body:
On May 4, 2006, at 3:57 AM, Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

> Wikipedia is NOT a democracy; the First Ammendment of the Constitution
> of the United States only guarantees "free speech" against
> intervention
> by Congress. Wikipedia is a private website where you have exactly TWO
> rights:
>
> * The right to leave
> * The right to fork

Those are your enforceable legal rights; however, you also have the
right to participate on an equal basis in the project; the right to
be treated with respect; and the right to a fair hearing should your
rights not be respected or should you be accused of violating the
rights of others. Just because you cannot go into a court and enforce
Wikipedia policies does not mean that they do not exist and are not
upheld.

Fred


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cyde should not have violated Deletion policy (

body:
On May 4, 2006, at 5:26 AM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Wed, 3 May 2006 23:51:01 -0700, you wrote:
>
>
>> Unfortunately, this misses the point.  Whether you called it a
>> "closure" or
>> "cancellation" or a "stoppage" or whatever.  You halted the
>> process that a
>> lot of people were contributing to.  They had a right to be
>> heard.  This
>> wastes a lot of time and looks like bad behavior for an admin to
>> kill an AfD
>> early, especially one he has been involved in.
>>
>
> I disagree.  Cyde stopped a catfight.

But he took a job as a cat herder. Yes, the AfD is extremely messy
and, however decided, will involve bad feeling, but when we attempt
to write encyclopedia articles about contemporary controversial
subjects that is always the case. The alternative would be to not
accept articles until the matter is settled. But our coverage of
controversial current events is one of our strengths. It is like a
great Limburger cheese. Nothing that stinky, or interesting, on
Britannica.

Fred

>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Upload by default to Commons?

body:
Kirill Lokshin wrote:
>
> The image deletion process is, unfortunately, institutionalizing the
> assumption of bad faith.  See, for example,
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:PUI#April 30 (specifically the
> discussion of the Himmler photo); people seem to be approaching the
> issue of image sourcing with the intent to delete as many images as
> possible, preferably for purely bureaucratic reasons.
>
I'm looking at that discussion and wondering whether the nominator actually
believes the other guy's claim that he works for the "National Personnel
Records Center" and therefore has some expertise in the matter.

The worrying possibility exists that he does indeed believe but is indulging
in his ability as a Wikipedia contributor to "cock a snook" at a
self-proclaimed expert.
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Upload-by-default-to-Commons--t1550339.html#a4229097
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


body:
geni wrote:
>
> On 5/4/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It looks a hell of a lot like using common sense.
> [[Monty Hall problem]]. "Common sense" is not a valid justification for
> decision making.
>
The reason the [[Monty Hall problem]] is a "problem" is because it appears
to turn common sense on its head: the "exception that proves the rule".

Just because there exist carefully designed situations in which common sense
will lead you up a carefully prepared garden path does not invalidate the
application of common sense in each and every situation.

The reason it is called "common sense" is after all because it commonly
makes sense.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Re%3A-Cyde-should-not-have-violated-Deletion-policy-%28-t1554965.html#a4229169
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
Rob Church wrote:
>
> Sound familiar?
>
The stabbing will continue until morale improves :-)
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Cruft-t1543632.html#a4229344
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
Philip Welch wrote:
>
> On May 3, 2006, at 1:47 PM, charles matthews wrote:
> Exactly. People who become Wikipedians should learn the jargon, and
> it's quite clear that at AfD, the opinions of *wikipedians* are the
> opinions that matter. Not the opinions of every anonymous contributor
> who comes in a vain ballot-stuffing attempt.
>
So the principle of "not biting the newbie" fits into this schema where
exactly?

"What? You dare to infest our beautiful encyclopedia with your filthy cruft?
You disgust me with your nasty IP and your misbegotten excuse for a
user-page! Be cast out into the darkness until you can learn better!"

Oh, yes: I'd be signing up for an account like a shot...if I got my kicks
being insulted by some rude bastard who hadn't understood word one of what I
written, assuming he even bothered to read one word...

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Cruft-t1543632.html#a4229493
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] vote-stacking and userboxes

body:
A more benign perspective is that userboxes makes it possible to
easily identify users who are interested in a subject and give them
an opportunity to contribute to decision making. The war over
userboxes has been a lot worse than the userboxes.

Fred

On May 4, 2006, at 6:55 AM, Raphael Wegmann wrote:

> Hi,
>
> as everybody probably knows here, userboxes made vote-stacking
> und campaigning easy, since one can easily find the "right" people
> to vote on a subject.
>
> Maybe a technical solution to this problem is possible.
> What if a bot substitutes all userboxes on the user-pages?
> Maybe it's even possible to somehow "tag" a template,
> so it is always substituted? This could be used on warning
> templates as well.
>
> Of course this wouldn't eliminate vote-stacking at all,
> since one can still find the "right" people on various
> Wikiproject pages, but IMHO it's still a step in the right
> direction.
>
> best regards
> --
> Raphael
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: commons-l

from_name: Adi & Nadav Perez

subject: [Commons-l] Direct copy to commons

body:
It can't habdle unicode... can't be used for non-latin wikis.
can something be done about that?
thanks
Felagund
----- Original Message -----
From: "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at web.de>
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2006 4:27 PM
Subject: [Commons-l] Direct copy to commons

> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On 04/05/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> There are articles that cite books which would probably take way more
> effort for me to track down than it would for me to play 50 levels of
> BlueMonsterKilla without taking a hit, though, so I still don't think
> one should reject a reference purely on the basis of how easy it is to
> verify (provided it's at least _possible_). Though if a walkthrough were
> indeed available I agree that it would be a nicer thing to reference.

But this is a bit beside the point. We have lots of information in
Wikipedia verifiable by first persons experience - talk about the
architecture of a building, and anyone who visits it can probably
verify it. But we don't require "verifiable information" as much as we
require "verifiable sources" who have already stated the information.

In other words, the game may contain some facts, but it doesn't
contain a statement or an interpretation of those facts. That's why
it's inappropriate to "cite" directly. If the packaging of the game
contained a summary of the levels or the characters or something, that
might be different.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Verifiability equating to notability

body:
On 04/05/06, Gallagher Mark George
<m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> > On 03/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > As for "an article with no claim to notability", I actually have no
> > > idea what that phrase means.
> >
> > An article has to establish the notability of its subject. If it
> > doesn't do that, it's subject to speedy deletion.
> >
> > ...I recite.
>
> No, it has to *assert* the notability of its subject.  When clearing up CAT:CSD I see a lot of speedy taggings where the tagger simply figured "sure, there's an assertion of notability there, but I don't think it's good enough".  Wrong.

I recited badly.

Steve


from_name: John Tex

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need to recognize that advocating is a basic right

body:
We need to recognize that each user has a right to try to influence policy
in ways that they believe are beneficial to the project.  Two basic tenets
of this are discussing the ideas and building up groups of people who agree
with you and who will help you bring about the beneficial change.

This is "advocacy".  Contacting people to recruit them to support you or to
act according to beliefs you think they may already have should rightly be
called "campaigning". This is a Good Thing.

 Let's stop insulting people by calling them "meat puppets" or "vote
stackers".  Let's stop confusing the issue by calling it "spamming".  It is
not spamming.  Spamming is indiscriminately notifying people that are
probably not interested in the hopes that a few people will be.  This is
practically the opposite.

Attempting to stifle advocacy is harmful to the consensus building process
and it is harmful to the project.  If we try to prohibit it, it will just be
taken off-wiki, which would be a huge shame.
Johntex


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Commons-l] Direct copy to commons

body:
Adi & Nadav Perez schrieb:
> It can't habdle unicode... can't be used for non-latin wikis.
> can something be done about that?
>
Example?

Magnus

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [Foundation-l] RfC: A Free Content and Expression Definition

body:
On 5/4/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/2/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > While en.wp has initially been extremely liberal in its application of
> > "fair use", a few other Wikipedias prohibit it entirely. I think it's
> > time that we work towards fair use / fair dealing policies on all
> > Wikimedia projects. This is going to be a bit tricky as we have to
> > distinguish between the law that applies to the uploader of the work,
> > and the law that applies to the Wikimedia Foundation which is hosting
> > the work.
> >
> > I would appreciate a legal opinion on how to best achieve this - my
> > own feeling is that the fair use policies of a project like de.wp or
> > nl.wp should explain the legal situation in countries where these
> > languages are predominantly spoken, while allowing the freedoms
> > granted under U.S. law.
>
> Until we have an answer to "are the authors or is the Foundation
> ultimately responsible for the content of the Wikimedia projects?" -
> which I believe we will only ever get if we go to court, I do not
> believe there is a clear answer, legal or not, to the question.
>
> My take on this is:
>
> -FL law comes first
> -You must respect whichever local law is yours (country of residence)
> when you edit Wikimedia projects.
>
> In any case, (and maybe unfortunately) editing Wikimedia projects
> which are physically based in Florida *does not* grant you *more*
> rights than those you have in your own country.
>
> Internet is not a lawless zone.
>
>
> Delphine
>
> --
> ~notafish

Sarl Louis Feraud International v. Viewfinder Inc. provides some
guidance about this issue.  If you're distributing copyrighted
material to residents of France, then the French courts can find you
liable for copyright infringement.  As long as you never go to France
or have any assets there though, that ruling is meaningless unless
someone can convince a judge in your country of residence (or
somewhere you have assets) to enforce the ruling.  According to the
Berne Convention countries are supposed to enforce rulings from other
jurisdictions which are members, however for example in the United
States they won't do so if that ruling violates the Constitution.
Fair Use is a Constitutional requirement in the United States.

I really think the question has to be defined more specifically
though.  What is Wikipedia trying to accomplish?  Are they trying to
obey the laws of the countries they operate in, or are they willing to
break those laws if they can get away with it?  Is it enough to
protect contributors identities so that they can get away with
breaking the laws of their country, or does Wikipedia insist that
everything a contributor does must be legal?  Finally, though it
wasn't mentioned, what about redistributors, including redistributors
in other countries?

It'd be nice to just say that Wikipedia should be legal everywhere,
and maybe that can be accomplished wrt copyright law, but go outside
of copyright law (and consider China, for instance), and it's obvious
that Wikipedia should not attempt to follow the law of every single
jurisdiction in the world.

Anthony


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] We need a policy against vote-stacking

body:
Nothing wrong with informing previous voters, as long as you inform ALL of
them, not just the ones that vote "your way". Selectively notifying people
is disruptive (and in my opinion blockable already). No need for additional
policy there.

Mgm

On 5/4/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> geni wrote:
> > On 5/4/06, Rob <gamaliel8 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> I'd think this counts as a disruption of the normal workings of afd
> >> and is blockable on those grounds.   Isn't this exactly why we were so
> >> concerned about userboxes - to prevent this sort of thing from
> >> happening?
> >
> > That would depend on which set of claims you belived.
> >
> > In any case it appears at least one of the people used a list compiled
> > from past AFD votes.
>
> Well, specifically, a list of all of the people who had voted Delete in
> the previous vote.  That user made no attempt to notify any of the Keep
> voters.  It's this kind of selective voting recruitment (aka
> vote-stacking) that is so harmful to Wikipedia.  When I canceled that
> Afd it was leaning heavily towards Delete, but that was only because two
> Delete vote-stackers had been out campaigning heavily and there was only
> one Keep vote-stacker who had just begun operations.  The end result
> would've just been another no consensus once both sides were "properly"
> marshaled.
>
> The kind of actions I'm describing here are pretty clearly disruptive
> and work against the policies we have in place for deciding issues.
> It's extremely harmful.  Note that the ArbCom has already come out
> against vote-stacking, in one form or another, in three separate
> instances:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/IZAK
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Guanaco%2C_MarkSweep%2C_et_al
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Jason_Gastrich
>
> In the past many blocks have been issued to deal with these issues.  Yet
> suddenly we're running into a lot of resistance from people who are
> saying it isn't explicitly listed in policy.  Well, since policy is
> simply a written-down version of what happens in practice, we need to
> modify policy.  The only single diehard policy is "Wikipedia is an
> encyclopedia", and it's pretty clear that these vote-stacking campaigns
> I've been describing go against that ultimate goal of making the best
> encyclopedia we can.
>
> - --
> Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")
>
> ~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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>
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> LOyAO2gEHeqEqPH2w0SokrA=
> =dLw8
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 02:47:11PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> Gregory suggests calling the MediaWiki with refactored code "1.99" and then
> calling this refactored code plus some extra features "2.0". I suspect the
> two would more likely be tagged 1.7 and 1.8.
>
> Maybe we should just drop the "1." and call the next release 7.0. Makes for
> less typing. Someone remind me which software project did that...

Java.  Ick.

I know you're kidding, but I just ate.  Please don't say things like
that when I've just eaten.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 01:46:01PM -0000, Greg Sabino Mullane wrote:
> > The the guys wanting to use Perl wouldn't need to re-invent the mysql
> > backend :) Just throwing out ideas.
>
> That's the easy part - I'm already running MW on PostgreSQL. :) Next step
> is to move some of the logic into the database. *Then* we can port the
> whole thing to Perl...

Is there enough involved these days in running MW against Pg to entail
writing a howto?  (Or, I think, updating the one that's already on
meta...)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Pete Bartlett

subject: [WikiEN-l] RfAs (was: Re: Verifiability equating to notability)

body:
On Thu, 4 May 2006 14:59:36 +0200, you wrote:

>> It would be better to have a guideline which says someone should not
>> even be nominated until they have passed agreed milestones, then we
>> can assess candidates on their merits with the knowledge that they
>> have passed some kind of minimum standard of wikipedian-ness.

>Kind of like a speedy reject? Or more politely, a "speedy come back
>later". Sounds good to me. I propose 1000 edits, including 100 outside
>the article and user namespaces, and at least 500 within the article
>namespace. Also minimum 3 months active participation.

If precise minimum criteria was phrased in terms like
:Create 1 featured article or N good articles
or
:Graduate from Erik's "Wikipedia School" (which itself had precise criteria)

then I would support it.

Sadly I expect any proposal would actually be terms of (virtual meaningless)
edit counts, so I wouldn't.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 12:39:23PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> >  I'd humbly suggest that there are better things to discuss here than
> > if certain languages are more maintainable than others. A good
> > programmer can write maintainable code in any language; similarly a bad
> > programmer can write crap anywhere, too.
> >
> > Are we here to have a meaningful discussion about MW, or just engage in
> > useless language debates?
>
> Er, my mail should have gone only to the author, not the list. My
> apologies.

What, you mean mailing lists with reply-to set to the list are a *bad*
thing?

Cheers,
-- jr 'PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE' a
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

     A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
     Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

     A: Top-posting.
     Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Commons-l] Direct copy to commons

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Uh... if it just says "these images have been tagged GFDL/PD/whatever,
> do you want to transfer them to the Commons?" I would have to say no.
> Transferring images is a good opportunity to re-examine the licenses
> and sources provided for many images on local projects, which are
> often quite suspect! Transferrers should be quite stringent in
> requiring a source (that if online, is actually *checked*) and a
> license justification - for non "(PD/GFDL/whatever)-self" items. For
> self created items, some common sense is needed... low res items
> should generally be treated with a great deal of suspicion.

I agree very strongly with Brianna on this.  Commons should be extremely
hardcore about sourcing and license checking... this is a great point in
the overall workflow to do a rigorous second check on anything being
brought from individual projects.

-
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################
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body:
I respect John a great deal, but I think the end result was right in this
instance and support Cyde's actions.

k

On 5/4/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/4/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > It looks a hell of a lot like using common sense.
>
> [[Monty Hall problem]]. "Common sense" is not a valid justifcation for
> descission makeing.
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 04/05/06, Ben McIlwain <cydeweys at gmail.com> wrote:
> The problem is that some people (e.g. John Tex) are saying that the
> blocking shouldn't be allowed because it isn't explicitly mentioned in
> policy.  I'm with you; we shouldn't have to codify something so obvious;
> but John Tex and others seem to want it, so we have to.

That vote stacking is bad is obvious. That vote stacking is blockable
is not obvious. How long would you block for?

Steve


body:
>> This is "advocacy".  Contacting people to recruit them to support you or to
>> act according to beliefs you think they may already have should rightly be
>> called "campaigning". This is a Good Thing.

>You're on the wrong project, mate.

Campaigning is integral to voting. Policy-making that tries to prevent
campaigning whilst accepting voting is doomed to failure (*). Minimizing the
importance of voting on the other hand is a good way to go.

Pete

(*) Well actually it might be a success, in the sense that it gives bored
editors a whole load more to do in the Wikipedia namespace without
having to do awkward hard work like looking up stuff to contribute
to the encyclopedia :)


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Wed, May 03, 2006 at 11:51:22PM +0200, Daniel Wunsch wrote:
> > http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html
>
> Can I make a smart-ass crack about programmers who put that many
> non-significant 0's in a URL?  :-)

The article was written in April 2000 and needs a complete
rewrite, but I just couldn't find the edit button.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


body:
----- Original Message ----
From: Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org>
>How does an article go about asserting the notability of its subject?
>What would be an example of an article which asserts notability but
>doesn't establish it?

Those poor fellows who make music in garages in suburban towns in
the American Midwest seem to be a particular favourite target, so let's
give an example involving them:

"
'''Hormonal Screamings'' is a rock band hailing from Houghton, Michigan.
Next year they are going to take over the world.
"

Editors would be permitted to delete that.


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Cruft

body:
On May 4, 2006, at 6:50 AM, Phil Boswell wrote:

>> On May 3, 2006, at 1:47 PM, charles matthews wrote:
>> Exactly. People who become Wikipedians should learn the jargon, and
>> it's quite clear that at AfD, the opinions of *wikipedians* are the
>> opinions that matter. Not the opinions of every anonymous contributor
>> who comes in a vain ballot-stuffing attempt.
>>
> So the principle of "not biting the newbie" fits into this schema
> where
> exactly?

Providing a helping hand to teach them the jargon and a friendly way
to initiate them into the community.

> "What? You dare to infest our beautiful encyclopedia with your
> filthy cruft?
> You disgust me with your nasty IP and your misbegotten excuse for a
> user-page! Be cast out into the darkness until you can learn better!"

You know, I think we actually *needed* that straw for something...

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


from_name: William Allen Simpson

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [wsimpson@greendragon.com: Wikipedia
 watching	(was: Tier 2 - Lease?)]

body:
Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> Your responses to things are sometimes... not the same as other
> people's.
>
As previously noted on this list, you're as acerbic as ever....


body:
On May 4, 2006, at 10:10 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

> On 5/4/06, John Tex <johntexster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> This is "advocacy".  Contacting people to recruit them to support
>> you or to
>> act according to beliefs you think they may already have should
>> rightly be
>> called "campaigning". This is a Good Thing.
>>
>
> You're on the wrong project, mate.

He's thinking about policy issues and expressing himself in the
proper forum. He's being courteous. He may be wrong, but input on
policy questions is welcome.

Fred

> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia Version 1.0 logo copyrighted
	to foundation

body:
On 5/3/06, Kernigh <xkernigh at netscape.net> wrote:
> Titoxd <at> Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at ...> writes:
>
> > ... As this is not possible due to the Foundation's policy, after
> > consulting with Anthere, I changed the copyright of the image to point to
> > the Foundation, as done in the Wikipedia logo page.
>
> I think that you would need to ask the copyright holder of the other part (the
> shiny colored disk around the outside of the Wikipedia logo) whether they agree
> to transfer the copyright. Did you do this?

Not if ey released that part into the public domain, which is what is
claimed in the first version.

Anthony


subject: [Commons-l] Direct copy to commons

body:
Kernigh schrieb:
> Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at ...> writes:
>
>
>> My Commons helper tool [1] can now directly copy an image from a
>> wikipedia to the commons, using a perl script written by Eloquence.
>>
>> Note that this is now the default behaviour for the "CO" button on
>> "missing images" as well.
>>
>
> Can this be extended to also copy images from other Wikimedia projects,
> particularily Wikibooks and Wikisource?
>
Should work now (as well as UTF8 names). Didn't try it, though.
> Actually I have hacked Eloquence's script to go in reverse, downloading
> images instead of uploading them. I have not made the script public yet,
> but basically I download files, edit files.txt, and reupload them to a
> different wiki.
>
That's what I do :-)

I plan on another script that looks for, say, 20 commons-compatible
images on a wikipedia (or wikibooks) which are /not/ on commons yet.
These should be displayed with thumbnail images, links, etc. There would
be a checkbox in front of each, and the checked ones can be uploaded en
block to the commons. Would that be desirable?

Magnus

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Gregory Szorc schrieb:
> On 5/3/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>
>> Gregory Szorc wrote:
>>
>>> I was curious what the current plans are for MW 2.0.  Will it just be
>>> announced sometime during the quarterly release schedule?  Will it be a
>>> considerable rewrite?
>>>
>> Whether there will even be a 2.0 is an open question. So far we've made
>> huge
>> changes in internal structure incrementally, without having to rewrite
>> everything, and there's no obvious reason why this can't continue.
>>
>>
>>> If the later, I have an interesting idea for SoC.  How about somebody
>>> rewrite the MW 1.6 core.  Details of the rewrite would include
>>>
>> A core rewrite is I think not going to work for SoC. :)
>>
>>
>>> *Changing everything to PHP 5 (better OO support in core)
>>>
>> We already require PHP 5 for 1.7, and will be making more use of the new
>> features as things get refactored.
>>
>>
>>> *Eliminating $wg global usage.
>>>
>> This too happens piece by piece. Most non-configuration globals have been
>> pruned
>> from most code, though there's still further work to be done.
>>
>>
>>
> Thank you, Brion, for the reply.  This is exactly what I wanted to hear.
>
> Would a suitable project for SoC be to go through the code base and assist
> with the PHP 5/$wg global phase out that has been occurring with 1.7?  For
> example, adding visibility keywords on all the functions and fixing all the
> references to functions that are currently marked with comments as private
> or protected?  On top of that, someone could update all the functions that
> have a better PHP 5 implementation.  For example, replacing the XML
> functions with PHP 5 DOM ones and replacing all the references to the old
> functions.
>
For an initial attempt to get rid of the last globals, see index.php and
include/Wiki.php
One could expand on that.

Magnus

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from_name: wiwo wowi

subject: [Wikitech-l] taxobox problem

body:
I'm trying use a taxobox, but it doesn't work. I need something special
template or anything else?? I can see the text code, for example:
Template:Taxobox_begin, .... but i cann't see the table

Thanks!!


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Threads: any plans

body:
Uwe Brauer wrote:
> Hello
>
> I asked sometime ago about the possibilities to add some Thread
> functionality to the discussion pages and I was pointed out that there
> exists
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:LiquidThreads.
>
> However it seems to me not a very vivid project. Are there any other
> plans to add such a functionality?

There's a submission to implement this during Google's Summer of Code.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: amgine at saewyc.net

subject:
[Foundation-l] A Wikisource Definition (was: RfC: A Free
 Content and Expression Definition)

body:
On Thu, 2006-04-05 at 11:51 +0200, Erik Moeller wrote:
On 5/3/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > But might it not be a good idea to have the text of a license like the
> > GPL even if we don't have any material under it? Would not that be
> > well under the purpose of Wikisource?
>
> This is an excellent question.  It leads to another one: Why does
> Wikisource, as a project, exist? People will have many different
> answers to that. Here's mine.
>
...

> Erik
>
This is all well and good to present your ideas of what this project is
and should do. I tend to give weight to the people who are actually doing.
The Foundation should (and did) describe the projects goals and missions,
and approve any modifications of these. But changes from outside that
process from people not involved in it?

Wikisource doesn't have some of the things I see as part of their mission
- Galleries of artwork (they are the proper repository for such), original
research (transcriptions of oral histories, for example), or a legal
library (collections of court decisions, to be used as references for a
Wikibooks curriculum of law textbooks) to name just a few - but from
outside the project and unwilling (-able?) to put in the work to add this
content I have little or no basis to try to dictate to them.

Likewise, members of the larger community need to consider that people
active in the project are most knowledgeable of the needs of the project.
It's one of the underlying tenets of the Wikimedia Foundation. So long as
the goals and mission are being addressed, trying to force changes from
outside are likely to be counter-productive.

Amgine


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Commons-l] Direct copy to commons

body:
2006/5/4, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de>:

> I plan on another script that looks for, say, 20 commons-compatible
> images on a wikipedia (or wikibooks) which are /not/ on commons yet.
> These should be displayed with thumbnail images, links, etc. There would
> be a checkbox in front of each, and the checked ones can be uploaded en
> block to the commons. Would that be desirable?

I suppose 'compatible' here means 'under a commons-approved license'?

I would add an option to add categories - a picture on Commons that
neither has categories nor is on a subject page is of little use, at
least much less than one that is.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


from_name: Carl Witty

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 14:47 +1000, Tim Starling wrote:

> Maybe we should just drop the "1." and call the next release 7.0. Makes for
> less typing. Someone remind me which software project did that...

GNU Emacs: went from version 1.1 to 1.12, then dropped the initial "1"
and has continued from version 13 to version 21 (so far).

Carl Witty


from_name: Plyd

subject: [Wikitech-l] Google summer of code : RSS Category feeds

body:
ok thanks. so the second part remains interesting :)

On 5/4/06, SilverSide <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
>
> Hey, I didn't know about that - that's one SICK extension! Thanks for
> dev'ing that, implementing it as I type... well in between words.
> Even I can't type with one hand and FTP with the other (-:
>
> On May 3, 2006, at 3:38 PM, Gregory Szorc wrote:
>
> > On 5/3/06, Plyd <wiki.vincent at amplyd.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> I propose to add two main things:
> >> * RSS feed for every category
> >> * An article-included category limited listing/feed
> >
> >
> > My WikiFeeds extension already does the former.  It isn't
> > officially part of
> > MediaWiki, however.  See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiFeeds
> > for more
> > info.
> >
> > Gregory Szorc
> > gregory.szorc at gmail.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[Foundation-l] A Wikisource Definition (was: RfC: A Free Content
	and Expression Definition)

body:
On 5/3/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> But might it not be a good idea to have the text of a license like the
> GPL even if we don't have any material under it? Would not that be
> well under the purpose of Wikisource?

This is an excellent question.  It leads to another one: Why does
Wikisource, as a project, exist? People will have many different
answers to that. Here's mine.

1) All material is ready to use, because we follow a strict standard
of freedom. Derivative works, commercial use, and so forth, are all
permitted. This parallels the equally strict standards of Commons (I
still think a case could be made for them to be merged, but that
decision has long been made), and distinguishes Wikisource from other
archives.

2) Metadata. Wikis are getting better at storing a wide range of
relations and associations with the pages they contain. For now we
have categories, templates, interwiki links, and regular links
(enriched with the "What links here" feature). Projects like Semantic
MediaWiki or Wikidata will eventually add even more functionality, and
the collaborative editing approach makes it possible to develop
reasonable "folksonomies" (yech). Wikisource will probably have the
best metadata of all the source text libraries.

I count annotations as metadata. There is a wide range of NPOV
annotations that are possible, especially for classical texts.

3) Translate and collaborate. I cannot emphasize enough how strongly I
feel translations should become part of Wikisource's core mission.
This is where wikis, with some additional functionality (easier
processes for managing documents and assignments), could really shine.
There is tremendous value in free translations. Many, many books which
are in the free Wikisource archive are not available as free
translations even in languages like German, Italian, French, let alone
Russian, Farsi, or Japanese.

Wikis are well-suited for this kind of work, because you can both
split the work into packages, and collaborate on refining the
consistency of the end result. The same is true for proofreading
scanned documents, but here, the "Distributed Proofreaders" project is
already doing an admirable job. We'd have to do a lot of work on
further software extensions to compete with them.

4) Limited scope archive. We cannot possibly archive every single
document that might be of interest to someone in the future. Similarly
to Wikimedia Commons, we need to develop criteria of usefulness. One
such criterion is freedom of the content. This already drastically
reduces the scope to a much more manageable amount. The material
should also have been published at some point and meet  general
criteria of notability.

5) Incentivize freedom. Through 2) and 3), I hope that we can create a
real incentive for authors to release published works freely,
especially after they have gone out of print. I have decided to put
the first edition of my own book under a GFDL/CC-BY-SA dual license. I
did so with the hope that it might be archived and translated on
Wikisource. However, de.wikisource.org has neither decided whether it
wants to do translations, nor whether it wants modern texts.

I see no principal reason why Wikisource should not archive many
different ''kinds'' of material as long as they meet criteria as
defined in 4). For instance, I think it would be great if Wikisource
became an archive for "open access" scientific content (and even data)
that meets the free content definition.

But with the exception of 2), all of the points above suggest
implementing a strict standard of freedom on Wikisource. Then, in
answer to your above question, it follows logically that license texts
that are not used as resources are, unless they are free content,
inappropriate on Wikisource. What do we gain by archiving them? Due to
their very nature, only armageddon could wipe out the record of the
most popular licenses. If we cannot translate them, if others cannot
derive new licenses from them, if we do not use them -- then we should
not host them.

But, you might answer, aren't these documents in themselves
philosophically compatible with our core ideas? You might make an
equally strong case for mirroring all of Richard Stallman's
philosophical essays. However, unless they are published, and unless
they are free content, we should not do so.

Now, a library of free licenses that others can use as modular
building blocks to create their own, that would be a very interesting
project indeed.

All of our projects will eventually need clear definitions. There is
some need for Board oversight here, or there will be what we call
"semantic drift" in the WiktionaryZ project: people developing their
own meanings, and implementing them as they see fit. Some will take
the project away from its free content nature. Others will be too
strict in limiting the scope of documents. Some will argue that a
collaborative translation is a form of "original research" and should
not be allowed. Again others might see annotations as unacceptable
alterations of the source material.

We have seen this with Wikibooks. Intended as a place to
collaboratively write textbooks, this definition clashes with a much
more inclusive practice that has long tolerated materials such as game
guides, jokes, or dating tips. How much do we know about the way the
meaning of Wikibooks or Wikisource is interpreted in other languages
than English, when we don't have a shared definition of its mission
which itself is literally translated into these languages?

I'm glad that we did write and translate a mission statement for
Wikinews. There was never any confusion in a local Wikinews edition
about whether or not original reporting is allowable, for instance. So
volunteers could immediately start working on policies for it. These
_policies_ differ from language to language, but the core goals do
not.

Volunteers like Birgitte can be forgiven for being frustrated when
their own ideas clash with those which are seemingly well-understood
by a small group of people who have little to do with the project
itself, ideas which are not well-communicated to its editors. It needs
to be clear why Wikisource exists, and what core policies it should
follow. Certainly such a definition can be developed through a process
of community consultation (as we're doing with the FCD), but it still
has to be done.

Erik


body:
Ben McIlwain wrote:
> Vote-stacking is wrong, it is harmful to Wikipedia, and it needs to be
> discouraged and stopped.  The simple way to do this is to block users
> who are doing this.  If it's not in the policy now, it should be.

I am with you in spirit, but it seems quite difficult to define "vote
stacking" in a way that won't be the source of endless horrible fights.

I have been thinking lately about some radical solution to AfD woes.
Here are some thoughts.

1. Consensus works when there are a small number of people who have
reputations with each other who are willing to work for compromise and
positive progress.  The importance of social capital in the process
(earning it and spending it) can not be overemphasized.

2. As we get to be a larger community, consensus still works well on
individual articles and areas of interest, because there are
subcommunities in negotiation there who know each other.

3. Certain global processes, though, have turned quite bitter and sour,
likely because it is increasingly hard to have a process of reputation
and social capital when you have tons of people who don't know each other.

4.  The solution to this may well be to attempt to move the "locus of
control" for deletion decisions into subcommunities.

--------

I have an example, based on a nice dinner conversation I had with Sam
Wantman.  Sam knows a lot about bridges, and there is a subcommunity of
people who know each other and work on bridge articles.  Super.  This is
why our stuff on bridges is super excellent.

If a bridge is listed on AfD, the result is of course likely to be a
horrific mess.  People who don't know anything about bridges are likely
to vote based on pre-existing battles going on there between
inclusionists and deletionists.  If someone cares deeply about the
issue, they can campaign for random other friends to come and vote.  The
admins who go through and clean it up will find it very difficult to
figure out what to do, having little idea of the reputations of the
various parties, and therefore have no choice to follow the disastrously
bad rule of "one user account, one vote" ... even though this includes
the votes of trolls, newbies, sockpuppets, meatpuppets, idiots *and*
people who know what they are talking about and should be the ones deciding.

Wouldn't it be better in this case to say, you know what, we actually
have bridge experts, people who know about bridges, and these people
ought to be the ones deciding, not random people on AfD.

So how should this work in practice?


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright?

body:
On 03/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS/en/Author%27s_claim_of_license is
> > the standard reply to "someone keeps tagging my material as copyvio,
> > but I wrote it, damnit"
> >
> >From that page: "In order to accept into Wikipedia content which is
> published on another website, we usually require a clear statement
> from the author of the content that the content is being licensed
> under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) [...].
> This statement must come from an email address that we can clearly
> recognize as being from the operator of the website, or be in reply to
> a message sent to the operator of the website."
>
> Umm, what if the operator of the website isn't the author of the content?

Then we rephrase the boilerplate :-)

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


body:
Ben McIlwain wrote:
> That would take weeks, and by then the vote-stackers have long gotten
> away with it.  And I don't think vote-stacking is too subjective.  If
> you see someone recruiting votes, deal with them.  It's pretty simple.

I am, again, very much in sympathy with you, but now think about my
bridge example.  A bridge is placed on AfD.  It looks like it is about
to be deleted, let's suppose, because idiots are voting on the premise
of "Well, I have never heard of it, so: nn, delete."

A bridge expert knows that it *is* an important bridge.

Now, the right thing to do here, and what used to work, is that our
bridge expert writes a few sentences:  "This is an important bridge, and
part of an ongoing project we have in the bridges area to flesh out
articles on the top 1,000 longest bridges in the world.  This one is
currently ranked 797.  May not seem important to you, but we have
verifiable sources and are planning to fill these stubs in over the next
6-9 months.  Thanks."

THEN, some admin comes along and says, gee, the vote is 27-3 to delete,
but frankly, this bridge guy knows what he is talking about, so I am
going to close it with a keep.

In today's environment, the admin doing that better be prepared for a
massive firestorm from process wonks.

So, what's our bridge guy to do?  Well, one thing he can do is go around
to all the other bridgipedians (great word, huh?) and point it out to
them.    Vote stacking?  Maybe, but don't we prefer that these bridge
people come in and have a say?


body:
geni wrote:
>>  This is getting ridiculous.  Our very system of how we
>> make decisions is under attack and I'm trying to do something about it
>> and meeting resistance.
>
> That would be becuase you are attacking the way we make decisions. I'm
> sure you know how to propose new policy.

Now, now, geni, be nice.  He is pointing to a very real problem.  With
you, I am not persuaded this his solution is the right one, but the
problem is real, and you should not accuse him of attacking the way we
make decisions when he is trying to defend it.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


from_name: Jesse Martin

subject:
[Foundation-l] A Wikisource Definition (was: RfC: A Free
	Content and Expression Definition)

body:
Dear Erik Moeller (and others concerned),

The inclusion policies of the English Wikisource, at least, are rather
well-defined. We do indeed invite users to translate texts into
English, and even have a standardised title format for disambiguating
multiple translations of the same work. Annotations are welcome as
well, and editorial notes are considered standard. We are actively
expanding our category structure with discussion, ensuring simplicity
and scalability are maintained with every change. You and I seem to
generally agree over what Wikisource should host and what it should
allow.

However, disagreement arises over the question of what "free" is. You
state that any texts that are less globally free should not be
included, despite arguing in favour of fair use content on Wikipedia,
because you claim that fair use content is absolutely necessary in the
creation of a quality encyclopedia. However, fair use has a
significant impact on the freedom of the information; consider the
following quote from the template {{fair use in}}:

"However, it is believed that the use of this work in the article
'Foo': to illustrate the object in question; where no free equivalent
is available or could be created that would adequately give the same
information; *on the English-language Wikipedia*, hosted on servers
*in the United States* by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation,
qualifies as fair use under *United States* copyright law. *Any other
uses of this image, on Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright
infringement*. See Wikipedia:Fair use and Wikipedia:Copyrights."

Does that sound "free" to you?

Most English Wikisource users that have participated in discussions
have expressed favour for (or, at least, no opposition to) the hosting
of non-derivative works. These are considered free enough (whereas
many users oppose fair use, for example), because they allow every
freedom except modification. If the end-user wishes only works that
can be modified, he can simply ignore the non-derivative license
categories. To this purpose, we are actively developing a
comprehensive structure for categorising works by license. For
example, a Creative Commons license may be too restrictive for some
end-user; perhaps they want public domain works only. In that case,
they can browse or download from the public domain categories.

Can a user do that on Wikipedia? Can they easily choose to ignore any
article that isn't entirely free, or do they have to manually sift
through and examine every article? In other words, every end-user of
Wikipedia must assume that every article is as free as the most unfree
article. The end-user must, in fact, assume that every single article
provided by Wikipedia is fair use.

Non-derivative is perfectly fine for someone seeking to expand his own
archive, or print a collection of free stories; GFDL is fine for most
other uses; Public domain is best for some. Wikisource allows the user
to selectively decide on the degree and flavour of freedom they want.
We are careful to exclude the unfree licenses (noncommercial,
copyright, fair use, et cetera), but I see no reason to exclude
non-derivative works.

Yours sincerely,
Jesse Martin ([[User:Pathoschild]])

On 5/4/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > But might it not be a good idea to have the text of a license like the
> > GPL even if we don't have any material under it? Would not that be
> > well under the purpose of Wikisource?
>
> This is an excellent question.  It leads to another one: Why does
> Wikisource, as a project, exist? People will have many different
> answers to that. Here's mine.
>
> 1) All material is ready to use, because we follow a strict standard
> of freedom. Derivative works, commercial use, and so forth, are all
> permitted. This parallels the equally strict standards of Commons (I
> still think a case could be made for them to be merged, but that
> decision has long been made), and distinguishes Wikisource from other
> archives.
>
> 2) Metadata. Wikis are getting better at storing a wide range of
> relations and associations with the pages they contain. For now we
> have categories, templates, interwiki links, and regular links
> (enriched with the "What links here" feature). Projects like Semantic
> MediaWiki or Wikidata will eventually add even more functionality, and
> the collaborative editing approach makes it possible to develop
> reasonable "folksonomies" (yech). Wikisource will probably have the
> best metadata of all the source text libraries.
>
> I count annotations as metadata. There is a wide range of NPOV
> annotations that are possible, especially for classical texts.
>
> 3) Translate and collaborate. I cannot emphasize enough how strongly I
> feel translations should become part of Wikisource's core mission.
> This is where wikis, with some additional functionality (easier
> processes for managing documents and assignments), could really shine.
> There is tremendous value in free translations. Many, many books which
> are in the free Wikisource archive are not available as free
> translations even in languages like German, Italian, French, let alone
> Russian, Farsi, or Japanese.
>
> Wikis are well-suited for this kind of work, because you can both
> split the work into packages, and collaborate on refining the
> consistency of the end result. The same is true for proofreading
> scanned documents, but here, the "Distributed Proofreaders" project is
> already doing an admirable job. We'd have to do a lot of work on
> further software extensions to compete with them.
>
> 4) Limited scope archive. We cannot possibly archive every single
> document that might be of interest to someone in the future. Similarly
> to Wikimedia Commons, we need to develop criteria of usefulness. One
> such criterion is freedom of the content. This already drastically
> reduces the scope to a much more manageable amount. The material
> should also have been published at some point and meet  general
> criteria of notability.
>
> 5) Incentivize freedom. Through 2) and 3), I hope that we can create a
> real incentive for authors to release published works freely,
> especially after they have gone out of print. I have decided to put
> the first edition of my own book under a GFDL/CC-BY-SA dual license. I
> did so with the hope that it might be archived and translated on
> Wikisource. However, de.wikisource.org has neither decided whether it
> wants to do translations, nor whether it wants modern texts.
>
> I see no principal reason why Wikisource should not archive many
> different ''kinds'' of material as long as they meet criteria as
> defined in 4). For instance, I think it would be great if Wikisource
> became an archive for "open access" scientific content (and even data)
> that meets the free content definition.
>
> But with the exception of 2), all of the points above suggest
> implementing a strict standard of freedom on Wikisource. Then, in
> answer to your above question, it follows logically that license texts
> that are not used as resources are, unless they are free content,
> inappropriate on Wikisource. What do we gain by archiving them? Due to
> their very nature, only armageddon could wipe out the record of the
> most popular licenses. If we cannot translate them, if others cannot
> derive new licenses from them, if we do not use them -- then we should
> not host them.
>
> But, you might answer, aren't these documents in themselves
> philosophically compatible with our core ideas? You might make an
> equally strong case for mirroring all of Richard Stallman's
> philosophical essays. However, unless they are published, and unless
> they are free content, we should not do so.
>
> Now, a library of free licenses that others can use as modular
> building blocks to create their own, that would be a very interesting
> project indeed.
>
> All of our projects will eventually need clear definitions. There is
> some need for Board oversight here, or there will be what we call
> "semantic drift" in the WiktionaryZ project: people developing their
> own meanings, and implementing them as they see fit. Some will take
> the project away from its free content nature. Others will be too
> strict in limiting the scope of documents. Some will argue that a
> collaborative translation is a form of "original research" and should
> not be allowed. Again others might see annotations as unacceptable
> alterations of the source material.
>
> We have seen this with Wikibooks. Intended as a place to
> collaboratively write textbooks, this definition clashes with a much
> more inclusive practice that has long tolerated materials such as game
> guides, jokes, or dating tips. How much do we know about the way the
> meaning of Wikibooks or Wikisource is interpreted in other languages
> than English, when we don't have a shared definition of its mission
> which itself is literally translated into these languages?
>
> I'm glad that we did write and translate a mission statement for
> Wikinews. There was never any confusion in a local Wikinews edition
> about whether or not original reporting is allowable, for instance. So
> volunteers could immediately start working on policies for it. These
> _policies_ differ from language to language, but the core goals do
> not.
>
> Volunteers like Birgitte can be forgiven for being frustrated when
> their own ideas clash with those which are seemingly well-understood
> by a small group of people who have little to do with the project
> itself, ideas which are not well-communicated to its editors. It needs
> to be clear why Wikisource exists, and what core policies it should
> follow. Certainly such a definition can be developed through a process
> of community consultation (as we're doing with the FCD), but it still
> has to be done.
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Adi & Nadav Perez

subject: [Commons-l] Direct copy to commons

body:
I tested this one:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Image:00448r.jpg&oldid=1839376
Felagund
----- Original Message -----
From: "Magnus Manske" <magnus.manske at web.de>
To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 04, 2006 8:58 AM
Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Direct copy to commons

> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Ryan Dabler

body:
On 5/4/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> This is an excellent question.  It leads to another one: Why does
> Wikisource, as a project, exist? People will have many different
> answers to that. Here's mine.
>
> 3) Translate and collaborate. I cannot emphasize enough how strongly I
> feel translations should become part of Wikisource's core mission.
> This is where wikis, with some additional functionality (easier
> processes for managing documents and assignments), could really shine.
> There is tremendous value in free translations. Many, many books which
> are in the free Wikisource archive are not available as free
> translations even in languages like German, Italian, French, let alone
> Russian, Farsi, or Japanese.
>
> Wikis are well-suited for this kind of work, because you can both
> split the work into packages, and collaborate on refining the
> consistency of the end result. The same is true for proofreading
> scanned documents, but here, the "Distributed Proofreaders" project is
> already doing an admirable job. We'd have to do a lot of work on
> further software extensions to compete with them.

This is a great objective, and I don't know of a Wikisource that would be
against it.  The problem, though, is that we are small.  We've got a
dedicated user base of only a very few editors, and these editors can only
do so much in a given day.  One of Wikisource's main goals is "added value"
of texts (i.e., trying to distinguish ourselves from other digital libraries
like Gutenberg) of which translations are a portion.  But we need many more
editors who are bilingual and willing to take on the long task of
translating works, otherwise this will never get off the ground.

4) Limited scope archive. We cannot possibly archive every single
> document that might be of interest to someone in the future. Similarly
> to Wikimedia Commons, we need to develop criteria of usefulness. One
> such criterion is freedom of the content. This already drastically
> reduces the scope to a much more manageable amount. The material
> should also have been published at some point and meet  general
> criteria of notability.

Sadly, this is true.  But, darn it, we can try!  :-)

5) Incentivize freedom. Through 2) and 3), I hope that we can create a
> real incentive for authors to release published works freely,
> especially after they have gone out of print. I have decided to put
> the first edition of my own book under a GFDL/CC-BY-SA dual license. I
> did so with the hope that it might be archived and translated on
> Wikisource. However, de.wikisource.org has neither decided whether it
> wants to do translations, nor whether it wants modern texts.

This would be of great benefit to Wikisource, but I don't see this happening
for quite a long time.  So long as people can cash in on allowing others to
use what they created, people will (understandably) want to make money off
their creations.  But, should a trend of licensing works with free licenses
take hold, this would be an area where Wikisource could shine brighter than
other digital libraries.  Of course, part of this still revolves around
Wikisource having users willing to translate...

I see no principal reason why Wikisource should not archive many
> different ''kinds'' of material as long as they meet criteria as
> defined in 4). For instance, I think it would be great if Wikisource
> became an archive for "open access" scientific content (and even data)
> that meets the free content definition.

Wikisource has chosen to no longer accept this material, the biggest problem
being verifiability.  Such material would better fit databases far removed
from being editable by anyone other than those who are experts in the field,
lest Wikisource start publishing and distributing faulty information.  This
would be a step backwards from the direction we want to be going.

But with the exception of 2), all of the points above suggest
> implementing a strict standard of freedom on Wikisource.
>
> ...

> All of our projects will eventually need clear definitions. There is
> some need for Board oversight here, or there will be what we call
> "semantic drift" in the WiktionaryZ project: people developing their
> own meanings, and implementing them as they see fit. Some will take
> the project away from its free content nature. Others will be too
> strict in limiting the scope of documents. Some will argue that a
> collaborative translation is a form of "original research" and should
> not be allowed. Again others might see annotations as unacceptable
> alterations of the source material.
>

I'm getting the feeling that this clear definition of Wikisource will be
proposed by people who are not very active (if at all) in the project and
are only imposing their own personal visions of what Wikisource *should* be
on the community and group of editors who have been involved for months and
years.  If there is to be a definition, it should be formulated with a large
amount of help and input from those people who know Wikisource like the back
of their hand.  It should be done with Board oversight, of course, as it is
ultimately responsible to them and is but one of many projects of a
Foundation they are in charge of.

But I cannot stress how much the Wikisourcerors should be involved in
formulating this definition.  Wikisource is no longer "Project Sourceberg"
and its URL is not "sources.wikipedia.org" anymore.  It is a Wikimedia
project, on par with Wiktionary, Wikiquote, and the rest.

 We have seen this with Wikibooks. Intended as a place to
> collaboratively write textbooks, this definition clashes with a much
> more inclusive practice that has long tolerated materials such as game
> guides, jokes, or dating tips. How much do we know about the way the
> meaning of Wikibooks or Wikisource is interpreted in other languages
> than English, when we don't have a shared definition of its mission
> which itself is literally translated into these languages?
>

I suggest getting in touch with those projects sounds like a good first
step.

 Volunteers like Birgitte can be forgiven for being frustrated when
> their own ideas clash with those which are seemingly well-understood
> by a small group of people who have little to do with the project
> itself, ideas which are not well-communicated to its editors. It needs
> to be clear why Wikisource exists, and what core policies it should
> follow. Certainly such a definition can be developed through a process
> of community consultation (as we're doing with the FCD), but it still
> has to be done.
>

I highly suggest that these "core policies" be as general as possible,
allowing much freedom in their implementation.  I do not see the need for
having more than just a small handful of any core policies, either.  These
policies need to be written so that they can apply to all the current
projects and to any new projects that might be created.  Otherwise, by
custom-tailoring all the policies/definitions/requirements on a
project-to-project basis it might seem that WMF would be moving away from
its wiki model of allowing the community control over its own future to one
of prescribing policies which overly dictate (and perhaps put a damper on)
life and growth of the project.

Z


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 09:22:23AM -0400, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 12:39:23PM +0200, Tels wrote:
> >
> > Er, my mail should have gone only to the author, not the list. My
> > apologies.
>
> What, you mean mailing lists with reply-to set to the list are a *bad*
> thing?

Nah, I think that means someone made a mistake when replying.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 06:44:44PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> >
> > What, you mean mailing lists with reply-to set to the list are a *bad*
> > thing?
>
> What, you mean you'd rather have hundreds of e-mails constantly go to
> the individuals when they were meant for the list?
>
> Timwi
> (P.S. I use the newsgroup interface and I don't really get why anyone
> would use the mailing list. :-) )

Speaking just for myself here . . .
I don't need *yet another interface* for dealing with the world.  It's
hard enough just keeping up with email and the telephone.  Frankly, I'd
need newsgroups to notify me by email when something new arrived.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
This sig for rent:  a Signify v1.14 production from http://www.debian.org/


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Thu, 4 May 2006 00:17:58 +0200, you wrote:

>Except that in the case of RfA, we don't even have agreed principles
>that decisions should be based on, so all reasoning is good reasoning.

For some values of good, obviously.

My problem here is with the assertion that asking questions of
candidates for adminship is in some way bad.  I really can't see how
that could be a valid viewpoint.  One of the most pertinent questions
I've seen asked of an admin candidate recently was whether they saw
the role of admin more as that of policeman or janitor.  Asking that
question is entirely consistent with adminship being no big deal, also
entirely consistent with knowing in advance to whom we are giving the
tools, and what they will do with them.  For my money we don't need
policemen, but this is of course also just one person's view.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject:
[Foundation-l] English Wikipedia Version 1.0 logo copyrighted
	to	foundation

body:
I will forward you a correct copyright assignment form, and we'll try
to make things correctly :-)

Best,

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
wikimedia foundation
chief legal officer

Le 4 mai 06 ? 05:48, Kernigh a ?crit :

> Titoxd <at> Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at ...> writes:
>
>> ... As this is not possible due to the Foundation's policy, after
>> consulting with Anthere, I changed the copyright of the image to
>> point to
>> the Foundation, as done in the Wikipedia logo page.
>
> I think that you would need to ask the copyright holder of the
> other part (the
> shiny colored disk around the outside of the Wikipedia logo)
> whether they agree
> to transfer the copyright. Did you do this?
> -- [[User:Kernigh]]
>    http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Kernigh
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


body:
On Wed, 03 May 2006 20:32:12 -0400, you wrote:

>I recently came across a very contentious Afd having to deal with the
>movement to impeach George W. Bush.  The discussion was overwhelmed with
>vote-stacking.  I caught two users doing it and temporarily blocked
>them, but was reverted by an admin who says it's "not in policy" that we
>can block for that.  I've also since discovered a third person who was
>vote-stacking.

It is wrong per policy, it is disruption.  If done off Wikipedia it is
meatpuppetry.  On the whole it is good to attract more people to a
debate, but bad to select only those people who are known in advance
to support your view.

Also, no admin should revert the actions of another admin without
discussion, preferably at the noticeboards.  On the other hand using
admin tools - whether to block or to revert blocks - in disputes where
you are involved is a Bad Thing.  And yes, I have done it too, we are
but human.

If a particular debate is becoming a cesspit it may be better to close
it and get all parties involved to a dispute resolution process.  You
are right that in many cases personal preference is allowed to trump
policy.  And in some cases the Google hit count is taken in lieu of
reliable sources.  But AfD is not a vote, and the closing admin has
some discretion in weighing the arguments.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


body:
On Wed, 3 May 2006 23:51:01 -0700, you wrote:

>Unfortunately, this misses the point.  Whether you called it a "closure" or
>"cancellation" or a "stoppage" or whatever.  You halted the process that a
>lot of people were contributing to.  They had a right to be heard.  This
>wastes a lot of time and looks like bad behavior for an admin to kill an AfD
>early, especially one he has been involved in.

I disagree.  Cyde stopped a catfight.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Elliott F. Cable

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
As my latest (rather long) mail to the list stated, I have no wish to
clog the list with this. Thus let's please end it.

As I also said, those interested in Perl and mediawiki can contact me
personally, not clog the list, thanks (-:

On May 4, 2006, at 2:39 AM, Tels wrote:

> Moin,
>
> On Thursday 04 May 2006 02:05, Ben Garney wrote:
>> On 5/3/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
>>> Moin,
>>>
>>> On Wednesday 03 May 2006 22:43, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>>>> On 5/3/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
> [snip]
>>>>
>>>> Perl?
>>>>
>>>> You're kidding right?
>>>>
>>>> Is there some rule that says mediawiki must be written in a
>>>> language which encourages, nay demands!, unmaintainable results?
>>>
>>> You just insulted me as a Perl programmer that all my code is
>>> unmaintanable. Please have a look at:
>>
>>  I'd humbly suggest that there are better things to discuss here than
>> if certain languages are more maintainable than others. A good
>> programmer can write maintainable code in any language; similarly
>> a bad
>> programmer can write crap anywhere, too.
>>
>> Are we here to have a meaningful discussion about MW, or just
>> engage in
>> useless language debates?
>
> Er, my mail should have gone only to the author, not the list. My
> apologies.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Tels
>
> --
>  Signed on Thu May  4 12:38:41 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
>  Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
>  PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.
>
>  "Sundials don't work, the one I've had in my basement hasn't changed
>  time since I installed it." grub (11606) on 2004-12-03 on /.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


from_name: Delphine Ménard

body:
On 5/2/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:

> While en.wp has initially been extremely liberal in its application of
> "fair use", a few other Wikipedias prohibit it entirely. I think it's
> time that we work towards fair use / fair dealing policies on all
> Wikimedia projects. This is going to be a bit tricky as we have to
> distinguish between the law that applies to the uploader of the work,
> and the law that applies to the Wikimedia Foundation which is hosting
> the work.
>
> I would appreciate a legal opinion on how to best achieve this - my
> own feeling is that the fair use policies of a project like de.wp or
> nl.wp should explain the legal situation in countries where these
> languages are predominantly spoken, while allowing the freedoms
> granted under U.S. law.

Until we have an answer to "are the authors or is the Foundation
ultimately responsible for the content of the Wikimedia projects?" -
which I believe we will only ever get if we go to court, I do not
believe there is a clear answer, legal or not, to the question.

My take on this is:

-FL law comes first
-You must respect whichever local law is yours (country of residence)
when you edit Wikimedia projects.

In any case, (and maybe unfortunately) editing Wikimedia projects
which are physically based in Florida *does not* grant you *more*
rights than those you have in your own country.

Internet is not a lawless zone.

Delphine

--
~notafish


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Moin,

On Thursday 04 May 2006 02:05, Ben Garney wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> > Moin,
> >
> > On Wednesday 03 May 2006 22:43, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > > On 5/3/06, Elliott F. Cable <ecable at avxw.com> wrote:
[snip]
> > >
> > > Perl?
> > >
> > > You're kidding right?
> > >
> > > Is there some rule that says mediawiki must be written in a
> > > language which encourages, nay demands!, unmaintainable results?
> >
> > You just insulted me as a Perl programmer that all my code is
> > unmaintanable. Please have a look at:
>
>  I'd humbly suggest that there are better things to discuss here than
> if certain languages are more maintainable than others. A good
> programmer can write maintainable code in any language; similarly a bad
> programmer can write crap anywhere, too.
>
> Are we here to have a meaningful discussion about MW, or just engage in
> useless language debates?

Er, my mail should have gone only to the author, not the list. My
apologies.

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Thu May  4 12:38:41 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Sundials don't work, the one I've had in my basement hasn't changed
 time since I installed it." grub (11606) on 2004-12-03 on /.

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
Moin,

On Thursday 04 May 2006 02:14, Gregory Szorc wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > Gregory Szorc wrote:
> > > I was curious what the current plans are for MW 2.0.  Will it just
> > > be announced sometime during the quarterly release schedule?  Will
> > > it be a considerable rewrite?
[snip]
> Thank you, Brion, for the reply.  This is exactly what I wanted to
> hear.
>
> Would a suitable project for SoC be to go through the code base and
> assist with the PHP 5/$wg global phase out that has been occurring with
> 1.7?  For example, adding visibility keywords on all the functions and
> fixing all the references to functions that are currently marked with
> comments as private or protected?  On top of that, someone could update
> all the functions that have a better PHP 5 implementation.  For
> example, replacing the XML functions with PHP 5 DOM ones and replacing
> all the references to the old functions.

Another worthwhil project would be to properly tag variables so that
doxygen can extract/find them. Unfortunately, I am not a student, so I
cant apply :D

Best wishes,

Tels

--
 Signed on Thu May  4 12:40:21 2006 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three
 persons, two of them absent." -- Unknown

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subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 11:44:52AM -0700, Carl Witty wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-05-04 at 14:47 +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
>
> > Maybe we should just drop the "1." and call the next release 7.0. Makes for
> > less typing. Someone remind me which software project did that...
>
> GNU Emacs: went from version 1.1 to 1.12, then dropped the initial "1"
> and has continued from version 13 to version 21 (so far).

I wasn't aware of that one.  I knew about the Java example, though.

Of course, I wouldn't expect to know that much about Emacs.  After all,
I already have an OS.  I don't need another.

--
Chad Perrin [ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright?

body:
"Work for hire" means CBS International is the copyright owner rather than
the person who took the photograph or who's in it.
If it has not been released under a free license by the copyright owner it
can be deleted.

Mgm

On 5/4/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 5/3/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > SPUI has repeatedly tagged http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sbekele
> > as a copyvio of http://www.cbsintl.com/people.htm.  I refused to
> > speedy it on that basis, so SPUI blanked it and added the copyvio
> > template.
>
> > Sbekele self-identifies as Sophia Bekele, CEO of CBS
> > International,
>
> Looking at user contributions, I don't see this to be the case.  Was
> there a deleted edit you're referring to?
>
> > and therefore presumably the copyright owner.
>
> The copyright owner of that website is more likely to be CBS
> International.  The website is most likely a work for hire.
>
> > Since
> > this is user space, and the content is an "about us" bio, not
> > commercial content, I think that blanking and deletion are a bit
> > excessive.  On the other hand, copyright is copyright I guess.  What
> > does the panel think?
> >
> Who's "the panel"?
>
> What I think is that you're both arguing over something completely
> pointless.  It's just a user page.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On May 4, 2006, at 9:44 AM, Timwi wrote:
> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 12:39:23PM +0200, Tels wrote:
>>
>>>> I'd humbly suggest that there are better things to discuss here
>>>> than
>>>> if certain languages are more maintainable than others. A good
>>>> programmer can write maintainable code in any language;
>>>> similarly a bad
>>>> programmer can write crap anywhere, too.
>>>>
>>>> Are we here to have a meaningful discussion about MW, or just
>>>> engage in
>>>> useless language debates?
>>>
>>> Er, my mail should have gone only to the author, not the list. My
>>> apologies.
>>
>> What, you mean mailing lists with reply-to set to the list are a
>> *bad*
>> thing?
>
> What, you mean you'd rather have hundreds of e-mails constantly go to
> the individuals when they were meant for the list?
>
> Timwi
> (P.S. I use the newsgroup interface and I don't really get why anyone
> would use the mailing list. :-) )
What is that?


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 5/3/06, Gallagher Mark George <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Steve,
>
> > On 03/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > As for "an article with no claim to notability", I actually have no
> > > idea what that phrase means.
> >
> > An article has to establish the notability of its subject. If it
> > doesn't do that, it's subject to speedy deletion.
> >
> > ...I recite.
>
> No, it has to *assert* the notability of its subject.  When clearing up CAT:CSD I see a lot of speedy taggings where the tagger simply figured "sure, there's an assertion of notability there, but I don't think it's good enough".  Wrong.

How does an article go about asserting the notability of its subject?
What would be an example of an article which asserts notability but
doesn't establish it?

Anthony


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On May 4, 2006, at 10:12 AM, Chad Perrin wrote:
> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 06:44:44PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
>> Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
>>>
>>> What, you mean mailing lists with reply-to set to the list are a
>>> *bad*
>>> thing?
>>
>> What, you mean you'd rather have hundreds of e-mails constantly go to
>> the individuals when they were meant for the list?
>>
>> Timwi
>> (P.S. I use the newsgroup interface and I don't really get why anyone
>> would use the mailing list. :-) )
>
> Speaking just for myself here . . .
> I don't need *yet another interface* for dealing with the world.  It's
> hard enough just keeping up with email and the telephone.  Frankly,
> I'd
> need newsgroups to notify me by email when something new arrived.

Try - mail, RSS, AIM, MSN, ICQ, iChat, 4x web interfaces, at least 30
forums, at least 50 wikis, IRC (usually in around 10 channels on 4
servers) Limewire/azeureus chat, SEE chat, ventrilo, teamspeak,
Squeak, skype - the list goes on. Telephone? Fax? Not to mention
people trying to swarm me in RL while I'm trying to communicate with
the really important ones online...


body:
On 5/4/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Gallagher Mark George <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
> >
> > G'day Steve,
> >
> > > On 03/05/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > > As for "an article with no claim to notability", I actually have no
> > > > idea what that phrase means.
> > >
> > > An article has to establish the notability of its subject. If it
> > > doesn't do that, it's subject to speedy deletion.
> > >
> > > ...I recite.
> >
> > No, it has to *assert* the notability of its subject.  When clearing up CAT:CSD I see a lot of speedy taggings where the tagger simply figured "sure, there's an assertion of notability there, but I don't think it's good enough".  Wrong.
>
> How does an article go about asserting the notability of its subject?
> What would be an example of an article which asserts notability but
> doesn't establish it?
>
> Anthony
>
Isn't the very fact that an article is written about a subject an
assertion of the notability of the subject?

Anthony


from_name: Fastfission

body:
There's a fine line between "asking other interested people to
participate" and "attempting to stack a vote".

The first practice is just fine, I think. The second is not.

How to tell the different between them? I don't know of a good
criteria that would ever work in all cases. But usually the difference
is fairly obvious: when the people "coming to the discussion" do no
discussing (they just throw a vote in, or write some pithy comment
about how the other people are crazy/wrong/stupid/whatever), it looks
a lot like vote stacking to me. Additionally when the solicitation for
other eyes is along the lines of "Come vote on this, these guys are
trying to delete our favorite article!" it is usually quite telling.
And when people who have never edited on Wikipedia are drawn into it,
it is obviously vote stacking.

Consulting others is not a problem. Writing to people and saying, "I'd
like it if you'd weigh in on this," is great practice. Especially when
the people consulted are thoughtful and will even on occasion disagree
with the person who had solicited them! All the better.

Calling in pals who will just add a vote and show no real engagement
with the reasoning or discussion going on, people who have no
investment in Wikipedia as a whole and no experience with the project?
Not good, not helpful, not the right way to do things.

Drawing the line is hard primarily in theory. It is not usually that
hard in practice to spot the difference, though, because instances of
"meatpuppetry" are usually pretty transparent, in my experience.

FF

On 5/4/06, John Tex <johntexster at gmail.com> wrote:
> We need to recognize that each user has a right to try to influence policy
> in ways that they believe are beneficial to the project.  Two basic tenets
> of this are discussing the ideas and building up groups of people who agree
> with you and who will help you bring about the beneficial change.
>
> This is "advocacy".  Contacting people to recruit them to support you or to
> act according to beliefs you think they may already have should rightly be
> called "campaigning". This is a Good Thing.
>
>
>  Let's stop insulting people by calling them "meat puppets" or "vote
> stackers".  Let's stop confusing the issue by calling it "spamming".  It is
> not spamming.  Spamming is indiscriminately notifying people that are
> probably not interested in the hopes that a few people will be.  This is
> practically the opposite.
>
> Attempting to stifle advocacy is harmful to the consensus building process
> and it is harmful to the project.  If we try to prohibit it, it will just be
> taken off-wiki, which would be a huge shame.
> Johntex
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards MW 2.0

body:
On May 4, 2006, at 9:57 AM, Jay R. Ashworth wrote:
> On Thu, May 04, 2006 at 11:44:52AM -0700, Carl Witty wrote:
>>> Maybe we should just drop the "1." and call the next release 7.0.
>>> Makes for
>>> less typing. Someone remind me which software project did that...
>>
>> GNU Emacs: went from version 1.1 to 1.12, then dropped the initial
>> "1"
>> and has continued from version 13 to version 21 (so far).
>
> Less has never had "traditional" version numbers; it's up near version
> 247 or something.
Mac OS X? Other way around - went from system 7, 8, OS 9 - then 10.1
(10), 10.2 (11), 10.3 (12), 10.4 (13) and soon, 10.5 (14) - I tend to
find that copying something apple did leads to success, ESPECIALLY
when they changed something - usually, when they admit they made a
mistake (very rare) and fix it in a given way (much less rare) then
they usually fix it 100%, and put lots of thought into their
decision. I see the fact that they ended up using a X.YY system means
we should stick to the same, but maybe that's just me.


from_name: Drini drini

body:
On 5/4/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/4/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> > geni wrote:
> > >
> > > On 5/4/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >> It looks a hell of a lot like using common sense.
> > > [[Monty Hall problem]]. "Common sense" is not a valid justification
> for
> > > decision making.
> > >
> > The reason the [[Monty Hall problem]] is a "problem" is because it
> appears
> > to turn common sense on its head: the "exception that proves the rule".
> >
>
> That phrase makes no sense in commonly used modern english english.
>
> > Just because there exist carefully designed situations in which common
> sense
> > will lead you up a carefully prepared garden path does not invalidate
> the
> > application of common sense in each and every situation.
> >
>
> Ok then how about:
>
> [[Proof that 0.999... equals 1]] or most of [[Quantum mechanics]]

and for what is worth, 0.9999.... = 1 is common sense to me (but I won't
comment on quantum mechanics)


from_name: Ben McIlwain

subject: [WikiEN-l] vote-stacking and userboxes

body:
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Raphael Wegmann wrote:
> Hi,
>
> as everybody probably knows here, userboxes made vote-stacking
> und campaigning easy, since one can easily find the "right" people
> to vote on a subject.
>
> Maybe a technical solution to this problem is possible.
> What if a bot substitutes all userboxes on the user-pages?
> Maybe it's even possible to somehow "tag" a template,
> so it is always substituted? This could be used on warning
> templates as well.

It's honestly really funny that you should mention this today, because
if you check the pywikipediabot CVS logs for yesterday, you'll see that
I committed a change to the template bot that allows an arbitrarily
large number of templates to be substituted or deleted from an
arbitrarily large number of pages all in a single command.

> Of course this wouldn't eliminate vote-stacking at all,
> since one can still find the "right" people on various
> Wikiproject pages, but IMHO it's still a step in the right
> direction.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Cyde should not have violated Deletion policy
	(Johntex)

body:
What was the AFD?

On 5/4/06, John Tex <johntexster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Today, User Cyde improperly closed a AfD that had been listed for less
> than
> a day.  He voted to Keep it and then he closed it Keep even though the
> majority of votes were for deletion.
>
> Deletion Policy states "If a clear consensus for non-deletion is quickly
> reached, discussion may be closed before the end of the typical period,
> for
> example, a clear consensus for speedy deletion, a clear consensus for a
> speedy keep, or a consensus for a redirect. The debate should remain
> transcluded on the appropriate deletion page. *If the proposed solution
> has
> not achieved a very clear consensus, the listing should remain for the
> full
> five-day period. Any substantial debate, regardless of how lopsided the
> keep/delete count may be, implies that an early closing would be a bad
> idea.
> * [76]<
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Early_closure
> >(emphasis
> mine)
>
> In this case, discussion was ongoing and the AfD should not have been
> closed. Cyde had even voted on the AfD prior to closing it. He was not a
> neutral party and he should not have closed this AfD even after the normal
> time period, let alone close it prematurely.
>
> Johntex
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On Thu, 4 May 2006 13:38:41 +0200, you wrote:

>Since Wikipedia is not a democracy, and since voting is evil, it does
>not make sense to allow total freedom in voting on RfAs. It is not a
>desirable goal.

Yes, reminds me of those who vote keep on all schools by reference to
the previous list of arguments for keep.  Reiterating something does
not make it a consensus position.

It would be better to have a guideline which says someone should not
even be nominated until they have passed agreed milestones, then we
can assess candidates on their merits with the knowledge that they
have passed some kind of minimum standard of wikipedian-ness.

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

body:
On 5/4/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Wouldn't it be better in this case to say, you know what, we actually
> have bridge experts, people who know about bridges, and these people
> ought to be the ones deciding, not random people on AfD.
>
> So how should this work in practice?

One possibility would be to work from the existing WikiProject
infrastructure.  They already function as the default gathering place
for editors working in a particular subject area; why not simply allow
them (within reason) to conduct their own deletion discussions?

The major problem here has always been the fact that there's no
barrier to creating new projects.  We want _established_ communities
of people working on a topic making these decisions; at the same time,
merely deciding to create WikiProject Controversial Articles shouldn't
automatically give someone the ability to control deletion
discussions.  The obvious suggestion would be to have some manner of
community screening process that would determine whether a particular
project was in decent enough shape to run a deletion forum
responsibly; but there are probably other approaches that could work
as well.

Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Watchlist feature requests (was Re: Cruft)

body:
On 04/05/06, Pete Bartlett <pcb21 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >Theoretically, yes. I thought about having a similar system, only the
> >entire code would be written back to the monobook.js, because it's
> >protected from other users. However, I'm not sure that it would be
> >/practical/ to implement it without something like XUL to get the UI
> >setup - ie. it would be a Mozilla extension.
>
>
> This is all very sexy. But wouldn't an easy first step just to be gather
> the code in one set of pages first? Then users can do "manual" transclusion
> to begin with, and the neat interface could come later?

Well, the French page given before does just that. But copying and
pasting becomes very quickly unmanageable. What do you do when you
have 30 extensions and your monobook.js doesn't compile? How do you
remove one extension without breaking others? I do it by embedding big
///////////////// comments around them, but it's still a bit dicey.

Steve


body:
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geni wrote:
> On 5/4/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It looks a hell of a lot like using common sense.
>
> [[Monty Hall problem]]. "Common sense" is not a valid justifcation for
> descission makeing.

For what it's worth I figured out the Monty Hall problem on my own with
a simple experiment when I was younger, so don't say it tricks everyone,
because it doesn't.

- --
Ben McIlwain ("Cyde Weys")

~ Sub veste quisque nudus est ~
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