from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

references:
<enk1qb$8e3$1@sea.gmane.org> <459D9B91.3010806@pobox.com>
	<enkbc3$oj2$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling-2 wrote:
>
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>> "IMHO the extension's rather low-level and awkward. It works, but it's
>> ugly, and as with too many of our fancy syntaxes and extensions it drops
>> this big blob of incomprehensible _stuff_ directly into the text of the
>> article using it, cluttering up the editor's view.
>> What would be slicker would be if we can rig up a visual editor for the
>> thingy; compare with adding notations to images on flickr.
> Yes, the user interface sucks. I was aiming with this extension to
> implement image maps in a manner consistent with the rest of MediaWiki --
>  a robust implementation but limited in scope. It sucks as much as
> everything else we have.
>
Think of it as incremental development: we get the code up and running,
prove that it can cope with every stupid thing that anybody is likely to
throw at it, and a nice pretty interface can be added later.

> So do you want it or don't you? I'm not writing a visual editor right now,
> so unless anyone else wants to step forward, it's this or nothing. Will
> the extension be a help or a hindrance when we get around to
> revolutionising MediaWiki's ease of use?
>
It's got my vote. Am I safe in thinking this might well be a good way to put
the dreaded {{click}} template to rest?

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/ImageMap-extension-tf2922726.html#a8178106
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
"The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its
projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity."

If instead, this said "The Foundation will ensure that useful
information from its projects is available on the Internet free of
charge, in perpetuity.", it would give the projects more potential for
independence.

Anthony

On 1/4/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The currently proposed mission & vision statement of WMF are at:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mission/Unstable&oldid=485535
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vision/Unstable&oldid=470952
>
> I originally intended for us to have a community poll on these
> statements once the open editing phase is complete. However, editing
> and discussion activity on these statements have been minimal in spite
> of repeated announcements. Would there be objections to the Board
> simply ratifying these two statements as they are now?
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
"The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage
people around the world to collect and develop educational content
under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it
effectively and globally."

I note that this sentence does not have any notion of the word
"collaborate" in it.  IMO this notion *is* present in the vision
statement (to "freely share in" implies cooperation, and not just
people working independently), but the mission statement doesn't seem
to capture it.  Sure, people collect, develop, and disseminate free
content, but is that what distinguishes Wikimedia from other
organizations?  Or is it the real-time collaboration that does that?

Erik, in another thread you are discussing whether or not Wikimedia
should get involved with hosting videos, and one concern you have with
it is that "the strength of wiki is to collaborate".  But hosting of
free videos does disseminate free content, it does encourage people to
collect it, and to a lesser extent it even encourages people to
develop it.  Under the current mission statement collaboration isn't
even mentioned.

Anthony

On 1/4/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The currently proposed mission & vision statement of WMF are at:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mission/Unstable&oldid=485535
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vision/Unstable&oldid=470952
>
> I originally intended for us to have a community poll on these
> statements once the open editing phase is complete. However, editing
> and discussion activity on these statements have been minimal in spite
> of repeated announcements. Would there be objections to the Board
> simply ratifying these two statements as they are now?
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik
>
> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Romanian Wikipedia at 50,000 articles

body:
Yay!

On 1/5/07, Mihai Floran <mihai at emma.ro> wrote:
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
We really should stop throwing that word "trolling" around... it can be very
offensive towards those who mean well.

On 1/5/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
> >Ray Saintonge wrote:
> >
> >
> >>MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I'm not trying to step on the toes of the editors involved in this, but
> take
> >>>for example the article on Michael Perham who became the youngest
> sailor to
> >>>cross the Atlantic. That's clearly notable, but the article was deleted
> >>>because it stated "he was believed to become the youngest person to
> cross
> >>>the Atlantic".
> >>>
> >>>
> >>The youngest verifiable person to cross the Atlantic was probably a baby
> >>during early colonial days. ;-)
> >>
> >>
> >Did they do it solo, unassisted, etc? Please, stop trolling.
> >
> That wasn't stated in the quote.  Your risk of exploding from over
> inflation, and deficient sense of humour do not support your accusation
> of trolling.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Regarding the "change size" indicator in change
 lists

body:
Omegatron wrote:
>
> * Rudeness
> * Judgmental tone
> * Belittling contributors because of their skills
> * Personally targeted behavior that causes an atmosphere of greater
> conflict and stress
>
Well, you certainly managed at least three of the four; if you can find a
way to "belittle" Rob's technical skills, you could have the full house.

Go on, we're all waiting with bated breath...
--
Phil
whose technical skills outweigh his social skills by some considerable
margin but still tries his best regardless
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Regarding-the-%22change-size%22-indicator-in-change-lists-tf2898019.html#a8178512
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers mailing list archive at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
I hate to be a linkspammer, but I think this is relevant to everyone:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Forgive_and_forget

--James


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Donation of DVDs to Wikimedia Foundation Projects

body:
On 1/3/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Still, it seems very premature to shape our decisions around bandwidth
> concerns which do not yet exist.

It seems very reasonable to me to shape any policy decision around
estimates of its potential impact. In this case, we're not only
talking about storage/backup and bandwidth requirements, but also
about the question of focus for the WMF. All these depend highly on a
number of other variables:
- what scope of videos we allow
- how broadly we include these videos in Wikimedia projects
- whether we want to be able to stream all of these videos, or a
subset thereof, in real time.

Since we haven't settled answers for any of these questions, it's hard
to predict the impact, but it's easy to predict that under an
inclusive policy, with the videos being highly visible and easy to
access, we'd be significantly exceeding current storage and bandwidth
use quickly, even without reliable real-time streaming. This raises
the question whether this is an area the Wikimedia Foundation wants to
expand its focus to.

> How much traffic are we talking about? If we don't know, how could the internet
> archive fairly accept it?

Since the Archive appears to be getting significantly more
contributions than we do:
http://jnana.wikinerds.org/index.php/Form_990-PF_for_Internet_Archive_%282003%29
.. and since they specialize on archiving, I think it's safe to say
that they're in a better position to host these files than we are.
That said, we should ask them -- and other potential providers, such
as Kennisnet -- whether they'd be willing to help us out.

> We have far less video, so we do see less video collaboration..

Video collaboration does not require video hosting in the same place.
See Annodex/Metavid.

> Last I checked, many of the videos that we'd consider hosting which
> that have would not fit our copyright guidelines.  A lot of the full
> length movies for example, are only free in the sense that the movie
> itself was not renewed. The music, plot, and other elements are still
> copyrighted.

Certainly, and while Wikimedia strives for free content purity, that
desire has always been balanced with a healthy dose of pragmatism. A
film is a very large aggregate of pictures and sound; achieving purity
within such an aggregate gets more difficult the larger it gets. It is
still desirable but shouldn't, in my opinion, be the defining
exclusionary criterion. In other words, just because a film contains
some fair use music at some point, or a company logo, it is not
necessarily significantly less worthy of being featured or used within
a Wikimedia project.
--
Peace & Love,
Erik

DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] RfC: PDF and document management for MediaWiki

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> for exporting MediaWiki pages as PDF files, and improving
> document management for documents consisting of multiple pages.
> [...]
> c) Create a "PDF basket" UI which makes it possible to compile a PDF
> from multiple pages easily (and rearrange the pages in a hierarchy).

Things to throw into this basket are Wikisource and Wikibooks.
These projects currently consist of thousands of "pages", but
there is no way to separate a "book" (or title or volume) from the
rest of the site. For example, at download.wikimedia.org I can
download the entire French Wikisource in XML, but I cannot
download the XML (or PDF) for just one of the books there.

If I'm lucky, all wiki pages (facsimile pages or chapters) that
belong to one book are subpages of a single page, or all have page
names that begin with a common prefix, but the current Mediawiki
software doesn't help in maintaining this integrity.  Clicking
around to manually fill a PDF basket would be a nightmare.

Of course, for a Wikisource book with scanned images, I'd like
these printed in the PDF.  But the OCR text would be used for
searching through the PDF.

As far as I know, the ProofreadPage extension (the Page:
namespace) doesn't support a grouping or table of contents of all
pages belonging to a book. This would be a useful next step.

> The resulting structures could potentially also be stored as wikitext,
> using a new <structure> extension tag, so that they can be used both
> by individuals compiling PDFs for personal use, and by groups
> collaborating on complex documents.

This could be it.

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


from_name: Evan Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] MessageCache and MediaWiki namespace redesign

body:
On 1/5/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> * The message cache can exceed the 1MB limit of MemCached, causing total
> failure

For what it's worth, this can be adjusted with a compile-time constant:
http://lists.danga.com/pipermail/memcached/2006-January/001879.html

(Of course, you have many other good points beyond this...)


from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mailing list scheduled downtime and changes

body:
Hello, WikiEN-l subscribers.

This coming Saturday at 10:00 UTC/GMT, the mailing lists will be
shifted to a new server. This will cause a downtime for the mailing
lists (and may also incidentally affect other Wikimedia mail systems).

The mailing lists will also be shifted to a new subdomain, so that the
WikiEN-l mailing list email address will in fact be either
"wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org" or "wikien-l at lists.wikipedia.org" (I
don't know myself yet; probably the former). You will still be able to
send mail to the mailing list via the current (wikien-l at wikipedia.org)
email address, but all emails will have fields like "reply-to" reflect
the new address. This will break most email filters which subscribers
have in place to tag mailing list emails and sort them, so many of you
will have to tweak your settings a bit once the change is made.

Sorry for any inconvenience and confusion this might cause.

~Mark Ryan
WikiEN-l mailing list admin


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thousands of *awful* articles on websites

body:
Steve Block wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>>> How do we know reliable sources aren't lying.  Every newspaper and
>>> source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the
>>> 2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that
>>> mathematically won the cup.  Monty's story simply made better press.  If
>>> we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct,
>>> why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying.
>>>   Obviously some judgement is at play.
>>>
>>>
>> Well, if the source is lying, then by definition it's not reliable. Your
>> example is an object lesson in how newspapers are intermediate in
>> reliability; they are usually better than Joe Random's blog, but not as
>> good as a scholarly monograph that has had multiple layers of review
>> spread over multiple years.
>>
>
> No, you haven't as yet stated how we define which source is telling the
> "truth".  My understanding is that we don't do that.  If we don't do
> that, it stands to reason we don't determine which source "lies", since
> doing so indicates we have determined one source is telling the truth.
> My understanding is that we weigh each source in relation to the topic,
> and present it in a NPV.  This means we must judge whether the
> information is relevant, not if it is true.  It is relevant to note that
> Montgomerie is credited as hitting the winning putt.
>
Dangerously close to epistemology, but I'm not afraid. :-) I think we
work with a fundamental underlying assumption that the facts are
knowable, even if we don't know them at the moment. Otherwise, if
somebody finds a hundred blogs stating that the sky is really green
(perhaps as part of a prank), and runs to WP to add stuff about how the
color of the sky is in dispute, we wouldn't have any basis for saying
"dude, it was an April Fool's joke, we're not going add it". We've
actually had a couple people in the past adding totally fictional
events, sourced from websites that reported the fictional events as if
they were real, and they got irate when we deleted their material,
because they were convinced it was all real - or that was part of their
prank, or possibly performance art, to this day I can't say for sure. So
I exaggerated when I said we're just stenographers; we do have to do
"research", if not "original research".
>> Seeing the references to that article, I can see where you're coming
>> from. I personally would be very reluctant to, for instance, use
>> rootsweb to source a death date, because not only do we have the problem
>> of identifying *which* person of a given name is meant, but genealogy
>> sites include all the standard howlers, like descents traced to Julius
>> Caesar, which is only plausible if you don't realize how utterly corrupt
>> the primary sources are for the Dark Ages. The "California Death
>> Records" link comes up blank, the oldpoetry.com link has a single
>> unsourced line affecting to be written in the first person, post-mortem
>> ("I lived from 1887-1972.") - kind of spooky actually. So some of your
>> references illustrate well the reasons to be wary of primary sources.
>>
>
> No, they reflect your bias regarding those sources.  What you cite as
> spooky is simply the presentation style of a website.  What you write
> about the rootsweb site doesn't apply to the California Death Records,
> which are state records and not genealogical research which links me to
> Julius Caesar.  The rootsweb link is to show where I accessed the record
> from, not the source.  The source is the death record itself.  I'm open
> to hearing someone argue that I haven't used the source properly, but
> I'm not open to people declaring it is out of order because it was found
> on the web.
>
That's why I said "personally reluctant", not "against policy". After
thirty years of doing scholarship, I thought I was pretty savvy, but
even so have been caught out a bunch of times while working on WP. Just
recently I used a web article that looked good, and it cited four print
references, but then we got a note from the webmaster of the site that
he was pulling the article because it was inaccurate, and making claims
not separated by those references. Ironically, the corresponding de:
article is sourced from newspapers of the time, so now I'm planning a
little quality time in the microfilm department of the library to try to
sort it all out.

Despite all our warnings, people do take WP at face value; I found it
very sobering to see some of my early mistakes propagated onto websites
all over the net. Maybe I'm the only one bothered by that.
>> I bring these up not to try to disparage you, but because to me it's
>> what is interesting about scholarship and Wikipedia. Which sources of
>> information are good, which not so good, and why? If they're
>> inconsistent, which is true, or are they both true if you interpret in a
>> different way? I imagine that some day, if it hasn't already happened, a
>> heated talk-page argument over some factual detail will inspire an
>> expert to do some original research and then publish the findings -
>> which we can then incorporate into the article originally in dispute.
>>
>
> I find this somewhat at odds with your thrust up until this point.  It
> seems to me this debate started when I asserted that web sources have
> value since the OED uses them.  If it is not your intention to declare
> web sources as inappropriate, then I fail to see how we have ended up
> where we are.  And if you didn't intend to disparage me, then I fail to
> see what your edit history has to do with anything.  I'm quite capable
> of judging an argument on its merits, thanks, and would hope my argument
> would be judged similarly too.  Let's not forget, these are only
> opinions, not facts, and we shouldn't be basing strict rules on
> subjective opinions.  I'm of the opinion sourcing is a "horses for
> courses" issue.
>
My argument is that web sources *may* have value, but people need to
keep their hands on their wallets - we have a lot of editors getting
their pockets picked and they don't even know it. Have you ever looked
at the fine print in an unabridged OED? It's great stuff - those guys
know about not only the English language proper, but every other human
language, and all the historical context too. To them, a web usage is a
raw data point, just like somebody's diary, or graffiti seen on a subway
wall. You will never find an OED entry that cites a web page as an
authority, it will always be in quoted form, as an example of observed
usage. That is the crucial difference.

Stan


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

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

Tim Starling wrote:
> So do you want it or don't you? I'm not writing a visual editor right now,
> so unless anyone else wants to step forward, it's this or nothing. Will
> the extension be a help or a hindrance when we get around to
> revolutionising MediaWiki's ease of use?

It'll probably do for now, I just hate knowing we'll have to keep it
around forever for compatibility. ;)

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: theProject

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
On 1/5/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
>
> On 05/01/07, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We really should stop throwing that word "trolling" around... it can be
> very
> > offensive towards those who mean well.
>
> I thought the smiley in Ray's original post was a fairly strong and
> obvious hint that he wasn't trolling. Maybe we should start using
> humor warnings in addition to spoiler warnings.
>
> --
> Earle Martin
>             http://downlode.org/
> http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Don't we already have a humor warning? I thought it was this --> :-)

--
theProject


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
Any comments on this before I put it live everywhere?

docs: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ImageMap
demo: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageMap

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Category Intersections: "Proof of Concept Page"
	feedback, please?

body:
Hi All,
I was really hoping get some feedback on the performance of my proof of
concept intersections page at http://aerik.com/wikintersections.php  -
anybody?

This is using the MyISAM table with categories stored as words in one row
per page, fulltext indexed.  It was a bit faster and much more consistent on
my local machine, but I'd really like anybody interested in intersections to
throw queries at it and beat it up - see if this might be an efficient
enough solution for prime time.

Of course, some difficult to anticipate factors are that if category
intersections are adopted and become popular, we will likely see a movement
towards more implied categories ("Americans" and "Actors" instead of
"American Actors") and fewer deep categories.  I can imagine the effect this
will have on the index (fewer keywords with each having more entries).  I
think this works okay as "+Living_people
+Articles_with_unsourced_statements" (two very large catgories) performs
well.

Thanks,
Aerik

P.S. I've been testing this by clicking the links, then picking some other
existant article from the wikipedia entry at the previous intersection.  I
have a lot of noise in my result time, so in a pure form, I think the
approach is good with results often coming in in less than .5 seconds, but
sometimes the same query, or a query of similar complexity will come in at 2
seconds.  I don't know how to extrapolate this to a theory of how it would
perform on the live servers.


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] switching & resetting memcached servers

body:
I switched our memcached server to another server and now I'm seeing alot of
"Error parsing memcached response" errors, probably because the new cache
doesn't have the items the old cache had, for both images and message cache.

How can I reset the status in Mediawiki of the memcached server?

Thanks,
Travis


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> What is wrong with 'move on' as a form of dispute resolution? Beats
>> vendetta and vindictiveness any day.
>
> It's simply resolving the dispute by accepting defeat. In some cases,
> the dispute may be so trivial that it's easier to simply let the other
> person win, but not always.

Of course, when the offending party is the one saying "move on," it's just
as bad as saying "I don't really care if what I did bothered you, I didn't
do anything wrong."

-Jeff


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
On 05/01/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Any comments on this before I put it live everywhere?

I feel like a total doofus, but how do you give coordinates for four
corners (in rect) using four single numbers?? The order must be
significant, but the documentation doesn't say what it should be.
Likewise with poly, how are the numbers interpreted as coords exactly?

thanks,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


body:
Great, thanks for the tip. I initially installed memcached-1.2.1 on the new
server and that apparently doesn't work too well with MW 1.6.7. Switching
back to 1.1.3 seems to have fixed the problem.

Thanks,
Travis

On 1/5/07, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 05/01/07, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
> > I switched our memcached server to another server and now I'm seeing
> alot of
> > "Error parsing memcached response" errors, probably because the new
> cache
> > doesn't have the items the old cache had, for both images and message
> cache.
>
> If the cache doesn't contain the items, then it'll fail without errors
> and be re-cached; cache misses aren't an error condition in cases like
> this. I'm no expert, but I'd be inclined to suspect something else was
> wrong.
>
> I recall reading somewhere that this error starting turning up with a
> newer version of MediaWiki and an older version of memcached. Is it
> possible that the "other server" is running an older version?
>
> > How can I reset the status in Mediawiki of the memcached server?
>
> You shouldn't need to, see above.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
Congratulations !
Gerard

Mihai Floran schreef:
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


from_name: Marco Chiesa

body:
Congratulations!
Cruccone

Mihai Floran wrote:

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


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
Hoi,
I want to point out to all, that it says to provide the information for
free in perpetuity. It does not say anything at all about
advertisements, sponsorships or whatever. The implication is that first
and foremost the data is to be provided for FREE, the rest is thereby
fluff, nice fluff but fluff. It is not what we explicitly do.
Thanks,
   Gerard

Anthony schreef:
> "The Foundation will make and keep useful information from its
> projects available on the Internet free of charge, in perpetuity."
>
> If instead, this said "The Foundation will ensure that useful
> information from its projects is available on the Internet free of
> charge, in perpetuity.", it would give the projects more potential for
> independence.
>
> Anthony
>
> On 1/4/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> The currently proposed mission & vision statement of WMF are at:
>>
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mission/Unstable&oldid=485535
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vision/Unstable&oldid=470952
>>
>> I originally intended for us to have a community poll on these
>> statements once the open editing phase is complete. However, editing
>> and discussion activity on these statements have been minimal in spite
>> of repeated announcements. Would there be objections to the Board
>> simply ratifying these two statements as they are now?
>> --
>> Peace & Love,
>> Erik
>>
>> DISCLAIMER: This message does not represent an official position of
>> the Wikimedia Foundation or its Board of Trustees.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
On 05/01/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/4/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 05/01/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > > Any comments on this before I put it live everywhere?
> >
> > I feel like a total doofus, but how do you give coordinates for four
> > corners (in rect) using four single numbers?? The order must be
> > significant, but the documentation doesn't say what it should be.
> > Likewise with poly, how are the numbers interpreted as coords exactly?
>
> It's all specified in the HTML specifications:
> <http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#h-13.6>.  Rectangles
> are determined by just two points, and pair of opposing corners, so
> four numbers make sense for that.  More specifically: for rectangles
> it's left-x, top-y, right-x, bottom-y; for circles it's center-x,
> center-y, radius; and for polygons it's just the x, y coordinates of
> each point in turn.  All coordinates are relative to the top left
> pixel, which is 0, 0.

Oh, well why didn't I think to look there? :P

I actually guessed right, but was confused because it didn't appear to
work. I had my "default" line before my "rect" line, and then my rect
was ignored and just the default link applied everywhere. Is that
desirable?

cheers,
Brianna


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> I want to point out to all, that it says to provide the information for
> free in perpetuity. It does not say anything at all about
> advertisements, sponsorships or whatever.

Yep, it sure doesn't.

IOW, if you object to there ever being ads on Wikipedia, now is the
time to speak up, before the mission statement is adopted.

Speak now, or forever hold your peace.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: Christophe Henner

subject: [Foundation-l] 4 wishes for Year 2007

body:
Yeah it would be a good idea, a really good one as we already
translated all of those documents ^^

With the Anthere's new years mail, few things are missing, perhaps as
a chapter reports.

--
schiste


subject: [Foundation-l] 4 wishes for Year 2007


from_name: Keitei

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
On Jan 5, 2007, at 11:39, Thomas Dalton wrote:

>> I try to apply it all the time, but apparently it is a dying kind of
>> dispute resolution.
>
> It isn't a form of dispute resolution at all. You can't really forgive
> someone until they accept they did something wrong (well, I guess
> technically you can, but it doesn't achieve much), and once they've
> done that, the dispute is already resolved. All "forgive and forget"
> says is "once the dispute is resolved, move on, don't try and punish
> people for their mistakes".

Refusing to move on prolongs the dispute. Therefore, agreeing to move
on resolves any residual dispute that would be left. Thus, it is
dispute resolution. This isn't a content dispute sort of situation,
but rather disagreeing with others' behaviors.

Let's say Person A often says certain sorts of things, which, to
Person B, sound like personal attacks. Person B is offended and
infuriated and begins a vendetta against Person A. Person A says, I'm
sorry you took it that way; I didn't mean it like that. Person B has
two choices: go around the wiki proclaiming that Person A is uncivil,
never assumes good faith, and is racist; or forgive, forget, move on.

(This happens a lot.)


from_name: Rory Stolzenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
On 1/4/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Any comments on this before I put it live everywhere?
>
> docs: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ImageMap
> demo: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageMap
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

Is it a good idea to allow the user to not have the desc page link at all?
That's one of the reasons {{click}} is bad, since so many images are CC-BY
or GFDL and need the link to comply with the licenses.


from_name: Mihai Floran


subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>> Any comments on this before I put it live everywhere?
>
>> docs: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:ImageMap
>> demo: http://test.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImageMap
>
> Just the comment I already made at
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1227#c12
>
> "IMHO the extension's rather low-level and awkward. It works, but it's
> ugly, and as with too many of our fancy syntaxes and extensions it drops
> this big blob of incomprehensible _stuff_ directly into the text of the
> article using it, cluttering up the editor's view.
>
> What would be slicker would be if we can rig up a visual editor for the
> thingy; compare with adding notations to images on flickr.
>
> That might end up spitting back the same extension code, or we might
> integrate it more directly into the image page, or something else. (cf
> the long-ago talk of having a separate namespace for tables... man I
> wish we'd done that instead of what we did, it would make a lot of thing
> simpler)"

Yes, the user interface sucks. I was aiming with this extension to
implement image maps in a manner consistent with the rest of MediaWiki --
 a robust implementation but limited in scope. It sucks as much as
everything else we have.

So do you want it or don't you? I'm not writing a visual editor right now,
so unless anyone else wants to step forward, it's this or nothing. Will
the extension be a help or a hindrance when we get around to
revolutionising MediaWiki's ease of use?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Fri, Jan 05, 2007 at 05:01:45AM +0100, Erik Moeller wrote:
> - Within this budget, do you believe an alternative approach which
> utilizes an intermediate format is viable (e.g.
> wiki-to-Docbook-to-PDF), given the complexity of the MediaWiki syntax,
> its various extensions, and the need to keep up with parser changes?

Some work has already been done on this front; check the archives.
It's one of the reasons I encouraged MythTV to move from Moin to MW.

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


from_name: Łukasz Garczewski

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> I want to point out to all, that it says to provide the information for
> free in perpetuity. It does not say anything at all about
> advertisements, sponsorships or whatever. The implication is that first
> and foremost the data is to be provided for FREE, the rest is thereby
> fluff, nice fluff but fluff. It is not what we explicitly do.

Let me correct you on that: it most certainly does not say "for FREE".
What it says is "free of charge". Perhaps my command of English is not
good enough and I can't fully understand what that implies, but to me
at least placing an ad does not "charge" the viewer in any way.

Also, if it does not say something should/is to be done, that does not
have to mean it cannot be done. That's stretching it.

Please note that I am not trying to make a case for ads on Wikimedia
projects here. I do not have a firm opinion on whether we should
engage in that or not. I am simply pointing out something which, to
me, is reading something that isn't there.

--
?ukasz 'TOR' Garczewski


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
Hoi,
I am sorry if I was not clear. You have it exactly correct. What I try
to express is that getting our content out free of charge is what we aim
to do. It trumps considerations that do hamper our efforts. This does
not mean that we should keep our independence but getting our NPOV data
out is what is important, that is what we do.
Thanks,
    GerardM

?ukasz Garczewski schreef:
> On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> I want to point out to all, that it says to provide the information for
>> free in perpetuity. It does not say anything at all about
>> advertisements, sponsorships or whatever. The implication is that first
>> and foremost the data is to be provided for FREE, the rest is thereby
>> fluff, nice fluff but fluff. It is not what we explicitly do.
>>
>
> Let me correct you on that: it most certainly does not say "for FREE".
> What it says is "free of charge". Perhaps my command of English is not
> good enough and I can't fully understand what that implies, but to me
> at least placing an ad does not "charge" the viewer in any way.
>
> Also, if it does not say something should/is to be done, that does not
> have to mean it cannot be done. That's stretching it.
>
> Please note that I am not trying to make a case for ads on Wikimedia
> projects here. I do not have a firm opinion on whether we should
> engage in that or not. I am simply pointing out something which, to
> me, is reading something that isn't there.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


subject: [Foundation-l] 4 wishes for Year 2007

body:
On 1/5/07, Christophe Henner <christophe.henner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah it would be a good idea, a really good one as we already
> translated all of those documents ^^
>
> With the Anthere's new years mail, few things are missing, perhaps as
> a chapter reports.

I love the idea. But...

I wouldn't count on those (at least not all of them) before February,
and that's a rather optimistic assumption. ;) Since most of the report
form ChapCom uses for annual chapter reports is oh-so-boring (lotsa
legal stuff, bank details, executive body members, domains owned...
yuck, gives me a headache when I think I have to write one) what I
would want to see in Quarto are the three FUN things from those
reports: completed projects, current projects and future projects. :)

Those will need some selection and thought since not everything can be
released to the public (agreements in the making, etc.).

Please contact ChapCom, me or Delphine with a deadline on that. We'll
see what we can do. Maybe we can get a few out, if not all of them are
submitted on time.

--
?ukasz 'TOR' Garczewski


subject: [Foundation-l] 4 wishes for Year 2007


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
I try to apply it all the time, but apparently it is a dying kind of
dispute resolution.
The New York Times article that was recently cited says projects like
Wikipedia attract more and more trolls and other ill-intended people
as it grows. Those won't forgive, it's not disruptive enough...

Mgm

On 1/5/07, James Hare <messedrocker at gmail.com> wrote:
> I hate to be a linkspammer, but I think this is relevant to everyone:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Forgive_and_forget
>
> --James
> _______________________________________________
> 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] ImageMap extension

body:
Evan Martin wrote:
> Sorry again for what may be a naive question, but if you're going to
> use HTML semantics why not just use HTML?
>
> Any parser of wikitext at this point must understand HTML anyway, and
> doubly so for a renderer.  I appreciate that other wiki markup intends
> to make the text more human-friendly, but in this particular instance
> I suppose it's not really possible to make image coordinates human
> friendly, and the proposed syntax has a one-to-one correspondence with
> "more complicated" HTML but with a syntax nobody has seen before.

Mainly because HTML requires URLs. We don't use those. Also the HTML can
get quite complicated, for instance, on my test wiki, this:

<imagemap>
Image:Test1.jpg|thumb|200px|hello
rect 0 0 50 50 [[Image:Test1.jpg|test1]]
</imagemap>

becomes:

<map name="ImageMap_1"><area shape="rect"
href="/w2/index.php/Image:Test1.jpg"
coords="0,0,25.6313131313,25.6313131313" alt="test1" title="test1"
/></map>

hello

Using ImageMap you get all the complexity of MediaWiki image links for free.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Foundation-l] 4 wishes for Year 2007

body:
I already told delphine on irc. Audit has already been summaryzed in
french, anthere's letter transleted, and what wa need money for... Few
things are missing. I think once we have the chapcom reports and the
fundraiser results it should be fast to do :)
--
schiste


subject: [Foundation-l] 4 wishes for Year 2007


from_name: Jared Williams

subject:
[Wikitech-l] [Mediawiki-l] RfC: PDF and document management for
	MediaWiki

body:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: mediawiki-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
> [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Erik Moeller
> Sent: 05 January 2007 04:02
> To: Wikimedia developers; MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
> Subject: [Mediawiki-l] RfC: PDF and document management for MediaWiki
>
> I have identified an organization which is willing to spend up to
> about EUR 10,000 on adding support for exporting MediaWiki pages as
> PDF files, and improving document management for documents consisting
> of multiple pages.
>
> My current thinking is that the functionality implemented, as a
> minimum, would be as follows:
> a) Using an extension, integrate of a "PDF link" on any wiki page
> which would call an external library like HTMLDOC on a single wiki
> page
> b) Support filters on the rendered HTML (replacing image thumbnails
> with high resolution images, filter content by regular expression,
> etc.), and revision filters (export last revision edited by user on
> whitelist Y, or approximating currentdate-Z)
> c) Create a "PDF basket" UI which makes it possible to compile a PDF
> from multiple pages easily (and rearrange the pages in a hierarchy).
> The resulting structures could potentially also be stored as wikitext,
> using a new <structure> extension tag, so that they can be used both
> by individuals compiling PDFs for personal use, and by groups
> collaborating on complex documents.
>
> Possibly some budget could also be allocated for improving the
> external PDF library used, especially if we can allocate additional
> funds for this project.
>
> I'd like to request comments on this approach, specifically:
> - Besides HTMLDOC, do you know a good (X)HTML-to-PDF library which
> could be used for this purpose?

(X)HTML transformed with XSL to XSL-FO and then use Apache FOP for PDF
generation.

> - Within this budget, do you believe an alternative approach which
> utilizes an intermediate format is viable (e.g.
> wiki-to-Docbook-to-PDF), given the complexity of the MediaWiki syntax,
> its various extensions, and the need to keep up with parser changes?

The standard docbook tools perform the same process as above, but start with
DocBook which is transformed with XSL to XSL-FO.

Jared


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia jumps _into_ the top 10.

body:
For the first time, Wikipedia's one-day traffic rank has today hit 9,
its highest level ever.

Only 8 more to go.

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

-- Neil


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 05/01/07, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:

> For the first time, Wikipedia's one-day traffic rank has today hit 9,
> its highest level ever.
> Only 8 more to go.
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Remember that that's relative, not absolute. Here's our actual page
request stats:

http://www.nedworks.org/~mark/reqstats/reqstats-monthly.png

Note the *dip* over Christmas-New Year, just in time for the fundraiser ...

http://www.nedworks.org/~mark/reqstats/ is lots of interesting and
scary reading, btw :-)

- d.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

references:
<enk1qb$8e3$1@sea.gmane.org> <459D9B91.3010806@pobox.com>
	<enkbc3$oj2$1@sea.gmane.org> <8178106.post@talk.nabble.com>

body:
On 05/01/07, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's got my vote. Am I safe in thinking this might well be a good way to put
> the dreaded {{click}} template to rest?

That came to mind when I was messing about with it, too.

Rob Church


from_name: Dan Collins

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 14:10:00 +0000, Neil Harris
> <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> Only 8 more to go.
>
> Unlikely, unless we start offering free email or setting every copy of
> Windows to use Wikipedia as its default home page.
>
> Guy (JzG)
Well, let's go do that!

--
GnuPG key ID is 0x84189146 on subkeys.pgp.net

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body:
On 05/01/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> So here's what I've done in my working copy, soon to be committed:
> * Removed InitialiseMessages.inc and rebuildMessages.php
> * During upgrade, delete all pages in the MediaWiki namespace which were
> last modified by "MediaWiki default".
> * Reoptimised the message cache for the sparse MediaWiki namespace.
>
> The main message cache (i.e. the $wgDBname:messages key) will now be a
> faithful representation of the contents of the MediaWiki namespace,
> instead of (as it previously was) a representation of the contents of all
> messages. If a page does not exist, it will not have a message cache key.
>
> To solve the performance problems of having a small number of large items,
> any page which is larger than some threshold (10KB by default) will only
> have a placeholder stored in the main message cache, instead of the
> complete page text. The full contents of these items are stored separately
> in the cache.

Sounds good, but...

...will this in any way affect the means by which extensions have to
add messages to the Message Cache? Will the existing interfaces still
work, or do we now have to update all the code, 'cause I'm concerned
about people breaking backwards compatibility again.

Rob Church


from_name: Teun Spaans

body:
congrats!

On 1/5/07, Marco Chiesa <chiesa.marco at gmail.com> wrote:
> Congratulations!
> Cruccone
>
> Mihai Floran wrote:
>
> >_______________________________________________
> >foundation-l mailing list
> >foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> >
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Steve Block

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
>> How do we know reliable sources aren't lying.  Every newspaper and
>> source in town reports Colin Montgomerie holed the winning putt in the
>> 2004 Ryder Cup, but it isn't true, Ian Poulter struck the putt that
>> mathematically won the cup.  Monty's story simply made better press.  If
>> we do, as you say, withhold judgement on whether a source is correct,
>> why do you then say we can't use some sources because they may be lying.
>>   Obviously some judgement is at play.
>>
> Well, if the source is lying, then by definition it's not reliable. Your
> example is an object lesson in how newspapers are intermediate in
> reliability; they are usually better than Joe Random's blog, but not as
> good as a scholarly monograph that has had multiple layers of review
> spread over multiple years.

No, you haven't as yet stated how we define which source is telling the
"truth".  My understanding is that we don't do that.  If we don't do
that, it stands to reason we don't determine which source "lies", since
doing so indicates we have determined one source is telling the truth.
My understanding is that we weigh each source in relation to the topic,
and present it in a NPV.  This means we must judge whether the
information is relevant, not if it is true.  It is relevant to note that
Montgomerie is credited as hitting the winning putt.

> Seeing the references to that article, I can see where you're coming
> from. I personally would be very reluctant to, for instance, use
> rootsweb to source a death date, because not only do we have the problem
> of identifying *which* person of a given name is meant, but genealogy
> sites include all the standard howlers, like descents traced to Julius
> Caesar, which is only plausible if you don't realize how utterly corrupt
> the primary sources are for the Dark Ages. The "California Death
> Records" link comes up blank, the oldpoetry.com link has a single
> unsourced line affecting to be written in the first person, post-mortem
> ("I lived from 1887-1972.") - kind of spooky actually. So some of your
> references illustrate well the reasons to be wary of primary sources.

No, they reflect your bias regarding those sources.  What you cite as
spooky is simply the presentation style of a website.  What you write
about the rootsweb site doesn't apply to the California Death Records,
which are state records and not genealogical research which links me to
Julius Caesar.  The rootsweb link is to show where I accessed the record
from, not the source.  The source is the death record itself.  I'm open
to hearing someone argue that I haven't used the source properly, but
I'm not open to people declaring it is out of order because it was found
on the web.

But this reflects something that annoys me on Wikipedia.  Far too often
people seem to be insisting that all articles be perfect all of the
time.  Now that was my first edit.  Compare that to some of the articles
deleted as speedies from first time contributors, and I'd say it's of
some value.  Wikipedia didn't have an article on Helen Hoyt before that
edit.  After it, it did.  Has Wikipedia improved because of my edit?
I'd argue it has.  Now people can come and look at the article, look at
the sources and decide for themselves what they want to take away from
it.  And I thought that's what we did.  And I too "did that because I
read it on a policy page"  although I think it was only semi policy back
then.

But to be honest, I didn't bring that example up to discuss the sources,
I brought it up to counter your attempt to assume some sort of moral
high ground on sourcing based on your editing style.  I have also
typically added sources to any material I add, and so I don't see that
you have any such high ground, nor do you have any right to characterise
my contributions to Wikipedia as anything less than yours, or to
question my commitment to the project.  This is a collaborative project,
and that means even the rules we work under beyond the foundation issues
and board edicts, are created collaboratively, and it tires me to be
told by people that maybe I should leave by people who disagree with me.
  I find that unhelpful and counter to the spirit of Wikipedia.

I am honest about my sourcing, and relate what I read in it, as anyone
else does.  I am happy to discuss that reading and those sources and I
am happy to concede I may read too much at times, or not present the
information as best as possible.  Look at today's featured article, an
article I slogged my guts out on, and tell me again I should reconsider
my contributions to Wikipedia.

> I bring these up not to try to disparage you, but because to me it's
> what is interesting about scholarship and Wikipedia. Which sources of
> information are good, which not so good, and why? If they're
> inconsistent, which is true, or are they both true if you interpret in a
> different way? I imagine that some day, if it hasn't already happened, a
> heated talk-page argument over some factual detail will inspire an
> expert to do some original research and then publish the findings -
> which we can then incorporate into the article originally in dispute.

I find this somewhat at odds with your thrust up until this point.  It
seems to me this debate started when I asserted that web sources have
value since the OED uses them.  If it is not your intention to declare
web sources as inappropriate, then I fail to see how we have ended up
where we are.  And if you didn't intend to disparage me, then I fail to
see what your edit history has to do with anything.  I'm quite capable
of judging an argument on its merits, thanks, and would hope my argument
would be judged similarly too.  Let's not forget, these are only
opinions, not facts, and we shouldn't be basing strict rules on
subjective opinions.  I'm of the opinion sourcing is a "horses for
courses" issue.

--
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from_name: James Hare

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
The problem with advertising on Wikipedia is that it presents a conflict
with our real mission: to provide neutral information to the peoples. In
contrast, the goal of advertising is to feed one-sided information to people
in a very flashy way. Showing only half the picture is what leads to
conflict: people think Americans are ignorant pigdogs when there are some
very intelligent Americans. Keyword-based ads would be terrible in this
sense: in an article about fertilizers, if there is a Miracle-Gro ad, it is
giving them unfairly better representation.

Now, we could counter this by linking to the relevant Wikipedia article
-next- to the advertisment. What if something non-notable were to be
advertised? Then there would be no article...

On 1/5/07, Teun Spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Anthony,
>
> what, according to you, is the place to speak up?
>
> I have considered this mailinglist as the place to speak up, anywhere
> else?
>
> teun
>
> On 1/5/07, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Hoi,
> > > I want to point out to all, that it says to provide the information
> for
> > > free in perpetuity. It does not say anything at all about
> > > advertisements, sponsorships or whatever.
> >
> > Yep, it sure doesn't.
> >
> > IOW, if you object to there ever being ads on Wikipedia, now is the
> > time to speak up, before the mission statement is adopted.
> >
> > Speak now, or forever hold your peace.
> >
> > Anthony
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Neil Harris [mailto:usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk]
>Sent: Friday, January 5, 2007 07:10 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia jumps _into_ the top 10.
>
>For the first time, Wikipedia's one-day traffic rank has today hit 9,
>its highest level ever.
>
>Only 8 more to go.
>
>http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
>
>-- Neil

Just a fluke, our reach was below 60,000. Sites above us are having trouble. We do seem to have passed ebay though.

Fred


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deletionism

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
>> There's nothing wrong with deleting articles, as long as attempts have been
>> made to clean them up, or solve their problem some other way. A lot of
>> articles that are nominated for deletion can be rescued by renaming, merging
>> or simply adding a line to claim notability.
>>
> Observing that would cut down the arguing.
>
>> I'm not trying to step on the toes of the editors involved in this, but take
>> for example the article on Michael Perham who became the youngest sailor to
>> cross the Atlantic. That's clearly notable, but the article was deleted
>> because it stated "he was believed to become the youngest person to cross
>> the Atlantic".
>>
> The youngest verifiable person to cross the Atlantic was probably a baby
> during early colonial days. ;-)
>

Did they do it solo, unassisted, etc? Please, stop trolling.

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

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body:
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
> Steve Block wrote
>
>> charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com wrote:
>>> Steve Block wrote
>>>
>>>> Bogdan Giusca wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Maybe I spent too much time editing history articles, where the source
>>>>> credibility matters, but accepting blog/forum/usenet posts as valid
>>>>> sources would be a great mistake, IMO.
>>>> Go tell it to the Oxford English Dictionary then.
>>> The OED does English language usage; we do reference material. Comment has no merit.
>
>> Go list Featured article Spoo for deletion then.
>
> Why? You made a global argument based on a ropey comparison. I happen to think 'reliable sources' needs a bit of modulation according to topic area. But even within "blog/forum/usenet posts", in areas where there is some validity in what is posted, these sources are not generally acceptable, and it is at best a gold-panning exercise.

No, you made a "global argument based on a ropey comparison".  I
responded in kind. If you don't think "accepting blog/forum/usenet posts
as valid sources would be a great mistake", don't say it.  If you do,
have the decency to explain why in the face of evidence to the contrary.
  As to the gold-panning exercise, it is my understanding of the way
Wikipedia works that that is precisely what we do on Wikipedia.  It's a
resource assembled collectively by anyone.  That to me implies there is
gold panning involved, as editors weigh other people's contributions for
value.  I apologise if my tone was more cantankerous than necessary, but
I would still appreciate it if we could avoid bandying about absolutes,
especially if we don't generally mean them.  I've said elsewhere it's a
horse for courses issue, and I still believe it is.  I don't think we
can consider Wikipedia as being entirely based on history practises any
more than we can OED practises.  But I think where appropriate, we
should consider those practises.

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.6/617 - Release Date: 05/01/07 11:11


references:
<enlnmo$69l$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<e92136380701050638gf16de49t31000dc477bc3b6a@mail.gmail.com>
	<enlpp5$hv4$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 05/01/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The only interface change is that I've renamed getFromCache() to the more
> accurate getMsgFromNamespace(), but that function was implicitly private.
> Anything that accesses $wgMessageCache->mCache directly will be broken.
> But the usual public interfaces such as addMessages() and get() are preserved.
>
> I'm usually pretty careful these days to maintain interface compatibility,
> but it was no challenge this time around, since the code changes are
> fairly minimal.

Excellent, thanks very much.

Rob Church


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Adding Users?

body:
On 1/5/07, Mike O <mikeo at operamail.com> wrote:
> Sorry if this is a really easy question, but how can sysops add new accounts to MediaWiki if public creation of accounts is disabled? Is there some hidden link, or extension available? I don't see anythign relevant under Special Pages.

Special:Userlogin


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> I do not know if you observe when people watch watch television, but
> people go to the toilet when there is an advertisement break. People
> tape a program and fastforward the ads. The notion that ads provide
> information is vastly overrated. Advertisements are typically ignored.

Look. Ads obviously work. That's why so much money is spent on them.

Claiming that people just ignore ads is fatuous.

 Ads influence people. Please don't pretend otherwise.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


subject: [Wikitech-l] How Wikipedia deal with MySQL replication delay?

body:
On 05/01/07, howard chen <howachen at gmail.com> wrote:
> I suppose the problem should be quite obvious...
>
> any technique deal with this kind of delay?

Yes, the software itself. MediaWiki's load balancer is quite clever,
in that it will pick a slave server which isn't too lagged, and make
that available for read requests...our maintenance scripts will also
wait for production servers to catch up when running large operations.

You might want to look at includes/LoadBalancer.php and
includes/Database.php, although most of the intelligence exists in the
former.

Rob Church


from_name: Raimond Spekking

subject: [Wikitech-l] ImageMap extension

references:
<enk1qb$8e3$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<459D9B91.3010806@pobox.com>	<enkbc3$oj2$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<8178106.post@talk.nabble.com>

body:
Phil Boswell schrieb:
> It's got my vote. Am I safe in thinking this might well be a good way to put
> the dreaded {{click}} template to rest?

A very good point. Tim please put the extension live asap. Thanks for
your work :-)

Raymond.

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from_name: Samuel Wantman

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Category Intersections: "Proof of Concept Page"
 feedback please? (Aerik Sylvan)

body:
Aerik,

Very interesting, but what puzzling results.  I tried intersections of some
of the largest categories I could think of and got wildly different
results.  The first time I tried American actors intersected with Living
people the results took 1.5 seconds the next time I tried it it was 0.0011
seconds.  What does this mean?  Is the long result because of server
traffic?  Is the short result close to the time that it actually took?  Are
the results being cached?  Also, the intersection of large categories with
numerous articles common to both seems to take longer than categories of
similar size with no common articles.  This is not what I expected.  If you
are just looking for the first 30 results, I'd expect the first case to be
faster.  The second has to look through the entire category for a match.

My question to developers is what is the criteria for an acceptable
solution?  How much time can an intersection be allowed to take?  How often
do we think people will be looking for intersections?  Can we save the
results of a popular intersections (like American people intersected with
Actors) so that the intersection is updated less frequently?

User:Rick Block, User:Radiant! and I have been discussing ways to optimize
or limit intersections so that server load will be less of a problem and
hopefully doable.  Please see our discussions at [[en:User
talk:Radiant!]]  Also, if anyone hasn't seen it, we've done quite a bit of
work on possible user interfaces.  These are at [[en:Wikikpedia:Category
intersection]].

There are many ways intersections can be constrained to put less of a load
on the servers.  I'm hoping that we can implement this at some level
soon.  The categorization system is being turned into a database search
system.  Instead of having broad rich indexes for each category, everything
is being chopped into tiny bits.  Look at [[:Category:Battles of the
American Civil War]] for an example of this.  The battles have been broken
into so many tiny pieces that there is no way to browse through all of
them.  It is becoming harder to browse through many topics and
over-categorization is increasing.  Implementing category intersection will
mean that users will be able to browse through categories at whatever level
of specificity they desire.  The longer we wait for this to be implemented,
the more broken up categories will become (at least on en: German Wikipedia
doesn't seem to have this problem).

Thanks, and keep up the great work.

Samuel Wantman
[[en:User:SamuelWantman]]


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
I've discovered that the fruit of Dispute resolution actually
inhibits editors who once in the process, from building voluntary
cooperative relationships and collaborative writing with diverse
perspectives.  Earned me another ban.  But who gives a crap or actually
wants to write an encyclopedia?

nobs


body:
On 05/01/07, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
> I switched our memcached server to another server and now I'm seeing alot of
> "Error parsing memcached response" errors, probably because the new cache
> doesn't have the items the old cache had, for both images and message cache.

If the cache doesn't contain the items, then it'll fail without errors
and be re-cached; cache misses aren't an error condition in cases like
this. I'm no expert, but I'd be inclined to suspect something else was
wrong.

I recall reading somewhere that this error starting turning up with a
newer version of MediaWiki and an older version of memcached. Is it
possible that the "other server" is running an older version?

> How can I reset the status in Mediawiki of the memcached server?

You shouldn't need to, see above.

Rob Church


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
Why do people put so much weight on Alexa's rankings? It's based on
very biased self selecting sample...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
> I try to apply it all the time, but apparently it is a dying kind of
> dispute resolution.

It isn't a form of dispute resolution at all. You can't really forgive
someone until they accept they did something wrong (well, I guess
technically you can, but it doesn't achieve much), and once they've
done that, the dispute is already resolved. All "forgive and forget"
says is "once the dispute is resolved, move on, don't try and punish
people for their mistakes".


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
"Thomas Dalton" wrote

> Why do people put so much weight on Alexa's rankings? It's based on
> very biased self selecting sample...

Short answer: it's a good indicator of trend. Especially that you can now apply smoothing to the stats.

Actually something weird appears to have been happening, with all the Chinese portals going up and down at the end of 2006. (WP went right down, and was running slow: China was going up.) The fact that one can see such effects suggests that Alexa rankings are sensitive to some tidal movements. What you cannot conclude is that the whole system is correctly calibrated. But it seems to me that it is possible to read these runes.

Charles

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subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement

body:
On 1/5/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hoi,
> It is nice to be insulted with a word that I do not know .. Thank you.

Not trying to insult you, though I guess fatuous is a bit strong. I did mean
it in the "delusive", not "inanely foolish" sense. Wiktionary is missing
that definition.

When you read what I wrote, you will find that they are TYPICALLY
> ignored. You would also read in the part that you did not bother to copy
> that often a better deal can be had by not being lazy and by thinking
> about what there is to buy.

It's a mistake to believe that ads are typically ignored. Again, ads work
because they influence people. Ads typically do not motivate people to
direct action (at least percentagewise) but they do inevitably influence
people.

Now that we have exchanged pleasantries, the point I make is not that it
> has no effect it has little effect. Another point that I l make is that
> the Wikimedia Foundation can be much more effective when it had a bigger
> budget. Given the growth rate of all our projects, our need for money
> will increase even when we only want to continue to provide the level of
> service that we do.

One would hope that the need for money will not grow disproportionately to
the growth in audience. In fact, there should be economies of scale.

Given that many people in Europe do not know Wikipedia, given that we
> have not really made an impact in Africa, Asia and South America I do
> argue that we have not scratched the service of what we aim to do. The
> fact that only the English Wikipedia has more than a million articles
> proves to me that Wikipedia is still very much a rich man's game.
>

That's an interesting conclusion but hardly the only one that can be drawn.

We do
> not have the organisational infrastructure to do well in many languages.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "well".

One thing to recognize is that Wikipedia is part of the Web -- if the reach
of the Web in particular regions of the world is limited in certain ways,
that will limit the effectiveness and growth of those language's Wikipedias.

The point is that we need much more money than we have.

That's your argument. It's not prima facie true. We'd certainly *like* much
more money, but need?

The aim of the
> foundation is to bring information to everyone. We do not do as good a
> job as we could. This is the argument that is not addressed when people
> are rabidly against advertisements. Even when like in the Virgin Unite
> case that organisation does not sell a thing. The problem I have with
> this blanket anti add attitude is that it has little to do with our aims

In your opinion. If, for example, you accept that ads influence people, then
it's not too far to conclude that they unavoidably violate NPOV.


subject: [Foundation-l] Mission/Vision Statement


subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
"Thomas Dalton"

> > I try to apply it all the time, but apparently it is a dying kind of
> > dispute resolution.
>
> It isn't a form of dispute resolution at all. You can't really forgive
> someone until they accept they did something wrong (well, I guess
> technically you can, but it doesn't achieve much), and once they've
> done that, the dispute is already resolved. All "forgive and forget"
> says is "once the dispute is resolved, move on, don't try and punish
> people for their mistakes".

What is wrong with 'move on' as a form of dispute resolution? Beats vendetta and vindictiveness any day.

I begin to think 'Njal's Saga' should be required reading for those concerned with Wikipedia disputes. Here's a short version (spoiler warning: look away now).

Starts with brothers H and H and a Queen of Norway.

Much later: spectacular murders of almost unrelated G and N in their homes.

Much later again: F and K, representing the two feuding sides, and almost the only ones left standing, say 'to hell with it'.

Charles

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subject: [WikiEN-l] West Ham players: copyvio

body:
I have been alerted to a claim of systematic copyvio on pages of players from West Ham, the London football club. This concerns copying from Tony Hogg, "Who's Who of West Ham United" (2000). I have no specifics, but this may well be true.

Could someone in the know look at [[Category:Category:West Ham United F.C. players]], and determine if this is a well founded beef?

Charles

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from_name: Matthew Flaschen

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Category Intersections: "Proof of Concept Page"
 feedback, please?

body:
Aerik Sylvan wrote:
> Hi All,
> I was really hoping get some feedback on the performance of my proof of
> concept intersections page at http://aerik.com/wikintersections.php  -
> anybody?

The performance was acceptable to me on most of the tests I did.  A few
outliers came in over 4 seconds,

> Of course, some difficult to anticipate factors are that if category
> intersections are adopted and become popular, we will likely see a movement
> towards more implied categories ("Americans" and "Actors" instead of
> "American Actors")

This is why people want the intersections, so the system should be able
to scale efficiently enough for it.

Matthew Flaschen

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
> What is wrong with 'move on' as a form of dispute resolution? Beats vendetta and vindictiveness any day.

It's simply resolving the dispute by accepting defeat. In some cases,
the dispute may be so trivial that it's easier to simply let the other
person win, but not always.


list: commons-l

from_name: silvia

subject: [Commons-l] unsubscrition !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: <commons-l-request at wikimedia.org>
To: <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2007 5:09 PM
Subject: Commons-l Digest, Vol 20, Issue 2

> Send Commons-l mailing list submissions to
> commons-l at wikimedia.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> commons-l-request at wikimedia.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
> commons-l-owner at wikimedia.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Commons-l digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: Anglo-Saxonisation of the commons (jfulrich at mailaka.net)
>   2. Re: English Wikipedia (jfulrich at mailaka.net)
>   3. Category renaming (was: Anglo-Saxonisation of the commons)
>      (Robin Schwab)
>   4. Re: UI design on image pages (Fredrik Josefsson)
>   5. Re: UI design on image pages (David Monniaux)
>   6. Re: UI design on image pages (Andre Engels)
>   7. Re: UI design on image pages (Fredrik Josefsson)
>   8. Re: UI design on image pages (Gregory Maxwell)
>   9. Re: UI design on image pages (David Monniaux)
>  10. Re: UI design on image pages (David Gerard)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2007 01:28:17 -0000
> From: jfulrich at mailaka.net
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Anglo-Saxonisation of the commons
> To: commons-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <380-2200713312817223 at mailaka.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> I agree.
>
>                Laleena
>
> ---- Original Message ----
> From: bastique at bellsouth.net
> To: commons-l at wikimedia.org
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Anglo-Saxonisation of the commons
> Date: Mon, 1 Jan 2007 21:16:03 -0500
>
>>It must have been a mental infarction.  Galleries are done using
>>native
>>language and redirects.  Categories have generally been done in
>>English.
>>
>>~~~~ (Cary)
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
>>> [mailto:commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org]On Behalf Of Brianna
>>Laugher
>>> Sent: Monday, January 01, 2007 7:43 PM
>>> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
>>> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] Anglo-Saxonisation of the commons
>>>
>>>
>>> On 02/01/07, Cary Bass <bastique at bellsouth.net> wrote:
>>> > I am fairly certain that the policy on Commons is that cities and
>>other
>>> > localities are in the native language.  Therefore M?nchen and
>>Praha are
>>> > absolutely correct and the categories must be fixed.
>>>
>>> No...
>>> did you ever notice [[category:??]] ? (or even worse, maybe
>>> [[category:transport in ??]]?)
>>>
>>> Nobody likes enforcing English-only categories to further
>>Anglo-saxon
>>> supremism or the like, but until we have proper category
>>redirects...
>>>
>>> regards,
>>> Brianna
>>> user:pfctdayelise
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Commons-l mailing list
>>> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>>>
>>> --
>>> No virus found in this incoming message.
>>> Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>>> Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.2/613 - Release Date:
>>> 1/1/2007 2:50 PM
>>>
>>--
>>No virus found in this outgoing message.
>>Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>>Version: 7.5.432 / Virus Database: 268.16.2/613 - Release Date:
>>1/1/2007
>>2:50 PM
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Commons-l mailing list
>>Commons-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2007 01:30:21 -0000
> From: jfulrich at mailaka.net
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] English Wikipedia
> To: commons-l at wikimedia.org
> Message-ID: <380-2200713313021909 at mailaka.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
> Any issues on Wikipedia that need correcting?
>
>
>
>
>
>
>                             LaleenaWiki
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2007 22:58:12 +0100
> From: Robin Schwab <contact at robinschwab.ch>
> Subject: [Commons-l] Category renaming (was: Anglo-Saxonisation of the
> commons)
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <459C26F3.5040705 at robinschwab.ch>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> In the recent days I noticed an increase in conflicts about category
> renaming. Two cases: Category:Churches_in_Italy (and others) and
> Category:Cities_and_villages_by_country
>
> I think we would benefit from a formalized system for category
> renamings. The damage is enormous if a well working category tree gets
> destroyed or damaged. Currently all places worldwide are categorized as
> cities independent of their size!
>
> An idea could be that there must be a deletion request for the category
> to be moved. What do you think of this?
>
> Regards
>
> Robin
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 01:15:55 +0100 (CET)
> From: Fredrik Josefsson <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se>
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages
> To: bawolff+wn at gmail.com, Wikimedia Commons Discussion List
> <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <454826.19789.qm at web23011.mail.ird.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>
>
> bawolff <bawolff+wn at gmail.com> skrev:  Why not just edit stuff in the
> [[mediawiki:*]] namespace to make the
> uploader field more prominent in the file history? Whomever uploaded
> it is usually the author, and you don't need users to do the "right
> thing" its automatic.
>
> -bawolff
>
>  It is difficult to implement this, as the developers have told me.
>
>  I do think that if we want to develop this free stuff concept, our
> software needs to be more user friendly. Wikipedia is getting big, but  it
> is still too complicated for ordinary people to do things that  should be
> simple, such as uploading files.
>
>  The upload form which requires the user to copy and paste a template is
> not something I'd expect every user to understand (for example my
> grandparents, but maybe not my parents either). And the current  language
> translation of template is hardly optimal.
>
>  Fredrik.
>
> __________________________________________________
> Anv?nder du Yahoo!?
> ?r du tr?tt p? spam?  Yahoo! E-post har det b?sta spamskyddet som finns
> http://se.mail.yahoo.com
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2007 08:48:17 +0100
> From: David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr>
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
> Cc: bawolff+wn at gmail.com
> Message-ID: <459CB141.4000006 at free.fr>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Fredrik Josefsson a ?crit :
>> I do think that if we want to develop this free stuff concept, our
>> software needs to be more user friendly. Wikipedia is getting big, but
>> it is still too complicated for ordinary people to do things that
>> should be simple, such as uploading files.
> This is not necessarily a bad thing, since many many people out there
> seem to have very inaccurate ideas of copyright and other issues related
> to images. This is not YouTube.
>
> -- DM
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 15:00:36 +0100
> From: "Andre Engels" <andreengels at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages
> To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <6faf39c90701040600y478f6b89j32177350d98e09f7 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> 2007/1/4, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr>:
>>
>> Fredrik Josefsson a ?crit :
>> > I do think that if we want to develop this free stuff concept, our
>> > software needs to be more user friendly. Wikipedia is getting big, but
>> > it is still too complicated for ordinary people to do things that
>> > should be simple, such as uploading files.
>> This is not necessarily a bad thing, since many many people out there
>> seem to have very inaccurate ideas of copyright and other issues related
>> to images. This is not YouTube.
>>
>
> Unless you give me evidence that the people who have problems with our
> software are the same people who have problems with copyright, this is an
> extremely bad way to tackle this (admittedly large) problem.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> -------------- next part --------------
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>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 15:28:06 +0100 (CET)
> From: Fredrik Josefsson <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se>
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <20070104142806.65783.qmail at web23015.mail.ird.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
>
>
> --- Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> skrev:
>
>> 2007/1/4, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr>:
>> >
>> > Fredrik Josefsson a ?crit :
>> > > I do think that if we want to develop this free
>> stuff concept, our
>> > > software needs to be more user friendly.
>> Wikipedia is getting big, but
>> > > it is still too complicated for ordinary people
>> to do things that
>> > > should be simple, such as uploading files.
>
>> > This is not necessarily a bad thing, since many
>> many people out there
>> > seem to have very inaccurate ideas of copyright
>> and other issues related
>> > to images. This is not YouTube.
>> >
>>
>> Unless you give me evidence that the people who have
>> problems with our
>> software are the same people who have problems with
>> copyright, this is an
>> extremely bad way to tackle this (admittedly large)
>> problem.
>
> I was also surprised to see a reply implying that it
> would solve copyright problems to have a complicated
> interface. From what I've seen, even good intended
> contributors initially find it difficult to get
> everything right when they are uploading files.
>
> Fredrik
>
> __________________________________________________
> Anv?nder du Yahoo!?
> ?r du tr?tt p? spam?  Yahoo! E-post har det b?sta spamskyddet som finns
> http://se.mail.yahoo.com
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 8
> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 10:50:02 -0500
> From: "Gregory Maxwell" <gmaxwell at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages
> To: bawolff+wn at gmail.com, "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List"
> <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <e692861c0701040750k72e238bfv8124a9666f645bba at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> Whomever uploaded is usually the author?
> On commons? What data is this claim based on?
>
> I wish it were true but I'm not sure that it is...
>
> On 12/30/06, bawolff <bawolff+wn at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Why not just edit stuff in the [[mediawiki:*]] namespace to make the
>> uploader field more prominent in the file history? Whomever uploaded
>> it is usually the author, and you don't need users to do the "right
>> thing" its automatic.
>>
>> -bawolff
>> _______________________________________________
>> Commons-l mailing list
>> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 9
> Date: Thu, 04 Jan 2007 17:02:41 +0100
> From: David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr>
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages
> To: Wikimedia Commons Discussion List <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID: <459D2521.1010002 at free.fr>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Fredrik Josefsson wrote:
>
>>I was also surprised to see a reply implying that it
>>would solve copyright problems to have a complicated
>>interface. From what I've seen, even good intended
>>contributors initially find it difficult to get
>>everything right when they are uploading files.
>>
> I was referring to the claim that a bad user interface is the reason why
> the Foundation and others get requests for reuse of images or text.
>
> In my humble opinion, this has little to do with user interface and
> rather more to do with habits.
>
> People have been told to request permission from the web site before
> reusing content. Even though our page say that you can reuse content
> under the terms of <link to GFDL or CC or whatever>, people assume they
> must email those who run the site, that is, the Foundation.
>
> I don't see how rearranging the user interface will change anything to
> this. And I must say, the user interface at Flickr is even less clear
> with respect to image reuse rights.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 10
> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2007 16:09:19 +0000
> From: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Commons-l] UI design on image pages
> To: "Wikimedia Commons Discussion List" <commons-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
> <fbad4e140701040809w41124d7eg4f2e6b26cf18ebf7 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 04/01/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
>
>> I was referring to the claim that a bad user interface is the reason why
>> the Foundation and others get requests for reuse of images or text.
>> In my humble opinion, this has little to do with user interface and
>> rather more to do with habits.
>
>
> No, in the case I was speaking of they knew it was a PD image scanned
> from a book, they were trying to track down a better copy. I said
> "well, the original uploader is the one with that." "Who's that on the
> page?" "See there?" "... no ..."
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
> End of Commons-l Digest, Vol 20, Issue 2
> ****************************************
>
>


body:
> Short answer: it's a good indicator of trend.

It's a good indicator of trend within a small subset of internet
users. How do you know they are representative of everyone? I doubt
they are.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Forgive and forget

body:
> Of course, when the offending party is the one saying "move on," it's just
> as bad as saying "I don't really care if what I did bothered you, I didn't
> do anything wrong."

The offending party can't move on, they can say "move on", but if the
person that is accusing them doesn't want to move on, there is nothing
the offending party can do about it.


subject: [Foundation-l] alternatives

body:
hi Anthere,

I just posted you request for a volunteer to email the clones in the pub.

There also have been a number of reactions. User:Taka gave the longest reaction:
1) The legal risk statement raised a question: which legal risks do we
run by publishing data on dvd or in books? (supposing we do a good
check to prevent copyvios)
2) News agents and others: this might raise money if we could offer
them some stable version which has been scanned for vandalism. Call it
premum content.
3) The people considered fanpedia as one of the most promising ideas,
as it would solve several problems at once. First, wikipedia is known
and rightly mocked for its endless series of articles on Star Wars,
The Lord of the Rings, We Just produced Our First Albums bands, and
the favourite soap-of-the-day. The wikis could still have articles on
the major ones, but all articles of the bandmembers, the actors in the
soap, the separate articles of TLotR characters could all be moved to
fanpedia. It would raise the prestige of wikipedia.  Second, most of
the images which get routinely uploaded and removed are fanstuff. The
english wiki is rightly trying to get rid of them, and on the Dutch
wiki they are always listed as a copyvio (though we do have a backlog
of stuff from before 1-9-2005). But there is a desparate need among
the others to illustrate their articles, something which currnetly
simply can not be done. A fanpedia could solve both problems. You did
not comment on this idea, could you please let us know what you think
of it?

kind regards,
teun spaans

On 1/3/07, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Teun Spaans wrote:
> > On 1/2/07, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Teun Spaans wrote:
> >>
> >>>A number of people answered this call. A summary of ideas from the dutch pub:
> >>>* save money on bandwith by symplfying html. - however, I checked and
> >>>html seems already pretty lean.
> >>>* Save discspace by deleting older versions of articles - probably
> >>>contradicts GFDL.
> >>>* Make lists of charities. Foundation board is probably already doing this.
> >>
> >>** I remember seeing such a list from Danny. But yes, that's something
> >>we should work on.
> >>
> >>
> >>>* There were a number of people who suggested running selected commercial ads.
> >>>* Distributed storage - technically probably not yet feasible
> >>>* Grid computing
> >>>* Publish thematical information as commercial books
> >>
> >>** legal risk associated with publishing (same for dvd below), but we
> >>can have others publish or sell them, and get royalties. Hopefully, a
> >>deal will soon be signed up on this matter, which I hope we can generalized.
> >>
> >>
> >>>* Sell dvds, either whole encyclopedia or thematical
> >>>* Make deals with clones or block them
> >>
> >>There are a handful of such deals. Just a handful.
> >
> >
> > Perhaps we can approach the others?
>
> Absolutely !
> Our general approach until now has been not to bug the sites which are
> obviously "non profit" type, dedicated to education.
> As for the obvious mirrors-for-money, yeah, we can approach them and
> propose them a datafeed.
>
> A template for such suggestion has been done a few months ago. It is
> useable on OTRS. Do you have access to OTRS ? If not, OTRS members can
> certainly provide you the template. It would be great someone (a
> community volunteer) take the time to contact all "big" languages and
> try to identify lists of major commercial mirrors. Maybe coordinate
> contact of these mirrors and to suggest them datafeeds.
> If there is a no, contact the developers to get these mirrors blocked.
> The Foundation does have a template contract to propose afterwards, so
> this will be easy to handle (a bit of Brad or Danny time though).
> The datafeed must get activated, which requires more or less work.
> Usually done by Brion (slows down other features development, nothing
> perfect).
>
> But yes, feasible.
> Mostly need coordinators in the biggest languages. Web hunting to
> identify major commercial mirrors. Then contacting them. Foundation can
> take in charge administrative and technical follow up.
>
> Ant
>
> >>>* Same for news agencies
> >>
> >>Not sure I see how it would bring money. How so ?
> >
> > I'll ask the user who posted this. David Gerard is probably right that
> > wikinews has to pick up   a bit more before this will work.
> >
> >
> >>>* Make bio info available for pda's. A lot easier to carry around than
> >>>field guides
> >>
> >>Same question. Making it available only against a payment ?
> >
> > If it requires a special format, we might consider that.
> >
> >
> >>>* Asks subsidies from UN, EU and individual states.
> >>
> >>Some expressed concerns with regards to independance. Limitations on
> >>this very topic is mostly lack of human resources to make the requests.
> >>Volunteers welcome.
> >
> > I admit that these concerns are much more legitimate than when we have
> > a broad array of companies which advertise.
> >
> >>>* Be more selective in accepting articles
> >>>* Much of what we have is fancruft, and it seems fairly popular. Move
> >>>all fanstuff to a separate project, outside wikipedia. Call if
> >>>fanpedia or something. Let this project be more liberal in its
> >>>acceptance of media, and let this project accept advertisements. This
> >>>could probably support all wiki projects.
> >>>* If images cost to much bandwidth, put a limit of 3 images / article.
> >>
> >>I cant estimate the interest of technical suggestions.
> >>thanks for the feedback
> >
> > Neither can I. But in the dutch pub I can ask the user who suggested
> > there was opensource software for grid compunting, if Brion thinks it
> > may be interesting.
> >
> > Thank you for listening and commenting. I'll post a translation in the
> > appropriate thread in the pub of the Dutch wiki.
> >
> > teun
> >
> >
> >>ant
> >>
> >>
> >>>teun
> >>>
> >>>On 12/29/06, Jeff V. Merkey <jmerkey at wolfmountaingroup.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Old Chinese proverb:
> >>>>
> >>>>"... no matter how loud the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it ..."
> >>>>
> >>>>mountain = foundation
> >>>>wind = people whining.
> >>>>
> >>>>:-)
> >>>>
> >>>>Jeff
> >>>>
> >>>>effe iets anders wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>Hi all,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Lots of people are yelling and shouting that the current vision and policy
> >>>>>of the foundation is totally wrong. I would like to invite all these people
> >>>>>and others to think about alternatives. We won't get rid of these ugly
> >>>>>things (everybody agrees upon that, i guess) in the sitenotice without any
> >>>>>serious alternatives. I already asked this in the Dutch Village Pump, I hope
> >>>>>you will bring the question back to all your communities, to the places
> >>>>>where is discussed about the sitenotice. I have myself troubles to come up
> >>>>>with serious alternatives, so I hope you guys have one. And when you have
> >>>>>one, then you can ideed start a discussion about which solution is better. I
> >>>>>look forward to your ideas, and please keep the discussion about how bad the
> >>>>>current solution is for other threads.
> >>>>>
> >>>>>Lodewijk / Eia
> >>>>>_______________________________________________
> >>>>>foundation-l mailing list
> >>>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>_______________________________________________
> >>>>foundation-l mailing list
> >>>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>>>
> >>
> >>_______________________________________________
> >>foundation-l mailing list
> >>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> >>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] alternatives


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> Short answer: it's a good indicator of trend.
>>
>
> It's a good indicator of trend within a small subset of internet
> users. How do you know they are representative of everyone? I doubt
> they are.
>
We can't, of course, and no-one should take Alexa's data as representing
anything other than Alexa's user base. The main reason why the Alexa
rating is quoted so often is because its data is freely available, and
updated in real time.

However, the long-term trend of their figures does seem to correlate
fairly well with other sources. Firstly, their traffic figures show the
same general trend as Wikipedia's own internal measurements, and
secondly, every so often, other organizations like comScore and Hitwise,
which use different methodologies, publish the results of their surveys
in press releases, and they show broadly the same overall trend as the
Alexa data.

-- Neil