subject: [WikiEN-l] A request from H. Jonat

body:
Maybe names should somehow be censored in the mailing list archives... we could encrypt any word not in the dictionary.
--LittleDan

james duffy <jtdirl at hotmail.com> wrote:

>cprompt wrote

>Many organizations also restrict what parts of their website can be edited,
>if any. They restrict access to their services to those without an account,
>and they verify accounts. Personally though, I think some protection should
>be offered against "ego surfing" where information on a person from the
>list is indexed in Google. This can still be an open and transparent public
>project with a fully searchable mailing list archive. I think that anyone
>should be able to search the archive only after clicking an appropriate
>link on Wikipedia.org.
>
Here's a practical example. We have all being condemning Lir. That could
rebound on Adam (I won't use his full name here so as not to provide another
link to his name!) But how many of his 'names' on wiki are also the names of
real people. For example, if there is someone called Vera Cruz, they might
not be happy to find the following on google:

[WikiEN-l] vera cruz is a troll
... WikiEN-l] vera cruz is a troll; ... |From: Oliver Pereira
|X-ECS-MailScanner:
Found to be clean |Sender: wikien-l-admin at wikipedia.org |Reply ...

I have clashed with Fred Bauder, but Fred does not deserve to have the
following on google, which comes via a different dispute he was involved in:

[WikiEN-l] [FB] and academic dishonesty
[WikiEN-l] [FB] and academic dishonesty. Fred Bauder wikien-l at wikipedia.org
Thu, 20 Mar 2003 18:08:18 -0700: Previous message ...

(I have removed Fred's name from the above so as not to create another link
to that claim!)

These are just from a couple of quick google searches I did at random.

In view of this, I would suggest:

1. That the list NOT be available to check on google or any search engine.
2. That users be discouraged from using their own name. If they don't have a
nickname, initials or an unusual spelling of their name should be used.
3. We should not use a person's in the title of any messages on the list.

JT

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] A request from H. Jonat

body:
cprompt <cprompt at tmbg.org> wrote:
james duffy wrote:

>> james duffy wrote:
>> > I agree. People need to be able to discuss matters openly and
>> frankly. It
>> > really is nobody else's business but the people on the mailing list
>> what is
>> > said on that list.
>>
>> Well, I don't agree at all. Wikipedia is a transparent public
>> project, what we do is all out in the open for anyone to see.
>>
>> Sunshine is the best disinfectant.
>
> Communication on this list should only be available (a) through a
> carefully restricted means (eg, through being a contributor to
> wikipedia), not simply through a google search, and (b) perhaps with
> some time delay mechanism. There is, for example, a US Democratic
> Party political consultant called James Duffy, a soccer manager called
> James Duffy and a number of others. What happens if someone does a
> google search, finds attacks made on me under the name of this email
> account and presumes it was some other 'James Duffy', one with a
> public profile. That is why organisations 'always' provide restricted
> access to discussions such as those here, usually with a time delay
> mechanism. They universally find that unrestricted access blocks free
> discussion and prevents, not encourages, free speech.

Many organizations also restrict what parts of their website can be
edited, if any. They restrict access to their services to those without
an account, and they verify accounts. Personally though, I think some
protection should be offered against "ego surfing" where information on
a person from the list is indexed in Google. This can still be an open
and transparent public project with a fully searchable mailing list
archive. I think that anyone should be able to search the archive only
after clicking an appropriate link on Wikipedia.org.

many people block all javascript, and (AFAIK) javascript is necessaryto tell the source page. If it may be achieved with PHP, people also can disable all requests of a source page (as I do). Without the sourcepage, there is no way to force a link from wikipedia.org. Plus, I see no reason to make the mailing list inaccesable to googlers. I often find a lot of information about open source software from either the direct mailing list archive and news.gmane.org, which archives several mailing lists (including all of the Wikipedia lists). If you really don't want to have the lists show up on Google, just edit robots.txt and you're done
--LittleDan

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subject: [WikiEN-l] A request from H. Jonat

body:
censoring names to non-logged-in people would keep information more public.

Zoe <zoecomnena at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Jimmy Wales wrote:
> H. Jonat wrote me a nice letter, expressing concern
> that when her name
> is searched for at google, the bulk of what is found
> is wikipedia talk
> pages and wikipedia mailing list postings that are
> sharply critical of
> her. She resents the accusation that she is 'right
> wing' and in any
> event doesn't like this turn of events.
>
> Now, some might say, well, if you don't want your
> name to be
> associated on the Internet with various things, then
> don't write in
> thus-and-such a way, and they'd be right of course.
>
> But since Helga requested nicely that perhaps we
> could do something
> about this, I am thinking that perhaps we could
> refactor some pages.
>
> This part is important: I presume, and I asked her,
> that if we did
> this, she would agree to simply part company with us
> peacefully. ALSO
> IMPORTANT: She did not threaten to stay if we don't
> do this, she did
> not make this as a tit-for-tat offer or request, she
> did not make any
> kind of legalistic or other threat.
>
> It sounds to me like she may regret ever getting
> mixed up with
> wikipedia, and would like to simply go away. It
> would be helpful to
> this process if we refactored some pages.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Wikipedia holds no grudges, of course, and if people
> who have been
> controversial wish to end things peacefully, then
> that's great as far
> as I am concerned.
>
> --Jimbo

I really think that the mailing list pages should be
blocked from search engines.

Zoe

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from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] A request from H. Jonat

body:
--- Anthere <anthere6 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> --- james duffy <jtdirl at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Zoe wrote
> > >I really think that the mailing list pages should
> > be
> > >blocked from search engines.
> >
> > I agree. People need to be able to discuss matters
> > openly and frankly. It
> > really is nobody else's business but the people on
> > the mailing list what is
> > said on that list. Other email conversations aren't
> > accessible generally.
> > Why should this mailing list be available? Many
> > people don't realise that
> > what they say on the mailing list isn't private and
> > if they did might simply
> > opt out of it.
> >
> > JT
>
> Well...in case they did not know, now they do.
> Nothing said here is private.
> Nothing said on talk page is private either :-)

I agree. If people want to lead private lives, then the mailing list
is not for them.
It does not preclude them in participating to the W as an anon user,
however.

To use the legal term, there is no expectation of privacy in email.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
818.943.1850 cell
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Static html

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Je ?a?do 29 Majo 2003 22:18, Lee Daniel Crocker skribis:
> I don't think there's anything unresolved; clearly we CAN'T
> redistribute copyrighted photos under GFDL. But the issue of whether
> or not we can use them in Wikipedia is more complicated.

Aye, there's the rub. Can we modify a GFDL-licensed work by integrating
material we *know* we cannot distribute under the GFDL license and
*distribute the result under the GFDL license*?

It sure looks to me like we're blatantly voiding our own license, and
that makes me reeeeeeal uncomfortable.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use (was: Static html)

body:
Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen wrote:

>On 30 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>>Having a status flag in the database would be very helpful for forkers,
>>but we should not encourage uploading photos under licenses that limit
>>redistribution. But a little more Linus Torvalds style pragmatism and a
>>little less Richard Stallman style zealotry wouldn't hurt either.
>>
>
>And end up being sued like Linus?
>
I agree with Erik on this.  Simply guessing that something is copyright
doesn't make it so.  It's all a question of whether you interpret
copyright laws liberally in favour of the user or liberally in favour of
the putative copyright owner.  The fear of being sued is a red herring;
we are very far from any possibility that such a thing might happen.
 With the safe harbor provisions of copyright law we would have ample
opportunity to remove offending material before it went that far.
 Notification of copyright violation would have to come first from the
copyright OWNER or his AUTHORIZED representative, not from some
disinterested 3rd party do-gooder with unschooled guesses about what the
law says.

Effectively violating copyright is very easy to do.  I have hundreds of
copyright books in my personal library that I could scan with OCR
software, and add into a Wikipedia article without anyone EVER realizing
it.  That wouldn't make it right, but I'm confident that nobody would
ever call my hand on it.  If I can do it so can any other contributor,
so let's not be naive about this.

Of course, if a copyright violation is flagrant and obvious it should be
removed.  Unfortunately, most alleged violations are not that clear, and
we should give the contributor the benefit of the doubt without
descending into copyright paranoia.

Eclecticology


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mention that Bomis hosts Wikipedia

body:
what do you mean? we link to pov sites.

Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:It isn't necessary, and may not be desirable, as Bomis isn't NPOV. :-)

Geoffrey Thomas wrote:

> The bottom of [[fr:Accueil]], the French Wikipedia's home page, contains the text "Site
> gracieusement h?berg? par _Bomis_", with a link to the website. Loosely translated, it says, "Site
> graciously hosted by Bomis." Should we add something like this to the [[en:Main Page]], e.g.,
> "Thanks to [[Bomis]] (www.bomis.com) for hosting the Wikipedia!"? It's awfully nice of them to
> provide for what's probably the last big site on the Internet without banner ads and popups; we
> really ought to say thanks somehow, and at the least give them a bit of traffic.
>
> -Geoffrey
>
> __________________________________
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from_name: Toby Bartels

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Alternative to Blanking Pages

body:
Evercat wrote in part:

>Cprompt wrote:

>>If no one else would like to undertake the task of
>>writing out the boilerplate texts, I'll add it to my todo list.

>Hmm, I've still not seen an answer to the problem I raised - links to
>blanked pages will no longer be coloured as stubs. This isn't a small
>problem, I feel...

Part of the problem is that redirects are ''never'' classified as stubs.
How difficult would it be to follow redirects before colouring their links?
Of course, this still won't be a perfect solution
if the boilerplate texts are longer than some people's thresholds.
(But if they at least stay short, I for one
might well adjust my threshold to fit them.)

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] A request from H. Jonat

body:
Christopher Mahan <chris_mahan at yahoo.com> wrote:
--- Anthere wrote:
>
> --- james duffy wrote:
> > Zoe wrote
> > >I really think that the mailing list pages should
> > be
> > >blocked from search engines.
> >
> > I agree. People need to be able to discuss matters
> > openly and frankly. It
> > really is nobody else's business but the people on
> > the mailing list what is
> > said on that list. Other email conversations aren't
> > accessible generally.
> > Why should this mailing list be available? Many
> > people don't realise that
> > what they say on the mailing list isn't private and
> > if they did might simply
> > opt out of it.
> >
> > JT
>
> Well...in case they did not know, now they do.
> Nothing said here is private.
> Nothing said on talk page is private either :-)

I agree. If people want to lead private lives, then the mailing list
is not for them.
It does not preclude them in participating to the W as an anon user,
however.

To use the legal term, there is no expectation of privacy in email.

=====
Christopher Mahan
chris_mahan at yahoo.com

you don't even have to be an anon user; just use a pseudonym.

--LittleDan

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from_name: Tomasz Wegrzanowski

subject: [Wikitech-l] Static html

body:
On Thu, May 29, 2003 at 09:46:53PM -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Je ??a??do 29 Majo 2003 02:15, Alfio Puglisi skribis:
> > - Images: no images are present here. AFAIK, each of them has a SQL
> > record (that my script skips), but the actual image data is not
> > included.
>
> Many images uploaded to Wikipedia are third-parties' copyrighted IP
> being used under the vague claim of "fair use". The project has not yet
> received legal advice about whether such materials can be redistributed
> under the terms of the GFDL; until that's resolved I at least have no
> intention of putting them all in one easy download, for which a
> significant use would be reuse and redistribution by people like
> yourself trying to reuse Wikipedia material.

On Polish Wikipedia they would be immediately deleted.
"Fair use" is well known to be incompatible with free software -
it gives very limited rights.

Please detele all such images, so Wikipedia can stay free.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Daniel-
>
>>On 30 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:
>>
>
>>>Having a status flag in the database would be very helpful for forkers,
>>>but we should not encourage uploading photos under licenses that limit
>>>redistribution. But a little more Linus Torvalds style pragmatism and a
>>>little less Richard Stallman style zealotry wouldn't hurt either.
>>>
>
>>And end up being sued like Linus?
>>
>
>Hardly an argument. You can always end up being sued. The question is
>whether the other side wins.
>
Agreed, but there's still the problem of ambulance chasing lawyers
earning contingency fees.  Innocent defendants in such suits need to be
able to collect contingency fees. :-D

Ec


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Static html

body:
On Fri, 30 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:

>critical enough to justify some hassle. So if copyrighted images, used with
>permission or under fair use, are attached to Wikipedia articles, and it is
>likely that most if not all redistributions of the Wikipedia would also
>qualify for the same fair use, I think that's a reasonable second choice,
>so long as (1) every image so used _is clearly identified_ as such, and
>has clear documentation of its source.
>
>Images from unknown sources should certainly be removed, and any images
>that can be replaced with real GFDL images should be. Likewise, if we do
>any static mirror of Wikipedia, I think it's important that it retain
>(or point to) the image description pages that identify the source of
>each image and its status.

Maybe a new SQL field for images? Something like

copyright tinyint(2) NOT NULL

1 = public domain
2 = explicit GFDL
3 = fair use
4 = copyright holder permission
5 = don't redistribute
6 = stolen
7 = don't know

to be filled with a checkbox in the image upload page?

Ciao,
Alfio


subject: [Wikitech-l] Static html

body:
On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 10:44:16AM +0200, Alfio Puglisi wrote:
> On Fri, 30 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
>
> >critical enough to justify some hassle. So if copyrighted images, used with
> >permission or under fair use, are attached to Wikipedia articles, and it is
> >likely that most if not all redistributions of the Wikipedia would also
> >qualify for the same fair use, I think that's a reasonable second choice,
> >so long as (1) every image so used _is clearly identified_ as such, and
> >has clear documentation of its source.
> >
> >Images from unknown sources should certainly be removed, and any images
> >that can be replaced with real GFDL images should be. Likewise, if we do
> >any static mirror of Wikipedia, I think it's important that it retain
> >(or point to) the image description pages that identify the source of
> >each image and its status.
>
> Maybe a new SQL field for images? Something like
>
> copyright tinyint(2) NOT NULL
>
> 1 = public domain
> 2 = explicit GFDL
> 3 = fair use
> 4 = copyright holder permission
> 5 = don't redistribute
> 6 = stolen
> 7 = don't know
>
> to be filled with a checkbox in the image upload page?

No !!!
Just delete all non-free images.


body:
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Je Vendredo 30 Majo 2003 03:09, Erik Moeller skribis:
> Having a status flag in the database would be very helpful for
> forkers, but we should not encourage uploading photos under licenses
> that limit redistribution.  But a little more Linus Torvalds style
> pragmatism and a little less Richard Stallman style zealotry wouldn't
> hurt either.

I assume you're referring to the row over linking binary-only modules in
the Linux kernel. For the uninitiated:

The GPL license forbids linking GPL'd code with non-GPL'able code,
excluding standard system libraries on non-free operating systems. This
is to prevent fake "free" code that in fact is dependant on third-party
non-free libraries in order to function.

The Free Software Foundation claims that this forbids _any_ linking,
including dynamic run-time linking such as is common today in plug-in
module/driver architectures. Linus doesn't interpret it this way, and
says it's okay to distribute binary-only (non-free, no-source, limited
distribution) driver modules that can be linked into the GPL'd Linux
kernel at run-time.

Coupla notes:
* Said modules are distributed by their copyright owners with the
supported hardware, not as part of the Linux kernel.
* The Linux kernel runs just fine without them. The modules provide
additional support for certain hardware only.
* Said linking is done at run time on the user's machine; the combined
result exists only in memory and is never redistributed.

So by analogy "Linus Torvalds style pragmatism" might provide for a
third-party filter program that inserts non-FDL images into Wikipedia
articles on a reader's computer as they're loaded. ;)  But it's real
questionable whether it could mean "sure, let's put a whole bunch of
stuff that's not compatible with our license directly into our main
distribution and embed them directly into pages served from our server.
After all, we can tell people to remove them if they can't use them
(even though we say it's absolutely vital that we include these images
to have a legitimate encyclopedia)."

> What we should allow:
> ---------------------
> 1) public domain
> 2) FDL

Wonderful.

> 3) fair use
> 4) free for non-commercial use. This is similar to fair use, but less
> vague.

Can't redistribute these under the terms of the GFDL, so can't embed
them in articles.

> 5) Creative Commons licenses (e.g. Attribution) and FDL-equivalent
> open content licenses

This is a greyer area, as such licenses have much the same goals, but
may or may not be letter-compatible. There's a fair chance that someone
releasing material under such a license would be willing to
dual-license if asked.

> What we should not allow:
> -------------------------
> 1) Copyrighted, no permission (duh)
> 2) No permission to redistribute other than for Wikipedia (prevents
> forking)
> 3) Advertising or prominent copyright notices in images that cannot
> be removed
> 4) Other restrictive licenses

How can these be shown to be distinct from claiming "fair use" on
copyrighted material that hasn't given us *any* rights (the default
being 'all rights reserved')?

Unless one of us is a lawyer familiar with the licenses and laws
involved, I don't think this discussion is going to go anywhere useful
at this point. :)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Axel Boldt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Static html

body:
--- Tomasz Wegrzanowski <taw at users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
> "Fair use" is well known to be incompatible with free software -
> it gives very limited rights.
>
> Please delete all such images, so Wikipedia can stay free.

I agree. Illustrating an article by adding a photo creates a derivative
work, therefore the whole has to be put under GFDL, therefore it cannot
be fair use material (or anything besides public domain or GFDL).

Axel

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body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

>How can these be shown to be distinct from claiming "fair use" on
>copyrighted material that hasn't given us *any* rights (the default
>being 'all rights reserved')?
>
"All right reserved" is equivalent to saying,  "I don't know what my
rights are, but whatever they are I'm claiming them.  Figuring out what
rights I don't have is your problem."

>Unless one of us is a lawyer familiar with the licenses and laws
>involved, I don't think this discussion is going to go anywhere useful
>at this point. :)
>
Even if one of us IS a lawyer, I don't think it would go any further. ;-)

Ec


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:

> How do you propose acquiring a free photo of a prominent,
> recently deceased author or actor? A picture of an important
> historical event?

First, use the extensive public domain archives, for instance the
collections of the library of congress. Next, once our foundation has
money, we can try to acquire the copyright of selected important images
we need and cannot get in any other way.

Axel

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Accessibility of mailing list archives

body:
--- james duffy <jtdirl at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Keeping of records and access to them is vital. To too much
> ''immediate'' access tends to lead to (a) people not being able to
> be open in a discussion without their words coming back to haunt
> them or being used outside wikipedia against them (if they were
> called on the list a rascist, a bigot, a homophobe, anti-semite,
> anti-catholic, any-woman, anti whatever) (b) playing to the gallery,
> ie., phoney positions being taken up simply for the
 > impression they give if anyone does a google search on someone.

I don't think we have seen any evidence of either (a) or (b)
with respect to the Wikipedia mailing lists.

> That is why organisations 'always' provide
> restricted access to discussions such as those here, usually with a
> time delay mechanism. They universally find that unrestricted access
> blocks free discussion  and prevents, not encourages, free speech.

"Always" and "universally" are factually incorrect. Organizations
comparable to ours, such as the Debian project, KDE, the Free Software
Foundation etc. all keep their mailing list archives open, immediately
accessible and searchable. So should we.

Axel

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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
 Marco wrote:
> No, you lose much more. You can not easily combine the content of two
> "free" encyclopedias and get something that is "free". You can not copy
> images from the English Wikipedia to the German Wikipedia anymore because
> the "fair use" right works not this way in Germany.

What? Since when has the German Wikipedia moved to a German-based server?

Well, I know for a fact that it hasn't so German law has no bearing on the
legality of having "fair user" (per US law) images on the German Wikipedia.

However, those people who are subject to German law may be legally barred from
uploading such images. But there are plenty of German-speaking Wikipedians
living outside of Germany to do this.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation detector

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Axel Boldt wrote:
>
> >If we adopt Magnus' feature (which I would support), then it
> >should not become a user option. The whole point of the feature
> >is to do away with hand-written disambiguation blocks, but that is
> >only possible if everyone uses it.
>
> I think that we can do this in such a way
> as to eliminate human-written disambiguation *blocks*
> but to retain of human-written disambiguation *pages*.

Absolutely, and I think that answers the objections of Lee and Sean.
Just to clarify, [[Paris]] has a human-written disambiguation block at
the top which would become unnecessary; [[Paris (disambiguation)]] is a
human-written disambiguation page which would stay the same.

Axel

__________________________________
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from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Tomasz-

> No !!!
> Just delete all non-free images.

It would be silly not to allow the freedoms given to us by the law to the
maximum possible extent. Obviously free images (PD/FDL) are always
preferable to non-free ones, but so long as  Wikipedia remains
redistributable AND forkable, I see no problem with using fair use
pictures or those under equivalent semi-free licenses. Keep in mind that
the freedom to modify is, for images, not nearly as important as for
text.[1] How do you propose acquiring a free photo of a prominent,
recently deceased author or actor? A picture of an important historical
event? This is unrealistic -- you won't, and with your attitude, we will
simply have no image for that article, while Encarta et al. will sport a
nice gallery of them. Unacceptable.

Fair use is acceptable as per the current consensus on [[Wikipedia:Image
use policy]]. You may use any quasi-dictatorial powers you have on pl. to
enforce your point of view, but this will not be possible on en.

Having a status flag in the database would be very helpful for forkers,
but we should not encourage uploading photos under licenses that limit
redistribution. But a little more Linus Torvalds style pragmatism and a
little less Richard Stallman style zealotry wouldn't hurt either.

What we should allow:
---------------------
1) public domain
2) FDL
3) fair use
4) free for non-commercial use. This is similar to fair use, but less
vague.
5) Creative Commons licenses (e.g. Attribution) and FDL-equivalent open
content licenses

What we should not allow:
-------------------------
1) Copyrighted, no permission (duh)
2) No permission to redistribute other than for Wikipedia (prevents
forking)
3) Advertising or prominent copyright notices in images that cannot be
removed
4) Other restrictive licenses

Regards,

Erik

[1] And before someone starts mentioning all the important crop and
resizing operations we do on images, these would not constitute license
violations because they do not substantially alter the source image.


from_name: Hr. Daniel Mikkelsen

body:
On 30 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Having a status flag in the database would be very helpful for forkers,
> but we should not encourage uploading photos under licenses that limit
> redistribution. But a little more Linus Torvalds style pragmatism and a
> little less Richard Stallman style zealotry wouldn't hurt either.

And end up being sued like Linus?

-- Daniel


from_name: Oliver Pereira

subject: [WikiEN-l] American diplomatic listings

body:
On Thu, 29 May 2003 daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

> A long while ago, there was an article listing something like British
> ambassadors to Kazakhstan.

A long while ago? You had me worried for a moment there! But luckily, it's
still there...

[[Ambassadors (from United Kingdom to Kazakhstan)]]

Not a complete list, of course. :) Not *yet*, anyway. I'm still planning
to expand it...

Perhaps it would be better to have a single list of British ambassadors
and then only split it up when it becomes unwieldy. Similarly for American
ones, and so on.

The fact that things change is not really an argument against keeping
information. Pretty much everything changes, but the Wikipedia should
preserve the history of those changes, as well as linking to up-to-date
sites where the most current information can be found.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: giskart at gmx.net

subject: [Wikitech-l] request for a redirect

body:
Can somebody setup a redirect from http://nds.wikipedia.org and
http://www.nds.wikipedia.org to http://za.wikipedia.com

The Plattd??tsch Wikipedia now is using a old usemod wikipedia whit the
wrong language code.  Whit the redirect the can spread the good url even when the
do not have a fase III wiki

Giskart

--
+++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more  http://www.gmx.net +++
Bitte l?cheln! Fotogalerie online mit GMX ohne eigene Homepage!


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation detector

body:
Axel Boldt wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>I think that we can do this in such a way
>>as to eliminate human-written disambiguation *blocks*
>>but to retain of human-written disambiguation *pages*.

>Absolutely, and I think that answers the objections of Lee and Sean.
>Just to clarify, [[Paris]] has a human-written disambiguation block at
>the top which would become unnecessary; [[Paris (disambiguation)]] is a
>human-written disambiguation page which would stay the same.

OK, we seem to be in agreement.  But just to be clear:

Magnus' present code will miss a lot of links at the top of [[Paris]],
since most of those articles are disambiguated by commas, not parentheses.
Alternatively, it'll have an rather unwieldy long list of links,
if we create redirects from the parentheses to the commas.
And it'll still miss the rock band, unless we create another redirect
(from [[Paris (band)]] to [[Poison (band)]]).
Best all round, then, to simply link to [[Paris (disambiguation)]].

Magnus' code is also problematic in that on [[Paris, Texas]],
its disambiguate block will include only [[Paris, Texas (movie)]],
whereas the human-written block also links to [[Paris (disambiguation)]].

That's too much complaining now about a basically good idea.
I did say in another post that I would look at the code ...

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] A request from H. Jonat

body:
On Thu, 29 May 2003, james duffy wrote:

> Here's a practical example. We have all being condemning Lir. That could
> rebound on Adam (I won't use his full name here so as not to provide
> another link to his name!)

Adam [name omitted for privacy reasons] is a well-meaning chap who has been unfairly maligned on
this mailing list too many times. There you go. I've just counterbalanced
all the negative things about him on the mailing lists. ;)

> 1. That the list NOT be available to check on google or any search engine.
> 2. That users be discouraged from using their own name. If they don't have a
> nickname, initials or an unusual spelling of their name should be used.
> 3. We should not use a person's in the title of any messages on the list.

On the contrary - the lists should be kept public, and people should be
encouraged to use their real names. This is a serious project, and I don't
see why people should hide behind silly made-up names to contribute to it.
Hiding one's true identity is arguably against the GNU Free Documentation
License anyway (it says that authors must be listed), and is arguably
contrary to the general Wikipedia spirit of openness and freedom of
information. Besides, if people's real identities are known, they would
hopefully be less inclined to be rude to each other, and to say silly
things they might regret later. :) Your third point sounds good to me,
though, if by that you mean in the context of a personal attack. Personal
attacks are generally best avoided anyway.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Limits to the non-paperiness of Wikipedia?

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Oliver Pereira wrote:

>>I think
>>that Web-based things should be tailored to the medium, and that means
>>that information should be arranged in a web-like structure.

>The question is, do we want relevant information on one subject to be
>grouped together, or do we want to *unnecessarily* use the "hypertext
>medium" just for kicks? The latter seems like a gimmicky thing to do,

Well of course it does, because it's a strawman
(uninentionally on your part, I'm sure).
Oliver doesn't want to use the medium for *kicks* --
even the people that worked on [[Gnipper]] (below) weren't doing that.

>>I don't think so. Merging small articles into big ones increases the
>>number of redirects floating around.

>Replacing all redirects to FOO with redirects to BAR is a job for a
>machine. Replacing all links to FOO with links to BAR is a job for a
>human, because you don't know in which verbal context these links appear.

I don't understand this comment.
Can you give an example (possibly hypothetical) of a situation
where you can contrast the effects of the different designs?

>>Erik Moeller wrote:

>>>* A short average article length does not reflect well on our article
>>>count, which is one of the key instruments used for size comparisons

>>It makes the count bigger, which is a *good* thing. :)

>No, it's not a good thing, if the next time someone does a random page
>sample for a review, they get 10 one-pargraph articles about fictional
>characters. This makes us look unprofessional.

Agh, everybody forget how we *look*.
We worry far too much about our article count and Randompage.
When I first discovered Wikipedia, I noticed two things: wiki and 'pedia.
We should stick to the subject, which is usability for readers and writers:
that's what'll attract people to the site and make us look professional.

>And the more such articles we have, the more difficult it becomes to
>enforce standards, to systematically copyedit articles about certain
>subjects etc. -- like Everything2, the whole database becomes increasingly
>messsy and unappealing to deal with. It's like the subpages mess we just
>barely avoided.

But another problem with subpages is still present.
That problem was that we didn't know if it was best
to structure things as [[Stuff/Chap's views]] or [[Chap/Views on Stuff]].
By placing all of Chap's views on Stuff in [[Chap]], you choose the latter.
By keeping [[Chap's views on Stuff]] separate, Oliver avoids the problem.

In practice, things will of course depend on the situation.
As you said, you and Oliver probably aren't that far apart in practice,
and I'm probably smooshed somewhere in the small space between you.
But when the section == Views on Stuff == or == Chap's views ==
(as the case may be) becomes long enough to stand on its own,
then I believe that it's often best to give it its own article,
with a brief summary (probably without header) in both [[Chap]] and [[Stuff]].
(I won't replace "often" with "always" in that sentence, however.)

I said before that I agreed with your main point,
because I thought that you were talking about things (like [[Gnipper]])
that are very short and would be only a single paragraph in an article.
But I disagree if you're talking about things of the size of subheaders,
or at least I'll disagree in many cases.

>>As for comparisons,
>>if you check other popular encyclopaedias, you'll find that many of them
>>have articles a lot shorter than 20 Kb.

>Certainly not about "Gnipper the dog". The point is: If you actually check
>out these articles, you notice that they are about subjects that can quite
>plausibly grow into reasonably long articles -- an author, a politician, a
>company spokesperson; a mechanical device, a philosophical concept, a
>published work .. We currently have plenty of small articles that can
>never be anything but small articles because their subjects are so
>insignificant.

For a published encyclopaedia, which is a finished work,
I don't think that the ability to grow into a long article
makes any difference for their purposes one way or another.
That does have some relevance to us, but not to them.
Rather, they don't have [[Gnipper]] -- even as a redirect! --
because they don't consider that character significant enough.
We, OTOH, are not paper, and it's significant enough if somebody writes it.

That doesn't mean that [[Gnipper]] should have its own article --
that depends on circumstances, and in this case it shouldn't,
since we simply don't have enough material to stand on its own
(regardless of whether such might ''potentially'' be available!).
It does mean that we can stick in a redirect, however,
and thus the distinction between us and EB is maintained.

IOW, for them, it's not about size at all, but significance.
Since we're not paper, we care only about size
(replacing significance to some extent with verifiability) --
and I agree with you about [[Gnipper]] on that basis of course! --
but comparisons with EB really have little significance,
for one side or the other, in this matter.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation detector

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote in part:

>On the whole, though, I think Toby's idea of linking to just the one
>human-written disambiguation page is nicer, as it would clutter the page
>less, and would leave disambiguation in the hands of the humans, who can
>still do these things better. But maybe that's irrelevant, as this version
>has been coded and that one hasn't...

Thanks for the opinion.  And it shouldn't be a big changed to the code.
Maybe I look at the code for myself and be of some use someday ...

-- Toby


body:
On Fri, May 30, 2003 at 12:09:00PM +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
> Tomasz-
>
> > No !!!
> > Just delete all non-free images.
>
> It would be silly not to allow the freedoms given to us by the law to the
> maximum possible extent. Obviously free images (PD/FDL) are always
> preferable to non-free ones, but so long as  Wikipedia remains
> redistributable AND forkable, I see no problem with using fair use
> pictures or those under equivalent semi-free licenses. Keep in mind that
> the freedom to modify is, for images, not nearly as important as for
> text.[1] How do you propose acquiring a free photo of a prominent,
> recently deceased author or actor? A picture of an important historical
> event? This is unrealistic -- you won't, and with your attitude, we will
> simply have no image for that article, while Encarta et al. will sport a
> nice gallery of them. Unacceptable.

This reasoning is exactly the greatest danger to Wikipedia - you
want us to give up important freedoms to get a little more content.
People who think like that are much greater threat that all Helgas and Lirs
project ever had.

Not only it is perfectly acceptable, it is THE ONLY RIGHT THING TO DO.

> Fair use is acceptable as per the current consensus on [[Wikipedia:Image
> use policy]]. You may use any quasi-dictatorial powers you have on pl. to
> enforce your point of view, but this will not be possible on en.

There has never been any contensus about that. Upload page has always been
saying that copyright status of uploaded files must be clear.

> Having a status flag in the database would be very helpful for forkers,
> but we should not encourage uploading photos under licenses that limit
> redistribution. But a little more Linus Torvalds style pragmatism and a
> little less Richard Stallman style zealotry wouldn't hurt either.

What you call "pragmatism" is in fact short-sightedness.

> What we should allow:
> ---------------------
> 1) public domain
> 2) FDL
> 3) fair use
> 4) free for non-commercial use. This is similar to fair use, but less
> vague.
> 5) Creative Commons licenses (e.g. Attribution) and FDL-equivalent open
> content licenses

Of course Wikipedia may be used commercially.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] American diplomatic listings

body:
james duffy wrote:

> [...] A far better solution would be to pull all that info out of
> separate articles and pull it together in an article on [[US
> Ambassadors and diplomats]], which in time could be augmented by pages
> on anything from Congolese Ambassadors and diplomats to Irish,
> Chinese, Russian, Dutch, Argentinian, etc etc etc.

Well, you were talking about branching out from just Irish topics, this
is perfect
for you!  I'll be looking for the new articles in the morning. :-)

But seriously, a worldwide collection of ambassadors past and present would
be a valuable addition to Wikipedia, not only because the info is presently
scattered, but because the ambassadorial ranks often include persons with,
shall we say, "interesting" links to other topics.  Wikipedia could become
the favored resource for researchers trying to understand more about some
of these connections.

Stan


subject: [Wikitech-l] 3 new InterWiki prefixes

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>I have added
>*PageHistory
>*UserContributions
>*BackLinks
>InterWiki prefixes,

Nice, those should be useful.

>As you might expect, these InterWiki links point to en:. I pondered
>picking a name like EnHistory, EnContris etc., but I wanted something
>intuitive. If other languages want the same functionality, prefixes like
>"SeitenHistorie","BenutzerBeitraege" and "LinksAuf" can be easily added
>(i.e. local equivalents).

And what if two different languages translate these the same way?
OK, that's not very likely with such long terms as these examples,
but I could imagine that "BackLinks" is the same in [[hr:]] and [[bs:]].
Generally speaking, I don't think that such differences should be assumed.
Would namespaces like [[PageHistory:]], [[PageHistory talk:]], etc work?
(Those are also more in keeping with the functions of the links,
since they're not literally InterWiki.)

-- Toby


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Tomasz-
>
> > No !!!
> > Just delete all non-free images.
>
> It would be silly not to allow the freedoms given to us by the law to
> the maximum possible extent.

By law, we could include texts which are exclusively licensed to us.
Yet we don't do it: the goal isn't to produce a good encyclopedia
(there are enough already), but a good encyclopedia that's free in as
many senses as possible.

Axel

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Calendar - Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
http://calendar.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] A request from H. Jonat

body:
james duffy wrote:

> [...]  I would suggest:
>
> 1. That the list NOT be available to check on google or any search
> engine.
> 2. That users be discouraged from using their own name. If they don't
> have a nickname, initials or an unusual spelling of their name should
> be used.
> 3. We should not use a person's in the title of any messages on the list.

20 years ago, the RAND corporation put out a tech report discussing
the then-newfangled email, and one of their recommendations was
"don't put anything in email that you don't want to see on the
front page of the New York Times the next day".

It's still good advice today.  I came to appreciate its value when
some of my Usenet flaming came up in a job interview a year later.
It didn't cost me the job, but it was a reminder that what we do here
is as much a part of the public record as a printed article or book.
Perhaps someday a Wikipedia talk page will figure in a political
scandal! "I truly believe a [[Strom Thurmond]] presidency in [[1948]]
would have averted the [[civil rights]] disturbances of the following
decade." :-)

Stan


from_name: a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l digest, Vol 1 #394 - 15 msgs

body:
cprompt wrote:
>
> Evercat wrote:
>
> >No, that's not what I mean. If you go to your preferences, you'll see
> >a field called "threshold for stub display". Enter a value into it.
> >All links to articles (not counting redirects) that have less than
> >that many characters will be rendered in a different colour. This is
> >very useful, and plans to create boilerplate text to put in blanked
> >pages will undermine its usefulness somewhat.
> >
> Hmm...I see what you mean. Well, I'm not really sure what to do about
> that one...

I wonder if there could be a technical solution. Could the server be
made to serve up a page that explained about blank pages and page
history and so forth, instead of just the blanked page?

Evercat
--
Allan Crossman
a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk
http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
Brion Vibber wrote in part:

>So by analogy "Linus Torvalds style pragmatism" might provide for a
>third-party filter program that inserts non-FDL images into Wikipedia
>articles on a reader's computer as they're loaded. ;)

Like a web browser?
That's a third-party program that inserts Wikipedia's images
into Wikipedia's articles on a reader's computer as they're loaded.
The HTML document (the article) that we serve them has no image;
we also serve them the image, which they request in reaction to our article
(much as a module may be requested in reaction to the kernel's actions),
but that's under fair use, not GFDL.

The problem, it seems to me, isn't that we use the images,
but that we pretend that we're using them under the GFDL.
They're already separated out a bit (not in the download, after all),
and we should separate them (or the non-free ones) out further,
rather than claiming in some places that we're entirely free and GFDL,
while claiming in other places that we use some images through fair use.
(I'd even support placing fair use images in a separate namespace
and database from the free ones, just to make things ultraclear.)
Our fair use images should be treated as *auxiliary*.

>(even though we say it's absolutely vital that we include these images
>to have a legitimate encyclopedia).

It should ''never'' be vital to an article that we include an image,
if we can help it, not only for distribution but also for accessibility.
We should make our articles as good as possible without the images,
whether or not we then also decide to send an image along with it.
This is true even for free images, because we may have blind readers.

>Unless one of us is a lawyer familiar with the licenses and laws
>involved, I don't think this discussion is going to go anywhere useful
>at this point. :)

Of course, IANAL either.

-- Toby


body:
On 29 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> Long articles have several advantages:
> * A topic is kept in context, eliminating the need to write a separate
> intro for each individual article

The context depends on the reader. What is the context of Chap's views on
Stuff? For someone interested in the life of Chap, the relevant context is
his life, and so they would want that section to be at [[Chap]]. For
someone interested in Stuff, the relevant context is that subject, and so
they would want the section to be at [[Stuff]]. Of course, there should be
mentions of his views in both articles, but to duplicate the whole lot
would cause problems. I think it would be better to have a separate
article on [[Chap's views on Stuff]], and have links to it from both
articles.

> * It becomes easy to save, print and pass around an article covering all
> relevant information

Hmm. Keep Wikipedia articles as close to paper as possible, for ease of
conversion into paper. ;) Okay, maybe that's an unfair characterisation of
what you said, but I think that Web-based things should be tailored to the
medium, and that means that information should be arranged in a web-like
structure, not artificially forced into a one-dimensional structure like
traditional writing. It would be good to have a way to save related
articles together, but what is related depends on the reader, again. A
reader interested in Chap would want [[Chap]], [[Chap's views on Stuff]],
and [[Chap's views on Things]] saved together, whereas a reader interested
in Stuff would want [[Stuff]], [[Chap's views on Stuff]], and [[Guy's
views on Stuff]] all saved together. I expect a technical solution could
be thought up to enable readers to group articles for saving together,
according to their personal preferences. :)

> * We do not require the reader to click around unnecessarily, which can be
> confusing to many people

I'm not sure I follow this argument. Isn't that what people do on the Web
all the time?

> * Should we decide on some major structural change or even a deletion, it
> becomes easier to fix things
> * The same goes for links: The less articles there are, the less double
> redirects, the less links that need to be manually edited and so on

I don't think so. Merging small articles into big ones increases the
number of redirects floating around.

> * A short average article length does not reflect well on our article
> count, which is one of the key instruments used for size comparisons

It makes the count bigger, which is a *good* thing. :) As for comparisons,
if you check other popular encyclopaedias, you'll find that many of them
have articles a lot shorter than 20 Kb.

> The arguments against long articles:
>
> Hard to edit:
> One of the features on my personal wishlist is the ability to edit an
> individual article section.

Doesn't that give the reader more unnecessary things to click on, and
wouldn't that be confusing to many people? ;)

> No linkability to individual sections:
> Supporting a [[foo#bar]] style syntax is not the problem. However, keeping
> these links working is non-trivial. It might be desirable to only have
> this label functionality for some sections, instead of automatically
> turning every section title into a label.

The whole idea of linking to individual sections is just so evil that I'm
going to have to write another whole e-mail on this subject...

> Attention span:
> This is a valid argument, but splitting up articles is not the solution:
> instead of giving our reader easy access to the pertinent info, we now
> hide it with the justification that it is "too much to read". The solution
> is structure. Have a proper introduction with a decent summary, and put
> every relevant piece of information into the right section. We could try
> to develop guidelines for structuring articles in specific subject areas.

The solution *is* structure. We agree on that. I say use the natural
web-like structure of the Web; you say force things into a traditional
book-like structure. I say the latter is more off-putting for all those
people with short attention spans, who would be, I believe, the majority
of potential readers.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
Marco Krohn wrote in part to Erik Moeller:

>No, you lose much more. You can not easily combine the content of two "free"
>encyclopedias and get something that is "free". You can not copy images from
>the English Wikipedia to the German Wikipedia anymore because the "fair use"
>right works not this way in Germany.

Maybe you and Erik can't, being in Germany and all as you are, but ''I'' can.
Everybody is invited to drop such requests on [[en:User talk:Toby Bartels]]!

-- Toby


body:
I wrote in small part:

>But what about [[Neighorhood (topology)]] (with the US spelling)?

Heh.  The US spelling does, of course, include the "B".  ^_^

-- Toby


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Limits to the non-paperiness of Wikipedia?

body:
On Thu, 29 May 2003, Neil Harris wrote:

> >My current favorite suggestion is that second-level headings (H2)
> >should automatically become link targets.
>
> I agree; this is the "obvious right thing" to do, in my opinion. We can
> now argue about whether we should support references for these anchors
> as [[article#fragment-text]], which also seems to be the "obvious thing" ?

I think that the very idea of linking to sections within articles is the
obvious *wrong* thing to do. The opening paragraph of an article is the
thing that establishes the subject matter and the context - basically,
what the article is all about. We can't just throw people into the middle
of an article and expect them to know what's going on. They'll have to
scroll back up to the top again anyway to check. If we don't want to just
confuse people, we'd have to make each section pretty much self-contained.
Hmm, a piece of writing that is self-contained and that you can link to.
Sounds like an article to me! If a section is autonomous enough to be
linked to, it is far more natural to separate it out and make it an
article all by itself than to give it some strange new semi-article
status.

I think this is a case of people looking for technical solutions to a
problem that could be solved much more satisfactorily by sensible planning
by humans.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation detector

body:
Kurt Jansson wrote:

>Okay, this discussion is coming up again and again. I've said that I'm
>against putting more of this meta-information into the article text, but
>some people feel a pressing need for it. So how about adding an extra
>meta:-namespace were this information could be put in? So we could also
>get rid of the annoying interlanguage links on top of each article.

I don't think that we want a *namespace* -- it's all for the one page.
But an extra little box on the edit page (perhaps turned on as an option?)
could be useful, for both language links and category information.

In the past, I've been quite suspicious of category information,
but ''meta'' categories (like "stub", "disambiguation", etc) are different.
And once we get the code running well for them,
if ''content'' categories fit into the scheme perfectly well
(that is, without complicating the editing process),
then we could always try them out at that time.

-- Toby


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
Daniel-
> On 30 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

>> Having a status flag in the database would be very helpful for forkers,
>> but we should not encourage uploading photos under licenses that limit
>> redistribution. But a little more Linus Torvalds style pragmatism and a
>> little less Richard Stallman style zealotry wouldn't hurt either.

> And end up being sued like Linus?

Hardly an argument. You can always end up being sued. The question is
whether the other side wins.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
Tomasz-
> This reasoning is exactly the greatest danger to Wikipedia - you
> want us to give up important freedoms to get a little more content.
> People who think like that are much greater threat that all Helgas and Lirs
> project ever had.

I could respond on the same level, but I won't. It's a matter of balance
-- what freedoms do you lose? You might lose the freedom to take all of
Wikipedia's images and sell them as the "Coca Cola photo collection" for
50 bucks. Big deal. As I said, having the respective flag in the "image"
table would be sufficient for any third party to easily filter out images
which contradict commercial use.

> Not only it is perfectly acceptable, it is THE ONLY RIGHT THING TO DO.

Because you say so? I don't care about an ideologically defined "RIGHT
THING TO DO". I care about results.

>> Fair use is acceptable as per the current consensus on [[Wikipedia:Image
>> use policy]]. You may use any quasi-dictatorial powers you have on pl. to
>> enforce your point of view, but this will not be possible on en.

> There has never been any contensus about that.

I don't know about pl:, but policies on en: are developed through
discussions. This is how the current image use policy was created. Jimbo
has said that fair use, in limited scope, is acceptable. I agree: Fair use
is the last desirable of all choices because it is so vaguely defined. It
should only be used for very important images.

> What you call "pragmatism" is in fact short-sightedness.

No, I am thinking very much about how Wikipedia will look 10 years from
now.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
On 30 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

>>> Having a status flag in the database would be very helpful for forkers,
>>> but we should not encourage uploading photos under licenses that limit
>>> redistribution. But a little more Linus Torvalds style pragmatism and a
>>> little less Richard Stallman style zealotry wouldn't hurt either.

>> And end up being sued like Linus?

> Hardly an argument. You can always end up being sued. The question is
> whether the other side wins.

That's like saying seatbelts are hardly a safety improvement, because you might
still end up dead.

Free software and free content projects are very vunerable to corporate
litigation simply because they don't have the financial resources to tackle it.
The projects are generally run by a group of individuals, which make ideal
targets for corporate threats about liability.

So speaking in practical terms (wich should please you) the question isn't so
much about who is right or wrong - but what the risks are. And the risks of
using material that isn't 100% verified as free are enormous. As the SCO
debacle clearly demonstrates.

FreeBSD is a project where they have learned from bitter experience that every
last piece of code included or inherited must be double checked for copyright,
patents and non disclusure problems. Now, FreeBSD people are very far away
"politically" from RMS, yet take these issues very seriously. So please don't
turn this into a "practical vs. zealot" issue.

So should Wikipedia.

(Wikipedia also has the great advantage of incorporating hundreds, if not
thousands of authors world wide. Cameras are cheap. If there is a serious
dearth of pictures, we should organize a project to have more of our authors go
out and take pictures, and work to aquire permission to use copyrighted
pictures where this isn't possible.)

-- Daniel


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Interesting image policy on this site:

http://www.aboutgaymovies.info/wallpapers.htm

Fred

> From: rednblack at alum.mit.edu
> Reply-To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Date: Thu, 29 May 2003 23:32:06 -0400
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Advertising for website by anonymous user 24.132.158.131
>
>
> An anonymous user has inserted the following text into basically every article
> relating to gay film:
>
> "[http://www.aboutgaymovies.info/ About Gay Movies] for information about gay
> themed movies and TV series."


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Disambiguation detector

body:
On Wed, 28 May 2003, Magnus Manske wrote:

> I hacked a small function that automatically shows what might be
> disambiguation pages below the page subtitle. This works for all pages
> with a " (" in the title.

This is very cunning! The list might get a bit cluttered, though, for
articles whose titles have lots of different meanings. And, although you
say that the feature is not meant to replace human-written disambiguation
pages, it might have the effect of discouraging people from writing them
in practice. On the other hand, it would help them, by telling them what
to put in those disambiguation pages...

On the whole, though, I think Toby's idea of linking to just the one
human-written disambiguation page is nicer, as it would clutter the page
less, and would leave disambiguation in the hands of the humans, who can
still do these things better. But maybe that's irrelevant, as this version
has been coded and that one hasn't...

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
Daniel-

> Free software and free content projects are very vunerable to corporate
> litigation simply because they don't have the financial resources to tackle
> it. The projects are generally run by a group of individuals, which make
> ideal targets for corporate threats about liability.

That's why having a non-profit organization is a good idea. It is one of
the best arguments to join the GNU project when developing free software,
for example -- still, most people are understandably irritated by their
zealous nature. For Wikipedia, we will have the Nupedia Foundation to
offer legal protection.

> So speaking in practical terms (wich should please you) the question isn't
> so much about who is right or wrong - but what the risks are. And the risks
> of using material that isn't 100% verified as free are enormous. As the SCO
> debacle clearly demonstrates.

Only that the "SCO debacle" happened in spite of assurances by everyone
that only GNU GPL code was involved -- according to SCO, however, IBM
screwed up. Aside from the fact that the entire lawsuit is a Microsoft FUD
project, all this demonstrates is that in spite of your best intentions,
you can still get sued -- exactly what I've been saying.

It makes no sense to ignore the freedoms offered to us by law -- and one
of these freedoms, in the US and most other civilized nations, is fair use
-- only because some people might interpret that law differently.
Realistically, the only real threat to Wikipedia is that someone will send
us a nasty letter to take this or that image down, which we obviously will
do in most cases. What you are promoting is to give up freedom because the
Large Evil Corporations have deeper pockets. I don't think we should give
in that easily. See also:
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/avoid_copyright_paranoia

It makes sense to be careful, it makes sense to use open content whenever
possible. But a purely ideological stance is counter productive. I find it
quite ironic that the most ardent advocates of open content also
frequently adopt a police state mentality with regard to perceived
violations.

> FreeBSD is a project where they have learned from bitter experience that
> every last piece of code included or inherited must be double checked for
> copyright, patents and non disclusure problems.

I'm all for double checking. I'm against saying "Everything but the GNU
FDL or public domain is forbidden". I'm against removing images
prematurely because they *might* be protected. There is no analogy to fair
use in the free software world.

> (Wikipedia also has the great advantage of incorporating hundreds, if not
> thousands of authors world wide. Cameras are cheap. If there is a
> serious dearth of pictures, we should organize a project to have more of
> our authors go out and take pictures, and work to aquire permission to
> use copyrighted pictures where this isn't possible.)

[Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia photo squad?
Erik Moeller wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
Wed, 30 Oct 2002 15:51:29 +0100 (MET)
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2002-October/006804.html

As you can see, I'm all for collaborative content creation. However, it
will be difficult to get a nice FDL photo of Clark Gable, because the
guy's been dead for quite a while. Incidentally, the current article about
Clark Gable uses a copyrighted photo, uploaded by Zoe, a long-time
Wikipedian who is also very careful about finding and reporting copyright
infringements. Fair use is a common practice on Wikipedia, and I don't
think that should change.

Regards,

Erik


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
On Fri, 30 May 2003, Toby Bartels wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote in part:
> >So by analogy "Linus Torvalds style pragmatism" might provide for a
> >third-party filter program that inserts non-FDL images into Wikipedia
> >articles on a reader's computer as they're loaded. ;)
>
> Like a web browser?
> That's a third-party program that inserts Wikipedia's images
> into Wikipedia's articles on a reader's computer as they're loaded.

...automatically upon the programmed instructions contained in the page,
without permission of the copyright owner of the image, without
instruction or intervention by the user.

> The HTML document (the article) that we serve them has no image;
> we also serve them the image, which they request in reaction to our article
> (much as a module may be requested in reaction to the kernel's actions),
> but that's under fair use, not GFDL.

Compare again:
* the modules are distributed by their owners, *not* with the GPL kernel
* the images are distributed with the GFDL articles, *not* by their owners

* the modules are installed and loaded by deliberate action of the user on
  the user's machine, not automatically by the kernel
* the images are loaded automatically upon the instructions in the article
  page without user intervention

* the kernel-module combination is never redistributed
* the article-image combination is redistributed by local saving,
  hardcopy, mirroring, or format conversion of the articles unless
  careful effort is made to avoid including the image (which the article
  includes programmatic commands to include)

Most importantly, the paradigm of separate text and image files is simply
a technical limitation of the HTML format used. If Wikipedia were
distributed in PostScript, PDF, MS Word documents, RTF, or the printed
page, there would be no such separation. ('Material printed in black ink
is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and may be
redistributed and modified under those terms. Material in cyan, magenta,
and/or yellow inks which *just happens* to be on the same pages and *just
happens* to be about things mentioned in the text and *just happens* to
have been placed there by modifying the GFDL source text to include it is
used without permission of the copyright holder and can't be reused except
under very limited circumstances. These are actually separate documents,
you see, having been printed by separate inks, but for convenience all
four documents have been placed on the same page. They are not related
in any way. It's just a fluke!')

As it is, the GFDL pages we distribute include commands with the explicit
purpose of embedding particular non-GFDL material inside them, and correct
loading of pages is expected to load the images and display them
transparently without the user needing to notice that the data comes in
several chunks with different filenames. To claim they are separate
documents is at the least deceptive.

> The problem, it seems to me, isn't that we use the images,
> but that we pretend that we're using them under the GFDL.

Either we are, or we're violating the license of every article that
someone has modified by putting a non-GFDL picture into it.

> They're already separated out a bit (not in the download, after all),
> and we should separate them (or the non-free ones) out further,
> rather than claiming in some places that we're entirely free and GFDL,
> while claiming in other places that we use some images through fair use.
> (I'd even support placing fair use images in a separate namespace
> and database from the free ones, just to make things ultraclear.)
> Our fair use images should be treated as *auxiliary*.

I'm all in favor of putting them on a separate server with a separate
database and *not* embedding those images inline into articles, but
allowing explicitly external links to those images which users would have
to follow knowingly.

nonfree.wikipedia.org, anyone?

> >(even though we say it's absolutely vital that we include these images
> >to have a legitimate encyclopedia).
>
> It should ''never'' be vital to an article that we include an image,
> if we can help it, not only for distribution but also for accessibility.

Thanks! This removes the sense of urgency that drives some people to add
non-free images knowing they are not compatible with the project's goals.
Hopefully they'll stop immediately. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Ban on User:Viking?

body:
I sixth the ban. He has only made destructive contrabutions.

a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk wrote:Hi,

Please see [[User talk:Viking/ban]]

User:Viking has been nominated for a ban by Mbecker, seconded by
Wapcaplet, thirded by me, fourthed by Dante, fifthed by CGS. No
opposition at the time of writing (except from Viking).

Actions include censorship of sex-related pages; totally false claims
that he was a sysop, to intimidate users and make them stop
criticising him; suggesting that the reason someone wanted to know
the identity of his sysop account was so that they could hurt his
children, and so on. General unpleasantness.

So I suppose we now need a ruling from on high. :-)

Thanks,
--
Allan Crossman
a.crossman at blueyonder.co.uk
http://dogma.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
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from_name: james duffy

subject: [WikiEN-l] American diplomatic listings

body:
>Brion wrote: Because it's not very informative, changes with little notice
>(therefore
>will likely not be maintained well), and would probably be better
>served by linking to the embassies' home pages which will have more
>information?
>
>Dan wrote in reply
>I still think it's bad to delete npov content, even if it's incomplete.

The problem, Dan, is that for any article to focus on a country's
relationship with only one country is not NPOV. If an article on say,
Canada, Australia or New Zealand only listed the diplomatic relationship
between that country and the UK, it would implicitly be suggesting a special
relationship between the country and the UK over other states, or that
Wikipedia believed there was a special relationship that required special
mention. That by definition is POV, not NPOV.

The problem isn't that it is the US, it is that only one country is
mentioned in these articles. Whether it was the US, UK, Ireland, China or
Outer Mongolia is irrelevant; focusing simply on one country and listing its
diplomatic relationship exclusively gives that relationship an implicit
extra weight. We should not do that. The only way to introduce a balance
would be to add in other countries, but that is a POV minefield; use too
many European states and it would look eurocentric. Too many western
countries and it would look as though it was giving the west additional
weight. Too many African states and it would look like it was giving Africa
special weight. So either to achieve absolute balance you mention ALL
diplomatic relationships, or none. All diplomatic relationships would be a
nightmare to construct, would date quickly and would dominate most articles
on countries because maybe 10% of the article space would be taken up with
that country's information, and 90% with a list of their diplomatic
relationships with 150 countries or more, possibly 300 if one takes each
country's representative in the country whose page it is on, and that
country's own embassies and ambassadors to each country with whom it has
diplomatic relations.

I understand totally how this problem arose and don't doubt for one moment
the genuine reasons behind it. But as it stands it send out the message that
the most important diplomatic relationship countries have is with the US.
That is highly POV. A far better solution would be to pull all that info out
of separate articles and pull it together in an article on [[US Ambassadors
and diplomats]], which in time could be augmented by pages on anything from
Congolese Ambassadors and diplomats to Irish, Chinese, Russian, Dutch,
Argentinian, etc etc etc. That could be linked to pages on what is a [[head
of state]], on what is a [[Letter of Credence]], on what legally diplomacy
and diplomatic immunity means, on the differing types of diplomatic
relationships (head of state to head of state with ambassadors, government
to government through Charges d'Affaires) But in its present form it is
unworkable and POV.

JT

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: Karl Eichwalder

body:
Oliver Pereira <omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk> writes:

> It makes the count bigger, which is a *good* thing. :) As for comparisons,
> if you check other popular encyclopaedias, you'll find that many of them
> have articles a lot shorter than 20 Kb.

Those probably are toys.

Yes, short articles are okay as well (it depends on the subject).
Allowing short articles does not mean the article on Shakespeare, say,
should consist of 1001 fragments (I didn't read the article on S.,
though...).

Discussing these issue in general is worthless.

--
                                                         |      ,__o
http://www.gnu.franken.de/ke/                            |    _-\_<,
ke at suse.de (work) / keichwa at gmx.net (home)               |   (*)/'(*)


body:
On 30 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

> I don't know how much we disagree in practice. As long as you don't move
> Chip 'n Dale and all their fictional supporting characters back to their
> individual articles, I'm happy.

Okay, okay, we don't really disagree as much as my message may have
suggested. I don't like Everything2, either. ;)

And don't worry, I won't be moving those fictional supporting characters
back to their individual articles. To be honest, I haven't even looked at
any of the articles that you've brought up as examples, so you're probably
safe there. :)

I really don't like "== Chap's views on [[Stuff]] ==", though. Links in
headings look ugly... The opening sentence of that section should mention
Stuff anyway, and I think the link would look nicer there.

Oliver

+-------------------------------------------+
| Oliver Pereira                            |
| Dept. of Electronics and Computer Science |
| University of Southampton                 |
| omp199 at ecs.soton.ac.uk                    |
+-------------------------------------------+


from_name: Karim Moussally

subject: [WikiEN-l] re: Viking ban

body:
Just a little note.

In the interest of fairness I wanted to state that it may not be strictly
true that no one objects to the ban on User:Viking. I believe User:Triton
may. The following is from Triton on my Talk page (now archived at User
Talk:Dante Alighieri/clovis et al.):

Take a look now at the new way of humiliating a user. A new file has been
made called <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Viking/ban>User
talk:Viking/ban that will keep showing up on the Recent Changes list as
many times as their attacker(s) wish. When someone not involved sees that,
what is the impression of UserViking?

Now, I don't know for CERTAIN that this means Triton objects to the ban,
but I certainly would want to give Triton the chance to clarify himself. I
wouldn't want his comments to go unheard and risk us banning Viking without
giving anyone who cares to defend him a chance to do so.

Let's not ban Viking until we give Triton a clear chance to voice himself.
I would hate for Triton to go unheard.

-----

Karim Moussally
kmoussally at cal.berkeley.edu

"Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre
minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly
submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his
intelligence."
    -Albert Einstein, attributed

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from_name: Dante Alighieri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Viking ban

body:
(resubmission, submitted before under improper email profile)

Just a little note.

In the interest of fairness I wanted to state that it may not be strictly
true that no one objects to the ban on User:Viking. I believe User:Triton
may. The following is from Triton on my Talk page (now archived at User
Talk:Dante Alighieri/clovis et al.):

Take a look now at the new way of humiliating a user. A new file has been
made called <http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Viking/ban>User
talk:Viking/ban that will keep showing up on the Recent Changes list as
many times as their attacker(s) wish. When someone not involved sees that,
what is the impression of UserViking?

Now, I don't know for CERTAIN that this means Triton objects to the ban,
but I certainly would want to give Triton the chance to clarify himself. I
wouldn't want his comments to go unheard and risk us banning Viking without
giving anyone who cares to defend him a chance to do so.

Let's not ban Viking until we give Triton a clear chance to voice himself.
I would hate for Triton to go unheard.

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

"The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their
neutrality in times of great moral crisis."
    -Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321
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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Fair use

body:
On Fri, 30 May 2003, Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> > (Brion Vibber <vibber at aludra.usc.edu>):
> > I'm all in favor of putting them on a separate server with a separate
> > database and *not* embedding those images inline into articles, but
> > allowing explicitly external links to those images which users would have
> > to follow knowingly.
> >
> > nonfree.wikipedia.org, anyone?
>
> That's certainly an option to which I wouldn't object if it came to
> that. I still think it's a bit paranoid,

You *will* submit to CopyrightParanoia... you *will* join the collective!
:D

> but at least it would retain our ability to collect and describe
> useful information even if it did hamper its display a bit.

Great. As an intermediate step, how about we go ahead and add a
license-compatibility field or two to the image table and upload form (and
at some point go looking through old images to mark the ones known to be
PD or GFDL).

Then if we do decide we need to, we can slurp them out separately later or
change their display style.

What I think I'd like to see instead of the blanket "the copyright holder
has agreed to X" checkbox -- which encourages sloppiness -- is to have the
following:

( ) I, the uploader, created this file and own the copyright.
( ) I got this file from somewhere else:
    [URL_or_citation_of_source___________]
and
( ) This file is public domain (has fallen out of copyright, was never
    copyrighted, or has been explicitly put in PD by the author)
( ) This file is licensed under GFDL
( ) Copyright owner gives permission to reproduce for
    non-commercial/educational purposes only
    NOTE: [concerns over distribution, prefer free files]
( ) This file is used under 'fair use' claims without permission of the
    copyright holder. NOTE: [concerns over distribution, prefer free
    files]

Source is something that people are _supposed_ to put in the description,
but it often doesn't get done. If we can reject uploads that don't have a
source listed, this should encourage better documentation. (A true
paranoic would require this of all text edits too, but people at least
_seem_ to be less inclined to plagiarize text, and other people are a lot
less tolerant of it when it's found, so I think our current procedures are
sufficient for a good-faith effort in text-land.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Oliver Pereira wrote:

>On Thu, 29 May 2003, Neil Harris wrote:
>
>
>
>>>My current favorite suggestion is that second-level headings (H2)
>>>should automatically become link targets.
>>>
>>>
>>I agree; this is the "obvious right thing" to do, in my opinion. We can
>>now argue about whether we should support references for these anchors
>>as [[article#fragment-text]], which also seems to be the "obvious thing" ?
>>
>>
>
>I think that the very idea of linking to sections within articles is the
>obvious *wrong* thing to do. The opening paragraph of an article is the
>thing that establishes the subject matter and the context - basically,
>what the article is all about. We can't just throw people into the middle
>of an article and expect them to know what's going on. They'll have to
>scroll back up to the top again anyway to check. If we don't want to just
>confuse people, we'd have to make each section pretty much self-contained.
>Hmm, a piece of writing that is self-contained and that you can link to.
>Sounds like an article to me! If a section is autonomous enough to be
>linked to, it is far more natural to separate it out and make it an
>article all by itself than to give it some strange new semi-article
>status.
>
>I think this is a case of people looking for technical solutions to a
>problem that could be solved much more satisfactorily by sensible planning
>by humans.
>
>Oliver
>
>
Oliver,

I can see your point of view. I can also see the other point of view.
Both are sensible arguments, and I'm not sure which is right.

I feel that the design referred to is the "obvious right way" to do
this, if you are going to do it at all. No-one will be (or should be)
forced to use it, and it has the advantage that it can be made to
degrade gracefully to simple article links.

It's worth giving a try. We can then explore the fuzzy space between
"natural" articles and "natural" subsections, and see if it works.  If
it's a bad idea, the generation of links to fragments can simply be
turned off, leaving the source intact, and links still linking to the
correct articles.  If we really hate it, we can even go so far as to
programmatically remove the fragment tags from the article sources, and
it will be as if it had never been.

Regards,

Neil


body:
Oliver-
> On 29 May 2003, Erik Moeller wrote:

>> Long articles have several advantages:
>> * A topic is kept in context, eliminating the need to write a separate
>> intro for each individual article

> The context depends on the reader. What is the context of Chap's views on
> Stuff? For someone interested in the life of Chap, the relevant context is
> his life, and so they would want that section to be at [[Chap]]. For
> someone interested in Stuff, the relevant context is that subject, and so
> they would want the section to be at [[Stuff]]. Of course, there should be
> mentions of his views in both articles, but to duplicate the whole lot
> would cause problems. I think it would be better to have a separate
> article on [[Chap's views on Stuff]], and have links to it from both
> articles.

I would prefer to have

=Chap==

'''Chap''' is ...

== Chap's views on [[Stuff]] ==

> Okay, maybe that's an unfair characterisation of what you said, but I think
> that Web-based things should be tailored to the medium, and that means
> that information should be arranged in a web-like
> structure, not artificially forced into a one-dimensional structure like
> traditional writing.

It is. Wikipedia articles have more links than any other encyclopedia.
Compare Wikipedia to Encarta, an electronic encyclopedia, and you will
notice that we will have much more cross-references, often to completely
off-topical articles. I think that's a good thing and allows readers to
explore freely (don't get me started about link underlining again,
though). It separates us from Encarta, though, who have obviously done a
great deal of usability research.

The question is, do we want relevant information on one subject to be
grouped together, or do we want to *unnecessarily* use the "hypertext
medium" just for kicks? The latter seems like a gimmicky thing to do, and
reminds me more of a project like Everything2. By doing so, we do not
accomodate but actually encourage short attention spans, with lots of
disjointed small articles. Remember that for each link the reader has to
follow, he needs to develop an idea what that link is about, and whether
he wants to read it, whereas it is much easier to skim a well-structured
text in front of you based on section titles.

(BTW, it may be nice to have a small table of contents auto-generated for
articles with more than 4-5 sections.)

I do believe writing a well structured coherent long article is more
difficult than writing many small ones. I still think we should try.

> It would be good to have a way to save related
> articles together, but what is related depends on the reader, again. A
> reader interested in Chap would want [[Chap]], [[Chap's views on Stuff]],
> and [[Chap's views on Things]] saved together, whereas a reader interested
> in Stuff would want [[Stuff]], [[Chap's views on Stuff]], and [[Guy's
> views on Stuff]] all saved together.

There will always be differences in what is perceived as belonging
together. However, where coherence is reasonably clear, it should be
reflected by having relevant information merged into a single document.
For example, I left some fictional characters alone because these appeared
in several different fictional realms. So it would not have been useful to
have them just in one article, because that would complicate linkability,
saving etc. -- but for those characters which just appear in one realm,
having them in the article about that realm is preferable.

>> * We do not require the reader to click around unnecessarily, which can
be
>> confusing to many people

> I'm not sure I follow this argument. Isn't that what people do on the Web
> all the time?

One of the key problems of empirical web design is link predictability. If
the reader does not know what to expect, he will get confused, frustrated
and stop navigating. Obviously, the smaller your information pieces are,
the more frequently the reader will have to find the proper link to
navigate to the next one, and the more likely it is that he will get
frustrated in the process. With too long documents, you risk having too
much uninteresting information in the same file, making the text harder to
skim etc. So finding the right balance is important. With lots of highly
interlinked short articles, you get a structure like Everything2, which
only appeals to very strange persons.

> I don't think so. Merging small articles into big ones increases the
> number of redirects floating around.

Replacing all redirects to FOO with redirects to BAR is a job for a
machine. Replacing all links to FOO with links to BAR is a job for a
human, because you don't know in which verbal context these links appear.

>> * A short average article length does not reflect well on our article
>> count, which is one of the key instruments used for size comparisons

> It makes the count bigger, which is a *good* thing. :)

No, it's not a good thing, if the next time someone does a random page
sample for a review, they get 10 one-pargraph articles about fictional
characters. This makes us look unprofessional.

And the more such articles we have, the more difficult it becomes to
enforce standards, to systematically copyedit articles about certain
subjects etc. -- like Everything2, the whole database becomes increasingly
messsy and unappealing to deal with. It's like the subpages mess we just
barely avoided.

>  As for comparisons,
> if you check other popular encyclopaedias, you'll find that many of them
> have articles a lot shorter than 20 Kb.

Certainly not about "Gnipper the dog". The point is: If you actually check
out these articles, you notice that they are about subjects that can quite
plausibly grow into reasonably long articles -- an author, a politician, a
company spokesperson; a mechanical device, a philosophical concept, a
published work .. We currently have plenty of small articles that can
never be anything but small articles because their subjects are so
insignificant.

>> Hard to edit:
>> One of the features on my personal wishlist is the ability to edit an
>> individual article section.

> Doesn't that give the reader more unnecessary things to click on, and
> wouldn't that be confusing to many people? ;)

Not for the reader, but for the editor. Editors can be expected to click
more, but even for them, it should be a user preference to avoid
confusion.

> The whole idea of linking to individual sections is just so evil that I'm
> going to have to write another whole e-mail on this subject...

Actually, I tend to agree with you on that one.

> The solution *is* structure. We agree on that. I say use the natural
> web-like structure of the Web; you say force things into a traditional
> book-like structure.

No, I don't say that. I say use both: traditional structural elements and
associative web structure, to allow getting relevant coherent information
quickly. Wikipedia is not a hypertext experiment.

I don't know how much we disagree in practice. As long as you don't move
Chip 'n Dale and all their fictional supporting characters back to their
individual articles, I'm happy.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Daniel Ehrenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Viking ban

body:
I thought Triton was BW... I'm confused.
--LittleDan

Dante Alighieri <dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com> wrote:
(resubmission, submitted before under improper email profile)

Just a little note.

In the interest of fairness I wanted to state that it may not be strictly true that no one objects to the ban on User:Viking. I believe User:Triton may. The following is from Triton on my Talk page (now archived at User Talk:Dante Alighieri/clovis et al.):

Take a look now at the new way of humiliating a user. A new file has been made called User talk:Viking/ban that will keep showing up on the Recent Changes list as many times as their attacker(s) wish. When someone not involved sees that, what is the impression of UserViking?

Now, I don't know for CERTAIN that this means Triton objects to the ban, but I certainly would want to give Triton the chance to clarify himself. I wouldn't want his comments to go unheard and risk us banning Viking without giving anyone who cares to defend him a chance to do so.

Let's not ban Viking until we give Triton a clear chance to voice himself. I would hate for Triton to go unheard.

-----

Dante Alighieri
dalighieri at digitalgrapefruit.com

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Free online calendar with sync to Outlook(TM).
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from_name: Julie Kemp

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please help.  please.

body:
Hi all - look we all know that I can be more than a little abrasive when
people I don't know come in out of nowhere and accuse me of not knowing
my facts, or lying about history.  It's one of my weaknesses.  I hope
everyone also knows that I generally try to be patient and get people to
work together (even if it's in what Mr. Kemp calls "teacher mode"),
asking specific questions, giving specific examples, etc.  I hope that
my positive contributions over the long haul outweigh the negative ones.
If that's not what people think, I really should just take off ;-)

The most recent unpleasantness is really weighing on me.  Llywrch
e-mailed me and asked me to feed no trolls while he tried to get some
cooperation, and I pretty much have - but in the meantime, if you look
at the user contributions, you will see that really nasty accusations
about me and, to a lesser extent, and one who has tried to step in, all
over the site.  They are almost entirely taken out of context or
deliberate misunderstandings or misquotes.

I also believe that this person has shown up in at least two other
guises in the past, and had run-ins with, or left comments about me or
my contributions in each persona - almost all repetitions of the old HJ
controversies, but with a French nationalist flair.  The person is now
also accusing me of forcing others in some way to join in a persecution,
and also claims that I regularly try to get people to leave through
bullying and intimidation (boredom and wordiness perhaps .).  Oddly
enough, some of the people he seems to be saying I "forced out" are the
very people I think are his other personae.

Not only is there a possibility of the troll-like habit of changing
identities, but I notice that many of the excuses given to others as to
why he can't get along is because of a cross-cultural language problem.
While it is true that he writes these comments in a quaint and stilted
manner, his tirades (especially those directed against me) are amazingly
fluid and use lots of polysyllables (apparently, several of us can't be
understood because our words are complicated - it's kind of like that
old SNL skit about the defrosted cave-man).

Anyway, could someone not currently involved (or who has not yet been
blasted)  PLEASE take a look?  There's a frightening amount of
commentary, but I think this person is not in any way aware of how to
work with others or really interested in participating in a positive
manner.  I am not using the "b" word, but if that is already something
this user is under (it has been suggested he's DW), then it's not a
problem.  If it's not, perhaps someone with a Voice of Authority (and in
his eyes, the only authority is Jimbo, whose wrath he threatens
regularly)  could ask him nicely to quit his abuse and play nice?

Thanks!

Julie
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