from_name: Benjamin Webb

body:
On 26/03/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
> > Having already been involved with several massive volunteer
> >
> >transcription efforts, including some that transcribe antique manuscript
> >records for old hand-written records of the sort you are discussing, I
> >think it is something not only possible but very likely to happen.  This
> >is really nothing different than what is happening right now with the
> >Distributed Proofreader project, if you want to give an example of a
> >group of complete volunteers working over the internet and skattered
> >across many countries.  Those volunteer transcription efforts I
> >participated included the transcribing of all of the records for Ellis
> >Island, as well as participation in transcribing the 1880 United States
> >Census... neither one of those were exactly trivial and wasn't just
> >microfilms but instead some very high resolution images sent
> >electronically (for current efforts).  My wife was involved with some
> >early 19th Century church records from Lousiana... all of them hand
> >written as well.  The current standard is a monochrome TIFF images, but
> >other data formats certainly could be used.  This isn't decades from
> >now, but something that is currently happening.  Software can even be
> >written to do some futher data processing to help clean up the image for
> >identification purposes... like trying to get that pesky little letter
> >you might think is an "o" but it could be an "a" or even an "e".
> >
> I'm afraid that where this kind of ambiguity arises it is usually best
> not to attempt to resolve it unless your arguments are very convincing.
> Spelling in many of these old documents was atrocious.  In many cases
> the affected individuals did not know how to read or write, and the
> local clergyman's spelling of entries into the parish records was
> scarcely more than educated guesswork.  My wife is from Quebec and her
> family name is Gu?nard; another branch of the family ended up in Wyoming
> in the mid-19th century.where the name became Guinard.  Misreading an
> accent on an "e" for the dot on an "i" is perfectly understandable for
> some handwritings, or where a person has never heard of diacritics.  I
> would be very hesitant to have software resolve these issues.
>
> >As far as the reilability, I've used both original records and the
> >scanned TIFFs, and frankly I think the scanned images are even better
> >than the original documents in terms of clarity of trying to decyper
> >what is there.  The originals are still valuable, and can be refered to
> >by a professional researcher, but the need isn't really there for the
> >most part.
> >
> That's mostly right.  Photographic techniques can help to bring out the
> contrast between the writing and its physical background.
>
> >Now it would be necessary for even more software changes to be made to a
> >project like this, but it is possible to do some very exacting
> >geneological research about people who are not even necessarily your
> >ancestors.  As usual, citations are very important for this kind of
> >research, and the amount of original material that is available would
> >amaze you that can be considered a primary source.  What makes this kind
> >of research interesting is that it has a very personal connection to the
> >individual doing the research.  You would be surprised at how many
> >people would be willing to volunteer to help others out in getting some
> >of this genolgical research.
> >
> I agree.  It is a community that very much understands the importance of
> mutual help.  If I am seeking a small bit of information from a far away
> community that would be impractical for me to visit I can easily find a
> local person to help.  There may be nothing useful that I can do for my
> helper in return, but I should be ready to help some other stranger when
> the occasion arises.
>
> >One other thing to note is that geneolgists are loaded with money that
> >they are willing to spend on worthy research projects.  They tend to be
> >people at the twilight years of their life and usually retired.  Not
> >everybody has the money, but enough do that some incredible waste of
> >money is done.
> >
> There are many commercial enterprises that just love seniors.  They may
> provide one or two pages of easy research, append it to a stack of
> potboiler material, and charge a big fee.
>
> >Or more to the point, I think that starting a geneology project is
> >actually going to be a significant source of revenue for the Wikimedia
> >Foundation rather than being a drag on the resources.  And a geneology
> >database increases significantly in value as it grows.  I can't say what
> >the critical number would be, but having over a million names would
> >certainly be a significant milestone to make any project, and people
> >have paid some large amounts of money ($1,000's) for much smaller
> >databases that might have some information they are looking for, or are
> >even willing to do international travel just to get a few additional
> >names and references.
> >
> Probabably so, and by charging very modest fees at that.  The question
> to ask then, given the massive number of genealogical websites out
> there, what can we do that will make our site more desirable than all
> the others.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

Surely the Wikimedia Foundation isn't going to charge fees, I thought it was
non-profit. Have I misunderstood what you are saying?


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject:
[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki,
	wishes to become a wiki project


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New wikipedias created

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>On 26/03/06, Alin Dosoftei <desiphral at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Mark, this a perfect example of why Roma get sick and tired of non-Roma
>>trying to organize their lives by thinking they finally find some exotic
>>puppets to play with. They come with cut and dried ideas and they try to
>>impose them irrespective of the ground reality by not listening to the
>>people.
>>
>>
>If you think I discriminate against you, you are wildly mistaken. In
>my life I don't have a lot of personal experiences with Roma people,
>so I don't have any of the biases you may encounter with non-Roma
>people in your own environment. To me, Roma people are just like any
>other people. Not "exotic puppets to play with".
>
No-one is suggesting bias or bad faith, only well-intentioned
ignorance.  That's what the image of the [[Ugly American]]  has been all
about ever since that book was written in 1958.  Most Americans who have
regularly involved themselves in Wikipedia have learned that lesson.
They have learned that people from other countries prefer to solve their
own problems without recourse to the presumption that American solutions
are necessarily the best.  Regretably, some few Americans here, like
you, have never grasped this.

>What worries me is the prospect that you will call yourself the
>"Romani Wikipedia" while at the same time being inaccessable to a
>large portion of Roma, including but not limited to readers of Ursari.
>
Why should that worry YOU?  I saw no evident Roma involvement in the
decision that there should be one English Wikipedia to unite the British
and American languages.  Why shouldn't the Roma sort out their own
problems?  There are more ways to have people come together than having
them unite to repel a meddler who has decided that he has better
solutions to their problems than they do themselves.  If the Ursari
speakers feel that they have a problem with the rest of the Roma
community it's up to them to seek help; it's not up to a stranger to
imagine a problem and impose his own gratuitous solution.

Ec


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki,
 wishes to become a wiki project

body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:

>On 26/03/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Or more to the point, I think that starting a geneology project is
>>>actually going to be a significant source of revenue for the Wikimedia
>>>Foundation rather than being a drag on the resources.  And a geneology
>>>database increases significantly in value as it grows.  I can't say what
>>>the critical number would be, but having over a million names would
>>>certainly be a significant milestone to make any project, and people
>>>have paid some large amounts of money ($1,000's) for much smaller
>>>databases that might have some information they are looking for, or are
>>>even willing to do international travel just to get a few additional
>>>names and references.
>>>
>>>
>>Probabably so, and by charging very modest fees at that.  The question
>>to ask then, given the massive number of genealogical websites out
>>there, what can we do that will make our site more desirable than all
>>the others.
>>
>>
>Surely the Wikimedia Foundation isn't going to charge fees, I thought it was
>non-profit. Have I misunderstood what you are saying?
>
Charging fees and being non-profit are not mutually exclusive concepts.
That idea is one possibility among many. It would be irresponsible to
lunge forward with such a huge project without some consideration of its
economics.

Ec


body:
Benjamin Webb wrote:

>Yes, I agree, a well aimed donation system would bring in quite a tidy sum
>for a project like this.
>
>As for copyrights, when it comes it Genealogical data, most of it can't be
>copyrighted, as it is mostly facts. I have added certain familysearch
>GEDCOMs to my tree on Rodovid, do you think I am allowed to do this, as it
>is facts.
>
>Of course, having a free license does make it much easier, there isn't an
>issue of trying to draw the line between fact and copyrightable material.
>
>By the way, what do you think of the meta
>page<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rodovid.org>
>?
>
>
Are there any other intellectual property hazards in connection with
GEDCOMs?  Does the LDS church or anyone else hold any software patents?

What verifiability standards would such a project have?

What policies would such a project follow in relation to privacy?
Attitudes toward including living persons in a genealogical database are
not consistent.

While I don't see any big copyright problems in relation to importing
the GEDCOMs of others, I would be very concerned about the accuracy of
these imported files.  GIGO = Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Ec


list: wikien-l

from_name: SP

subject: [WikiEN-l] Different DRV threshold for speedy deletions?

body:
The number people giving input is very low on some prod and *fd's, too.

Sydney

David Alexander Russell wrote:
> This occured to me recently - wouldn't it make a lot of sense to lower
> the threshold to 50% for a successful undeletion of speedies? I'm all
> for keeping the 75% threshold for stuff deleted via *fd, since *fd
> deletions require consensus to achieve, it makes sense to require a high
> standard to overturn that decision, however if an article has been
> speedied (ie the deletion judgment was made by one admin, rather than a
> discussion on *fd), and 60% of people think that it shouldn't have been,
> surely there is something wrong there.
>
> Sure, I know that voting is evil, Wikipedia is not a democracy and so
> on, but shouldn't speedies (or, to be more precise, an individual
> admin's interpretation of whether a page meets the speedy deletion
> criteria) which are not subject to any community scrutiny be easier to
> overturn than *fd votes, which are?
>
> Cynical
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

--
Sydney Poore

Go Bengals!


body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

>I'd also like to give an example of the typical licensing terms for most
>of these websites:
>
>http://familysearch.org/Eng/policy/FSI_terms.asp
>
>Note especially the clause:
>
>"All material found at this site is owned or licensed by us. You may
>view, download, and print material from this site only for your
>personal, noncommercial use or, if you are a professional genealogist,
>for use by a current client."
>
It is often unclear just what is copyright in these sites.  Most claims
of this sort are self-serving, and legally doubtful.  Whether something
is copyright or not has nothing to do with this kind of statement.  If I
were to contribute to such a project I would not be granting them
ownership in my information.  Facts are not copyrightable, though their
form of organization may be.  It all comes down to the status of GEDCOM
files when accepted as a standard.

>Compare that to the GFDL, and you will see that most data has been
>signifcantly restricted for re-use in most cases, even if you were the
>person who submitted the information in the first place.  GFDL (or
>Creative Commons type licensing) is one area where sites like what is
>being proposed here is going to blow all of the other geneology sites
>out of the water.
>
Have any of these other sites tried taking people to court over
copyright violations?  I would be quite prepared to overlook their
copyright claims.

>All of these are aspects that are derived from Wikimedia users'
>experience with developing other on-line content.  The current internal
>push for this sort of development is where users like myself have been
>so used to how things are done with Wiki software that we wonder why
>this isn't be done for geneological research, where these ideas of free
>access to information and the ability to freely edit the information
>havn't yet caught on.
>
Being able to freely edit is an important feature, but that opens up a
wide range of other problems like our policies on original research.

Ec


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban Question on Johnny Tapia issue

body:
On 3/26/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Range blocks aren't supposed to be week-long.

They can be as long as they need to be.  I'm sure Raul654 considered
the possible side-effects.

--
Sam


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tor and "X-Forwarded-For"

body:
Ilmari Karonen wrote:
> Ilmari Karonen wrote:
>
>>Actually, [[MediaWiki:Blockiptext]] is probably one place where this
>>also ought to be advertised.
>
>
> ...done.  Improvements welcome.
>
> Should there be some specific place where admins can report ISP proxies
> so that a developer can check them, with a list of proxies that have
> already been checked and found wanting?

May I suggest http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:XFF_project ?

> An admin doing vandal blocking
> generally can't tell if a proxy provides XFF headers or not, but I
> understand that the headers are logged in the database where developers
> (and those with CheckUser privs?) can access them.

You need either shell access or cooperation from someone behind the proxy. Only a single IP is
recorded in the database, that's what Special:CheckUser gives access to. The entire XFF header for
each POST request is stored in a text format log on NFS, that's what developers need to check.

Note that the log might not tell you the difference between fradulent XFF headers and real ones. For
that I mostly rely on reverse DNS. I also use DNS to list proxies which have never made an edit to
Wikipedia, and IP addresses reserved by the ISP for proxies that don't exist yet.

The method can be summarised as follows:

1) Find a proxy IP. I've done this in two ways: by user reports and searching IPs marked
{{SharedIP}} on en.
2) Do reverse DNS. If it looks like a proxy, continue, otherwise stop.
3) If the hostname contains a number (e.g. bbcache-8.singnet.com.sg), change it until you find the
edges of the range.
4) Search the XFF log.
  a) If the proxy is forwarding for private addresses, add the range to [[/RFC 1918]].
  b) If the proxy is not giving XFF headers, send them an email asking them to change their
configuration.
  c) If the proxy is giving valid XFF headers, add the range to the list.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

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

Mathias Schindler stated for the record:

> "a large portion of wikipedia is pornographic" - Britannica
> representative (unidentified)
>
> http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/03/25/podcast47-in-defense-of-encyclopedia-britannica/

You say that like it's a bad thing....

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Knowledge is power, and power
 sean at epoptic.org | corrupts. So study hard and be evil.
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Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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ljq5y6mNUJo6eIvqcNSeFhk=
=r3zr
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from_name: Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz

subject: [Foundation-l] Polish Wikimedia meetup

body:
Polish Wikimedia Meeting 2006 will take place on April 29 - May 1 in
Wroc?aw. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wroc%C5%82aw)

The Meeting is mainly organised for Polish-spoken participants, but all
non-Polish spoken Wikimedians are also welcome.

During the meeting there will be time for informal talks, as well as one
formal session of oral presentations - most of them in Polish, but we
may organise english, french and german translators to help you
understand them. There is no conference fee. We can help to organise
accomodation in Wroc?aw, as well as some assistance if you need it. You
can also book yourself your room in Hotel Tumski, which is near the
meeting-place:

http://www.hotel-tumski.com.pl/hotel/enhotel_booking.xml

See the map of the meeting-place, and some other pictures:

http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Zlot_Wikimedian_2006#Noclegi

If you'd like to join us, please drop en e-mail to
[mailto:zarzad at wikimedia.pl zarzad at wikimedia.pl].

See the oficial web-page of the meeting: [http://zlot.wikimedia.pl
zlot.wikimedia.pl] (in Polish only)
--
Tomasz "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedysta:Polimerek
http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/pl/TomaszGanicz.html


subject: [Foundation-l] Polish Wikimedia meetup


from_name: Keith D. Tyler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> Keith D. Tyler wrote:
>
>
>>2. I call Boeing Field on the phone and ask them how many planes fly in and out
>>every day.
>>
>
> Thanks, but no thanks. This has all kinds of verifiability problem -
> who answers the phone? Are they working from records, or BSing you
> from memory so as to get you to hang up and stop bothering them?
> What if I call them later, and get a different answer; do I delete
> your number as out of date, or start accumulating a long list of
> answers from random phone calls?
>

Excellent question. And the answer is the same as what you would do if
different published sources have different numbers, or what you would do
if a verifiable web site was updated with new numbers since the time
it's information was added to WP.

Attributable personal contact to an identifiable authority does not
introduce new problems that don't already present themselves in the
approved methods of research. The notion that a personal contact results
in irreconcilability or potential for inaccuracy is a disingenuous straw
man. If these were issues isolated to personal contact, I could see the
problem. But they simply and plainly are not; they occur in print and
online sourcing as well.

Kdt

> There are millions of good print resources in the world; I'd be
> happy if people actually finished the job of representing their
> content in WP, rather than fool around with marginal cases.
>
> Stan
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-03-26

body:
brion at pobox.com wrote:
> Passed 299 of 300 tests (99.67%) FAILED!

I have all tests passing with the latest CVS. I suspect there is an
issue with the texvc installation on leuksman.com?

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | GPG: 0x147C722D


from_name: SJ

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Wikide-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
"large portion" is in the eye of the beholder.  For some people, this
statement is true.  And this is, in fact, one of the key differences
between Wikipedia and more traditional publications.

SJ

On 3/26/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
> "a large portion of wikipedia is pornographic" - Britannica
> representative (unidentified)
>
> http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/03/25/podcast47-in-defense-of-encyclopedia-britannica/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiDE-l mailing list
> WikiDE-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikide-l
>

--
++SJ


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Overly lengthy blocks

body:
wiki.pedia.WiseFool at spamgourmet.com wrote:
> Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>>On 3/21/06, wiki.pedia.WiseFool at spamgourmet.com wrote:
>>
>>>I've been blocked from editing Wikipedia from a university connection
>>>for over three months now, since the IP block stops traffic from the
>>>entire state of Maine's library/school system. Are four-month blocks
>>>really an accepted part of policy, for a system that blocks
>>>established users along with anonymous users from contributing?
>>
>>Could you tell us what IPs this is regarding?
>
> It's 169.244.143.115. Blocking that blocks every public computer in the
> whole state, apparently.

Tim, could you check if this a candidate for the trusted XFF list.  The
IP resolves as CE2-P-UNET.unet.maine.edu, which looks trustworthy enough
for me.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
"a large portion of wikipedia is pornographic" - Britannica
representative (unidentified)

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/03/25/podcast47-in-defense-of-encyclopedia-britannica/


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New wikipedias created

body:
> >>Mark, this a perfect example of why Roma get sick and tired of non-Roma
> >>trying to organize their lives by thinking they finally find some exotic
> >>puppets to play with. They come with cut and dried ideas and they try to
> >>impose them irrespective of the ground reality by not listening to the
> >>people.
> >>
> >>
> No-one is suggesting bias or bad faith, only well-intentioned
> ignorance.  That's what the image of the [[Ugly American]]  has been all
> about ever since that book was written in 1958.  Most Americans who have
> regularly involved themselves in Wikipedia have learned that lesson.
> They have learned that people from other countries prefer to solve their
> own problems without recourse to the presumption that American solutions
> are necessarily the best.  Regretably, some few Americans here, like
> you, have never grasped this.

How do you know what Alin is or is not suggesting? Now who is being
presumtuous? Somehow I think the phrase "exotic puppet to play with"
is hinting at something a bit more malicious than simple
well-intentioned ignorance.

> Why should that worry YOU?  I saw no evident Roma involvement in the
> decision that there should be one English Wikipedia to unite the British
> and American languages.  Why shouldn't the Roma sort out their own
> problems?  There are more ways to have people come together than having
> them unite to repel a meddler who has decided that he has better
> solutions to their problems than they do themselves.  If the Ursari
> speakers feel that they have a problem with the rest of the Roma
> community it's up to them to seek help; it's not up to a stranger to
> imagine a problem and impose his own gratuitous solution.

Ursari speakers simply aren't represented here. There are 2 Roma here
only as far as I know, and it seems awfully strange to assume that
their solution is endorsed by all Roma people.

If a problem doesn't exist yet but will probably exist in the future,
it's easier to sort it out while it's still easy to do than when
things have already become complicated and it's a real problem in the
present.

Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Block a users possibility to send wikimail?

body:
I think the reason it's not currently easy to do is the fear of abuse.
Block a user, they complain about their blocking, get tired of hearing
their complaints, block their ability to send wikimail, tada, they
have no further recourse against possibly unfair actions.

That's not to say that's what's going on here, but rather, that's the
situation which is being guarded against.

On 26/03/06, Habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/26/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It's important that block users can send mail... this allows them to
> > request that a mistaken block be removed.
>
>
> On that I agree.
>
> Perhaps we could limit sending mail if their talk page is protected?
>
>
> Isn't it better that this function is completely separate? I.e. a button to
> press, or similar, saying "prevent this user from sending wikimail"? If the
> function is performed by admin, bureacrat, steward isn't important to me. I
> just think the possibility should be there
>
> Should I understand your reply as "there is currently no such function"? Is
> it possible that this never happened to any other wiki? Sure there are
> bigger problems, but...
>
>
> /habj
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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


from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New wikipedias created

body:
I think, at the moment, it's best on focusing RMY to be a general Romani
Wikipedia. I presume in many ways the code RMY is better than ROM since it
doesn't confuse with Romanian (which for some reason uses "ron" as its three
letter code). In any way, if there are problems with intelligibility, then a
new version of the Wikipedia can be made in the same way that nds-nl split
from nds, with the original "rmy" remaining as "Vlax Romany". But I think
there is increasing work by Roma bodies to standardise the language, and all
the Roma bodies call the language "Romani", not differentiating between the
different variants (though, as Mark pointed out, there is a significant
degree of intelligiblity).

Another issue we are faced with is script. Alin (Desiphral) said that he
writes in Devanagari, and that the Devanagari script is the best
representative script for Romani, even though it's used to a lesser extent
officially than Latin. I think the best solution would be to have an
automatically-biscriptal Wikipedia. Currently, there are articles in both
Latin and Devanagari, but as long as there is no automatic conversion, the
system is clunky and requires duplication by hand.

Would it be possible to adapt the Serbian Cyrillic-->Latin script to work
for Latin-->Hindi? The conversion is 1-on-1 and quite conventional.

Another thing - the interwiki descriptor should be changed from "Romani" to
"Romani / ??????". I will file a bug report about this (this is the proper
procedure, is it not?)

Thanks,

Ronline

2006/3/26, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
>
> With a pluricentric language such as Romani, there is no realistic
> hope of real linguistic regulation in the modern world.
>
> Even languages which are "controlled" by specific countries such as
> Spanish, French, German, or Portuguese, have had major problems in
> aligning national standards.
>
> Romani, on the other hand, is considered by linguists to be a family
> of languages, rather than a single language, because the three main
> dialect groups are not really mutually intelligible.
>
> Here is a list of the words for "woman" in some Romani varieties:
>
> d?uvel -- welsh
> manu??i -- sremski gurbet
> d?eni -- sinte
> d?uuli -- romungro
> d?uvli -- macedonian d?ambazi
> manu??i -- lovara
> d?uuli -- latvian
> ?uvli -- kaldera?
> manu??i -- gurvari
> d?uuli -- finnish
> d?uvli -- dolenjski
> d?uvli -- burgenland
> manu??i -- banatiski gurbet
> d?uvi -- bugurd?i
> d?uvli -- crimean
> rani -- east slovak
> d?uvli -- gurbet
> ?uvli -- hungarian vend
> d?uvli -- kosovo arli
> d?ul? -- lithuanian
> d?uvli -- macedonian arli
> d?uvl? -- north russian
> romni -- sepe?ides
> d?eni -- sofia erli
> ?uvli -- ursari
>
> With such differences as this in even such a basic word, it is
> unrealistic to expect people to be able to understand each other,
> without studying the so-called "unified romani" for years beforehand.
>
> >From what I've heard from Roma people, Unified Romani is not really
> wide-spread.
>
> On the other hand, if we have separate Wikipedias for each Romani
> variety, they will be able to reach all literate Roma.
>
> Mark
>
> On 25/03/06, Alin Dosoftei <desiphral at gmail.com> wrote:
> > By now the "Standard Romani" is a bit in a ideal phase, with more
> centers of
> > developement worlwide. Already there are some differences in the way I
> have
> > written and the way the other Romani user has written,  but this does
> not
> > impede the mutual understanding. Personally I don't have in my mind a
> wiki
> > confined only to some specific patterns of the Romani language picked
> from
> > those disponible worldwide. Speakers of every dialect would be welcomed
> to
> > contribute to rom.wiki, and if there is standing power to make wikis in
> > specific dialects, let them run. But for the beginning there is standing
> > power for a general Romani Wikipedia.
> >
> > Also, the evolution of the standardized form, is not based only on Vlax
> > Romani. As I wrote in the English article abot the Romani language,
> Romani
> > taught in schools from Romania has mostly the pronunciation and grammar
> > style of the older non-Vlax dialects, considered closer to the original
> > language. The language used till now for the Romani Wikipedia is not
> quite
> > Vlax, it does not stand for a Vlax Wikipedia.
> >
> > Desiphral
> >
> > On 3/25/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > The comparison to Kurdish isn't exactly valid -- the Kurdish Wikipedia
> > > doesn't use a single "standard form", but rather has separate
> > > "sections" for each dialect, beccause quite simply there is no
> > > Standard Kuridsh.
> > >
> > > Mark
> > >
> > > On 25/03/06, Alin Dosoftei <desiphral at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Have a look at the debate for the test Romani Wikipedia, at my last
> > > comment:
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Vlax_Romany/Discussion
> > > >
> > > > My point is that if it is will to make Wikipedias in other dialects,
> > > it's
> > > > OK, but I don't think this is an impediment to have one for the
> standard
> > > > form.
> > > >
> > > > On 3/25/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > >
> > > > > As far as I know, although there is a "standard romani", it
> doesn't
> > > > > totally bridge all Romani languages as it intends (it is
> apparently
> > > > > based mostly on Kalderash), and is not intelligible to diverse
> > > > > varieties such as Ursari, Sinte, or Baltic.
> > > > >
> > > > > I don't think it's right for any single language to claim to be
> "*the*
> > > > > Romani language", I think rom.wp should be a portal.
> > > > >
> > > > > mark
> > > > >
> > > > > On 25/03/06, Alin Dosoftei <desiphral at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > Thank you!
> > > > > >
> > > > > > But the proposed code name is rom. not rmy. which is only for
> the
> > > Vlax
> > > > > > Romani dialect. Is it because I forgot to change it at the Meta
> page
> > > for
> > > > > > requests? Vlax was the first proposal but then the test changed
> to
> > > > > Standard
> > > > > > Romani and I made the changes from rmy to rom wherever I found
> the
> > > older
> > > > > > code.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Also in English it is favoured the spelling Romani instead of
> > > Romany,
> > > > > > because this is the way the other Indo-Aryan languages are
> spelled:
> > > > > Hindi,
> > > > > > Bengali, Marathi, Kashmiri etc. The Romani dialects are spelled
> also
> > > > > like
> > > > > > this: Drindari, Erli, Jambashi etc. and even the dialects of
> other
> > > > > languages
> > > > > > spoken by Roma (with only Romani vocabulary) like Pogadi.
> *Romany*
> > > look
> > > > > > awkward together with other Indo-Aryan languages.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > On 3/25/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Just a question - none of the Wikipedias so far seem to have a
> > > > > localised
> > > > > > > interface. The Romany Wikipedia (code RMY) has a nearly
> > > > > fully-translated
> > > > > > > localisation file at:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LanguageRom.php
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > (This file still contains some Romanian-language fragments)
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Once this file is fully translated, how is it possible to
> update
> > > the
> > > > > > > interface?
> > > > > > > Neither me nor the native Romani user, Desiphral, know how to
> use
> > > the
> > > > > CVS
> > > > > > > system.
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Thanks,
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > Ronline
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > 2006/3/25, Servien Ilaino <servien at gmail.com>:
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > YEEEAAAH!! Finaly!! :D
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > Serv
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > 2006/3/25, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <
> rowikipedia at gmail.com>:
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > WOO HOO!!!
> > > > > > > > > Thanks so much for that!
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > 2006/3/25, Jens Frank < JeLuF at gmx.de>:
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Hello,
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > the following wikipedias have been created:
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > nds-nl
> > > > > > > > > > rmy
> > > > > > > > > > lij
> > > > > > > > > > bat-smg
> > > > > > > > > > map-bms
> > > > > > > > > > ksh
> > > > > > > > > > pdc
> > > > > > > > > > vls
> > > > > > > > > > nrm
> > > > > > > > > > frp
> > > > > > > > > > zh-yue
> > > > > > > > > > tet
> > > > > > > > > > xal
> > > > > > > > > > pap
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > See also
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > >
> > > > >
> > >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Approved_requests_for_new_languages&oldid=310831
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > Regards,
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > JeLuF
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > --
> > > > > > > > > > Echte DSL-Flatrate dauerhaft f?r 0,- Euro*!
> > > > > > > > > > "Feel free" mit GMX DSL! http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > > > >
> > > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > > --
> > > > > "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Cantonese WP: Report

body:
That's great news!
I'm just wondering - how were they able to localise the interface so
quickly?
Is it possible to do the same for Romani, since we already have a
partially-translated interface file?

Also, would it possible for Desiphral and I to be given sysop rights on the
Romany Wikipedia, for localisation, and all the necessary admin work that
needs to be done at the beginning of a new Wikipedia.

Thanks,

Ronline

2006/3/26, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
>
> Already, even though it has only existed for a day, the Cantonese
> Wikipedia has been full of activity.
>
> Take the main talk page as an example:
>
> http://zh-yue.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Main_Page
>
> Already, there are active discussions on:
>
> 1) User interface translation
> 2) Name of the encyclopaedia (Should it be same asthe Mandarin, which
> is pronounced in Cantonese as "wai gei", or should it be a more
> phonetic Cantonese, like "wik gei"?)
> 3) Promotion of cantonese wp
> 4) "Standard Characters" (Hoeng Gong Zi)
> 5) Subdomain (some people think it's unfair to use zh-yue, and that
> just yue should be used instead or such)
> 6) Getting an admin and making a logo
> 7) Should it be "Cantonese Wikipedia" or "Yue Wikipedia"
> 8) Name of main page
> 9) Allmessages, namespace translation
>
> With such activity in such little time I have no doubt we can expect
> phenomenal growth from this new Wikipedia.
>
> Mark
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
David Alexander Russell wrote:
> Yes but in written sources you have just that - a written record of what
> was said and who said it. That is the difference in credibility between
> an official press release by the airport and you phoning up some bozo in
> the airport's customer services department
>
> Cynical
>

That's not at all true of Web sites, and anyone who's been on it for any
significant period of time knows this. Web sites are very dynamic and
pages and even whole sites often disappear without a trace
(notwithstanding Google cache and Internet Archive).

What happens if I use as a reference a website that has disappeared in
the time since I added the information? It then becomes unverifiable.
Presumably the info, like the website it was sourced from, must disappear?

Kdt

> Keith D. Tyler wrote:
>
>>Stan Shebs wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Keith D. Tyler wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>2. I call Boeing Field on the phone and ask them how many planes fly in and out
>>>>every day.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>Thanks, but no thanks. This has all kinds of verifiability problem -
>>>who answers the phone? Are they working from records, or BSing you
>>>from memory so as to get you to hang up and stop bothering them?
>>>What if I call them later, and get a different answer; do I delete
>>>your number as out of date, or start accumulating a long list of
>>>answers from random phone calls?
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Excellent question. And the answer is the same as what you would do if
>>different published sources have different numbers, or what you would do
>>if a verifiable web site was updated with new numbers since the time
>>it's information was added to WP.
>>
>>Attributable personal contact to an identifiable authority does not
>>introduce new problems that don't already present themselves in the
>>approved methods of research. The notion that a personal contact results
>>in irreconcilability or potential for inaccuracy is a disingenuous straw
>>man. If these were issues isolated to personal contact, I could see the
>>problem. But they simply and plainly are not; they occur in print and
>>online sourcing as well.
>>
>>Kdt
>>
>>
>>
>>>There are millions of good print resources in the world; I'd be
>>>happy if people actually finished the job of representing their
>>>content in WP, rather than fool around with marginal cases.
>>>
>>>Stan
>>>
>>>_______________________________________________
>>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 3/26/06, Habj <sweetadelaide at gmail.com> wrote:
> At svwiki, there is a user account that has made no edits. However, the user
> account sends wikimail - nasty ones. I have so far recieved three of them,
> and this is in no way unusual. IP-check is being performed to see if the
> account is a sockpuppet of another registered user.
>
> Is it possible to block the users ability to send wikimail? A block doesn't
> do that, blocked users can still send wikimail.

It's important that block users can send mail... this allows them to
request that a mistaken block be removed.

Perhaps we could limit sending mail if their talk page is protected?


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On Sun, 26 Mar 2006 15:10:21 +0200, you wrote:

>"a large portion of wikipedia is pornographic" - Britannica
>representative (unidentified)

He could always nominate some of the porn articles for deletion. Start
with the "actresses" for who we have no real name, no date of birth,
no biographical data outside of their entries on add-it-yourself porn
fansites, and who have appeared in a small number of films released
straight to video.

I wish them luck.  Porn seems to be one area where "verifiable" is
taken as meaning more than one Google hit...
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Michael Steudle

subject: [WikiEN-l] Question Johnny Tapia Issue

body:
Does Raul654 have an email ?. I'd still like to know what exact thing I did wrong so it wont happen again. Because I'm still clueless because I didn't write anything negative just changed a win to a draw lol

  Best Regards

  Mike

---------------------------------
Blab-away for as little as 1?/min. Make  PC-to-Phone Calls using Yahoo! Messenger with Voice.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.5.8, 1.4.15 released [SECURITY]

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

MediaWiki 1.5.8 and 1.4.15 are security and bugfix maintenance releases.

A bug in decoding of certain encoded links could allow injection of raw
HTML into page output; this could potentially lead to XSS attacks.

Some minor UI fixes were also made, see the change log at the bottom of
the release notes.

Release notes:
1.5.8: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=404871
1.4.15: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=404869

Download:
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.5.8.tar.gz
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wikipedia/mediawiki-1.4.15.tar.gz

MD5 checksums:
1eef94157377fa8c3d049877a27c0163  mediawiki-1.5.8.tar.gz
e729190a32d54118d24bec4021b0729e  mediawiki-1.4.15.tar.gz

Before asking for help, try the FAQ:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_FAQ

Low-traffic release announcements mailing list:
(Please subscribe to receive announcements of security updates.)
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-announce

Wiki admin help mailing list:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Bug report system:
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/

Play "stump the developers" live on IRC:
#mediawiki on irc.freenode.net

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (Darwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFEJzNXwRnhpk1wk44RAiyKAKCO/fKIb+kpw4XwUh7/88qjrCt66ACgjAuZ
Y69fJh94cryQBhCJlM2il10=
=Jv/Y
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

body:
Range blocks aren't supposed to be week-long.

--NSLE

On 3/26/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Michael Steudle wrote:
> > My IP is  By the way 24.6.87.47.
> >
>
> Ouch.
>
> # 00:16, 26 March 2006 Raul654 blocked "24.6.0.0/16 (contribs)" with an
> expiry time of 1 week (Range being used for vandalism)
>
> I think that could do it.
>
> --
> Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
> Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
> "We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
> Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/26/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 26 Mar 2006 15:10:21 +0200, you wrote:
>
> >"a large portion of wikipedia is pornographic" - Britannica
> >representative (unidentified)
>
> He could always nominate some of the porn articles for deletion. Start
> with the "actresses" for who we have no real name, no date of birth,
> no biographical data outside of their entries on add-it-yourself porn
> fansites, and who have appeared in a small number of films released
> straight to video.
>
> I wish them luck.  Porn seems to be one area where "verifiable" is
> taken as meaning more than one Google hit...
> Guy (JzG)

Please don't do anything to annoy our young single male demographic.
Userboxians will have been a mear picnic by comparison.

--
geni


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Hello Benjamin,
>
>As a personal suggestion, I
>recommend changing the name before campaigning; something starting
>with "Wiki-" and reflecting the ambitious nature of your goals (such
>as "Wikiplanet", but that one is taken) might work better.
>
How about "Wikigenes, The Family Wiki"?

Ec


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
On 3/26/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Personal communications are valid to cite. All one needs to do to check is call the guy and ask the same question.

All our sources have to be published, Daniel, i.e. in the public
domain, so a personal communication can't be cited.

Sarah


from_name: David Alexander Russell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
I have no particular attachment to pornstar bios, but 'for who we have
no real name' does not seem a valid objection to me - most if not all of
our entertainment industry bios use the person's 'stage name' as the
title of the article, and only mention their 'real name' briefly in
passing, if at all, so the lack of a 'real name' doesn't make the
article dramatically different

Cynical

geni wrote:
> On 3/26/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 26 Mar 2006 15:10:21 +0200, you wrote:
>>
>>
>>> "a large portion of wikipedia is pornographic" - Britannica
>>> representative (unidentified)
>>>
>> He could always nominate some of the porn articles for deletion. Start
>> with the "actresses" for who we have no real name, no date of birth,
>> no biographical data outside of their entries on add-it-yourself porn
>> fansites, and who have appeared in a small number of films released
>> straight to video.
>>
>> I wish them luck.  Porn seems to be one area where "verifiable" is
>> taken as meaning more than one Google hit...
>> Guy (JzG)
>>
>
> Please don't do anything to annoy our young single male demographic.
> Userboxians will have been a mear picnic by comparison.
>
> --
> 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: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On Mar 26, 2006, at 4:35 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

> Look we've been sown this path many times before, and it's never
> gotten us anywhere, infact, all it's done is make people fight and
> occasionally force good contributors out because of the hostile mood
> of the discussion (Wikipedians for decency/encyclopedic merit and
> WP:TOBY for instance). The fact is, far too many wikipedians think
> that this kind of censorship is wrong, so you'll NEVER get consensus
> on it. This is a discussion that should be killed before it has any
> chance to do more harm.

This has nothing to do with censoring Wikipedia. This is about
tagging content so schools (for instance) and filtering software used
by schools can discriminate between Wikipedia articles. Or would you
rather Wikipedia be inaccessible in schools and libraries?

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


subject: [WikiEN-l] Notability and juggling

body:
On Fri, 24 Mar 2006 14:01:21 +0000, you wrote:

>Two reasons:

You forgot (c):

A flower is more beautiful than a scattering of petals.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
--- jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, of course personal communications are not valid to cite.  You can
> cite reliable published sources.

When they exist, yes. But that is not always the case. Sometimes one must rely on what reputable
people say vs what they write. I've cited professors whose classes I've taken. Is that wrong?

-- mav

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


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban Question on  Johnny Tapia issue

body:
Michael Steudle wrote:
> My IP is  By the way 24.6.87.47.
>

Ouch.

# 00:16, 26 March 2006 Raul654 blocked "24.6.0.0/16 (contribs)" with an
expiry time of 1 week (Range being used for vandalism)

I think that could do it.

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

body:
--- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> On 3/26/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Personal communications are valid to cite. All one needs to do to check is call the guy and
> ask the same question.
>
> All our sources have to be published, Daniel, i.e. in the public
> domain, so a personal communication can't be cited.

That is absurd since not all knowledge has been written. What matters is if you can trust the
source and if it is verifiable. The method of communication is not that important.

-- mav

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


from_name: jayjg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
On 3/26/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> > On 3/24/06, Keith D. Tyler <keith at keithtyler.com> wrote:
> > > To me, "original research" is when I perform an investigative task involving the
> > > scientific or statistical methods to get information that has not been
> > > determined before.
> > >
> > > Here's some examples.
> > >
> > > 1. I drive up to Seattle, and stand outside Boeing Field, and count the number
> > > of planes that fly in and out over the period of a day.
> > >
> > > 2. I call Boeing Field on the phone and ask them how many planes fly in and out
> > > every day.
> >
> > > To me, 1 is clearly OR, and 2 is not ...
> > >
> > > For some reason, though, contacting an authoritative source is OR, but finding a
> > > book from an authoritative source is not.
> > >
> > That's because if you cite a published source, readers can easily
> > check that it says what you say it does. They can't easily check that
> > the guy on the phone told you 500 planes fly in and out every day.
>
> Personal communications are valid to cite. All one needs to do to check is call the guy and ask
> the same question.

No, of course personal communications are not valid to cite.  You can
cite reliable published sources.

Jay.


body:
This occured to me recently - wouldn't it make a lot of sense to lower
the threshold to 50% for a successful undeletion of speedies? I'm all
for keeping the 75% threshold for stuff deleted via *fd, since *fd
deletions require consensus to achieve, it makes sense to require a high
standard to overturn that decision, however if an article has been
speedied (ie the deletion judgment was made by one admin, rather than a
discussion on *fd), and 60% of people think that it shouldn't have been,
surely there is something wrong there.

Sure, I know that voting is evil, Wikipedia is not a democracy and so
on, but shouldn't speedies (or, to be more precise, an individual
admin's interpretation of whether a page meets the speedy deletion
criteria) which are not subject to any community scrutiny be easier to
overturn than *fd votes, which are?

Cynical


from_name: Christopher G. Parham

body:
According to     [[WP:DRV]], 50% would be enough to overturn a speedy
deletion and send it back to the relevant *FD:

"If there is neither a majority to endorse the decision nor a
three-quarters supermajority to overturn and apply some other result,
the article is *relisted* on the relevant deletion process."

--Christopher Parham

On 3/26/2006 11:15 AM, David Alexander Russell wrote:

>This occured to me recently - wouldn't it make a lot of sense to lower
>the threshold to 50% for a successful undeletion of speedies? I'm all
>for keeping the 75% threshold for stuff deleted via *fd, since *fd
>deletions require consensus to achieve, it makes sense to require a high
>standard to overturn that decision, however if an article has been
>speedied (ie the deletion judgment was made by one admin, rather than a
>discussion on *fd), and 60% of people think that it shouldn't have been,
>surely there is something wrong there.
>
>Sure, I know that voting is evil, Wikipedia is not a democracy and so
>on, but shouldn't speedies (or, to be more precise, an individual
>admin's interpretation of whether a page meets the speedy deletion
>criteria) which are not subject to any community scrutiny be easier to
>overturn than *fd votes, which are?
>
>Cynical
>_______________________________________________
>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: Essjay

body:
GerardM wrote:
> Hoi,
> This is not necessarily true. A blocked user should be able to send a
> message to an OTRS queue. There it will be dealt with by people who
> are not likely to be the person who is part of the situation. That is
> in essence a good thing because it de-escalates.
>
> Oh, and by the way when you do OTRS work, it is not uncommon to hear
> some "complaints".. :)
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
>
Also, there are the public mailing lists...I think the block text on
en.wikipedia specifically directs people to wikien-l.

Essjay


from_name: Colin Delacroix

subject: [Wikitech-l] inconsistencies in dumps ?

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

> > - it might be that the revision has changed between the dumps of those 2
> > tables (page has been edited)
>
> They're dumped at different times, yes. A copy of the 'page' table is for
> reference only, and is not guaranteed to be consistent with the XML data
> dumps. If you're using an XML data dump you don't need a separate download
> of the 'page' table, just use the one created by the import.

Ok. I had missed the fact that the page.sql archive was superfluous for
a simple import, sorry.

> > - it ends in empty pages (i.e. with the usual stub text), for ~ 5% of
> > the pages (that seems huge, but I don't see where the problem lies)
>
> I don't know what this means. What "ends" in empty pages, and in what way?

I meant the renderer output, but it's irrelevant now.

> Just use the page table generated from the import; it's guaranteed to be
consistent.

Thanks a lot, Brion, now it works just right.

--
Colin


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
The undeletion policy gives any administrator the power to undelete a
wrongly deleted article.  There's no need to go to DRV.  If someone
disagrees they can take it to AfD where a consensus would be required
to delete.


from_name: Benjamin Webb

body:
Yes, I agree, a well aimed donation system would bring in quite a tidy sum
for a project like this.

As for copyrights, when it comes it Genealogical data, most of it can't be
copyrighted, as it is mostly facts. I have added certain familysearch
GEDCOMs to my tree on Rodovid, do you think I am allowed to do this, as it
is facts.

Of course, having a free license does make it much easier, there isn't an
issue of trying to draw the line between fact and copyrightable material.

By the way, what do you think of the meta
page<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Rodovid.org>
?

Benjamin Webb

On 26/03/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
> >Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Or more to the point, I think that starting a geneology project is
> >>actually going to be a significant source of revenue for the Wikimedia
> >>Foundation rather than being a drag on the resources.
> >>
> >>
> >Probabably so, and by charging very modest fees at that.  The question
> >to ask then, given the massive number of genealogical websites out
> >there, what can we do that will make our site more desirable than all
> >the others.
> >
> >Ec
> >
> >
> The thing that the spin-offs from Wikimedia users (Rodovid.org and
> Wikitree.org) have in common is that the content is free to be
> redistributed and is not encumbered with sometimes very draconian
> copyright protections.  And a strong spirit of cooperation among users
> to help each other out.  The current drive to push for citation
> standards with Wikipedia is also going to have a strong spill-over
> effect for a project like this, where it would be possible to
> demonstrate the quality of the information.  Indeed this has been a
> major complaint of some other massive on-line geneology projects like
> familysearch.org, where the quality of the data is seriously lacking in
> many situations.  Another big advantage is the ability for people who
> have the correct information to be able to easily update the information
> and not require manuvering through bureaucratic red tape and obtaining a
> CS degree in order to be able to submit any changes.
>
> I'd also like to give an example of the typical licensing terms for most
> of these websites:
>
> http://familysearch.org/Eng/policy/FSI_terms.asp
>
> Note especially the clause:
>
> "All material found at this site is owned or licensed by us. You may
> view, download, and print material from this site only for your
> personal, noncommercial use or, if you are a professional genealogist,
> for use by a current client."
>
> Compare that to the GFDL, and you will see that most data has been
> signifcantly restricted for re-use in most cases, even if you were the
> person who submitted the information in the first place.  GFDL (or
> Creative Commons type licensing) is one area where sites like what is
> being proposed here is going to blow all of the other geneology sites
> out of the water.
>
> All of these are aspects that are derived from Wikimedia users'
> experience with developing other on-line content.  The current internal
> push for this sort of development is where users like myself have been
> so used to how things are done with Wiki software that we wonder why
> this isn't be done for geneological research, where these ideas of free
> access to information and the ability to freely edit the information
> havn't yet caught on.
>
> --
> Robert Scott Horning
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
On 3/26/06, Keith D. Tyler <keith at keithtyler.com> wrote:
> What happens if I use as a reference a website that has disappeared in
> the time since I added the information? It then becomes unverifiable.
> Presumably the info, like the website it was sourced from, must disappear?

Keith, for any source you use, you should leave a full citation in the
References section. See [[WP:CITE]]. That way, if your source is on
the Web and disappears, others may still be able to find it (if, say,
it was a published article that was posted online). However, if you're
using material that exists only on the Web, and the website disappears
completely, then you've lost your source, and the material in the
article goes back to being unsourced. For that reason, and also to do
with the likely quality of the source, I'd say it's best to avoid
relying on material that exists only on one or two websites.

Sarah


body:
Yeah, but unless you happen to have an administrator who knows how the
article has developed (and if it's a niche subject the chances are there
won't be) it's very unlikely that such an undeletion would take place -
and in the recent cases where this undeletion power has been exercised,
it has resulted in wheel warring, desyoppings and flamewars.

Cynical

Tony Sidaway wrote:
> The undeletion policy gives any administrator the power to undelete a
> wrongly deleted article.  There's no need to go to DRV.  If someone
> disagrees they can take it to AfD where a consensus would be required
> to delete.
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Alin Dosoftei

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New wikipedias created

body:
Mark, this a perfect example of why Roma get sick and tired of non-Roma
trying to organize their lives by thinking they finally find some exotic
puppets to play with. They come with cut and dried ideas and they try to
impose them irrespective of the ground reality by not listening to the
people.

In your case, it seems that your future plans for the Roma include the
prevention of a unified Romani. I presume this  by the way you come first
with this preconceived idea and then you try to support it by bringing some
flawless examples. The "wildly different" (to cite your speech) words for
'woman' in different dialects are pretty well inteligible by every Romani
native speaker. Most of them are variations of the root d?u(v) which are not
hard to understand what they mean. I don't know very well the existent
variations in English, but I think if a group of English speakers say
'wouman' or 'wiman' it is not hard to understand what they mean. And every,
but every standardized language had at the beginning these variations (and
most of them continue to have them in parallel with the generic one). As for
the other forms to say woman, they are simply synonyms made with the suffix
"-ni" which feminize the words with male grammatical gender: manushni and
d?eni are from manush and d?eno (which mean "man", "chap"), words present in
quite every dialect. Also "rani" has a specific meaning of "lady". If some
English speaker utters "woman", other "dudette" and the other "lady" will
you draw the conclusion they are mutually unintelligible? Try not to take
for granted every Romani stuff you find, because most of it is not in such a
good condition as being written by people with poor knowledge of the
language, simply trying to show how much they know about the world.

As for your comments that "it doesn't seem possible that there is a single
person literate in Devanagri" I find them disparaging and racist as they
allude to a presumed imposibility to be an educated Rom (the same for your
"important distinction" of the " *literate* Roma community"). If you would
try to know what is going on at the rom.wp you would find that both the
Romani contributors write in Devanagari and in the world there are many
others. And that the first priority would be the Latin script, to cater for
its more extended use. I am really amazed and disappointed for the way you
come and say what is good and what is bad in a field you have no knowledge
and no intent to help my people, just to put in practice your theories. I
don't know what is the opinion of the other readers of this mailing list,
but I hope  for  a  respectful  dialogue. If you don't know too much about
my people don't rush to hurried conclusions. I imagine that a comment that
"it doesn't seem possible that there is a single American born Chinese or
Jew literate in Chinese or Hebrew" wouldn't be welcomed at all here. I hope
it will be also like this regarding the Romani side.

So, as for the pending issues, the newly created rmy.wp has the code of the
Vlax dialect, which is not the way was written this wp till now. The
non-Roma made first the proposal about a Romani Wikipedia. Their debate
reached a conclusion that a Vlax one would be better for the beginnig. When
the two Romani contributors till now (me and Naayram) started the work, they
wrote in a Romani used in the standadization efforts made worldwide by the
Roma people. As I said before, there are already some differences in the
approach for us two contribuitors but this did not impede the mutual
understanding. If there will be problems about the way will go the Romani wp
let us debate them first and afterwards if we can't solve them it will
intervene the mediation of the outsiders. I see there are many small wp with
some dozens of articles, which are patronized by non-speakers. If it will be
the same like this for the Romani one, then I don't foresee a bright future
for it. I don't know why some non-speakers stick to the Vlax one when there
is no will by now to make it (btw, do you know that there are differences
between the Vlax dialects?). What is envisaged till now is a wp for the
generic Romani including the standardized and the dialects. First let us get
more people (presumably much easier in this way) and if there will be
standing power for making wp in dialects, it's OK, no problem.

As for the code name, ROM. one is the internationally accepted for this kind
of wp. It was said that it might get confusions with the Romanian wiki ( for
their fear of not being confused with the "Gypsies") when I see that there a
lot of other possible confusions for all the 228 wp. What then for the
Romansh one, with its code RM?

Waiting for serious replies,
Desiphral


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New wikipedias created

body:
Mark, this a perfect example of why Roma get sick and tired of non-Roma
trying to organize their lives by thinking they finally find some exotic
puppets to play with. They come with cut and dried ideas and they try to
impose them irrespective of the ground reality by not listening to the
people.

In your case, it seems that your future plans for the Roma include the
prevention of a unified Romani. I presume this  by the way you come first
with this preconceived idea and then you try to support it by bringing some
flawless examples. The "wildly different" (to cite your speech) words for
'woman' in different dialects are pretty well inteligible by every Romani
native speaker. Most of them are variations of the root d?u(v) which are not
hard to understand what they mean. I don't know very well the existent
variations in English, but I think if a group of English speakers say
'wouman' or 'wiman' it is not hard to understand what they mean. And every,
but every standardized language had at the beginning these variations (and
most of them continue to have them in parallel with the generic one). As for
the other forms to say woman, they are simply synonyms made with the suffix
"-ni" which feminize the words with male grammatical gender: manushni and
d?eni are from manush and d?eno (which mean "man", "chap"), words present in
quite every dialect. Also "rani" has a specific meaning of "lady". If some
English speaker utters "woman", other "dudette" and the other "lady" will
you draw the conclusion they are mutually unintelligible? Try not to take
for granted every Romani stuff you find, because most of it is not in such a
good condition as being written by people with poor knowledge of the
language, simply trying to show how much they know about the world.

As for your comments that "it doesn't seem possible that there is a single
person literate in Devanagri" I find them disparaging and racist as they
allude to a presumed imposibility to be an educated Rom (the same for your
"important distinction" of the " *literate* Roma community"). If you would
try to know what is going on at the rom.wp you would find that both the
Romani contributors write in Devanagari and in the world there are many
others. And that the first priority would be the Latin script, to cater for
its more extended use. I am really amazed and disappointed for the way you
come and say what is good and what is bad in a field you have no knowledge
and no intent to help my people, just to put in practice your theories. I
don't know what is the opinion of the other readers of this mailing list,
but I hope  for  a  respectful  dialogue. If you don't know too much about
my people don't rush to hurried conclusions. I imagine that a comment that
"it doesn't seem possible that there is a single American born Chinese or
Jew literate in Chinese or Hebrew" wouldn't be welcomed at all here. I hope
it will be also like this regarding the Romani side.

So, as for the pending issues, the newly created rmy.wp has the code of the
Vlax dialect, which is not the way was written this wp till now. The
non-Roma made first the proposal about a Romani Wikipedia. Their debate
reached a conclusion that a Vlax one would be better for the beginnig. When
the two Romani contributors till now (me and Naayram) started the work, they
wrote in a Romani used in the standadization efforts made worldwide by the
Roma people. As I said before, there are already some differences in the
approach for us two contribuitors but this did not impede the mutual
understanding. If there will be problems about the way will go the Romani wp
let us debate them first and afterwards if we can't solve them it will
intervene the mediation of the outsiders. I see there are many small wp with
some dozens of articles, which are patronized by non-speakers. If it will be
the same like this for the Romani one, then I don't foresee a bright future
for it. I don't know why some non-speakers stick to the Vlax one when there
is no will by now to make it (btw, do you know that there are differences
between the Vlax dialects?). What is envisaged till now is a wp for the
generic Romani including the standardized and the dialects. First let us get
more people (presumably much easier in this way) and if there will be
standing power for making wp in dialects, it's OK, no problem.

As for the code name, ROM. one is the internationally accepted for this kind
of wp. It was said that it might get confusions with the Romanian wiki ( for
their fear of not being confused with the "Gypsies") when I see that there a
lot of other possible confusions for all the 228 wp. What then for the
Romansh one, with its code RM?

Waiting for serious replies,
Desiphral

On 3/26/06, Alin Dosoftei <desiphral at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Mark, this a perfect example of why Roma get sick and tired of non-Roma
> trying to organize their lives by thinking they finally find some exotic
> puppets to play with. They come with cut and dried ideas and they try to
> impose them irrespective of the ground reality by not listening to the
> people.
>
> In your case, it seems that your future plans for the Roma include the
> prevention of a unified Romani. I presume this  by the way you come first
> with this preconceived idea and then you try to support it by bringing some
> flawless examples. The "wildly different" (to cite your speech) words for
> 'woman' in different dialects are pretty well inteligible by every Romani
> native speaker. Most of them are variations of the root d?u(v) which are not
> hard to understand what they mean. I don't know very well the existent
> variations in English, but I think if a group of English speakers say
> 'wouman' or 'wiman' it is not hard to understand what they mean. And every,
> but every standardized language had at the beginning these variations (and
> most of them continue to have them in parallel with the generic one). As for
> the other forms to say woman, they are simply synonyms made with the suffix
> "-ni" which feminize the words with male grammatical gender: manushni and
> d?eni are from manush and d?eno (which mean "man", "chap"), words present in
> quite every dialect. Also "rani" has a specific meaning of "lady". If some
> English speaker utters "woman", other "dudette" and the other "lady" will
> you draw the conclusion they are mutually unintelligible? Try not to take
> for granted every Romani stuff you find, because most of it is not in such a
> good condition as being written by people with poor knowledge of the
> language, simply trying to show how much they know about the world.
>
> As for your comments that "it doesn't seem possible that there is a single
> person literate in Devanagri" I find them disparaging and racist as they
> allude to a presumed imposibility to be an educated Rom (the same for your
> "important distinction" of the " *literate* Roma community"). If you would
> try to know what is going on at the rom.wp you would find that both the
> Romani contributors write in Devanagari and in the world there are many
> others. And that the first priority would be the Latin script, to cater for
> its more extended use. I am really amazed and disappointed for the way you
> come and say what is good and what is bad in a field you have no knowledge
> and no intent to help my people, just to put in practice your theories. I
> don't know what is the opinion of the other readers of this mailing list,
> but I hope  for  a  respectful  dialogue. If you don't know too much about
> my people don't rush to hurried conclusions. I imagine that a comment that
> "it doesn't seem possible that there is a single American born Chinese or
> Jew literate in Chinese or Hebrew" wouldn't be welcomed at all here. I hope
> it will be also like this regarding the Romani side.
>
> So, as for the pending issues, the newly created rmy.wp has the code of
> the Vlax dialect, which is not the way was written this wp till now. The
> non-Roma made first the proposal about a Romani Wikipedia. Their debate
> reached a conclusion that a Vlax one would be better for the beginnig. When
> the two Romani contributors till now (me and Naayram) started the work, they
> wrote in a Romani used in the standadization efforts made worldwide by the
> Roma people. As I said before, there are already some differences in the
> approach for us two contribuitors but this did not impede the mutual
> understanding. If there will be problems about the way will go the Romani wp
> let us debate them first and afterwards if we can't solve them it will
> intervene the mediation of the outsiders. I see there are many small wp with
> some dozens of articles, which are patronized by non-speakers. If it will be
> the same like this for the Romani one, then I don't foresee a bright future
> for it. I don't know why some non-speakers stick to the Vlax one when there
> is no will by now to make it (btw, do you know that there are differences
> between the Vlax dialects?). What is envisaged till now is a wp for the
> generic Romani including the standardized and the dialects. First let us get
> more people (presumably much easier in this way) and if there will be
> standing power for making wp in dialects, it's OK, no problem.
>
> As for the code name, ROM. one is the internationally accepted for this
> kind of wp. It was said that it might get confusions with the Romanian wiki
> ( for their fear of not being confused with the "Gypsies") when I see that
> there a lot of other possible confusions for all the 228 wp. What then for
> the Romansh one, with its code RM?
>
> Waiting for serious replies,
> Desiphral
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
What on earth does 'a large portion' mean anyway? In an encyclopedia
with over a million articles a couple of dozen pornstar bios hardly
qualifies as 'a large portion'

Cynical

Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> I find it very curious that of all the things they can attack
> wikipedia for, the fact that wikipedia is not censored is the one they
> focus on. Very strange indeed.
>
> On 3/26/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
>
>> "a large portion of wikipedia is pornographic" - Britannica
>> representative (unidentified)
>>
>> http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/03/25/podcast47-in-defense-of-encyclopedia-britannica/
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>
>
>


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject: [WikiEN-l] Philosophical question re sources

body:
G'day Michael,

>>Theoretically yes, except that I would say any rebuttal rather than just
>>a verifiable one.  It is NPOV because it represents the average of all
>>views that have been submitted until then.  In practical terms that
>>neutrality will cease as soon as one other person reads the article and
>>challenges its contents, unless a visiting Beta Centaurian decides to
>>get in on the act.  A challenge to the system can be as simple as a
>>polite request for sources to be cited.
>
> So Wikipedia policies only apply once someone insists it does? I.e. I
> can keep an article about my random theory about Beta Centauri until
> someone comes to read the article and wonders "mmm, I wonder if this
> satisfies WP:V?"?

Well, sure.  That's called *real life*.  If an editor is either ignorant
of Wikipedia practices or, alternatively, a kook, they aren't likely to
restrain themselves --- so their work stays in until someone more
knowledgeable/less crazy takes a look.

>>Once a request has been made for verification, the original contributor
>>has the primary burden of proof, but that does not prevent others from
>>supplying proof if they so desire.  If the original statement is as
>>patently ridiculous as the one you hypothesize, any attempt at rebuttal
>>implies that there was something there worth rebutting, and the very act
>>of initiating a rebuttal gives credibility to the original statement.
>
> That's quite a statement. Holocaust denial, say, is often rebutted so
> does this give those claims "credibility"?

Frankly, yes ... as shocking as it sounds.  There's a spectrum of
credibility, which I will be making up over the next few seconds.  It
goes something like this:

* the unchallenged truth ("George W. Bush is President of the USA")
* unlikely but true ("scratching just makes it worse")
* true, but beset on all sides by kooks (Chip Berlet around?)
* plausible but untrue (e.g. those "stupid people sue for their own
   stupidity and win" hoax emails)
* lies that have attracted the attention of rebutters (Holocaust denial,
   for example)
* lies so obviously false that it's really not worth our while to rebut
   them (like Lyndon LaRouche's claims to significance)
* kookery (lizardmen, anyone?)

So, David Irving is more credible than Lyndon LaRouche, who in turn is
more credible than David Icke.  All three are members of that subset of
humanity known as "lying scumbags who really ought to spend all their
time hung up by the ankles while well-paid troops take turns tickling
their soles with feathers", but some of that subset tell more fantastic
lies than others.

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
0439 704 975
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
On 3/26/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No, of course personal communications are not valid to cite.  You can
> > cite reliable published sources.
>
> When they exist, yes. But that is not always the case. Sometimes one must rely on what reputable
> people say vs what they write. I've cited professors whose classes I've taken. Is that wrong?
>
Hi Daniel, all our sources must be published in some form. If your
professors have published the same material in a book or paper, we can
use that, but not if they simply say it in a classroom situation. The
key to whether a source is citable on Wikipedia is (a) whether it's in
the public domain, and (b) whether there's some form of third-party
editorial oversight, no matter how minimal, as there is when an editor
goes through a book prior to publication, or when a newspaper copy
editor checks a news story for factual errors or legal problems. In
the case of a professor giving a lecture, the quality of the material
is the same as in a self-published book or personal website, where
there are no third-party checks. Self-published material is only
allowed to be used in articles about the professor himself, and only
if he is speaking about himself and not about any third party. There
are exceptions if the professor is well known, but even then the
self-published material must be in the public domain. It can't be an
oral communication, because then readers have no way of checking that
you've communicated it accurately, or that the professor stands by
what he said. See [[WP:V]] and [[WP:RS]].

Sarah


body:
On 3/26/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > The undeletion policy gives any administrator the power to undelete a
> > wrongly deleted article.  There's no need to go to DRV.  If someone
> > disagrees they can take it to AfD where a consensus would be required
> > to delete.
>
> Yeah, but unless you happen to have an administrator who knows how the
> article has developed (and if it's a niche subject the chances are there
> won't be) it's very unlikely that such an undeletion would take place -
> and in the recent cases where this undeletion power has been exercised,
> it has resulted in wheel warring, desyoppings and flamewars.

I think you're exaggerating wildly.  I'm aware of one or two silly
spats, but mostly undeletion of a wrongly deleted article is
uncontroversial.  I've done dozens and dozens of them.


from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
I find it very curious that of all the things they can attack
wikipedia for, the fact that wikipedia is not censored is the one they
focus on. Very strange indeed.

On 3/26/06, Mathias Schindler <neubau at presroi.de> wrote:
> "a large portion of wikipedia is pornographic" - Britannica
> representative (unidentified)
>
> http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2006/03/25/podcast47-in-defense-of-encyclopedia-britannica/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
Not if it can be verified by anyone.

k

On 3/26/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No, of course personal communications are not valid to cite.  You can
> > cite reliable published sources.
>
> When they exist, yes. But that is not always the case. Sometimes one must
> rely on what reputable
> people say vs what they write. I've cited professors whose classes I've
> taken. Is that wrong?
>
> -- mav
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:
<snip>
> * kookery (lizardmen, anyone?)
>

Lizardmen are perfectly real and certainly verifiable...

... in a fictional context, that is.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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body:
Even though your e-mail could be seen as critisising me, I greatly
appreciate it. Any feedback at all is useful for me. You mentioned having an
opinion poll. Could I start that now? The proposal has been on meta for a
week.

On 26/03/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hello Benjamin,
>
> if Rodovid (under whichever name) was to become a Wikimedia project,
> that would mean
> - It benefits from Wikimedia's fundraising drives
> - It is featured prominently on all of Wikimedia's portal pages
> - It becomes part of Wikimedia's press and publicity efforts
> - It becomes as integral to the thinking about external partnerships
> as other projects
> - It is maintained, to a certain extent, by our paid and volunteer
> administrators and developers...
>
> ..and so forth. There is always the concern that new projects distract
> from improving existing ones. For each of our projects, including
> Wikipedia, there are huge wishlists of software changes, community
> processes, surveys, partnerships, and so on -- we need to make sure
> that we grow at a manageable rate.
>
> So, from the point of view of the Foundation, accepting a new project
> is quite a big deal. That's why the processes to do so are rather
> complex. Part of the process is a community poll about whether the
> project should be launched within Wikimedia. Our process does not yet
> deal with "adopting" existing projects (this has never been done), but
> you could start a slightly modified poll, similar to the one at
> [[m:Wikinews/Vote]], and probably get away with it.
>
> Essential for your success is that you can generate not just a solid
> majority in support, but also excitement in the community about the
> idea. Such excitement was clearly visible with Wikinews and
> Wikiversity; I am skeptical if there is similarly broad interest in
> genealogical data in an experimental wiki environment. I know there
> are a lot of enthusiasts, of course.
>
> Even though the idea of a "World Family Tree" has some appeal, I am
> also not convinced that this is an experiment that needs to be taken
> up by the Wikimedia Foundation; given the primary mission to bring
> knowledge to human beings, it is natural for the organization to focus
> on applicable and practical knowledge. (Hence projects like Wikibooks,
> with its strong focus on learning materials, and Wikiversity, with its
> learning and research angle.)
>
> However, do not let this discourage you; if you truly want this to
> become a Wikimedia project, do campaign in the community for support.
> Only when such support is visible do I expect that the Board might get
> behind the project proposal in a big way. As a personal suggestion, I
> recommend changing the name before campaigning; something starting
> with "Wiki-" and reflecting the ambitious nature of your goals (such
> as "Wikiplanet", but that one is taken) might work better.
>
> Erik (not speaking for the Foundation, of course)
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
 "Steve Bennett" wrote

> All the more reason to tag Wikipedia articles as kidsafe/worksafe.

Oh. I don't think so.  That presents a challenge to posters of obscenities
and unacceptable images.  Since we cannot prevent such postings, it is all
rather futile  to make claims we are in no position to give any kind of
warranty for.

Charles


from_name: Ilmari Karonen

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to get around AOL proxies?

body:
There has been some recent discussion at [[MediaWiki talk:Blockedtext]]
about providing specific instructions for AOL users who find the IP of
their proxy blocked, similar to how we provide instructions for users
editing from China.

It seems the German Wikipedia already advises blocked AOL users to use a
different browser (like Firefox), as this apparently bypasses the proxy
setup the standard AOL browser is configured to use.  They even held a
(failed) poll to rangeblock the entire AOL proxy range, forcing anyone
editing from AOL to do this.

Give this, there are a number of questions I'd like help answering:

1. Does using a different browser really help?  Does it work on both
Windows and Mac?  If you're on AOL, you can check this by opening the
link <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Mypage> in an alternative
browser while not logged in to Wikipedia, and comparing the address
shown to the list at <http://webmaster.info.aol.com/proxyinfo.html>.

2. Can the AOL browser itself be configured to bypass the proxies?  Can
this be done for Wikipedia only?  And again, does this work on Mac OS X
too, since AOL uses a different browser there?

...and finally, something I'm sure is controversial:

3. If a sufficiently easy way to circumvent the AOL proxies was found,
would you support rangeblocking the proxies permanently (or until AOL
fixes their proxies to provide XFF headers)?  This would force anyone
editing from AOL to bypass the proxies somehow, but would also make
blocking AOL vandals much easier.  And what would you consider
"sufficiently easy"?

In any case, answers to 1 and 2 above would let us amend the block
notice to suggest workarounds for AOL users accidentally caught in a
block.  Presumably there are people with AOL accounts on this list; if
you're one of them, your help is needed.

--
Ilmari Karonen


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/26/06, David Alexander Russell <webmaster at davidarussell.co.uk> wrote:
> What on earth does 'a large portion' mean anyway?

It means that Britannica is trolling. Don't feed them.

Erik


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
>
>
>>On 3/26/06, Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Personal communications are valid to cite. All one needs to do to check is call the guy and
>>>
>>>
>>ask the same question.
>>
>>All our sources have to be published, Daniel, i.e. in the public
>>domain, so a personal communication can't be cited.
>>
>>
>
>That is absurd since not all knowledge has been written. What matters is if you can trust the
>source and if it is verifiable. The method of communication is not that important.
>
>
If it's extremely important and not available elsewhere I suppose I
could see citing personal communication, but in general I'd be wary of
it precisely because it's *not* particularly easily verifiable.  The
source, often in another country, might not be easily reachable, and is
likely not immortal.  This is also true, of course, of particularly
obscure and hard-to-acquire books; in both cases, preference should be
made for more widely-available sources.

As an added bonus, widely-available sources tend to be more
authoritative and reviewed by more people in the field, who have the
opportunity to point out errors.

-Mark


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 3/26/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Once a request has been made for verification, the original contributor
> has the primary burden of proof, but that does not prevent others from
> supplying proof if they so desire.  If the original statement is as
> patently ridiculous as the one you hypothesize, any attempt at rebuttal
> implies that there was something there worth rebutting, and the very act
> of initiating a rebuttal gives credibility to the original statement.

There have been a couple of attempts to give responsibility to the
original contributor, but I think it goes against the wiki concept. As
I see it, you contribute something to the encyclopaedia, and that's
where your responsibility ends (libel etc aside). If your contribution
is no good, someone can ask for sources. Someone else, who thinks the
contribution is good, can supply them.

Attempting to maintain a dialogue with the original contributor is
impractical (people don't necessarily stick around, or check the talk
page or whatever), and contributes to the misleading impression that
people "own" articles, or sections or whatever.

Steve


body:
On 3/26/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> 3. If a sufficiently easy way to circumvent the AOL proxies was found,
> would you support rangeblocking the proxies permanently (or until AOL
> fixes their proxies to provide XFF headers)?  This would force anyone
> editing from AOL to bypass the proxies somehow, but would also make
> blocking AOL vandals much easier.  And what would you consider
> "sufficiently easy"?

Dear newbie,
  We don't like your ISP. No, that's not true. We hate your ISP.
What's more, you're probably a vandal. If you'd like to contribute to
Wikipedia, please jump through the following hoops. Thank you!

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/26/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> I find it very curious that of all the things they can attack
> wikipedia for, the fact that wikipedia is not censored is the one they
> focus on. Very strange indeed.

All the more reason to tag Wikipedia articles as kidsafe/worksafe.

Steve


body:
Hello Benjamin,

if Rodovid (under whichever name) was to become a Wikimedia project,
that would mean
- It benefits from Wikimedia's fundraising drives
- It is featured prominently on all of Wikimedia's portal pages
- It becomes part of Wikimedia's press and publicity efforts
- It becomes as integral to the thinking about external partnerships
as other projects
- It is maintained, to a certain extent, by our paid and volunteer
administrators and developers...

..and so forth. There is always the concern that new projects distract
from improving existing ones. For each of our projects, including
Wikipedia, there are huge wishlists of software changes, community
processes, surveys, partnerships, and so on -- we need to make sure
that we grow at a manageable rate.

So, from the point of view of the Foundation, accepting a new project
is quite a big deal. That's why the processes to do so are rather
complex. Part of the process is a community poll about whether the
project should be launched within Wikimedia. Our process does not yet
deal with "adopting" existing projects (this has never been done), but
you could start a slightly modified poll, similar to the one at
[[m:Wikinews/Vote]], and probably get away with it.

Essential for your success is that you can generate not just a solid
majority in support, but also excitement in the community about the
idea. Such excitement was clearly visible with Wikinews and
Wikiversity; I am skeptical if there is similarly broad interest in
genealogical data in an experimental wiki environment. I know there
are a lot of enthusiasts, of course.

Even though the idea of a "World Family Tree" has some appeal, I am
also not convinced that this is an experiment that needs to be taken
up by the Wikimedia Foundation; given the primary mission to bring
knowledge to human beings, it is natural for the organization to focus
on applicable and practical knowledge. (Hence projects like Wikibooks,
with its strong focus on learning materials, and Wikiversity, with its
learning and research angle.)

However, do not let this discourage you; if you truly want this to
become a Wikimedia project, do campaign in the community for support.
Only when such support is visible do I expect that the Board might get
behind the project proposal in a big way. As a personal suggestion, I
recommend changing the name before campaigning; something starting
with "Wiki-" and reflecting the ambitious nature of your goals (such
as "Wikiplanet", but that one is taken) might work better.

Erik (not speaking for the Foundation, of course)