in POV edit warring it will not necessarily be
> taken at face value.

The difficulty is that we can never be sure that a request for sources
is being used as a tactic. And even if it is, either there's a good
source or there isn't, and if there isn't, the material shouldn't be
in the article.

I've had editors ask me for sources for things that were obviously
true (to me) and it was pretty clear they did it just to be
irritating, but going off to find the sources was nevertheless
instructive, and on one occasion I couldn't find a source that said
exactly what I had added. So the wrong intention can lead to the right
result.

But in the case being discussed, I see no evidence of bad intentions.
When you're up against an editor like Xed, requesting sources for
every edit is about the only way to deal with him, and it's what the
policy recommends.

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] The George W. Bush article: is this still a wiki?

body:
On 12/25/05, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> That's a nice change - most of the complaints at GWB seem to be the
> opposite: people complaining that a small number of legitimate editors
> were being blocked along with the vast numbers of vandals, and they
> thought *that* was unfair :)
>

It's a high profile article and naturally attracts a lot of first time
edits, many of which are of the "hey, can I really call Dubya a
poopyhead?" type.  In addition there was a single person or organized
group deliberately taunting and goading the anti-vandalism people.
Neither of the two classes of vandalism constitutes much of a problem
for legitimate editors, but the anti-vandalism measures on the other
hand were a serious problem.  The NOEDITSECTION is gone now and I
think it's unlikely to be tried again.  A semi-protection policy is in
place and, if it's successful in deterring vandals, perhaps that can
be removed too.


from_name: The Hooded Man

body:
> From: wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gregory Maxwell
> Sent: Sunday, December 25, 2005 3:25 PM
> To: Wikimedia developers
> Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] GFDL violation in the Wikimedia database dumps

> Perhaps it will, but the foundation will not be able steal credit from
> the actual authors of the works in Wikipedia for itself, at least not
> without a legal fight. Most quality works in Wikipedia are the work of
> a small number of authors per work, not these massively collaborative
> efforts as has been misrepresented to the free software foundation.

I think the point is:

1.) Do you think Wikimedia would do this?

2.) They would not be able to do this.  A legal fight would be stupid;
database dumps are publicly available that clearly show full author history.

If Wikimedia wanted to steal the articles, they could delete the entire edit
history and remove it from all database dumps.  But then people would still
have them.  It's impossible for them to do that.

3.) There is nothing that can be legally "stolen".  By writing an article,
the authors have released their work under the GFDL.

Let's not get into conspiracy theories.
-HoodedMan


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Happy Holidays

body:
Thanks...right back at ya!

On 12/25/05, Martin Osterman <stonewallgrant at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hey everyone,
>
> I wanted to take a moment and wish everyone here a Merry Christmas (or
> Happy
> Holidays if you don't celebrate Christmas).  I know it's been a busy time
> for everyone, so I hope that these wishes find everyone in good spirits!
>
> --Martin Osterman
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Digital Universe

body:
On 12/19/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/19/sanger_onlinepedia_with_experts/
>
> Anyone know any more about this?

Wikipedia does. ;)

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


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Brandt wishes to release personal details
	of	all	Wikipedia admins

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Violet/Riga wrote:

>> According to a thread at the Wikipedia Review forum (
>> http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1134797879&page=1)
>> Daniel Brandt is wishing to name every Wikipedia admin, expanding the
>> Hivemind page (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to
>> include all
>> such details.

> BTW, his enemies list looked like a pretty distinguished crowd,
> so I sent him mail asking to be added to it, along with where I
> live so he would get more excited.

Oh, that's a thought. You can find my home address easily enough if you
can work whois, and I've been considering making my phone number
publicly available. What's his email address?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] off on holiday next Wed

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> I bet it's Whitby!  You know you should try to avoid giving such
> obvious clues to your status.  You're obviously one of these chaps who
> go all gooey if a chap cuts his thumb, and view a pretty young lady in
> a see-through nightie as a jolly good meal and a chance to hang upside
> down from the ceiling chirping bloodily and disconcerting the other
> hotel guests.
> Enjoy your time away, don't bite until you see their blood donation
> service cards.

It'll be with a pack of goths: http://www.allaboutnewyearseve.co.uk/
You don't want to bite their blood if you're going to be driving or
anything.

- d.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 12/25/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> now for four or five days).  Rather, I think that the NOEDITSECTION
> was an imposition that disproportionately hit legitimate editors of
> the  article, while delivering no measurable reduction of vandalism in
> the face of a sustained campaign of vandalism by a particular person
> or group--the kind of campaign that I know from experience can be
> ignored, because it has little of no effect on the ability of good
> faith editors to continue their work.

That's a nice change - most of the complaints at GWB seem to be the
opposite: people complaining that a small number of legitimate editors
were being blocked along with the vast numbers of vandals, and they
thought *that* was unfair :)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] RefBot blocked by Admin with no email

body:
Ref Bot wrote:

> User:Refbot has been erroneously blocked while being set up by
> User:Curps, who has no email address and can not be contacted by
> blocked/autoblocked user.  Perhaps those with no email address should
> not be using features which require email addresses.  Reason given is
> possible impersonator of User:SEWilcoBot, but Curps also reverted a
> change to SEWilcoBot's user page which showed that functionality was
> being transferred to RefBot and thus there was no such behavior to
> impersonate.

I blocked RefBot indefinitely as an attempt by SEWilco to evade ArbCom
restrictions, and SEWilco for 48 hours for trying to game his ArbCom
restrictions. Go away and stop trying to game the system. Merry Christmas.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] off on holiday next Wed

body:
On 12/25/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> It'll be with a pack of goths: http://www.allaboutnewyearseve.co.uk/
> You don't want to bite their blood if you're going to be driving or
> anything.

Shit!  I was right about Whitby!  Complete wild guess.


subject: [WikiEN-l] off on holiday next Wed

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> On 12/25/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>>It'll be with a pack of goths: http://www.allaboutnewyearseve.co.uk/
>>You don't want to bite their blood if you're going to be driving or
>>anything.

> Shit!  I was right about Whitby!  Complete wild guess.

See [[Whitby Gothic Weekend]] - this is a special event being put
together by someone who runs one of the side events of that.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Look what santa brought me.

body:
This is neat.

Pretty intuitive if you're accustomed to Unix shells.

wpl -type block -user David_Gerard

wp User:Tony_Sidaway

wpw

man wpl

man wp

man wpw

ls wikipedia

ma Patrick Stewart

comix able and baker

http://tonysidaway.schtuff.com/the_web_shell


subject: [WikiEN-l] off on holiday next Wed

body: Good cover story.  Just don't go near any pointy sticks.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requiring sources

body:
That Jerusalem was occupied by Isreal and Jordan from 1947 to 1967,
and by Israel ever since the Six Day War, is a historical fact that
should not be removed from an article.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Brandt wishes to release personal details of all
	Wikipedia admins

body:
--- Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:

> Violet/Riga wrote:
>
> >According to a thread at the Wikipedia Review forum (
>
>http://wikipediareview.proboards78.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1134797879&page=1)
> >Daniel Brandt is wishing to name every Wikipedia admin, expanding the
> >Hivemind page (http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/hivemind.html) to include all
> >such details.
> >
> BTW, his enemies list looked like a pretty distinguished crowd,
> so I sent him mail asking to be added to it, along with where I
> live so he would get more excited.
>
> Stan

My real name (Daniel Mayer) and where I live (Atlanta, Georgia, USA) is not a secret. If that is
all he is listing, then I wouldn't care if I were on that list either. But if he starts to list
other things, such as home addresses, phone numbers, workplace, etc, then that is something very
different since that can be used to harass people and even put them in danger. How many crank
calls directed at you to your boss will your boss tolerate before firing you?

So, IMO, the list as is, is mostly harmless. But then, I may be hardend by the fact that I've
received death threats in the past by a now banned Wikipedian.

-- mav

__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about.
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

body:
On 12/25/05, Brion Vibber <brion.vibber at gmail.com> wrote:
> A couple months ago the software got tweaked to display history info
> (but not contained text) of deleted revisions to any and all random
> visitors. In the last few weeks we've gotten a rash of complaints
> about edits being made with private, embarrassing, vandalistic,
> libelous, etc stuff in the edit summaries etc, and of course deleting
> the revisions from the wiki still shows them to everybody.
>
> For the moment I'm shutting off this ability (restoring the pre-August
> behavior) until we get more fine-grained revision deletion / scrubbing
> in place. I've added a permission key to control it, 'deletedhistory',
> so if there's a need to turn it back on this can just be added to the
> '*' pseudogroup in the config to restore the previous behavior.

If the only issue was the contents of the comments can't we just show
the history without them? I even added software support for that a
while ago (for rev_deleted), you just call Linker::commentBlock with a
third paramater bool true.


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
The most important reason why the Wikipedia is GFDL is because it was
the best that was on offer at the time. When you want to narrowly
interpret what the GFDL says, you can. However this is not helpfull
and the only consequence is that people will scorn this attitude and
maybe even material that is published under this license.

The license and the way it is interpreted has been discussed and
explained to the people that are involved with the license. The GPL is
first going to be amended and then it will be the GFDL that will be
modernised. The reason why is simple; the GFDL was not created with
projects like Wikipedia in mind, it was intended for documentation
associated with GPL software.

Have a merry Christmas and be happy with what we have been given.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 12/25/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/25/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> > For practical purposes, we should consider offereing a dump that contains
> > * articles
> > * templates (which are needed for many articles)
> > * a list of all author names
> > That would contain everything needed to generate GFDL-compliant,
> > complete articles, but still be much smaller than the full dumps.
> >
> > We could put this information in the "articles" dump (slightly larger
> > download for everyone) or create a new dump type (more memory and
> > processor power needed to create and offer it).
>
> That is likely not enough, because you couldn't discover the principal
> authors that way... a great many republication worthy articles are
> almost entirely written by one or two people. But more importantly, a
> mere list of names would not appear to be enough to satisify the
> GFDL's requirement to 'Preserve the section Entitled "History"'.
>
> It would be preferable to only include templates which are used in the
> main namespace, although that would further complicate the dumping
> process.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Biographical data

body:
On 25/12/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> My biggest criticism of it at this point is that it's only available to
> the geeks who use a monobook skin and know how to edit it.  I'm not
> going to stop using the classic skin, and I have no intention of
> learning how to edit a css.  I'm sure there are many other non-techies
> in the latter group that would be kept away from the feature because of
> that.  A simple toggle in the user preferences would make a lot more sense.

I'm not sure it really is - it can be set to be visible there, sure,
but you can edit it at will through the "conventional means" - and,
right now, it's not meant to be read in the article as such.

> The one thing that I wouild make clear about the contents is that one
> can add years when an author flourished.  For some authors we anly know
> the years when they wrote, and know nothing of their lives before or
> after the time during which they wrote.  Perhaps our German colleagues
> have already thought of that.

This is certainly a handy idea, but it doesn't seem to be in the
standard format in de:. I've suggested a way of dealing with this on
the talk page - an additional optional line for "flourished", just as
a single year (for simplicity) or as a range -

 |FLOURISHED=1200
 |PLACE OF ACTIVITY=England
or
 |FLOURISHED=1191-1208
 |PLACE OF ACTIVITY=England
or something else along these lines

Even if it's just a single year, it allows us to say "ah, he's
thirteenth century" or the like. As it stands, if you don't have birth
and death dates, they could be contemporary or they could be biblical,
and we can't say at a glance - well, *we* can, but a computer can't.

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requiring sources

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

> I agree with Jon. The problem with the proposed ruling
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Xed_2/Proposed_decision#Viriditas_and_Jayjg_reminded_regarding_NPOV
> is that it reprimands two editors because they asked for sources from
> an inveterate POV-pusher, which is exactly what they should have done.
> The policy is [[WP:V]], which says: (1) the burden of evidence lies
> with the editor who adds the material (in this case Xed and an anon);
> (2) one reason to ask for sources is if the edit is overly vague (it
> was) and if the editor has a history of making inaccurate claims (Xed
> does); and (3) any material not sourced may be removed by any editor.

Yep.

> Jay and Viriditas were asking for sources for some wild claims
> inserted by an anon and supported by Xed, including that the film
> Divine Intervention had not been nominated for an Academy Award
> because of a "vigorous campaign by Zionist activists to bar the movie
> ..." There was no evidence at all of any "Zionist" campaign. There's a
> good ABC News article about the controversy, which was basically a
> series of misunderstandings combined with a lack of insight into the
> Palestinian situation.
> http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=79485&page=1
> One of the proposed findings of fact says that: "After Xed restored,
> Jayjg demanded sources despite the fact that a simple Google search
> gives 80,000 hits ..." But the Google search cited was for "'Divine
> Intervention' academy".
> http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&as_qdr=all&q=+%22Divine+Intervention%22+academy&btnG=Search

Yep.

> The proposed decision sends a message that editors have to be careful
> when asking for sources, which is the opposite of the one many of us
> are trying to get across.

And that's why this proposed decision is not only mind-bogglingly awful
both as a way to treat good editors, but even *more so* for its
follow-on effects. It sets an incredibly awful example and it amazes me
that there are people this isn't obvious to at a glance.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Requiring sources

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

> The proposed decision says that if you are just using a request for
> sources as a tactic in POV edit warring it will not necessarily be
> taken at face value.

You've dealt with enough bad-faith POV pushers and what they'll take as
a cue to let it rest at that. The proposal is actually worse for its
knock-on effects than as the original insult to good editors trying to
deal with an odious POV-pusher like Xed that it was.

- d.


body:
jayjg wrote:
> On 12/25/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

>>I blocked RefBot indefinitely as an attempt by SEWilco to evade ArbCom
>>restrictions, and SEWilco for 48 hours for trying to game his ArbCom
>>restrictions. Go away and stop trying to game the system. Merry Christmas.

> There's something wrong with SEWilco; read this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:SEWilco#Temporarily_blocked_RefBot

Yeah, it's crying "assume good faith in me!" while demonstrating bad
faith. Must be my outgoing Christmas spirit making me not accept this.

- d.


body:
On 12/25/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > On 12/25/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> >
> >> For practical purposes, we should consider offereing a dump that contains
> >> * articles
> >> * templates (which are needed for many articles)
> >> * a list of all author names
> >> That would contain everything needed to generate GFDL-compliant,
> >> complete articles, but still be much smaller than the full dumps.
> >>
> >> We could put this information in the "articles" dump (slightly larger
> >> download for everyone) or create a new dump type (more memory and
> >> processor power needed to create and offer it).
> >>
> >
> > That is likely not enough, because you couldn't discover the principal
> > authors that way.
> I'm thinking about third party publications here; the WikiReaders and
> DVDs, for example. They cannot fulfil the GFDL with the current article
> dump, as that lists only the last author. However, with a list of all
> authors, they can just list all of them, which is enough under the GFDL.
> For a work consisting of several articles, they have to name each author
> only once in the book/DVD.
>
> So, for what a thrid publishing party needs:
> * articles only : Incomplete text, not GFDL-compliant; may not be
> published in large numbers
> * articles and templates: complete text, not GFDL-compliant; may not be
> published in large numbers
> * articles, templates, and authors: complete text, GFDL-compliant; may
> be published in large numbers

The already have that in the full dumps, granted it includes other
data as well but if you're going to publish something it's hardly a
showstopper to download the full dump and extract the info you need
from that.


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Merry Christmas from Daniel Brandt

body:
Brandt dug up an old webpage of mine, one which I
assumed had been deleted by my alma mater.  I
remembered the password and removed the pictures of
myself and any personal information, and added a link
to Google-Watch-Watch.  I guess that pissed him off,
so now instead of linking to the page, Brandt has
posted a copy of my page (prior to alterations) and
the pictures on his own website. Advice on how to
handle this would be much appreciated. Obviously this
is a blantant copyright violation but I'm not sure
what to do about this.

It doesn't bother me that Brandt knows my name or my
face, as I've never been particularly careful about
protecting my identity.  My concern is: where does it
end?  What's next?  My address?  My place of
employment?  Google maps and satellite pics of my
house?  My credit report?  He's already got the names
of the *children* of another Wikipedian on his
hitlist.

"Ignore him" and "do nothing" are not options.  While
the "No, I'm Spartacus!" volunteering of personal
information to Brandt is a heartening display of
solidarity, it's not a sufficient response.  I
understand that there is a limit to what WP can do
outside its own cyberborders, and I understand that I
bear some responsibility for pissing off the wrong
internet nutcase, but we as a community must come up
with some sort of response to this type of harrassment
or we're going to lose good people whose only "crime"
is to edit an encyclopedia article in good faith.

__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about.
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 12/25/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
>
>> For practical purposes, we should consider offereing a dump that contains
>> * articles
>> * templates (which are needed for many articles)
>> * a list of all author names
>> That would contain everything needed to generate GFDL-compliant,
>> complete articles, but still be much smaller than the full dumps.
>>
>> We could put this information in the "articles" dump (slightly larger
>> download for everyone) or create a new dump type (more memory and
>> processor power needed to create and offer it).
>>
>
> That is likely not enough, because you couldn't discover the principal
> authors that way.
I'm thinking about third party publications here; the WikiReaders and
DVDs, for example. They cannot fulfil the GFDL with the current article
dump, as that lists only the last author. However, with a list of all
authors, they can just list all of them, which is enough under the GFDL.
For a work consisting of several articles, they have to name each author
only once in the book/DVD.

So, for what a thrid publishing party needs:
* articles only : Incomplete text, not GFDL-compliant; may not be
published in large numbers
* articles and templates: complete text, not GFDL-compliant; may not be
published in large numbers
* articles, templates, and authors: complete text, GFDL-compliant; may
be published in large numbers

Magnus


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
On 12/25/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> If the only issue was the contents of the comments can't we just show
> the history without them? I even added software support for that a
> while ago (for rev_deleted), you just call Linker::commentBlock with a
> third paramater bool true.

Particular usernames/IPs are also sometimes cited as an issue.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Blackcap

body:
On 12/15/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> Except they can't.  Someone has *deliberately* inserted a
> "noeditsection" directive into this article, and all suggestions that
> this hinders editing are resisted, on the grounds that, as well as
> hindering legitimate edits, it hinders vandalism.
>

This appears to be a bug due to semi-protection (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Semi-protection_policy for more
information on semi-protection). A Bugzilla report on the matter (Bug 4385:
Cannot edit specific sections on semi protected articles;
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4385) was submitted about
eight hours ago. If you could provide some information on the Bugzilla page
that would help it become cleared up.


subject: [WikiEN-l] off on holiday next Wed

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>> On 12/23/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

>>> For New Year, I'm off to a seaside resort in North Yorkshire in the
>>> middle of the bloody winter, because I am obviously insane.

>> Enjoy your time away, don't bite until you see their blood donation
>> service cards.

> You make it sound like he's going to "Carry On" just like in the movies.

It's sorta like that with lots of drink and much better sxxy deth chyx.

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] GFDL violation in the Wikimedia
	database dumps

body:
On 12/25/05, The Hooded Man <hoodedman at shadowedcorner.com> wrote:
> > Perhaps it will, but the foundation will not be able steal credit from
> > the actual authors of the works in Wikipedia for itself, at least not
> > without a legal fight. Most quality works in Wikipedia are the work of
> > a small number of authors per work, not these massively collaborative
> > efforts as has been misrepresented to the free software foundation.
>
> I think the point is:
>
> 1.) Do you think Wikimedia would do this?
>
> 2.) They would not be able to do this.  A legal fight would be stupid;
> database dumps are publicly available that clearly show full author history.
>
> If Wikimedia wanted to steal the articles, they could delete the entire edit
> history and remove it from all database dumps.  But then people would still
> have them.  It's impossible for them to do that.
>
> 3.) There is nothing that can be legally "stolen".  By writing an article,
> the authors have released their work under the GFDL.
>
> Let's not get into conspiracy theories.

There is no conspiracy theory needed. You ask "would the foundation do
this", but we need to first be clear on what 'this' means.  If 'this'
means treating our authors in any way which is unethical today, I
stand firmly that the answer is clearly no. In the future, I can not
answer because my crystal ball is not that powerful.  If 'this' means
to work to cause changes to be made to future versions of the licenses
which temporarily increase the foundations ease at the expense at
removing the protection of the authors from unethical actions in the
future, I must answer a resounding yes because it is demonstrably
true.

The Wikimedia foundation has been quietly advocating to the Creative
Commons and the Free Software foundations alterations to further
versions of the appropriate licenses which will allow the operators of
websites such as Wikipedia the authority to permit redistribution of
content submitted to their website with attribution to the site rather
than the author of the content.  In effect, the *single* remaining
tangible return an author of freely licensed content receives (their
authorship credit) will be removed and granted to the priesthood of
intellectual property barons who have apparently earned the right to
take credit for the blood and sweat of a world of people because of
their great feat of operating a website.

For the latest in the implementation of this grand vision, take a look
at the terms of the CC-Wiki license, or the mysteriously vague
attribution terms so cowardly sneaked into CC-BY-SA v2.0. These
changes to cc-by-sa could have been implemented as another CC license
flag 'CA' (community attribution) but instead it was decided to
include the changes into the root license with no mention in the
layman version, presumably because such a change would fail to change
the license of existing works against the consent of the authors and
would probably too much attention to this difficult issue.  Although
this has not been widely noticed, I certainly am not the only one...
For example see the interesting distribution terms on enwiki
User:Jamesday.

The argument used to advance this change is that, somehow, by being
submitted to  a collaborative authorship site a document no longer has
authors but is somehow authored by the 'community'.  In some cases a
compelling argument can indeed be made that there was no effective
single person author of the work, but even in these cases (which I
contend are rare) it takes a fantastic leap of faith to make the claim
that some organization (non-profit or otherwise) is the sole official
legal voice of the above mentioned ephemeral 'community' of authors
simple because they operate a website which is used by that community.
 But, indeed, that is exactly what is being claimed and what is being
swallowed because it's a lot easier to pretend that a website operator
represents the community because the reality of the matter (that the
community is a shifting cloud of unclear membership and
representation) is useless for solving the real challenges presented
by the requirement of preserving something as simple as authorship
credit in the world of paper.

Basically we're reaching a point where silly details like the moral
obligation to credit the authors of a work are hindering the grand
vision of the knowledge of the world made available to all at the
lowest cost possible.  This is a hard problem, so rather than dealing
with it head on, the details are being swept under the rug.  Licenses
will and have been retroactively changed to reflect this
prioritization of the quick solution over ethical obligations.

Normally I would not worry about this, because such changes which defy
the character of the licenses agreed to by the creators of content
would never stand... but the more I consider the issue the more I
realize how many differing forces will support such changes for both
laudable (in the case of the foundation) and selfish reasons, and it
leaves me feeling unsure and angry.

I fear that we, the community of authors and spokesmen who support the
propagation of knowledge freely to the world, have become so impatient
with the slowness of achieving our goals that we have begun to take
steps to extinguish the protective flame of decentralization which
immunizes our work from the privatization, exploitation, and
commercial imprisonment by greedy self interests, simply because the
resulting legal obligations of that decentralized existence have
become a temporary hindrance to our important goals.

Such a move to promote the notion that the operator of a
telecommunication service (isn't that what the foundation claims to be
when it invokes the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA as a
reassurance that our negligent handling of copyright matters will go
unpunished) is  granted a special position of unique control over the
creative works by the users of that service will not only be supported
by the operators of Wiki's who are currently so inconvenienced, but it
will also be strongly supported by the newly re-merged
telecommunications giants so eager to exercise their believed right to
extract maximum profit from every bit transferred across their glass.

The words "theft" and "steal" constantly create confusion when applied
to information, it is unfortunate that we use them. You are quite
correct that no one can take away what we already have, but it is
quite possible that through changes in license that powerful interests
will be able to claim special rights over the works of others because
of their ownership of telecommunications infrastructure at least that
is the notion embodied by the proposed license changes.   So that
while you will be free to use the content you helped create, another
group, by virtue of their operation of a telecommunications service,
will be far more free. You can not claim that you are free so long as
there is another group which has more freedom with the work you
created.

Welcome to the new serfdom.

Today we love and trust our telecommunications service providing
masters, but what changes does the future bring?


from_name: Martin Osterman

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Brandt wishes to release personal details of all
	Wikipedia admins

body:
Even though I'm not an admin, I'd like to offer some ideas on the matter.

The major idea I have would offer a modicum of security:  Wikipedia sets up
a POP server for admins and the admins have their e-mails run through the
server.  Their personal data, such as their name, is scrubbed if the Admins
wish it -- leaving only their handle on Wiki.  Changing code a bit could,
theoretically, screen their IPs so they were only visible to admins or
higher -- thus eliminating one method of tracking them down.

Unfortunately, the rest is up to the Admins themselves.  You can't stop
someone from collecting data about you that's freely available unless you
have evidence of malicious intent -- then the law can offer you protection.
Of course, in theory, a court order would shut down his website if it could
be proven that his actions were promoting illegal actions such as threats.
But again, legal actions are something you want to save as a last-ditch
effort since they take time and money and create a lot of publicity.

I don't know if this helps or not; I'm just a year-old editor on the project
who is concerned for the safety and security of all involved.  Brandt does
not seem to be someone who has anyone's best interests in mind but his own.

--Martin Osterman


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Digital Universe

body:
On 12/25/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> On 24 Dec 2005, at 11:05, Jack wrote:
>
> >> Pity. If they had a compatible license, $10m of investment using free
> >> content could get somewhere useful. And producing free content.
> >> -- Justin Cormack
> >
> > Reply to a query of how the non-subscription material on DU will be
> > licenced:
> >
> >> It will be some form of creative commons license. We are still
> >> mulling over various possible versions,
> >> -- Bernard Haisch
>
> Hmmm, so its going to be free but incompatible with wikipedia.
> Apparently.
>
> Compatible with Commons though.
>
> Justinc
>

There may be developments on that front comeing up.

--
geni


subject: [Wikitech-l] Experimental HTTPS interface to the wikis

body:
I've taken one of our old Pentium IV servers out of the regular Apache rotation
and made it into a testbed for an encrypted HTTPS interface to Wikimedia's wikis.

This should allow privileged accounts to log in and do their business on an open
wireless network without entrusting their password, session keys, etc to
everybody on the WLAN.

Currently it's using a self-signed certificate, but if we decide to keep this we
could pick up a "real" cert for convenience/peace of mind.

To visit a page on the encrypted server, transpose the domain elements into the
path like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SSL
->
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/SSL

Due to our internal configuration, some will appear under 'wikipedia' that are
not Wikipedias, such as:
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/foundation/wiki/Home
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/mediawiki/wiki/MediaWiki

Please don't distribute links to this server in general usage; we may change the
URL scheme, or restrict it to logins-only to make sure it doesn't get loaded
down with random page views. It's just one machine, so if it does get overloaded
it shouldn't affect the operation of the site in general.

Not all of the wikis will work on it; in particular the Korean, Japanese, Thai,
and Malay Wikipedias which are hosted on our Korean servers are inaccessible via
HTTPS at this time.

There may be various oddities and rough edges (missing logos, broken links here
and there, etc). Images are still pulled from the separate, non-encrypted, file
server, so you may get browser notices about mixed security, and your HTTPS URLs
may appear in plaintext referer headers.

This box is also running PHP 5.1.1 and Apache 2.2.0, giving us a chance to test
the latest gizmos in a low-pressure corner of our production environment.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
On 12/25/05, Violet/Riga <violetriga at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think this is starting to go too far now.
>
> ~~~~ Violet/Riga

Yes.

What to do. Clearly we can't back down. We are already reciving far to
many lible threats. If we back down here every obsevive with a grudge
will try the same tactic.

There may be legal options but:

A) I doubt we can afford them
B) Many of them will have no effect (I doubt he has any UK assets for example)
C) They can only kick in once the information is out there

negoate with the guy.

Not posible. As outlined above we can't afford to back down and anyway
what he wants can't be offered by anyone below board level.

Increase admin security.

Not much we can do here since most people will have a pre wikipedia
trail. We could offer emails on the wikipedia but that does nothing
for past stuff.

We should probably be doing more to warn potential admins of the
downsides (we lose numbers but less burnout hopeful). Even at a lower
level than phoneing (email userpage vandalism) you are going to get
some theats.

Adminship may or may not be a big deal on wikipedia. To the outside
world it appears to be and with the growth of wikipedia this is a
problem.
--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] off on holiday next Wed

body:
On 12/25/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > On 12/25/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> >>It'll be with a pack of goths: http://www.allaboutnewyearseve.co.uk/
> >>You don't want to bite their blood if you're going to be driving or
> >>anything.
>
> > Shit!  I was right about Whitby!  Complete wild guess.
>
>
> See [[Whitby Gothic Weekend]] - this is a special event being put
> together by someone who runs one of the side events of that.
>

Needs pics.

--
geni


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
geni wrote:
> Brandt isn't the only member of the board of Public Information
> Research. If we could contact the others we might be able to atchive
> something. The website is registered in their name.
> http://www.namebase.org/staffbl.html

I have offered to Brandt to come to Texas and give a talk about
Wikipedia to him and his board of directors, and seek to have a dialogue
about privacy issues and Wikipedia policies.  This is the only thing I
really know to do: try to engage him in a more productive dialogue than
what has gone on so far.

I have gotten no response yet, positive or negative, but I am still hopeful.

--Jimbo


from_name: Jesse Weinstein

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Deleted history view permissions

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at ...> writes:
> On 12/25/05, Brion Vibber <brion.vibber <at> gmail.com> wrote:
> > A couple months ago the software got tweaked to display history info
> > (but not contained text) of deleted revisions to any and all random
> > visitors. In the last few weeks we've gotten a rash of complaints
> > about edits being made with private, embarrassing, vandalistic,
> > libelous, etc stuff in the edit summaries etc, and of course deleting
> > the revisions from the wiki still shows them to everybody.
> >
> > For the moment I'm shutting off this ability (restoring the pre-August
> > behavior) until we get more fine-grained revision deletion / scrubbing
> > in place. I've added a permission key to control it, 'deletedhistory',
> > so if there's a need to turn it back on this can just be added to the
> > '*' pseudogroup in the config to restore the previous behavior.
>
> If the only issue was the contents of the comments can't we just show
> the history without them? I even added software support for that a
> while ago (for rev_deleted), you just call Linker::commentBlock with a
> third paramater bool true.
This does seem like a very useful compromise solution - what would be really
great would be to arrange things so deleted edits didn't vanish from
contribution lists; the deleted contributions browser
(http://tools.wikimedia.de/~kate/cgi-bin/archive_contribs ) was very useful;
it's a shame to have to disable it if we can just turn off public display of
deleted edit summaries.

[[User:JesseW]]


body:
On 12/26/05, Rob <gamaliel8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Brandt dug up an old webpage of mine, one which I
> assumed had been deleted by my alma mater.  I
> remembered the password and removed the pictures of
> myself and any personal information, and added a link
> to Google-Watch-Watch.  I guess that pissed him off,
> so now instead of linking to the page, Brandt has
> posted a copy of my page (prior to alterations) and
> the pictures on his own website. Advice on how to
> handle this would be much appreciated. Obviously this
> is a blantant copyright violation but I'm not sure
> what to do about this.
>

In theory see a lawer who will chrage you to send warning letters.

> It doesn't bother me that Brandt knows my name or my
> face, as I've never been particularly careful about
> protecting my identity.  My concern is: where does it
> end?  What's next?  My address?  My place of
> employment?  Google maps and satellite pics of my
> house?  My credit report?  He's already got the names
> of the *children* of another Wikipedian on his
> hitlist.

Children who appear top be in europe no less. Unfortunetly I suspect
that he has no assets on that side of the atlantic.

>
> "Ignore him" and "do nothing" are not options.  While
> the "No, I'm Spartacus!" volunteering of personal
> information to Brandt is a heartening display of
> solidarity, it's not a sufficient response.  I
> understand that there is a limit to what WP can do
> outside its own cyberborders, and I understand that I
> bear some responsibility for pissing off the wrong
> internet nutcase, but we as a community must come up
> with some sort of response to this type of harrassment
> or we're going to lose good people whose only "crime"
> is to edit an encyclopedia article in good faith.
>

Brandt isn't the only member of the board of Public Information
Research. If we could contact the others we might be able to atchive
something. The website is registered in their name.
http://www.namebase.org/staffbl.html

--
geni


from_name: Chip Berlet

body:
I used to be on the board of Brandt's public database group, but when I raised some questions about his starting to promote "research" materials from notorious antisemitic and pro-fascist organizations such as Liberty Lobby, he summarily dismissed me.  When other board members raised objections, he encouraged them to resign or they chose to leave or he dismissed them. Anyway, the folks on the board who challenged him in any way were soon gone.

Brandt then wrote and published a flame attack on me and Poltiical Research Associates, where I work.

Brandt does not abide criticism of any sort, and has now created a board that appears to support him without question. I doubt that appealing to his "board" will be effective.

Cberlet
aka
Chip Berlet

________________________________

From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org on behalf of geni
Sent: Mon 12/26/2005 2:33 AM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Merry Christmas from Daniel Brandt
<<SNIP>>
>

Brandt isn't the only member of the board of Public Information
Research. If we could contact the others we might be able to atchive
something. The website is registered in their name.
http://www.namebase.org/staffbl.html

--
geni
_______________________________________________
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: Matt Brown

body:
On 12/26/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> What I'm concerned about is if he starts putting out addresses, etc.

For which he could argue no justification, since Wikipedia does not
publish such information about anyone.

-Matt


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
The Hooded Man wrote:

>On Behalf Of Gregory Maxwell
>
>
>>Perhaps it will, but the foundation will not be able steal credit from
>>the actual authors of the works in Wikipedia for itself, at least not
>>without a legal fight. Most quality works in Wikipedia are the work of
>>a small number of authors per work, not these massively collaborative
>>efforts as has been misrepresented to the free software foundation.
>>
>>
>I think the point is:
>
>1.) Do you think Wikimedia would do this?
>
That's a strange question.  Probably the current Board would not, but
one must always be open to the possibility that it could happen with
some future Board.  Yhr huge market value would be very tempting.  A
person that is so minded can afford the patience to take whatever number
of years would be needed to put himself in the position to be able to do
this.  Believing that it could never happen is one way od insuring that
it does happen.

>2.) They would not be able to do this.  A legal fight would be stupid;
>database dumps are publicly available that clearly show full author history.
>
>If Wikimedia wanted to steal the articles, they could delete the entire edit
>history and remove it from all database dumps.  But then people would still
>have them.  It's impossible for them to do that.
>
The legal fight would be the least of their worries.  Who would defend
the rights of the individual authors?  On one side you have an
individual with clear vested interests, a chance to make big money, and
prospects attractive enough to hire legal help on a contingency basis.
On the other side is a large collective assortment of loosely connected
authors who do not lose any money by letting go of rights that would be
very expensive to defend.

I agree that any single work may be the product of a small number of
authors, but someone who is after bigger game can easily abandon
specific articles without any effect on his bottom line.  The big
copyright fight of the future is unlikely to be over Wikipedia's
infringement of the copyright of others; we have a history of building
and continually improving mechanisms for dealing with that.  The big
fight will be when someone else takes the GFDL material and unrepentedly
tries to claim copyright for himself.  Who will be there to defend the
rights of our individual authors?  What individual will be able to
defend his rights in what could be a very complex lawsuit?  In the
absence of an organization (perhaps the Foundation) which can be named a
collective agent for all our authors (or at least most of them) I don't
see how such a defense can happen.

>3.) There is nothing that can be legally "stolen".  By writing an article,
>the authors have released their work under the GFDL.
>
This na?vely misses the point. It's true enough, but there is a
difference between a licence and putting material into the public
domain.  The underlying principle and condition of the licence is that
there will be a chain of people who will successively apply this
licence.  The person who breaks that chain is the one who violates the
GFDL.  What CAN anybody do about it?

>Let's not get into conspiracy theories.
>
Conspiracy theories have nothing to do with this.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] A (late) Wikidata/Wiktionary Christmas present

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> we now have our first read-only prototype of Ultimate Wiktionary /
> Wikidata, using a subset of the final UW design.

Sweet!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Ilya N.

body:
It seems to me that most people would not want to bother erasing their past
information.

A small part of my name, Ilya N, and where I live (A suburb of Chicago
Illinois but you can find out which with a little digging) has been out
there for a while.

What I'm concerned about is if he starts putting out addresses, etc.

On 12/26/05, Martin Osterman <stonewallgrant at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Even though I'm not an admin, I'd like to offer some ideas on the matter.
>
> The major idea I have would offer a modicum of security:  Wikipedia sets
> up
> a POP server for admins and the admins have their e-mails run through the
> server.  Their personal data, such as their name, is scrubbed if the
> Admins
> wish it -- leaving only their handle on Wiki.  Changing code a bit could,
> theoretically, screen their IPs so they were only visible to admins or
> higher -- thus eliminating one method of tracking them down.
>
> Unfortunately, the rest is up to the Admins themselves.  You can't stop
> someone from collecting data about you that's freely available unless you
> have evidence of malicious intent -- then the law can offer you
> protection.
> Of course, in theory, a court order would shut down his website if it
> could
> be proven that his actions were promoting illegal actions such as threats.
> But again, legal actions are something you want to save as a last-ditch
> effort since they take time and money and create a lot of publicity.
>
> I don't know if this helps or not; I'm just a year-old editor on the
> project
> who is concerned for the safety and security of all involved.  Brandt does
> not seem to be someone who has anyone's best interests in mind but his
> own.
>
> --Martin Osterman
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)


body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:

> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>
>> For the latest in the implementation of this grand vision, take a look
>> at the terms of the CC-Wiki license, or the mysteriously vague
>> attribution terms so cowardly sneaked into CC-BY-SA v2.0. These
>> changes to cc-by-sa could have been implemented as another CC license
>> flag 'CA' (community attribution) but instead it was decided to
>> include the changes into the root license with no mention in the
>> layman version, presumably because such a change would fail to change
>> the license of existing works against the consent of the authors and
>> would probably too much attention to this difficult issue.  Although
>> this has not been widely noticed, I certainly am not the only one...
>> For example see the interesting distribution terms on enwiki
>> User:Jamesday.
>
> When you start using terms like "mysteriously vague attribution terms
> so cowardly sneaked"  you lost your ground because by giving it these
> kind of attributes you remove room for discussion. If that is your
> intention, you moved yourself from [[category:Reasonable]].

It's more accurate to say that he moved himself from [[Category:Na?ve]]

> There is one fundamental problem that I have with your stance; I do
> not understand what you want to achieve and how you want to square
> that with the WMF aims. In my opinion the point of these aims is to
> bring information to all people in their language. That is the whole
> reason why we do this. The important aspect of the license is that is
> has a viral aspect. This means that the information that we provide is
> Free and remains Free. Typically all articles are the work of multiple
> people. It is also true that the only place where you can find
> reliably what the contributions are of one person is on his
> contributions page. When you are interested in personal glory then
> Wikipedia is not the right medium for you. In its history pages, you
> will find detailed information on what somebody contributed. This is
> much more than what the GFDL requires us to have. It is exceedingly
> relevant information for all kinds of purposes.

Getting down on your knees and humming this kind of mantra accomplishes
fuck-all.

>> The argument used to advance this change is that, somehow, by being
>> submitted to  a collaborative authorship site a document no longer has
>> authors but is somehow authored by the 'community'.  In some cases a
>> compelling argument can indeed be made that there was no effective
>> single person author of the work, but even in these cases (which I
>> contend are rare) it takes a fantastic leap of faith to make the claim
>> that some organization (non-profit or otherwise) is the sole official
>> legal voice of the above mentioned ephemeral 'community' of authors
>> simple because they operate a website which is used by that community.
>>  But, indeed, that is exactly what is being claimed and what is being
>> swallowed because it's a lot easier to pretend that a website operator
>> represents the community because the reality of the matter (that the
>> community is a shifting cloud of unclear membership and
>> representation) is useless for solving the real challenges presented
>> by the requirement of preserving something as simple as authorship
>> credit in the world of paper.
>
> There is again one relevant point that you fail to notice. The WMF
> does NOT own any copyright and neither do the licenses argue that the
> WMF is the owner of the copyright. This ownership of the copyright is
> the one relevant thing. The consequence is that your arguments are NOT
> about copyright but about LICENSE. The difference between license and
> copyright is that a copyright owner can, when he is the sole owner of
> this right of a work, publish this work under a different license as
> well. Within our project that is not an option.

A legal right with no mechanism for enforcement is a paper tiger.

> The other point is a difference of emphasis. The WMF is about the
> publication of information. We have always been willing to have others
> do the distribution of this information as well because we want to
> make our information as widely available as possible. The changes in
> the license are designed to ease the distribution of the content. The
> authorship credit is preserved within the Wikimedia Foundation
> projects really well. The compulsory attribution provides two things;
> it points the way to where faulty information can be amended and it is
> the place where authors are  credited for EXACTLY what they contributed.

And who is responsible for maintaining an unbroken chain of
attributions?  What's the rush about having "ease of distribution"?
Yes, we would like to have the material universally available; that's an
undisputed goal.  At the same time I don't believe in charging headlong
into conflicted territory just to make the life of a handful of people
easier.  The implications of the GFDL are completely untested in the
courts, and grafting on various CC provisions only serves to muddy the
waters.  Ideally we should be working toward our own WMF license with a
slow and deliberate consideration of every clause, but that should done
in a way that would make the situation even worse.

>> Basically we're reaching a point where silly details like the moral
>> obligation to credit the authors of a work are hindering the grand
>> vision of the knowledge of the world made available to all at the
>> lowest cost possible.  This is a hard problem, so rather than dealing
>> with it head on, the details are being swept under the rug.  Licenses
>> will and have been retroactively changed to reflect this
>> prioritization of the quick solution over ethical obligations.
>
> Again, you remove the relevancy of your argument by calling arguments
> "silly". The suggestion that these changes are unethical is faulty
> because you did not even touch first base; the copyright. Consequently
> you are wrong. One thing to realise is, is that the WMF cannot  go to
> court over copyright or license infringements. It is the copyright
> holders read the authors that can.

I read the word "silly" in an ironic sense.  The rest of your comment
seems like a convenient excuse for doing nothing.

>> Normally I would not worry about this, because such changes which defy
>> the character of the licenses agreed to by the creators of content
>> would never stand... but the more I consider the issue the more I
>> realize how many differing forces will support such changes for both
>> laudable (in the case of the foundation) and selfish reasons, and it
>> leaves me feeling unsure and angry.
>
> Feeling angry leaves you in a state where it is hard for you to see
> the reason in the arguments on the other side of this equation. That
> is a shame.

The "reason" in the arguments can probably be paraphrased by, "Have
faith, and the Lord will provide."

Ec


body:
On 12/26/05, Brion Vibber <brion.vibber at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/25/05, ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If the only issue was the contents of the comments can't we just show
> > the history without them? I even added software support for that a
> > while ago (for rev_deleted), you just call Linker::commentBlock with a
> > third paramater bool true.
>
> Particular usernames/IPs are also sometimes cited as an issue.

...and if you're going to filter those two there's not a whole lot of
other information you can get from it;) Except the # of revisions and
their timestamps.


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikitech-l] GFDL violation in the Wikimedia
	database dumps

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>There is no conspiracy theory needed. You ask "would the foundation do
>this", but we need to first be clear on what 'this' means.  If 'this'
>means treating our authors in any way which is unethical today, I
>stand firmly that the answer is clearly no. In the future, I can not
>answer because my crystal ball is not that powerful.  If 'this' means
>to work to cause changes to be made to future versions of the licenses
>which temporarily increase the foundations ease at the expense at
>removing the protection of the authors from unethical actions in the
>future, I must answer a resounding yes because it is demonstrably
>true.
>
Absolutely.  A solid foundation for protecting individual rights is
preferable to a quick fix for the benefit of the impatent.  A big part
of ethics can be the consciousness of the effects and implications of
one's actions.  We cannot forsee all the effects of our actions, but we
do have a duty to consider the most likely.

>The Wikimedia foundation has been quietly advocating to the Creative
>Commons and the Free Software foundations alterations to further
>versions of the appropriate licenses which will allow the operators of
>websites such as Wikipedia the authority to permit redistribution of
>content submitted to their website with attribution to the site rather
>than the author of the content.  In effect, the *single* remaining
>tangible return an author of freely licensed content receives (their
>authorship credit) will be removed and granted to the priesthood of
>intellectual property barons who have apparently earned the right to
>take credit for the blood and sweat of a world of people because of
>their great feat of operating a website.
>
The phrasing is a little dramatic. ;-)    .  Nevertheless it does point
to issues around moral rights which, as I see it, go beyond copyrights.
In the strict sense copyright is an economic right, and judicial systems
are often established with economic rights in mind.  Attempting to
attach a monetary value to a moral right makes for a difficult transition.

>For the latest in the implementation of this grand vision, take a look
>at the terms of the CC-Wiki license, or the mysteriously vague
>attribution terms so cowardly sneaked into CC-BY-SA v2.0. These
>changes to cc-by-sa could have been implemented as another CC license
>flag 'CA' (community attribution) but instead it was decided to
>include the changes into the root license with no mention in the
>layman version, presumably because such a change would fail to change
>the license of existing works against the consent of the authors and
>would probably too much attention to this difficult issue.  Although
>this has not been widely noticed, I certainly am not the only one...
>For example see the interesting distribution terms on enwiki
>User:Jamesday.
>
Having a "layman version" of a law or license only eacerbates the
difficulties of having a law for the rich and a law for the poor.  The
layman can go on believing that his simplified version is the law until
someone with greater access can trump him with some obscure clause from
the full version.  The only way that a simplified version can work is if
any conflict the detailed cannot override the layman's version, but if
that is the case then what's the point of having a detailed version.
This is roughly akin to those politicians who proclaim that they want a
simplification of tax forms without understanding that what is needed is
a simplification of the underlying tax laws.

>The argument used to advance this change is that, somehow, by being
>submitted to  a collaborative authorship site a document no longer has
>authors but is somehow authored by the 'community'.  In some cases a
>compelling argument can indeed be made that there was no effective
>single person author of the work, but even in these cases (which I
>contend are rare) it takes a fantastic leap of faith to make the claim
>that some organization (non-profit or otherwise) is the sole official
>legal voice of the above mentioned ephemeral 'community' of authors
>simple because they operate a website which is used by that community.
> But, indeed, that is exactly what is being claimed and what is being
>swallowed because it's a lot easier to pretend that a website operator
>represents the community because the reality of the matter (that the
>community is a shifting cloud of unclear membership and
>representation) is useless for solving the real challenges presented
>by the requirement of preserving something as simple as authorship
>credit in the world of paper.
>
I believe that if that website operator is going to defend the community
then that defence also extends into the courts.to defend the collective
rights of that community.  It should be viewed as a duty.  But that duty
does not imply that it is the "sole" official voice.  The individual
authors should still reserve the right to mount their own defence, and
the community needs to safeguard the evidence that will allow them to
mount that defence.

>Basically we're reaching a point where silly details like the moral
>obligation to credit the authors of a work are hindering the grand
>vision of the knowledge of the world made available to all at the
>lowest cost possible.  This is a hard problem, so rather than dealing
>with it head on, the details are being swept under the rug.  Licenses
>will and have been retroactively changed to reflect this
>prioritization of the quick solution over ethical obligations.
>
Retroactive changes open up yet another hornets' nest.  This section is
interesting:

>     Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version
>     number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered
>     version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you
>     have the option of following the terms and conditions either of
>     that specified version or of any later version that has been
>     published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the
>     Document does not specify a version number of this License, you
>     may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free
>     Software Foundation.

This seems to protect people from being bound by any changes which may
be made to the license subsequent to their edits. Without conscious
compliance to the new version the option to be bound by the old version
would remain.

>Normally I would not worry about this, because such changes which defy
>the character of the licenses agreed to by the creators of content
>would never stand... but the more I consider the issue the more I
>realize how many differing forces will support such changes for both
>laudable (in the case of the foundation) and selfish reasons, and it
>leaves me feeling unsure and angry.
>
Sure!  But the arguments that will convince the most people will be
those rooted in convenience.

>I fear that we, the community of authors and spokesmen who support the
>propagation of knowledge freely to the world, have become so impatient
>with the slowness of achieving our goals that we have begun to take
>steps to extinguish the protective flame of decentralization which
>immunizes our work from the privatization, exploitation, and
>commercial imprisonment by greedy self interests, simply because the
>resulting legal obligations of that decentralized existence have
>become a temporary hindrance to our important goals.
>
I'm encouraged by hearing someone else understand that.  I have no
problem with undermining the entire copyright system as it is known
because it undermines the greedheads.  There are no shortcuts to that
goal; shortcuts could even destroy the mission.

>Such a move to promote the notion that the operator of a
>telecommunication service (isn't that what the foundation claims to be
>when it invokes the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA as a
>reassurance that our negligent handling of copyright matters will go
>unpunished) is  granted a special position of unique control over the
>creative works by the users of that service will not only be supported
>by the operators of Wiki's who are currently so inconvenienced, but it
>will also be strongly supported by the newly re-merged
>telecommunications giants so eager to exercise their believed right to
>extract maximum profit from every bit transferred across their glass.
>
In other words we can't have it both ways.  But there is more to this
than mere negligence that can be repaired when it is brought to our
attention.  This is why I have always maintained that the real problem
will not be with rights that Wikipedia has violated, but with the rights
of Wikipedians that have been violated by others.

>The words "theft" and "steal" constantly create confusion when applied
>to information, it is unfortunate that we use them. You are quite
>correct that no one can take away what we already have, but it is
>quite possible that through changes in license that powerful interests
>will be able to claim special rights over the works of others because
>of their ownership of telecommunications infrastructure at least that
>is the notion embodied by the proposed license changes.   So that
>while you will be free to use the content you helped create, another
>group, by virtue of their operation of a telecommunications service,
>will be far more free. You can not claim that you are free so long as
>there is another group which has more freedom with the work you
>created.
>
The introduction of terms like "theft" and "piracy" has diverted
attention away from what IIRC is the Jeffersonian principle in
intellectual property that if you still have the item that is
purportedly stolen it hasn't been stolen.

>Welcome to the new serfdom.
>
>Today we love and trust our telecommunications service providing
>masters, but what changes does the future bring?
>
All surfers are equal, but some are more equal than others. :-)

Ec

PS:  I don't know why this thread is on the Wikitech list, so I've
copied this response to the Foundation list, which really seems more
appropriate.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Biographical data

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 25/12/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>My biggest criticism of it at this point is that it's only available to
>>the geeks who use a monobook skin and know how to edit it.  I'm not
>>going to stop using the classic skin, and I have no intention of
>>learning how to edit a css.  I'm sure there are many other non-techies
>>in the latter group that would be kept away from the feature because of
>>that.  A simple toggle in the user preferences would make a lot more sense.
>>
>>
>I'm not sure it really is - it can be set to be visible there, sure,
>but you can edit it at will through the "conventional means" - and,
>right now, it's not meant to be read in the article as such.
>
If nobody can see it, nobody will be educated into using it.  If I have
nothing to say about an author, I'm not even going to bother opening the
edit box.  We already have a wide range of info boxes about articles
that work very well.  I don't see the point of making this one an
exception.  I think that more generally our approach to metadata has
been a little scattered.

>>The one thing that I wouild make clear about the contents is that one
>>can add years when an author flourished.  For some authors we anly know
>>the years when they wrote, and know nothing of their lives before or
>>after the time during which they wrote.  Perhaps our German colleagues
>>have already thought of that.
>>
>>
>
>This is certainly a handy idea, but it doesn't seem to be in the
>standard format in de:. I've suggested a way of dealing with this on
>the talk page - an additional optional line for "flourished", just as
>a single year (for simplicity) or as a range -
>
> |FLOURISHED=1200
> |PLACE OF ACTIVITY=England
>or
> |FLOURISHED=1191-1208
> |PLACE OF ACTIVITY=England
>or something else along these lines
>
>Even if it's just a single year, it allows us to say "ah, he's
>thirteenth century" or the like. As it stands, if you don't have birth
>and death dates, they could be contemporary or they could be biblical,
>and we can't say at a glance - well, *we* can, but a computer can't.
>
That would be perfect!

Ec


body:
geni wrote:

>On 12/26/05, Rob <gamaliel8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Brandt dug up an old webpage of mine, one which I
>>assumed had been deleted by my alma mater.  I
>>remembered the password and removed the pictures of
>>myself and any personal information, and added a link
>>to Google-Watch-Watch.  I guess that pissed him off,
>>so now instead of linking to the page, Brandt has
>>posted a copy of my page (prior to alterations) and
>>the pictures on his own website. Advice on how to
>>handle this would be much appreciated. Obviously this
>>is a blantant copyright violation but I'm not sure
>>what to do about this.
>>
>>
>In theory see a lawyer who will chrage you to send warning letters.
>
A formal DMCA notice would be better idea.  A lawyer should not be
needed for doing this.  A person like him, who is already experienced in
litigation is more likely to treat lawyer letters as a joke.

Ec


from_name: Stephen Bain

body:
On 12/26/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
> For me what is perhaps a tangential issue relates to articles that are
> transwikied to Wiktionary from Wikipedia.  These are sometimes
> accompanied by long edit histories copied onto the talk page which are
> nothing more than user names and date/time marks, but no indication
> about whether these edits had anything to do with what we use on
> Wiktionary.  It follows from the principle that Wiktionary is not an
> encyclopedia that Wiktionary accepts many articles that would be
> rejected as stubs by Wikipedia.  Is there any way to know just what each
> of those edits were?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Export
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Import

I know developer time is precious, but it would be helpful if Import
could be turned back on, if only for Transwiki purposes.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 12/26/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>What I'm concerned about is if he starts putting out addresses, etc.
>>
>>
>For which he could argue no justification, since Wikipedia does not
>publish such information about anyone.
>
True enough, but it's also easy to look things like that up in an online
phone-book.

Ec


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>On 12/26/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Matt Brown wrote:
>>
>>
>>>On 12/26/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>What I'm concerned about is if he starts putting out addresses, etc.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>For which he could argue no justification, since Wikipedia does not
>>>publish such information about anyone.
>>>
>>>
>>True enough, but it's also easy to look things like that up in an online
>>phone-book.
>>
>>
>Really? I've tried to look someone up in a phone book before, but even
>if you know their name, you might still get 3 pages of names to go
>through.
>
It will vary.  Very common names or people living in big cities will be
more difficult to establish, but relatively rare names or small town
people stand a better chance of being identified.  The level of the
searcher's skill can make a big difference.

Ec


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 12/25/05, The Hooded Man <hoodedman at shadowedcorner.com> wrote:
>
>>> Perhaps it will, but the foundation will not be able steal credit from
>>> the actual authors of the works in Wikipedia for itself, at least not
>>> without a legal fight. Most quality works in Wikipedia are the work of
>>> a small number of authors per work, not these massively collaborative
>>> efforts as has been misrepresented to the free software foundation.
>>>
>> I think the point is:
>>
>> 1.) Do you think Wikimedia would do this?
>>
>> 2.) They would not be able to do this.  A legal fight would be stupid;
>> database dumps are publicly available that clearly show full author history.
>>
>> If Wikimedia wanted to steal the articles, they could delete the entire edit
>> history and remove it from all database dumps.  But then people would still
>> have them.  It's impossible for them to do that.
>>
>> 3.) There is nothing that can be legally "stolen".  By writing an article,
>> the authors have released their work under the GFDL.
>>
>> Let's not get into conspiracy theories.
>>
>
> There is no conspiracy theory needed. You ask "would the foundation do
> this", but we need to first be clear on what 'this' means.  If 'this'
> means treating our authors in any way which is unethical today, I
> stand firmly that the answer is clearly no. In the future, I can not
> answer because my crystal ball is not that powerful.  If 'this' means
> to work to cause changes to be made to future versions of the licenses
> which temporarily increase the foundations ease at the expense at
> removing the protection of the authors from unethical actions in the
> future, I must answer a resounding yes because it is demonstrably
> true.
>
> The Wikimedia foundation has been quietly advocating to the Creative
> Commons and the Free Software foundations alterations to further
> versions of the appropriate licenses which will allow the operators of
> websites such as Wikipedia the authority to permit redistribution of
> content submitted to their website with attribution to the site rather
> than the author of the content.  In effect, the *single* remaining
> tangible return an author of freely licensed content receives (their
> authorship credit) will be removed and granted to the priesthood of
> intellectual property barons who have apparently earned the right to
> take credit for the blood and sweat of a world of people because of
> their great feat of operating a website.
>
> For the latest in the implementation of this grand vision, take a look
> at the terms of the CC-Wiki license, or the mysteriously vague
> attribution terms so cowardly sneaked into CC-BY-SA v2.0. These
> changes to cc-by-sa could have been implemented as another CC license
> flag 'CA' (community attribution) but instead it was decided to
> include the changes into the root license with no mention in the
> layman version, presumably because such a change would fail to change
> the license of existing works against the consent of the authors and
> would probably too much attention to this difficult issue.  Although
> this has not been widely noticed, I certainly am not the only one...
> For example see the interesting distribution terms on enwiki
> User:Jamesday.
>
When you start using terms like "mysteriously vague attribution terms so
cowardly sneaked"  you lost your ground because by giving it these kind
of attributes you remove room for discussion. If that is your intention,
you moved yourself from [[category:Reasonable]].

There is one fundamental problem that I have with your stance; I do not
understand what you want to achieve and how you want to square that with
the WMF aims. In my opinion the point of these aims is to bring
information to all people in their language. That is the whole reason
why we do this. The important aspect of the license is that is has a
viral aspect. This means that the information that we provide is Free
and remains Free. Typically all articles are the work of multiple
people. It is also true that the only place where you can find reliably
what the contributions are of one person is on his contributions page.
When you are interested in personal glory then Wikipedia is not the
right medium for you. In its history pages, you will find detailed
information on what somebody contributed. This is much more than what
the GFDL requires us to have. It is exceedingly relevant information for
all kinds of purposes.
> The argument used to advance this change is that, somehow, by being
> submitted to  a collaborative authorship site a document no longer has
> authors but is somehow authored by the 'community'.  In some cases a
> compelling argument can indeed be made that there was no effective
> single person author of the work, but even in these cases (which I
> contend are rare) it takes a fantastic leap of faith to make the claim
> that some organization (non-profit or otherwise) is the sole official
> legal voice of the above mentioned ephemeral 'community' of authors
> simple because they operate a website which is used by that community.
>  But, indeed, that is exactly what is being claimed and what is being
> swallowed because it's a lot easier to pretend that a website operator
> represents the community because the reality of the matter (that the
> community is a shifting cloud of unclear membership and
> representation) is useless for solving the real challenges presented
> by the requirement of preserving something as simple as authorship
> credit in the world of paper.
>
There is again one relevant point that you fail to notice. The WMF does
NOT own any copyright and neither do the licenses argue that the WMF is
the owner of the copyright. This ownership of the copyright is the one
relevant thing. The consequence is that your arguments are NOT about
copyright but about LICENSE. The difference between license and
copyright is that a copyright owner can, when he is the sole owner of
this right of a work, publish this work under a different license as
well. Within our project that is not an option.

The other point is a difference of emphasis. The WMF is about the
publication of information. We have always been willing to have others
do the distribution of this information as well because we want to make
our information as widely available as possible. The changes in the
license are designed to ease the distribution of the content. The
authorship credit is preserved within the Wikimedia Foundation projects
really well. The compulsory attribution provides two things; it points
the way to where faulty information can be amended and it is the place
where authors are  credited for EXACTLY what they contributed.
> Basically we're reaching a point where silly details like the moral
> obligation to credit the authors of a work are hindering the grand
> vision of the knowledge of the world made available to all at the
> lowest cost possible.  This is a hard problem, so rather than dealing
> with it head on, the details are being swept under the rug.  Licenses
> will and have been retroactively changed to reflect this
> prioritization of the quick solution over ethical obligations.
>
Again, you remove the relevancy of your argument by calling arguments
"silly". The suggestion that these changes are unethical is faulty
because you did not even touch first base; the copyright. Consequently
you are wrong. One thing to realise is, is that the WMF cannot  go to
court over copyright or license infringements. It is the copyright
holders read the authors that can.
> Normally I would not worry about this, because such changes which defy
> the character of the licenses agreed to by the creators of content
> would never stand... but the more I consider the issue the more I
> realize how many differing forces will support such changes for both
> laudable (in the case of the foundation) and selfish reasons, and it
> leaves me feeling unsure and angry.
>
Feeling angry leaves you in a state where it is hard for you to see the
reason in the arguments on the other side of this equation. That is a shame.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Stefan Wagner

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Experimental HTTPS interface to the wikis

body:
Hi,

On Mon, 26 Dec 2005 03:33:02 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> Currently it's using a self-signed certificate, but if we decide to keep this we
> could pick up a "real" cert for convenience/peace of mind.

you could try CaCert <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAcert>.

--
Ciao!
   Stefan Wagner

                                                      <><
                                       http://trumpkin.de
PGP vorhanden                               ICQ vorhanden


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 12/26/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > Brandt isn't the only member of the board of Public Information
> > Research. If we could contact the others we might be able to atchive
> > something. The website is registered in their name.
> > http://www.namebase.org/staffbl.html
>
> I have offered to Brandt to come to Texas and give a talk about
> Wikipedia to him and his board of directors, and seek to have a dialogue
> about privacy issues and Wikipedia policies.  This is the only thing I
> really know to do: try to engage him in a more productive dialogue than
> what has gone on so far.
>
> I have gotten no response yet, positive or negative, but I am still hopeful.
>
> --Jimbo

Do let us know what happens. Some of this information is just taking it too far.


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleted revisions no longer visible?

body:
The feature for non-admins to see the time and edit summary of deleted
revisions is no longer present. Is there a reason for this?


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Ho ho ho,

we now have our first read-only prototype of Ultimate Wiktionary /
Wikidata, using a subset of the final UW design. This subset is a
complex, versioned relational database that can model
- lexical items (words, short phrases) with multiple meanings
- synonyms and translations, on the meaning level
- other relationships between them, on the meaning level.

The prototype is at:
http://epov.org/wd-gemet/index.php/Main_Page

It contains over 70,000 words in 22 languages; many of them have
definitions. The definitions usually come in 4 languages. As I
understand it, we can have this data under the GFDL, but it's just one
of many building blocks we will use in seeding the UW.

There will be at least one significant upgrade to this protoype before
the end of the year. All the tables and fields for versioning complex
relations without ballooning up the database are already there. I'm not
sure if the model I have in mind for versioning works yet, and I hope to
test and demonstrate it soon. (Versioning, in my opinion, is the single
greatest challenge for Wikidata.) I also want to show how we try to "eat
our own dogfood" in Ultimate Wiktionary by localizing the user interface
using the content of the dictionary.

All the records are already hooked up to pages and revisions, so you can
use [[Special:Allpages]] and the like to navigate. When there are
identical words in different languages, all the translations and
definitions are shown on the same page.

Our goal with Ultimate Wiktionary is to provide an even more complex
application that will make this data collaboratively editable, to add
dynamic user-based views, APIs, and crucial features such as
inflections, etymologies, complex relations and attributes, and much
more. This will be a huge challenge. Fortunately, more funding seems to
be on the horizon, allowing us to put more developers on the job.

Ultimate Wiktionary is just one application of Wikidata, and we will try
to generalize as much functionality as possible, so that it will be
reasonably straightforward to build new Wikidata apps. In particular,
versioning and all basic relation types should be handled on the
Wikidata level. There are thousands of possible new applications for
Wikimedia and other MediaWiki users if we get this right.

Please take a look at the prototype. The view component is a quick and
dirty hack, but the backend is approaching some stability. There are
some small inconsistencies in the data here and there, some of them
inherited from GEMET. Due to time constraints, I also had to stop the
import at about 80% leading to a few red links; I'll try to import the
remaining terms in the next few days.

Finally, expect a paper explaining some of the key ideas of Wikidata and
UW, showing the first user interface prototypes, and defining future
development milestones and applications. I will also try to describe
some of the forthcoming changes to the MediaWiki core that come with the
need of Wikidata to handle multiple languages in one instalation; these
changes will benefit multi-language projects like Meta and Commons.

I will be at the 22C3 on December 30 to demonstrate this prototype as
well as the completed namespace manager, and to answer questions.

Best,

a very tired Erik


body:
On 12/26/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> This is a misunderstanding.  The words you quote were written by me
> before the inception of semi-protection,and currently there is no
> NOEDITSECTION directive in the article and, although it is
> semi-protected, I still successfully edited a section of the article
> from one of my alternative accounts, User:Tasty monster.
>
> So the problem of section editing has gone away.
>
> Also the rise of vandalism on that article seems to have halted
> somewhat, though this may be due to local factors. In any  case who
> care about vandalism on this article, it doesn't affect the final
> product as long as normal editing is not hindered.
>

Gotcha. Sorry about the misunderstanding.


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Foundation-l] A Christmas present on Boxing day

body:
Hoi,
I am extremely happy that I can inform you on Boxing day that a tired
Erik has produced the first tangible result of the Wikidata / Ultimate
Wiktionary project. It shows that we want great content in many
languages, that we want to include thesaurus information and that we
are happy to include with gratitude content like the Gemet thesaurus.

:) I want to thank Erik for working really hard to make this happen :)

Thanks,
   Gerard ..

This is the text of Erik's E-mail to the Wikitech mailinglist:
*****************************
Ho ho ho,

we now have our first read-only prototype of Ultimate Wiktionary /
Wikidata, using a subset of the final UW design. This subset is a
complex, versioned relational database that can model
- lexical items (words, short phrases) with multiple meanings
- synonyms and translations, on the meaning level
- other relationships between them, on the meaning level.

The prototype is at:
http://epov.org/wd-gemet/index.php/Main_Page

It contains over 70,000 words in 22 languages; many of them have
definitions. The definitions usually come in 4 languages. As I
understand it, we can have this data under the GFDL, but it's just one
of many building blocks we will use in seeding the UW.

There will be at least one significant upgrade to this protoype before
the end of the year. All the tables and fields for versioning complex
relations without ballooning up the database are already there. I'm not
sure if the model I have in mind for versioning works yet, and I hope to
test and demonstrate it soon. (Versioning, in my opinion, is the single
greatest challenge for Wikidata.) I also want to show how we try to "eat
our own dogfood" in Ultimate Wiktionary by localizing the user interface
using the content of the dictionary.

All the records are already hooked up to pages and revisions, so you can
use [[Special:Allpages]] and the like to navigate. When there are
identical words in different languages, all the translations and
definitions are shown on the same page.

Our goal with Ultimate Wiktionary is to provide an even more complex
application that will make this data collaboratively editable, to add
dynamic user-based views, APIs, and crucial features such as
inflections, etymologies, complex relations and attributes, and much
more. This will be a huge challenge. Fortunately, more funding seems to
be on the horizon, allowing us to put more developers on the job.

Ultimate Wiktionary is just one application of Wikidata, and we will try
to generalize as much functionality as possible, so that it will be
reasonably straightforward to build new Wikidata apps. In particular,
versioning and all basic relation types should be handled on the
Wikidata level. There are thousands of possible new applications for
Wikimedia and other MediaWiki users if we get this right.

Please take a look at the prototype. The view component is a quick and
dirty hack, but the backend is approaching some stability. There are
some small inconsistencies in the data here and there, some of them
inherited from GEMET. Due to time constraints, I also had to stop the
import at about 80% leading to a few red links; I'll try to import the
remaining terms in the next few days.

Finally, expect a paper explaining some of the key ideas of Wikidata and
UW, showing the first user interface prototypes, and defining future
development milestones and applications. I will also try to describe
some of the forthcoming changes to the MediaWiki core that come with the
need of Wikidata to handle multiple languages in one instalation; these
changes will benefit multi-language projects like Meta and Commons.

I will be at the 22C3 on December 30 to demonstrate this prototype as
well as the completed namespace manager, and to answer questions.

Best,

a very tired Erik
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] A Christmas present on Boxing day


subject: [Foundation-l] Please aprove an e-mail pending distribution

body:
Hoi
An  e-mail awaits I was extremely happy to sen awaits approval for
further distribution.. Its problem is that it has too many
recipients..

Could someone please oblige me :)
Thanks,
  GerardM


subject: [Wiktionary-l] Please aprove an e-mail pending distribution


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Foundation-l] News from Serbian chapter

body:
- In Wednesday probably Filip Maljkovic and Djordje Stakic would have
presentation of Wikipedia for 160 students of University of Novi
Pazar. (Presentation is based on one German Power Point presentation.)

- In Thursday Djordje Stakic would have presentation of Wikipedia on
the Faculty for Mathematics of Belgrade University.

- We started with cooperation with Free Software Network of Serbia,
which is associate organization of Free Software Foundation Europe and
the next steps we would work together.

- In the second half of January we would have two
presentations/speeches in the Youth Cultural Center of Belgrade (the
most important alternative cultural center in Belgrade;
http://www.domomladine.org/): The first one would be presentation of
Wikipedia, the second one would be the talk about free software and
projection of the movie Revolution OS.

- In February we would have two presentations/speeches, but we didn't
make materials yet.

- In the first half of March Richard Stallman would come in Belgrade.
(Not 100% sure, but we would know that in the next couple of days.)

- In the second half of April Jimbo would be in Belgrade (I hope in
Zagreb and Ljubljana, too).

- In May we would organize free knowledge/free software
(Wikipedia/GNU) festival in Belgrade.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] News from Serbian chapter