subject: [Wikipedia-l] unnecessary "forks"

body:
> >Of course, by this rationale, Wikimedia Commons itself is an unnecessary
> >fork, since all the images in the Commons could be put into Wikipedia
> >itself.

> Tsk tsk, being English-centric. Don't you realize that the Italian
> wikipedia can't refer to an English WP image directly, but has to
> upload each one to it:WP specifically? We have thousands of cloned
> images by now. The Commons is actually an anti-fork that will
> make all the images accessible to all WPs equally.

As the same could be said of Wikispecies (right now we have redundant
species information in every language Wikipedia), this is precisely my
point.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article - Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source

body:
Marco Krohn wrote:
> In contrast to that we can not even say if a part of an article was read more
> than once.

And that's why children should learn CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS. :) If
they're taking *any* encyclopedia at face value, they need to learn to
check multiple sources.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikien-l

from_name: Andrew Lih

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rebranding VfD

body:
One related suggestion might be to put the "delete" tab back for
everyone. However, instead of it actually deleting the page, it goes
to a simple page that kindly describes how deletion works in Wikipedia
and provides the templates necessary to do so. That way, it explains
the deletion process to more people.

Right now the following two pages are long and intimidating:
* [[Wikipedia:Deletion_policy]]
* [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]
We need a short simple description of how deletion works in less than
200 words. Something like:

"Articles are not deleted immediately on Wikipedia, but instead are
voted upon by the community. The main page for this is
[[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]] where they exist for comment for one
week, after which administrators act on the result of the vote."

The page could show the step-by-step process by doing the following:
* Display "{{vfd}}" for easy copy pasting into the article
* Generate the wiki-syntax template found in:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Votes_for_deletion#VfD_footer
already formatted for adding to the VfD page.
* List a "red link" to the appropriate Votes_for_deletion subpage, for
the article in question.

Of course, the delete tab would still work as usual for admins,
allowing direct deletion of the page, in addition to creating the
template above.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 21:29:28 -0700, Michael Snow
<wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Andrew Lih wrote:
>
> >I'm all for reevaluating how VfD works, but I'd like to oppose the
> >name "Editorial Review."
> >
> >Not only does it sound Nupedia-ish, but I have a strange image of a
> >salon with leather chairs, Ivy League professors smoking cigars and
> >sipping cognac while deciding the fate of articles from commonfolk.
> >The name "votes for deletion" makes the barrier high, meaning an
> >article stays unless you put yourself on the record for endorsing a
> >destructive act.
> >
> >This may come as a surprise to those who've found me a "deletionist",
> >but I think adopting the "Editorial Review" moniker makes Wikipedia
> >less wiki-like. It makes Wikipedia sound really stuffy and formal,
> >which it really is NOT.
> >
> I share at least some of Andrew's concerns about the choice of name,
> though perhaps not so much that I would say "Votes for deletion" is
> necessarily better than "Editorial review". But at a minimum, we would
> need to do something that doesn't confuse the process with "Peer
> review", which we already have a page for, and which is very different
> from the deletion process.
>
> I also agree with RickK, in that I think most of the problems can be
> addressed by improving the atmosphere, through renaming the page and/or
> providing better instructions on what the process is for. If this is
> done, I think the existing process can handle the issues just fine. For
> example, I definitely disagree with the suggestion that all new pages
> should be sent into a special editorial review process; they get that
> already with the wiki system and recent changes. Whatever we call it,
> VfD is for special cases that need something beyond that.
>
> --Michael Snow
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Rebranding VfD


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Renaming VfD now under discussion...

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net stated for the record:

> I got enough of an encouraging reception on this list to have started a
> discussion about it at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion
>
> There does seem to be support for renaming VfD and rewriting the VfD page
> notice, so I want to concentrate on that part of my proposal.
>
> And my campaign slogan for the change is: as we currently present VfD, some
> newbies are feeling _bitten_ when they should really only feel _barked at._

How 'bout "Campaigns to Obliterate Inadequate Articles and Humiliate
Their Worthless Authors"?  We're dealing, after all, with a Very Serious
Issue[tm].  The presence of a less-than-perfect article threatens to
rend the very fabric of the space-time continuum, to say nothing of
utterly annihilating Wikipedia as we know it....

--
  Sean Barrett     | Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an
  sean at epoptic.com | unlicensed version of Unix. --Kieran O'Shaughnessy,
                   | director of SCO Australia and New Zealand


from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Anglo-Saxon Wiktionary

body:
Hello,
	I've begun an Anglo-Saxon wiktionary, but there are a lot of words
(I've only done ? so far, and that's over 200 words).  Is there anyone who
can either rearrange the pages into columns, or split it up like the English
wiktionary or show me how to do so?

Thanks,

James


from_name: 100025727 at telefonica.net

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] new wikipedias: extremaduran and
	galaico-extremaduran

body:
The extremaduran language which I refer to is the "high extremaduran"
(probably spoken by some tens of thousands), the one considered to be
the language, derived from the historical asturleonese dialect of latin
(just as the portuguese derive from the galician-portuguese historical
latin dialect, or the spanish from the castilian historical latin
dialect). The ethnologue mixes this high extremaduran, the language,
with the "middle" and "low" extremaduran, already (and since centuries)
castilian dialects.

What I said is that the castilian dialect of Extremadura is similar
-logically- to the extremaduran language, as the english from Cornwall
is similar to the cornish language - both share vocabulary and some
verbal and phonological features; much more in this case where
extremaduran and the language which absorved it in those territories
(spanish) are from the same linguistic family.

The fala (or galaico-extremaduran) is a galician-portuguese language,
like the galician and portuguese (and by no means a portuguese or
galician dialect such as brazilian), so similar to spanish as the
portuguese or the galician (both with its own wikipedia). The
extremaduran language is so intelligible with spanish as the asturian
language or the aragonese (both with its own wikipedia too).

Every romanic linguistic variety is more or less intelligible to each
other, but there are degrees of comprehension, and one old high
extremaduran without having learned spanish at school has no more
comprehension of spanish than a norwegian understands swedish, or more
than a mother-tongue galician understands spanish (of course they can
understand the languages of the same family, and they usually do, but
they always loose information).

The reason why I said that more than 1.500.000 could use the
extremaduran language is to show the number of people who could be
interested in using it, the people who -like me- speak the
castilian-extremaduran dialect in the provinces of Salamanca, Cáceres,
Badajoz and Huelva (counting with the emigrated probably near  2.500.000
people).Just as one basque would be interested in using the basque
wikipedia, even if he doesn't really speak the basque language, only
because in the castilian that he speaks remains features of the old
regional language, and because of 'regional love', so to say, to defend
the "own" historical language.

But of course I am talking about languages, which by definition are not
mutually intelligible (at least to a good degree). I would never propose
to make a wikipedia in dialectal spanish from Extremadura, or dialectal
spanish from Andalusia or from Murcia, or from the american spanish
(argentinian, mexican,...). That would be an aberration, I have always
struggled with people not to propose such kind of desintegration of the
spanish domain: I speak spanish. Extremaduran spanish. But not
extremaduran. Extremaduran is a language derived from latin (through the
old astur-leonese dialect). I wouldn't accept ever something like
creating the "argentinian language" only because the argentinians may
feel they speak a different spanish, to present an example. And so
wouldn't I with extremaduran spanish. You have in me a defender of the
integration of dialects into standardized languages (so with the
extremaduran language). But of course not of absortion of the minority
languages by the official and important ones.

Anyway, apart from this, I also believe that languages should be used to
communicate with the more people possible, that is why I learned
english. But the fact that the Wikipedia is written in a lot of regional
minority languages of western Europe (where almost everyone learn at
school their country's official language, and many also english) reveals
that Wikimedia also defends the regional languages, because of its
intrinsecal cultural value and because of the attraction that causes in
its speakers (and the groups who spoke it in the past, like in the case
of the cornish or basques), speakers who other way would maybe never
read the wikipedia (if it were only in english or spanish, for example).
You have the example of the catalan wikipedia, which as far as I know
receives lots of articles - and only a few catalan-speakers cannot
communicate in spanish, and I don't think theese ones use the wikipedia
or even the internet...-. So there are a lot of people who understands
spanish and catalan more willing to use their regional language than the
spanish, that is obvious.

So: castilian/spanish of Extremadura (dialectal spanish, or dialectal
english,...) NO. But extremaduran, why not? No doubt there is a line to
be drawn between wikipedia factible languages and not factible ones - we
could say: "we will not start any wikipedias in artificial languages",
or "we will not start wikipedias in death languages", or even "neither
of them, but for the ones actually used" (like the artificial esperanto
or the death cornish, both widely accepted today as present languages).
But who could so easily say that the last two languages of Spain without
wikipedia (the others have it already) don't deserve having it? And,
most important, why? Who could say: this tongue is too similar to
spanish, while portuguese, asturian or spanish aren't?

Sorry for the big mail. Be what it be the final decision, I needed to
explain to all those who have interest about the spanish language domain
the difference between the spanish of Extremadura and the extremaduran
language, almost everywhere in the net confused and mixed altogether
(probably because they share the same name: "extremaduran").

By the way, the region of Extremadura is following a programme of
massive computer acquisition for public institutions (as a consequence
of the money saved in software, due to the use of Linex, a kind of
'Linux from Extremadura'), what makes more and more accessible the
internet to those old high extremadurans from little towns who speak the
language and have a lot of time to use the www.

[For more information on the extremaduran language actual domain you can
visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spain#Languages ; for still more
information on the extremaduran language and the extremaduran spanish
dialect you can visit http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme%C3%B1o ,
where it is clearly distinguished between both - the high extremaduran
and the rest. The Spanish Linguistic Organization Proel.org also has a
good map and some information at http://www.proel.org/lenguas.html . The
ethnologue information obviously mixes information about the
extremaduran language and the extremaduran spanish dialects, with a map
of the administrative region of Extremadura, and not actually its
territory]


list: foundation-l

from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia must change with Googling

body:
Jens Ropers wrote:

> CB low
> On 26 Aug 2004, at 08:50, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 10:45:17 +0800
>> From: Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com>
>>
>> (...) what has bothered me lately is the fact
>> that Googling for "wikipedia foo" likely brings up one of our mirrors
>> first, and not Wikipedia itself. So when I see a blatant error
>> magnified "n" times on the many mirrors on the Internet, it sends a
>> chill up my spine.
>>
>> Worse, because those sites are mirrors, and don't accept changes, it
>> makes it easy for readers to walk off and say, "What a crackpot
>> project."
>>
>> So increasingly, the dynamic is changing, and in large part it's due
>> to Google search results. Whether these mirrors are gaming the search
>> algorithm or whatever, increasingly "Wikipedia content" does not
>> reside in a true wiki, because the fruits of publishing are being
>> removed from the mechanisms of fixing errors. I feel the dynamic of
>> inclusionism/deletionism and the promptness of when things are fixed
>> must take this into account.
>>
>> --
>> Andrew Lih
>> andrew.lih at gmail.com
>
>
I'd also say that a lot of it comes from them using the word "Wikipedia"
in the article title, which seems to be ranked highly by Google. We
should make sure that we have trademark rights in the Wikipedia name,
and then dissuade mirrors from using the name "Wikipedia" for any
purpose other than referring to the real Wikipedia project, or by
express permission of the Wikimedia Foundation.

See http://www.wipo.int/madrid/en/

For example, according to this, just registering a non-figurative
trademark in CN, DE, FR, GB, GR, IE, JP, KR, PL, RU and SE (based on
countries which are majority native speakers of the "biggest"
Wikipedias, and some up-and-comers) in a single category via the US
Trademark Office will cost only 2873 CHF, or about US $2255, less than
the price of a server. (This presumably includes the U.S, too, since
that's the office of registration and the calculator does not give any
way to tick the host country, but the site is unclear on this detail...)

This seems like a very low cost for ensuring that the Wikipedia
Foundation retains these fundamental rights, and is in a position to
prevent their misuse. It should also conclusively win any domain
battles. Note that there is nothing un-Free about this: Linus Torvalds
holds the Linux trademark, and the Free Software Foundation holds the
GNU trademark, without their trademark rights in any way inhibiting the
rights granted by the GPL on their software.

Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia must change with Googling


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

body:
I got enough of an encouraging reception on this list to have started a
discussion about it at

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion

There does seem to be support for renaming VfD and rewriting the VfD page
notice, so I want to concentrate on that part of my proposal.

And my campaign slogan for the change is: as we currently present VfD, some
newbies are feeling _bitten_ when they should really only feel _barked at._


from_name: Austin Hair

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Anglo-Saxon Wiktionary

references:
<BAY10-DAV13nmJ5CY3J000046e3@hotmail.com>
	<20040826181029.BA31F1AC015F@mail.wikimedia.org>
	<cglj8t$b6h$2@sea.gmane.org>

body:
> Would you mind not replying to messages and then changing the subject
> the line, thinking you are starting a new thread? On many newsreaders
> your new message appears as a reply to the old thread which can be
> confusing.

Or, if you know how, delete the In-Reply-To header.  This is the line
which makes that threading magic work.

--
Austin D. Hair <austin at austinhair.org>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Callidus
http://www.austinhair.org/
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
>Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source
>AL FASOLDT
>
>Not so, wrote a school librarian who read that article. Susan
>Stagnitta, of the Liverpool High School library, explained that
>Wikipedia is not what many casual Web surfers think it is.
>
>It's not the online version of an established, well-researched
>traditional encyclopedia. Instead, Wikipedia is a do-it-yourself
>encyclopedia, without any credentials.
>
>"As a high school librarian, part of my job is to help my students
>develop critical thinking skills," Stagnitta wrote. "One of these
>skills is to evaluate the authority of any information source. The
>Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. It even states this in their
>disclaimer on their Web site."
>
Perhaps she should be directed to [[Appeal to authority]]

""Critical thinking" is a term we hear frequently these days as a form
of training which will herald a new day in mass schooling. It certainly
will, if it ever happens. No common school that actually dared teach the
use of dialectic, heuristic, and other tools of free minds could last a
year without being torn to pieces." - John Taylor Gatto (1991)

>Wikipedia, she explains, takes the idea of open source one step too
>far for most of us.
>
>"Anyone can change the content of an article in the Wikipedia, and
>there is no editorial review of the content. I use this Web site as a
>learning experience for my students. Many of them have used it in the
>past for research and were very surprised when we investigated the
>authority of the site."
>
A better exercise mighr be to compare the content of these pages with
what is said in "authoritative" sources about the same subject.  If the
student finds the Wikipedia article to be in error, he is welcome to
change it.

>Stagnitta gives two quotes from the Wikipedia site that illustrate the problem.
>
>>From the home page:
>
>"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers.
>The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can also edit
>any article right now by clicking on the edit this page link that
>appears at the top of every Wikipedia article."
>
>>From the disclaimer page:
>
>"WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY.
>
>"Therefore, please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily
>been reviewed by professionals who are knowledgeable in the particular
>areas of expertise necessary to provide you with complete, accurate or
>reliable information about any subject in Wikipedia."
>
>I was amazed at how little I knew about Wikipedia. If you know of
>other supposedly authoritative Web sites that are untrustworthy, send
>a note to technology at syracuse.com and let me know about them.
>
What's most amazing is the blindness applied when one believes that the
source is authoritative.  Authority becomes an excuse for shutting off
the thinking apparatus.

>The best thing about the Web is also the worst thing: Information is
>all over the place. You need to be careful about trusting what you
>read.
>
Children are trained to react positively when a parent or teacher says,
"Trust me."  When that lesson carries on into subsequent life the
consequences can be disastrous.  The patina of authority based on the
credentials of an encyclopedia's authors can be deceptive.  When we
accept that the peer review process has diminished the level of error in
such a publication, we still need to protect ourselves from falling into
a false sense of security.  The student who relies on any single source
for his information unduly restricts his ability for critical evaluation.

Ray


from_name: Eric B. Rakim

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 65

body:
>"Having said the idea that "anybody is allowed to put whatever trash they
>want to" in, is completely false and you know it.".  Exactly.  Because of
>those of us who feel the need to use the VfD page and its functionality,
>not because of those who feel that it's perfectly all right to leave
>garbage lying around for whenever somebody might, sometime, in the unknown
>future, decide that something needs to be done about it.
>
>So, what happens when you search for "George Washington" and "George
>Washington's underwear" shows up?
>
>RickK

It will not show up. Atleast not if google search is used. I can't test
whether it would show up with mediawiki's search algorithm, but if it does,
that algorithm would be very much broken.

_________________________________________________________________
Add photos to your e-mail with MSN 8. Get 2 months FREE*.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/featuredemail


from_name: Sj

body:
I'm all for it.

It *would* be nice to be able to tell people who scoff at WP's lack of
editorial review,
"actually, [[WP:Editorial Review]] is the three most active pages on the site."

=sj=

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:53:39 -0500, dpbsmith at verizon.net
<dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> I got enough of an encouraging reception on this list to have started a
> discussion about it at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion
>
> There does seem to be support for renaming VfD and rewriting the VfD page
> notice, so I want to concentrate on that part of my proposal.
>
> And my campaign slogan for the change is: as we currently present VfD, some
> newbies are feeling _bitten_ when they should really only feel _barked at._


body:
It seems the blogosphere has taken it up and identified it for what it is:
http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?rank=&url=wikipedia

The only real offense is the way the writer said "If you know of other
supposedly authoritative Web sites that are untrustworthy, send a note
to technology at syracuse.com and let me know about them."

Makes Wikipedia sound like a shady used car dealership exposed by the
local evening news. :)

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 11:46:32 +0200, Peter Gervai <grin at tolna.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 10:06:56AM +0800, Andrew Lih wrote:
>
> > I hesitate to even post this, because it's virtual flame-bait. :) But
> > with all the accolades Wikipedia receives in the press, you have to
> > take the knocks too.
>
> Why, this article is pretty fair. It states only the truth:
> * Wikipedia is not reviewed by the academics
> * Wikipedia does not guarantee validity or accuracy
> * The author of the article is dumb enough not to notice the disclaimers,
> the first paragraph of the main page, and to completely missing the point
> about [[what Wikipedia is]].
>
> I see no bait. :-)
>
> Peter
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

subject: [Wikipedia-l] unnecessary "forks"

body:
On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 10:20:04AM -0400, Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> > Creating good content will attract more, not starting over. We have
> already
> > established that this would be a fork and nothing in this proposed project
> > could not be put into Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Commons.
>
> Of course, by this rationale, Wikimedia Commons itself is an unnecessary
> fork, since all the images in the Commons could be put into Wikipedia
> itself.

additionally to stan's statement, Commons will also allow to upload
more images than actually need in the articles, thus we can build
up a nice images ressource.

ciao, tom
--
== Weblinks ==
* http://shop.wikipedia.org - WikiReader Internet zu kaufen
* http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
* http://www.hammererlehen.de - Urlaub in Berchtesgaden


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Rebranding VfD

body:
On Thu, 26 Aug 2004, Andrew Lih wrote:

> I'm all for reevaluating how VfD works, but I'd like to oppose the
> name "Editorial Review."
>
Well how about the name "Request for Review"?

Geoff


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image of Gandhi

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mahatma_Gandhi.jpg

"This image may not have information on its source. It may be usable
under fair use but this has yet to be verified. It might be public
domain or under a licence compatible with the GNU FDL. To the
uploader: Please provide licensing information as soon as possible.
Images without this information may be deleted in the future. If you
want to publish an image as fair use, please list it on Wikipedia:Fair
use."

We do not know.

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 08:15 -0700, Danavir Goswami (USA)
<danavir.goswami at pamho.net> wrote:
> Dear Friends,                           Aug. 26, 2004
>
> Greetings. I am a monk writing a book on celibacy---the title is "Brain
> Gain" (1,000 copies) and would like to use, within the book, an image of
> Gandhi I found on your website.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
>
> If you could be so kind as to inform me A) whether the image is in the
> public domain (copyright-free), or B) if you have the ability to grant
> permission for its use, or C) you could suggest how I might seek permission.
>
> The seminary is non profit and the publication is also not a profit
> enterprise.
>
> Thank you so much for your help.
>
> With best regards,
>
> Dr. Dane Holtzman
>
> Rupanuga Vedic College (USA)
> 5201 Paseo, Kansas City, Missouri 64110
> Tel: (816) 924-5619, (800) 340-5286, Fax: (816) 924-5640
> E-mail: danavir.goswami at pamho.net  Website: www.rvc.edu
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Edward Peschko

subject: [Wikitech-l] new sister project (off of home page) redux

body:
Gerard and SJ,

I'm responding to both of your posts here to save time.

> Hello Ed,
>
> This sounds like a fine idea.

Thanks! I appreciate it.

> I think the first part would make an excellent wikiproject
> (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject ),
> which you could promote on IRC, via the mailing lists as you are doing, or on
> the individual user pages of contributors who are working on related subjects.

well, I'm not sure if wikiprojects would work for what I had in mind.
I want to get some heavy-hitters in on this, and I've talked to a
few of them (Freeman Dyson, Lynn Margulis, Jared Diamond) as well as
some of the more popular writers like Richard Heinberg and
Colin Campbell, some EIA energy analysts, the IEA, etc.)
to ask them for advice. One of the things I asked them about is
their opinion on wiki.

And they aren't too keen on it as it stands. Aggregating what I've heard, in
particular, they have 5 major issues with it:

    1 - no ready road to publishing. Its very hard to get a cohesive
        physical paper out of wiki.

    2 - no editorial control. Since anyone can edit the page,
        the background is constantly shifting and not able to be given
        as a reference. Plus they think it is 'impermanent'.

    3 - No guarantee of attribution.

    4 - lack of features for research collaboration.

    5 - work in progress unable to be kept private amongst a group of
        researchers until publication.

Now, I'm not saying that these are true, but the perception is there.
(in particular, from my reading of the GFDL I think that 3 is false).
My own feeling is #1 and #4 and #5 are the real show stoppers.
Mediawiki as it stands does not create good copy or something that can be
handed to publishers. In addition, the interface is not 'free form' in
the same way that an editor is free form; you click on a link to type into
it it takes you to a different screen. And AFAIK, you can't upload and
display Adobe illustrator graphs or collaborate on graphs.

And finally, to a serious academic, #5 is crucial because of the
'publish-or-perish' attitude in academic circles, as well as competition.
I personally don't think that privacy before publishing contradicts the
spirit of the GFDL, simply because the researchers in using wiki should make
the commitment to make the paper/book GFDL *after* its ready for publishing.

All this is really a pity. For its quite hellish to make an
academic paper nowadays; proprietary formats, incompatible versions of
software tools, inability to garner easy public comment *before*
publication and error checking, etc. In my opinion, a good wiki interface
would revolutionize the scientific publishing industry.

Anyway, to me all this says to me that what I'm proposing doesn't fit
inside of regular wikipedia.  And IMO Its really counterproductive
to exclude original r and possibly important research because of
cultural or technical reasons.

> [ .. about wikiprojects being excellent .. ]
> This could be said of the a great many Wikipedia articles and subprojects.

Yeah I agree. In my mind its important that they have some place to go
once they reach critical mass, possibly get serious researchers attention,
and maybe get published.

> The second part seems like it should be its own separate affair, as your other
> comments suggest this would veer towards original research/analysis, and as it
> requires new software innovations for its realization..

In my mind this is another reason for a disconnect. I wouldn't want
to burden Mediawiki with creeping featurism; hence my sister wiki
software project which uses the mediawiki data model and is
interchangeable with it ('publishwiki').

Ed

(
ps - a couple of comment on Gerard's statements..

> One objection is that wikipedia is not the platform for original
> research.

see above..

> However you were talking about bundling the known facts. As
> such it would not be research. Write some articles, get some people to
> cooperate, link to your pages, categories where applicable and write
> your "Main page".

here I must disagree with you. Some things are straightforward in
the project I propose, some things require a *lot* of research - possibly
original research - on the part of the contributor.

For example - again from Smil - he states on 'Energy at the Crossroads'
that the gross domestic product is in a linear relationship
with the Total Primary Energy Supply (the total amount of energy
used by a nation), and has been so over pretty much every country in
the last 100 years.

Now this fact was hell to calculate - he had to wade through
hundreds of graphs and normalize the GDP based on purchasing
power parities (to translate money into a constant unit),
etc, just to get the graph on page 66 of this book.

And IMO its an absolutely *stunning* conclusion. Think about it
for a sec - it basically says that all the improvements we make to
efficiency of engines, all the technology and time-saving labor devices
that we produce, the idea that a 'service economy' brings more GDP
per unit energy, all of that all that is a smokescreen. The gross amount
of energy we use directly determines the size of our economy, plain and
simple. Which is bad news if oil producton plateaus and we don't have a
decent substitute.

Now, although I like his work, this is a big conclusion and I'd personally
like independent verification of this.  And the research may or may not be
out there which does confirms this. But I'd like to be able to give someone
the incentive via publishing credit or even money incentive to check it out,
as well as attract people who can publish the aggregate and distribute it
to people who are in positions of power. For as much as I'd like to think
so, I don't think a congressman is going to read a wiki.

)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 65

body:
Rick wrote:

> Why not?  It's going to bring up every article with the term "George Washington" in it, and if [[George Washington's underwear]] begins ... [[George Washington]] wore white [[boxer shorts]], then Google will certainly pick it up.
 > that algorithm would be very much broken.

If Google listed it that highly (in GW's case in the first dozen pages
or so) then people are clearly interested in it, and that is a strong
argument for having the article.

Pete


body:
James R. Johnson wrote:

> Hello,
> 	I've begun an Anglo-Saxon wiktionary, but there are a lot of words
> (I've only done ? so far, and that's over 200 words).  Is there anyone who
> can either rearrange the pages into columns, or split it up like the English
> wiktionary or show me how to do so?
>
> Thanks,
>
> James

Hi James,

Would you mind not replying to messages and then changing the subject
the line, thinking you are starting a new thread? On many newsreaders
your new message appears as a reply to the old thread which can be
confusing.

Thanks!

Pete


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 66

body:
Search for George Washington on www.google.com. There doesn't seem to be any
stuff about George Washington's underwear on the internet that Google has
indexed. But there are some stuff about George Washington's penis (go
figure) so we have that as example. With the search "George Washington" you
will not encounter anything about his penis in the 100,000 first hits or so.
The reason is that Google manages to figure out that there are atleast
100,000 pages that are more releveant to the search George Washington then
the pages about George Washington's penis.

I don't know why Google in almost all cases seem to, almost magically, to
figure out what you were looking for. One reason appears to be that Google
rates pages that many pages link to higher, and therefore kinda exploits
what other humans thinks are relevant. Google's search algorithm is a secret
and there are many more around that knows much more and can explain it much
better. See also [[Googlebomd]].

In anyway, the argument that bad articles will cripple the search function,
is false.

>Why not?  It's going to bring up every article with the term "George
>Washington" in it, and if [[George Washington's underwear]] begins ...
>[[George Washington]] wore white [[boxer shorts]], then Google will
>certainly pick it up.
>
>RickK
>
>"Eric B. Rakim" <eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >So, what happens when you search for "George Washington" and "George
> >Washington's underwear" shows up?
> >
> >RickK
>
>It will not show up. Atleast not if google search is used. I can't test
>whether it would show up with mediawiki's search algorithm, but if it does,
>that algorithm would be very much broken.
>
>__________________________________________________
>Do You Yahoo!?
>Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
>http://mail.yahoo.com
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 8
>Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:05:25 +0200
>From: ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Image of Gandhi
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID: <51dd1af8040826120559af4bcd at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mahatma_Gandhi.jpg
>
>"This image may not have information on its source. It may be usable
>under fair use but this has yet to be verified. It might be public
>domain or under a licence compatible with the GNU FDL. To the
>uploader: Please provide licensing information as soon as possible.
>Images without this information may be deleted in the future. If you
>want to publish an image as fair use, please list it on Wikipedia:Fair
>use."
>
>We do not know.
>
>On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 08:15 -0700, Danavir Goswami (USA)
><danavir.goswami at pamho.net> wrote:
> > Dear Friends,                           Aug. 26, 2004
> >
> > Greetings. I am a monk writing a book on celibacy---the title is "Brain
> > Gain" (1,000 copies) and would like to use, within the book, an image of
> > Gandhi I found on your website.
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
> >
> > If you could be so kind as to inform me A) whether the image is in the
> > public domain (copyright-free), or B) if you have the ability to grant
> > permission for its use, or C) you could suggest how I might seek
>permission.
> >
> > The seminary is non profit and the publication is also not a profit
> > enterprise.
> >
> > Thank you so much for your help.
> >
> > With best regards,
> >
> > Dr. Dane Holtzman
> >
> > Rupanuga Vedic College (USA)
> > 5201 Paseo, Kansas City, Missouri 64110
> > Tel: (816) 924-5619, (800) 340-5286, Fax: (816) 924-5640
> > E-mail: danavir.goswami at pamho.net  Website: www.rvc.edu
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 9
>Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:53:39 -0500
>From: <dpbsmith at verizon.net>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Renaming VfD now under discussion...
>To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID:
>	<20040826195339.JKAR24594.out001.verizon.net at outgoing.verizon.net>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>I got enough of an encouraging reception on this list to have started a
>discussion about it at
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion
>
>There does seem to be support for renaming VfD and rewriting the VfD page
>notice, so I want to concentrate on that part of my proposal.
>
>And my campaign slogan for the change is: as we currently present VfD, some
>newbies are feeling _bitten_ when they should really only feel _barked at._
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 10
>Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 16:52:19 -0400
>From: Sj <2.718281828 at gmail.com>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Renaming VfD now under discussion...
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Message-ID: <742dfd0604082613526f445692 at mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
>
>I'm all for it.
>
>It *would* be nice to be able to tell people who scoff at WP's lack of
>editorial review,
>"actually, [[WP:Editorial Review]] is the three most active pages on the
>site."
>
>=sj=
>
>On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:53:39 -0500, dpbsmith at verizon.net
><dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
> > I got enough of an encouraging reception on this list to have started a
> > discussion about it at
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion
> >
> > There does seem to be support for renaming VfD and rewriting the VfD
>page
> > notice, so I want to concentrate on that part of my proposal.
> >
> > And my campaign slogan for the change is: as we currently present VfD,
>some
> > newbies are feeling _bitten_ when they should really only feel _barked
>at._
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>Message: 11
>Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 22:08:26 +0100
>From: Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 65
>To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
>Message-ID: <cglj4p$b6h$1 at sea.gmane.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
>Rick wrote:
>
> > Why not?  It's going to bring up every article with the term "George
>Washington" in it, and if [[George Washington's underwear]] begins ...
>[[George Washington]] wore white [[boxer shorts]], then Google will
>certainly pick it up.
>  > that algorithm would be very much broken.
>
>If Google listed it that highly (in GW's case in the first dozen pages
>or so) then people are clearly interested in it, and that is a strong
>argument for having the article.
>
>Pete
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------
>
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>End of WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 66
>****************************************

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*
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subject: [WikiEN-l] apologises

body:
Ups! I'm very sorry. This is the reason why high-traffic mailing-lists suck.
:)

_________________________________________________________________
Tired of spam? Get advanced junk mail protection with MSN 8.
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


from_name: Daniel Kinzler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Advancing the concept of categories

body:
Hello again.

I just had a descussion with JeLuF on #mediawiki about the concept of
categories. Here is a summary of the main points that came up (but where
not neccessarily agreed upon):

* Categories as they are have prooven rather useless and confusing (at
least in the german WP). Cross-Sections and transitive covers have been
agreed there to be the core features missing to create a functioning
structure of categories.

* Nikola Smolenski proposed a patch for linking to cross-sections of
categories using a syntax like [[:Category:Woman/German/Author]] to get
female german authors. That syntax would break some existing categories,
  but changing the syntax is not a problem. The patch was discussed here
and dismissed as not practical (why exactly?).

* Cross-Sections of categories are only useful if we also have a
seach-page that allows for that feature. Possibly, this is even more
important than linking to cross-sections.

* Cross-Sections of categories are only useful if we can search over the
transitive closures (members of all subcategories, recursively). An
alternative would be to dispose of subcategories all together - but that
would require extensive redundant categorisation of articles.

* Besides linking to cross-sections, it would be useful and intuitive to
allow an article to be added directly to a cross-section. That is,
[[Category:Woman/German/Soccer player]] should put the articles into
[[Category:Woman]], [[Category:German]] and [[Category:Soccer player]].

* One problems with transitive closures are circularities in the
sub-category relation. As I can't think of any situation where such a
circularity would make sense, I think they sould be avoided alltogether.
  Maybe the software could output an error when it is attempted to
create a circular dependency?

* Another way of avoiding circular dependencies and non-intutitive
results of transitive closures would be to allow categories to *belong*
to other categories, without being a *subcategorie*. IMHO subcategories
should be declared using a special syntax, like [[Supercategory:Foobar]].

* Another problem with transitive closures is efficiency: storing graphs
in a relational database is not trivial and generally ineficient. I
think it would be best to store all "implicite" memberships of an
article whenever the articles assignment to categories changes. But that
would mean that a *lot* of article-entries have to be updated when a
subcategory-relation is added or removed. I belive this point to be the
main issue with my proposal for advancing the concept of categories.

* The concept that is actually wanted (in the de:WP) is general
metadata, consiting (at least) of the dimensions Time, Space, Type (of
objet or article), Topic (field of study), and Keyword (loose
bibliographical collections). Using this dimensions together with
cross-sections and transitive closures would yield a truely powerful
structure. The existing concept of categories should be expanded to meet
those requirement - the distinction of the dimensions, however, do not
need to be hard coded. Naming-conventions would be sufficient.

Could you please give me your opinion about these points? I would be
especially interrested in knowing if anyone has a good ideas as to how
to implement transitive closures efficiently. I belive that to be the
core problem here... and it would be *extremely* helpful to have that
feature. If someone can give me a definite "forget about it" with a good
reason, I would be disappointed, but it would be OK too...

Thank you very much
Daniel


from_name: Marco Krohn

body:
On Thursday 26 August 2004 12:16, Tomasz Wegrzanowski wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 11:46:32AM +0200, Peter Gervai wrote:

> > Why, this article is pretty fair. It states only the truth:
> > * Wikipedia is not reviewed by the academics
> > * Wikipedia does not guarantee validity or accuracy
>
> Neither are paper encyclopedias, but somehow he didn't have any problems
> with them. This article is pure biased bullshit.

I haven't read the article, but AFAIK at least some parts of paper
encyclopedias are reviewed. At the Brockhaus they claim that every article
was at least reviewed three times. O.k. I can's validate this information
neither can I proof that it was always reviewed by academics. Nevertheless
Brockhaus lists >1000 external authors (many of have a PhD or higher degree)
which helped with the new edition. The latter is at least some indication
that their claims are not completely without base.

In contrast to that we can not even say if a part of an article was read more
than once.

best regards,
  Marco


subject: [WikiEN-l] Anet Dartmouth, Again

body:
Two responses to my earlier email have left me puzzled. While I admit
it not the best thing I have ever written, I can't help but feel that
I have somehow been misunderstood.

>From Jens Ropers <ropers at ropersonline.com>

> I'm not trying to get into a political argument here, but I would like
> to note my objection to the above assumptions in the strongest possible
> terms. I believe they are:
>
> - historically untrue,
> - (on balance) also absurdly false as regards the present,
> - anachronistically missionaristic and
> - the positive aspects favoured in this paragraph are the very
> ANTITHESIS of how occidental civilization has historically conducted
> and continues to conduct itself.

You have your opinion, & I have mine. There is a great deal in the
history of Western Civilization that is offensive & shameful -- but I
believe that there are some things worthy of praise. If you cannot
accept that there is at least one or two redeeming things to Western
Civilization, then I don't know what I could say that you'd care to hear.

And because it seems to be a point of anger here, let me explain _precisely_
what I mean by the term "Western Civilization": it is the common heritage
of Europe, the Americas, Australia & New Zealand. One tradition that can
be found amongst all of these people is the struggle towards tolerance,
pluralism, & unfetered speech; I am unaware of any serious argument
that this tradition of thought was introduced from Africa, India, or China.

And from my long reading of history, I know that Western Civilization
hardly has a monopoly on violence, oppression, ignorance & hatred.

And Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at yurkycross.co.uk> wrote:

> > Bah! If I don't recognize the contributor -- or even more clearly, if
> > that person is editting from an IP number -- I'll just consider
> > her/him/it a troublemaker, list the articles that person produces on
> > VfD & revert all of her/his/its edits as "vandalism".

> So who the hell do you think you are???

My above passage is an example of a rhetorical technique known as
irony. Unfortunately tone of voice does not always successfully transmit
across the Internet for some reason, & obviously it failed in this case.
I apologize for that failure here.
>
> > And if I may allowed to be chauvanistic for a moment, I think this
> > ideal is a valuable part of Western Civilization that needs to be
> > taught to the rest of the world. We should respect other people's POV,
> > we should be willing to explain our own POV, & that there should be a
> > fair & beneficial
> > exchange between them
>
> *groan* spare us your offensive ethnocentric colonialist views, please.

I assume that you, too, misunderstood what I meant by "Western Civilization".
If not, then I am puzzled why you reject an ideal that the land you
appear to be writing from -- the United Kingdom -- has struggled to promote.
While the struggle may not have always been praiseworthy, orderly, or even
successful, many people in that land have worked to perpetuate the ideal
I talked about.

If you inadvertently thought that by "Western Civilization", I merely meant
the United States of America, I think I may understand part of your
reaction, but I still am left with one question. If there is nothing good
that comes from the United States, then why do you bother to contribute to
Wikipedia, which is a creation of the US?

> A positive purchase maybe:
> Lies My Teacher Told Me:Everything Your American History Textbook Got
> Wrong http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/liesmyteachertoldme/liesmyteacher.html
>
> A book for everyone of the American Empire.

Sorry, but my reading time is currently spent on teaching myself the immense
amount of knowledge that was not covered -- if even alluded to -- in
my school years.

While I should appreciate your concern for my educational backgruond, I
find myself somewhat upset that you made sweeping assumptions about what I
learned in school. From what I've since come to know, my education differed
in many respects from other people that I have known. I won't bore you
with all of the details, but I consider myself substantially self-taught
despite my college degree, & still unfinished.

And in reference to your comment about "the American Empire", not everyone
in the US agrees with the views of the current President: a majority of
voters cast ballots for his opponent in the last election, & I would be
surprised if he received as many votes in this coming election. The US
has been far more conflicted -- if not schizophrenic -- about the its
imperial role than other nations.

Wow. All of this verbage just because I tried to express (& again, I admit
I did so badly) the hope that despite all of the crimes, objectionable
behavior & just plain shit that has been done, it would nice if there was
one positive ideal we in the west could pass on to not only the rest of
the world, but also those who come after us. And the means this could be
passed on is thru how we run Wikipedia. I guess I've learned that this
ideal of pluralism, tolerance, & mutual respect isn't even that strongly
held within the Wikipedia community.

Geoff


from_name: Kate

subject: [WikiEN-l] "Today's Featured Article" - by email...

body:
...is now possible.  See [[Wikipedia:Today's featured article by email]]
or http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/daily-article-l for more
information.

Have fun,
Kate.


body:
I'm reminded of Ronald Reagan, "Trust, but verify."

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge
Sent: Thursday, August 26, 2004 6:55 PM
To: Andrew Lih; wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
Cc: technology at syracuse.com
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Article - Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as
source

>Librarian: Don't use Wikipedia as source AL FASOLDT
>
>Not so, wrote a school librarian who read that article. Susan
>Stagnitta, of the Liverpool High School library, explained that
>Wikipedia is not what many casual Web surfers think it is.
>
>It's not the online version of an established, well-researched
>traditional encyclopedia. Instead, Wikipedia is a do-it-yourself
>encyclopedia, without any credentials.
>
>"As a high school librarian, part of my job is to help my students
>develop critical thinking skills," Stagnitta wrote. "One of these
>skills is to evaluate the authority of any information source. The
>Wikipedia is not an authoritative source. It even states this in their
>disclaimer on their Web site."
>
Perhaps she should be directed to [[Appeal to authority]]

""Critical thinking" is a term we hear frequently these days as a form of
training which will herald a new day in mass schooling. It certainly will,
if it ever happens. No common school that actually dared teach the use of
dialectic, heuristic, and other tools of free minds could last a year
without being torn to pieces." - John Taylor Gatto (1991)

>Wikipedia, she explains, takes the idea of open source one step too far
>for most of us.
>
>"Anyone can change the content of an article in the Wikipedia, and
>there is no editorial review of the content. I use this Web site as a
>learning experience for my students. Many of them have used it in the
>past for research and were very surprised when we investigated the
>authority of the site."
>
A better exercise mighr be to compare the content of these pages with what
is said in "authoritative" sources about the same subject.  If the student
finds the Wikipedia article to be in error, he is welcome to change it.

>Stagnitta gives two quotes from the Wikipedia site that illustrate the
problem.
>
>>From the home page:
>
>"Wikipedia is an encyclopedia written collaboratively by its readers.
>The site is a Wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can also edit
>any article right now by clicking on the edit this page link that
>appears at the top of every Wikipedia article."
>
>>From the disclaimer page:
>
>"WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY.
>
>"Therefore, please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily
>been reviewed by professionals who are knowledgeable in the particular
>areas of expertise necessary to provide you with complete, accurate or
>reliable information about any subject in Wikipedia."
>
>I was amazed at how little I knew about Wikipedia. If you know of other
>supposedly authoritative Web sites that are untrustworthy, send a note
>to technology at syracuse.com and let me know about them.
>
What's most amazing is the blindness applied when one believes that the
source is authoritative.  Authority becomes an excuse for shutting off the
thinking apparatus.

>The best thing about the Web is also the worst thing: Information is
>all over the place. You need to be careful about trusting what you
>read.
>
Children are trained to react positively when a parent or teacher says,
"Trust me."  When that lesson carries on into subsequent life the
consequences can be disastrous.  The patina of authority based on the
credentials of an encyclopedia's authors can be deceptive.  When we accept
that the peer review process has diminished the level of error in such a
publication, we still need to protect ourselves from falling into a false
sense of security.  The student who relies on any single source for his
information unduly restricts his ability for critical evaluation.

Ray

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Jens Ropers

body:
> See http://www.wipo.int/madrid/en/
>
> For example, according to this, just registering a non-figurative
> trademark in CN, DE, FR, GB, GR, IE, JP, KR, PL, RU and SE (based on
> countries which are majority native speakers of the "biggest"
> Wikipedias, and some up-and-comers) in a single category via the US
> Trademark Office will cost only 2873 CHF, or about US $2255, less than
> the price of a server. (This presumably includes the U.S, too, since
> that's the office of registration and the calculator does not give any
> way to tick the host country, but the site is unclear on this
> detail...)
>
> This seems like a very low cost for ensuring that the Wikipedia
> Foundation retains these fundamental rights, and is in a position to
> prevent their misuse. It should also conclusively win any domain
> battles. Note that there is nothing un-Free about this: Linus Torvalds
> holds the Linux trademark, and the Free Software Foundation holds the
> GNU trademark, without their trademark rights in any way inhibiting
> the rights granted by the GPL on their software.
>
> Neil

enthusiastically SUPPORT. ~~~~

-- Jens [[User:Ropers|Ropers]]On 26 Aug 2004, at 15:27, Neil Harris
wrote:


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13,
	Issue 65 (was Wikipedia must change with Googling)

body:
On 26 Aug 2004, at 23:02, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 11
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 22:08:26 +0100
> From: Pete/Pcb21 <pete_pcb21_wpmail at pcbartlett.com>
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 65
> To: wikien-l at wikipedia.org
> Message-ID: <cglj4p$b6h$1 at sea.gmane.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
>
> Rick wrote:
>
>> Why not?  It's going to bring up every article with the term "George
>> Washington" in it, and if [[George Washington's underwear]] begins
>> ... [[George Washington]] wore white [[boxer shorts]], then Google
>> will certainly pick it up.
>> that algorithm would be very much broken.
>
> If Google listed it that highly (in GW's case in the first dozen pages
> or so) then people are clearly interested in it, and that is a strong
> argument for having the article.
>
> Pete

'''Pete's paradox''', a concept from the fields of [[philosophy]] and
[[logic]], is a [[paradox|paradoxical]] series of statements, which can
be summed up as follows:

# [[Google]] returns unwanted search results which users are not
interested in.
# External causes to Google's delivery of unwanted search results are
defined as nonexistent.
# Google is implied to be perfect.
# Thus, users must be interested in the unwanted search results.

== See also ==
* [[Epimenides paradox]]
* [[Eubulides of Miletus]]' [[Liar paradox]]

[[Category:Flamebait]]


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Certain articles lend themselves to philatelic coverage, for example,
Stellaland, after all, most folks who have ever heard of Stellaland first
encountered it with respect to its stamps. Illustrations of a few
representative stamps could be added.

A complete stamp catalog might be going a bit far, but if the energy is
around, which I doubt, it could be a sister project, Wikistamps...

If you take a photograph or scan a postage stamp that image is not
copyrighted even though the underlying design may be. Sometimes a nice
image, for example of a butterfly or bird or even a person can be included
in Wikipedia in that way. The Japanese stamp you reference is just a
photograph or scan of a stamp which anyone can make and publish, although
perhaps, in Japan, there might be some restriction as it is a Japanese
stamp.

It occurs to me that there is a sort of disconnect here. If you take a
photograph of painting in an museum or someone's home that is copyright free
but if you scan a reproduction of a painting in a book it is not, yet there
is very little difference in what you have done.

Fred

> From: Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:19:33 +0200
> To: wikipedia-l at Wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stamps, wiki and copyright
>
> Hi all,
>
> In the discussion Wikispecies, there were a few mentions of the possibility to
> enlarge Wikipedia with coverage on postage stamps.
>
> While some articles on famous stamps may easily find their place in an
> encyclopedia, an extensive coverage of stamps seems outside of the scope of
> Wikipedia. So I would like to know what people think about that.
>
> A few years back, I started a project on Savannah to offer data about postage
> stamps under a free licence, but with no success. Maybe a wiki would be more
> appriopriate. I have a MySQL database about French stamps to start with.
> AFAIK, there are no other project to provide data about stamps are under a
> free licence.
>
> Articles about stamps obviously need an illustration with stamps scans and
> photos. But it seems that most modern stamps can be considered as artitic
> work and could therefore not be reproduce without the permission of the
> author.
>
> cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Postage_stamp_thumb.jpg
> AFAIK, the information provided on this page is wrong. This image can't be
> under a free licence. Can a lawyer can confirm or refute that?
>
> I asked this here but got no answer:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Postage_stamp_thumb.jpg
>
> Best regards,
> Yann
>
> --
> http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
> http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
> http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
Just keep in mind that renaming/reorganizing VfD will have serious
implications as it ripples through the rest of the other languages.
Make sure the system does not get more convoluted or depends on much
more instruction reading.

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

On Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:09:13 -0700, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> dpbsmith at verizon.net stated for the record:
>
> > I got enough of an encouraging reception on this list to have started a
> > discussion about it at
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion
> >
> > There does seem to be support for renaming VfD and rewriting the VfD page
> > notice, so I want to concentrate on that part of my proposal.
> >
> > And my campaign slogan for the change is: as we currently present VfD, some
> > newbies are feeling _bitten_ when they should really only feel _barked at._
>
> How 'bout "Campaigns to Obliterate Inadequate Articles and Humiliate
> Their Worthless Authors"?  We're dealing, after all, with a Very Serious
> Issue[tm].  The presence of a less-than-perfect article threatens to
> rend the very fabric of the space-time continuum, to say nothing of
> utterly annihilating Wikipedia as we know it....
>
> --
>   Sean Barrett     | Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an
>   sean at epoptic.com | unlicensed version of Unix. --Kieran O'Shaughnessy,
>                    | director of SCO Australia and New Zealand
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Andrew Lih
andrew.lih at gmail.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Stamps, wiki and copyright

body:
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 14:19:33 +0200, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> In the discussion Wikispecies, there were a few mentions of the possibility to
> enlarge Wikipedia with coverage on postage stamps.
>
> While some articles on famous stamps may easily find their place in an
> encyclopedia, an extensive coverage of stamps seems outside of the scope of
> Wikipedia. So I would like to know what people think about that.

I think detailed coverage of stamps, coins, bills, &c is well within
the scope of
Wikipedia; to the extent of eventually having one article per item for
items that look
significantly different from one another.  Although the list of
misprints or misstrikes
for a given stamp/coin should be listed uner a single aticle.

+sj+


subject: [WikiEN-l] Image of Gandhi

body:
Dear Danavir,

You recently enquired about the copyright situation as regards a Gandhi
image on our site and requested permission for reuse.
I saw our fellow contributor Aevar Arnfjoerd Bjarmason
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:%c6var_Arnfj%f6r%f0_Bjarmason) has
already replied as follows (please read on below):

On 26 Aug 2004, at 23:02, wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

> Message: 8
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 21:05:25 +0200
> From: ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Image of Gandhi
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mahatma_Gandhi.jpg
>
> "This image may not have information on its source. It may be usable
> under fair use but this has yet to be verified. It might be public
> domain or under a licence compatible with the GNU FDL. To the
> uploader: Please provide licensing information as soon as possible.
> Images without this information may be deleted in the future. If you
> want to publish an image as fair use, please list it on Wikipedia:Fair
> use."
>
> We do not know.

In case you are already familiar with the details of how our system
works, please disregard this message.
In case you might not be, please allow me to explain:

- Wikipedia is a volunteer-driven effort. There currently are no full
time employees.
- One of our effective operating principles is to lower any bars to
entry as much as possible, if not to outright abolish them.
- As part of this philosophy, and contrary to what it possible with
paper-based works, editorial review of any contribution, including
images takes place /after/ publication.
- Any freely registered user thus can technically upload and submit any
image file of his or her choosing and it will be available online right
away.
- Submitters are however required to adhere to our copyright terms,
which including our image guidelines
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Image_guidelines).
This is further explained by our _Image use policy_
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Image_use_policy) and by our
_Uploading images_ article
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Uploading_images). Our terms
contain a clear requirement that the uploader ensure compliance with
copyright legislation AND explain why the image is copyright law
compliant AND also classify the rationale for legal use of the
respective image through the use of an appropriate tag. Again, the
legal responsibility to ensure copyright compliance lies squarely with
the submitter.
- It is only /after/ such submissions are made that these uploaded
images go through various review processes (e.g. listing and review at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Imagelist) to verify that they
meet our standards (which includes adherence to copyright regulations).
- If violations are confirmed, any offending images are _permanently_
deleted, unlike other submitted content, which remains available via
article history pages.
- Because such deletions are permanent and because the responsibility
for ensuring copyright compliance lies squarely with the submitter, we
are sometimes cautious about deleting images in cases of doubt.

Finally:
- In the case of the picture you asked us for permission about, the
contributor has so far failed to classify and explain the uploaded
image's copyright compliance.
- With virtually all images on the Wikipedia, you can check their
respective copyright and submission details just by clicking on them in
the article, which should take you to an image descriptor page.
- In case of the Gandhi image, that page is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Mahatma_Gandhi.jpg. This contains
the text which Aevar Arnfjoerd Bjarmason included in his email (see
above).
- From this page, it can be seen that the submitter was our fellow
contributor Netoholic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Netoholic). I
am contacting him for clarification via his Talk page. (This is
something you could have done do directly as well -- you can leave him
a message
(http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=User_talk:
Netoholic&action=edit&section=new) on his Talk page
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Netoholic). That goes for any
user.

- I am asking Netoholic to get back to you direct, but because of the
volunteer nature of our project there is no guarantee that he does so
(in time).

- Until Netoholic has confirmed the copyright situation, we would
strongly suggest for you NOT to use the respective Gandhi image as the
legality of its use is not presently clear to ourselves. (That is
unless you were to find out from other sources that the image can
legally be freely used. In this latter case -- or if you find out that
it CANNOT be used, we would be rather grateful to be notified as well.)
If you were to re-use the image without further enquiries, you would be
doing so entirely at your own risk.

Please accept my apologies for a lengthy email relating a complex
procedural and legal framework and please understand that in the
absence of more information we cannot grant permission for reuse of the
image. Indeed, if we do not receive such clarification, the image is
likely to sooner or later get deleted from our own servers as our
fellow Wikipedians follow our continual review processes.

Yours sincerely,

Jens
Wikipedia contributor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ropers
http://www.ropersonline.com

original message follows:

> Message: 4
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2004 08:15 -0700
> From: "Danavir Goswami (USA)" <Danavir.Goswami at pamho.net>
>
> Dear Friends,				Aug. 26, 2004
>
> Greetings. I am a monk writing a book on celibacy---the title is "Brain
> Gain" (1,000 copies) and would like to use, within the book, an image
> of
> Gandhi I found on your website.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi
>
> If you could be so kind as to inform me A) whether the image is in the
> public domain (copyright-free), or B) if you have the ability to grant
> permission for its use, or C) you could suggest how I might seek
> permission.
>
> The seminary is non profit and the publication is also not a profit
> enterprise.
>
> Thank you so much for your help.
>
> With best regards,
>
> Dr. Dane Holtzman
>
> Rupanuga Vedic College (USA)
> 5201 Paseo, Kansas City, Missouri 64110
> Tel: (816) 924-5619, (800) 340-5286, Fax: (816) 924-5640
> E-mail: danavir.goswami at pamho.net  Website: www.rvc.edu
>
>
>


from_name: Jakob Voss

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: How to get a list of authors for each article

body:
Hi,

seems like nobody is interested in providing the users of a offline CD
version with a list of authors for each article like required by GFDL?

I wrote

> All users should be listed - but not the IP-numbers of anonymous posts!
 > ...
> INSERT INTO has_edited
>   SELECT DISTINCT old_user_text AS user, old_title AS article
>   FROM old WHERE old_namespace=0

INSERT INTO has_edited
    SELECT cur_user_text AS user, cur_title AS article
    FROM cur WHERE cur_namespace=0

SELECT DISTINCT user FROM has_edited WHERE
article='ArticleYouWantTheAuthorListFor'

Should work, but IPs need to be filtered out. I still do not know how to
count the number of edits by anonymous users.

By the way getting all the author of an article should be a feature in
MediaWiki too.

Greetings
   Jakob

P.S: How long does it take to set up a copy of the whole german (all
tables, also users!) for an endreview process? Yes it will be a fork but
only a short one to be able to delete all URVs, images without copyright
statement, portal pages and things like that.

P.P.S: If the SQL-Statement stuff for detecting the authors does not
work we could use a bot that requests the history, creates the list of
authors and puts it at the discussion page - wie do not want to include
the discussion pages at the CD in any case.


from_name: Denni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Renaming VfD now under discussion

body:
>
>
> Just keep in mind that renaming/reorganizing VfD will have serious
> implications as it ripples through the rest of the other languages.
> Make sure the system does not get more convoluted or depends on much
> more instruction reading.
>
> -Andrew (User:Fuzheado)

What sorts of implications do you see, Andrew? I see this as evolving into a shape
much like featured article or featured picture, where the same sorts of
discussions go on as in VfD, just at a less emotional level. The first (and maybe
the only) step is the change to a less fractitious name, and I'd also suggest
using the same terms as in feature article; that is to say, "support" or
"oppose".  The fact is, we =do= bite the newbies, though I suspect that's a
systemic problem rather than Wiki's own: Everything2 is quite explicit in pointing
out that life for a level 1 noder is supposed to suck (go figure), and many
higher-level noders have no qualms about dumping all over newbies. I'm glad to see
the push at Wiki is back on track in the opposite direction.

Denni


from_name: Eric Pierce

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 13, Issue 65

body:
brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com) wrote:

> Binary attachments are stripped from the
> list to help keep virus mails off. Best
> to open a bug report on bugzilla.wikipedia.org
> and post your patches there...

Done. See it here:

http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=234

I hope it works!

Eric

=====
Do you know stuff? Contribute to Wikipedia! http://www.wikipedia.org/
Help preserve the public domain by becoming a Distributed Proofreader. http://www.pgdp.net/

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


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mosque as military target

body:
What is the stance of the Islamic community on militants taking refuge
inside a mosque? Are they permitted to use mosques as military bases?

What is the stance of the Islamic community on armies attacking
militants who take refuge inside mosques?

Who is the desecrator:

* the armed men who take refuge inside the mosque and use it as a base
to attack enemies; or,
* those who attack the armed men inside the mosque?

I've heard that in international law, both sides to a conflict should
avoid damaging holy places. But I've also heard that if soldiers from
one side occupy a "holy place", then the other side is no longer bound
by international law. That is, the holy place loses its protected status
and becomes a legitimate target.

Where in the Wikipedia can I find information about these matters?

Ed Poor


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Mosque as military target

body:
Poor, Edmund W stated for the record:

> What is the stance of the Islamic community on militants taking refuge
> inside a mosque? Are they permitted to use mosques as military bases?
>
> What is the stance of the Islamic community on armies attacking
> militants who take refuge inside mosques?
>
> Who is the desecrator:
>
> * the armed men who take refuge inside the mosque and use it as a base
> to attack enemies; or,
> * those who attack the armed men inside the mosque?
>
> I've heard that in international law, both sides to a conflict should
> avoid damaging holy places. But I've also heard that if soldiers from
> one side occupy a "holy place", then the other side is no longer bound
> by international law. That is, the holy place loses its protected status
> and becomes a legitimate target.
>
> Where in the Wikipedia can I find information about these matters?
>
> Ed Poor

The Hague Convention Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land,
Annex to the Convention, Article 27 (signed 1907) provides:

"In sieges and bombardments all necessary steps must be taken to spare,
as far as possible, buildings dedicated to religions, art, science, or
charitable purposes, historic monument, hospitals, and places where the
sick and wounded are collected, provided they are not being used at the
time for military purposes.

"It is the dury of the besieged to indicate the presence of such
buildings or places by distinctive and visible signs, which shall be
notified to the enemy beforehand."

Similar clauses can be found in numerous later conventions and treaties.

Now go thou and Wikipediate.

--
  Sean Barrett     | I got the white stars you wanted, but
  sean at epoptic.com | I couldn't find any red hearts, yellow
                   | moons, or green clovers. --Betsy Ross


from_name: Peter Gervai

subject: [Wikipedia-l] spammers and idiots

body:
Just an embryo of idea: seems some idiots/spammers spam their URL to
wikipedias they guess unmaintaned, and I suspect that they usually do it to
more than one: maybe one of them are is not maintaned, and thus raise their
ranks on google (cos' that's what it's all about).

Would be maybe useful to be able to put an IP (and its approximate modification
date) into the SpamExaminer queue, which could cehck every wikipedia for the
same IP (only not logged in IP's as it's unlikely that they log in to
several wikipedias they don't even get the language in) modifications, and
make it easier to rollback them (or even help non-maintaned wikipedias to
get rid of them, I don't yet know how).

Maybe a link somewhere on the contribs of a not logged in IP page could
help. Or when watching their diffs (it turns out to be spam in the diffs
usually, except when the moron creates a new article just for the spam).

I guess this could work effectively since not many non-logged-in people
makes changes to several wikipedias at once, and even if they would, sysops
probably wouldn't flag them as spammers.

Or maybe we already have such checks. Dunno. If there is, sorry for wasting
your time.

http://hu.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Speci%C3%A1lis:Contributions&target=67.9.96.162

[[user:grin]]


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 13,
 Issue 65 (was Wikipedia must change with Googling)

body:
Google recently got valued at about $20bn.
I guess some people must think its search results are ok.


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Renaming VfD now under discussion...

body:
Nice.  Nicely coded personal attack.  Nice way to avoid the issue by attempting to belittle those you disagree with.  Nice attempt to avoid reasoned discussion.

Sorry it didn't work.

RickK

Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
dpbsmith at verizon.net stated for the record:

> I got enough of an encouraging reception on this list to have started a
> discussion about it at
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion
>
> There does seem to be support for renaming VfD and rewriting the VfD page
> notice, so I want to concentrate on that part of my proposal.
>
> And my campaign slogan for the change is: as we currently present VfD, some
> newbies are feeling _bitten_ when they should really only feel _barked at._

How 'bout "Campaigns to Obliterate Inadequate Articles and Humiliate
Their Worthless Authors"? We're dealing, after all, with a Very Serious
Issue[tm]. The presence of a less-than-perfect article threatens to
rend the very fabric of the space-time continuum, to say nothing of
utterly annihilating Wikipedia as we know it....

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
New and Improved Yahoo! Mail - 100MB free storage!


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] morguefile.com image use

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> <Farnsworth>Good news, everyone!</Farnsworth>
>
> I contacted Michael Connors from www.morguefile.com, a free image
> repository, about use of the images on wikipedia. Short answer: Go
> ahead! Long answer: below...
>
> Happy image-hunting!
>
> Magnus
>
> -------- Original Message --------
>
> Hey mangus, first off for a site like Wikipedia, you can certainly use
> any
> image photographed by mconnors free and clear of all terms or by-lines
> and
> you have my written permission. The problem is that I don't own these
> images, I only have permission to redistribute them. Or at least all
> of the
> images that I haven't photographed. And I wrote the disclaimer myself,
> which
> is why it's so shoddy. (even more so then the coding) You are correct,
> what
> I plan to do is have a lawyer provide us with proper terms. My only real
> concern was preventing someone from downloading the entire collection and
> finding a morgeufile CD for sale at wal-mart. And I have gotten
> request from
> people who want to just rip off as many prints as they can and sell
> them at
> every street vendor in NYC, in which case I tell them they should at
> least
> stick a calendar on it. If your using the images on a webpage, that's
> really
> not the same- they would be really bad prints. The intent of the site was
> definitely to serve sites not unlike wikipedia, so I think you should run
> with using the images, I honestly believe the contributors would be
> tickled
> to know there work is being used by your site. Give me another 6
> months to
> hire the lawyers and we'll have a solid license. For now you can
> contact the
> contributor of a specific photo- I'm sure you won't have any problems
> getting permission. Thanks a lot for the advice, it is greatly
> appreciated.
> mconnors
>
Perhaps they would like to GFDL only low-resolution versions of their
images, say up to 640px or 800px on the longest edge? They would be no
use for prints, as they would be limited to only a few inches across at
150dpi colour resolution. However, they would be more than adequate as
encyclopedia illustrations, and would provide high-resolution thumbnails
and other small illustrations.

Neil


body:
Where did I say that?

RickK

"Eric B. Rakim" <eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com> wrote:
In anyway, the argument that bad articles will cripple the search function,
is false.

---------------------------------
Do you Yahoo!?
Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Graph drawing plugin

body:
On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 08:53:54PM +0200, Ingmar Schlecht wrote:
> My question is: Has this graph drawing plugin actually been coded or is
> it still nothing but an idea?

     We're  currently  finishing  up  support for GnuPlot at
wikisophia.org (see "Additional Features"); and  once  we've
achieved  XML-like syntax, we should be able to integrate it
with Mediawiki.

     Best, Peter

--
 .
..:


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Not that exactly, but you did write "Do you not understand what it
says about Wikipedia when Google and Yahoo! mirror all of the crap
and that's the face that Wikipedia presents to the world?" Histrionic
belittling of other WPians is not a reasoned argument.

Stan

Rick wrote:

>Where did I say that?
>
>RickK
>
>"Eric B. Rakim" <eric_b_and_rakim at hotmail.com> wrote:
>In anyway, the argument that bad articles will cripple the search function,
>is false.
>
>
>
>---------------------------------
>Do you Yahoo!?
>Win 1 of 4,000 free domain names from Yahoo! Enter now.
>_______________________________________________
>WikiEN-l mailing list
>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>


body:
Rick stated for the record:

> Nice.  Nicely coded personal attack.  Nice way to avoid the issue by attempting to belittle those you disagree with.  Nice attempt to avoid reasoned discussion.
>
> Sorry it didn't work.
>
> RickK

RickK, when I feel that you are worthy of a personal attack, I won't
"code" it.

I apologize for having struck such an exposed and sensitive nerve, even
though it was inadvertent.

--
  Sean Barrett     | I got the white stars you wanted, but
  sean at epoptic.com | I couldn't find any red hearts, yellow
                   | moons, or green clovers. --Betsy Ross


subject: [WikiEN-l] User:Michael/User:Mike Garcia

body:
User:Michael, a hard-banned user, has returned as [[User:Mike Garica]], claiming that he has been unbanned.  Jimbo replied on the User page that no, he has not been unbanned, but when anyone tries to reban him, Guanaco is unbanning him.  Please revoke Guanaco's sysop privileges until he agrees to stop doing this without discussion.  In the meantime, I have deleted/reverted all of Mike Garcia's additions to Wikipedia.

RickK

---------------------------------
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Express yourself with Y! Messenger! Free. Download now.


body:
I don't see that that quote is either histrionic nor a belittlement.  But then, since most of the belittlement on this mailing list is directed towards me, it seems that there aren't very many people on the mailing list that know what belittlement really is.

RickK

Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
Not that exactly, but you did write "Do you not understand what it
says about Wikipedia when Google and Yahoo! mirror all of the crap
and that's the face that Wikipedia presents to the world?" Histrionic
belittling of other WPians is not a reasoned argument.

Stan

Rick wrote:

>Where did I say that?
>
>RickK
>
>"Eric B. Rakim" wrote:
>In anyway, the argument that bad articles will cripple the search function,
>is false.
>
>
>
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Anet Dartmouth, Again

body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:

> As John Mohawk has argued, in regard to America for example, American
> Indians are directly or indirectly responsible for the public-meeting
> tradition, free speech, democracy, and "all those things which got
> attached to the Bill of Rights." Without the Native example, "do you
> really believe that all those ideas would have found birth among
> people who had spent a millennium butchering other people because of
> intolerance of questions of religion?"
>
Um, some guy claiming this doesn't make it an undisputed fact.
Europeans had a lot of misconceptions about Native American society,
both positive and negative; some of these were not fully understood
until the scientific development of anthropology in the 20th century.
An educated white American of the 18th century was more familiar with
the doings of the ancient Athenian boule than with the society living
on the other side of the hill outside his door; Ben Franklin's
admiration of the natives was considered just another one of his
charming eccentricities.

Reflexive condemnation of Western civilization is no more rational
than uncritical praise.

Stan


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
I am troubled by User:Guanaco's behavior here.

He does have a valid point that banning Michael seems to not work.  He
only comes back with new accounts or edits via IP, and does the same
thing.  It may indeed be easier to "contain" him to a known account or
two and then just pick up the pieces.

HOWEVER, I don't think it's Guanaco's place to unilaterally decide
that this should be our new policy.  He is still officially banned and
bannable on sight.  If we want to alter this decision, let's discuss
it in a place of record (here, or on Wikipedia).

-Matt (User:Morven)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mosque as military target

body:
Christiaan Briggs stated for the record:

> On 27 Aug 2004, at 7:15 pm, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
>> Who is the desecrator:
>>
>> * the armed men who take refuge inside the mosque and use it as a base
>> to attack enemies; or,
>> * those who attack the armed men inside the mosque?
>
>
> In terms of established law it seems you already have your answer. In
> terms of morality, when you're the armed men and women of a government
> that has committed the supreme international war crime (according to the
> Nuremberg Tribunal), a war of aggression, and illegally occupies that
> nation on spurious justification I think those attacking the men inside
> the mosque could be regarded as the desecrators.

In your loathing of all things "Western" you are ignoring nearly a
century of international law declaring the exact opposite of what you
think.  The moment the first set of armed men occupied the mosque, it
lost all protection under international law, and the attackers became
justified in attacking the mosque.  (The question of whether their
presence /near/ the mosque was justified is moot.)

--
  Sean Barrett     | I got the white stars you wanted, but
  sean at epoptic.com | I couldn't find any red hearts, yellow
                   | moons, or green clovers. --Betsy Ross


from_name: Yann Forget

body:
Hi all,

In the discussion Wikispecies, there were a few mentions of the possibility to
enlarge Wikipedia with coverage on postage stamps.

While some articles on famous stamps may easily find their place in an
encyclopedia, an extensive coverage of stamps seems outside of the scope of
Wikipedia. So I would like to know what people think about that.

A few years back, I started a project on Savannah to offer data about postage
stamps under a free licence, but with no success. Maybe a wiki would be more
appriopriate. I have a MySQL database about French stamps to start with.
AFAIK, there are no other project to provide data about stamps are under a
free licence.

Articles about stamps obviously need an illustration with stamps scans and
photos. But it seems that most modern stamps can be considered as artitic
work and could therefore not be reproduce without the permission of the
author.

cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Postage_stamp_thumb.jpg
AFAIK, the information provided on this page is wrong. This image can't be
under a free licence. Can a lawyer can confirm or refute that?

I asked this here but got no answer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Postage_stamp_thumb.jpg

Best regards,
Yann

--
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Anet Dartmouth, Again

body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:

> On 27 Aug 2004, at 9:55 pm, Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> Um, some guy claiming this doesn't make it an undisputed fact.
>
>
> Um, I know, that's why I said "he argued."
>
You gave yourself away when you repeated it all uncritically...

>> Reflexive condemnation of Western civilization is no more rational
>> than uncritical praise.
>
>
> Well, luckily for me, my response was nether reflexive nor condemning
> of Western culture.

Trotting out the "millions of deaths" argument is a standard tactic
for blanket condemnation; we're supposed to be so horrified and
guilt-ridden that we'll just go along with whatever is said next.

To borrow from politics, instead of doing negative attacks on the
competition, why not just stick to the advantages of your approach?
This all started with the comment (I paraphrase) that principles
of Western civilization are a better guide for encyclopedizing; if
that's not true, let's see a sample article developed according to
the principles of Islamic or Hindu civilization. Dunno about other
people, but I'm tremendously curious about how that would go.

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mosque as military target

body:
Christiaan Briggs stated for the record:

> On 27 Aug 2004, at 10:17 pm, Sean Barrett wrote:
>> you are ignoring nearly a century of international law declaring the
>> exact opposite of what you think.
>
>
> I'm hardly ignoring it, I started my sentence with it. I'm certainly
> disputing its morality however. If you'd like to respond to my argument
> you're welcome.

I -- or rather, the signatories of the Hague Convention of 1907 -- have
already responded to your argument.  To repeat: mosques, like all other
religious edifices, are to be spared by any attacker "provided they are
not being used at the time for military purposes."  The moment the
Iraqis -- however noble their cause -- took weapons into their mosque
the Americans -- however despicable their cause -- became justified in
attacking it.  The decision of the Nuremberg Tribunal has no bearing on
this principle.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Anet Dartmouth, Again

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>And Christiaan Briggs wrote:
>
>
>>>Bah! If I don't recognize the contributor -- or even more clearly, if
>>>that person is editting from an IP number -- I'll just consider
>>>her/him/it a troublemaker, list the articles that person produces on
>>>VfD & revert all of her/his/its edits as "vandalism".
>>>
>>>
>>So who the hell do you think you are???
>>
>>
>My above passage is an example of a rhetorical technique known as
>irony. Unfortunately tone of voice does not always successfully transmit
>across the Internet for some reason, & obviously it failed in this case.
>I apologize for that failure here.
>
I hope that in my own response to that message reflected that I did
detect the irony.  I often use it myself, and can sympathize when I see
it misunderstood in someone else's writing.  Quoting that passage out of
context made it seem far more serious.  I actively resisted the
temptation to respond to Christiaan, because I felt it would be a futile
gesture.

>>>And if I may allowed to be chauvanistic for a moment, I think this
>>>ideal is a valuable part of Western Civilization that needs to be
>>>taught to the rest of the world. We should respect other people's POV,
>>>we should be willing to explain our own POV, & that there should be a
>>>fair & beneficial exchange between them
>>>
>>>
>>*groan* spare us your offensive ethnocentric colonialist views, please.
>>
>>
>
>I assume that you, too, misunderstood what I meant by "Western Civilization".
>If not, then I am puzzled why you reject an ideal that the land you
>appear to be writing from -- the United Kingdom -- has struggled to promote.
>While the struggle may not have always been praiseworthy, orderly, or even
>successful, many people in that land have worked to perpetuate the ideal
>I talked about.
>
Western Civilization to me really relates to Western Europe plus key
members of its former colonial empires.  It does promote certain ideals,
but that does not mean that it has been uniformly successful in
implementing those ideals.  This distinction is difficult for the person
who has not yet grasped the concept of irony.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Mosque as military target

body:
On Fri, 27 Aug 2004 22:27:53 +0100, Christiaan Briggs
<christiaan at yurkycross.co.uk> wrote:
> On 27 Aug 2004, at 10:17 pm, Sean Barrett wrote:

> > you are ignoring nearly a century of international law declaring the
> > exact opposite of what you think.
>
> I'm hardly ignoring it, I started my sentence with it. I'm certainly
> disputing its morality however. If you'd like to respond to my argument
> you're welcome.

(at the risk of needlessly prolongnig an off topic discussion)

It seems to me that, having decided the US is on the morally wrong
side in this war, the US should be held to a stricter standard than
international law / convention calls for, while their armed opponents
should be held to a lesser standard.

If a detachment of US troops was occupying a mosque or other structure
of religious or cultural significance -- and was still engaging in
active conflict from there, rather than seeking sanctuary or
attempting surrender or truce -- would their opponents be justified in
firing upon them?

I'm curious as to where your moral logic goes here.  Are you arguing
that mosques and other sacred or significant places should not be
harmed no matter what?  Or are you arguing simply that nothing the US
does in Iraq can be right, because they are already in the wrong for
being the aggressor?

-Morven


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Anet Dartmouth, again

body:
> > > A positive purchase maybe:
> > > Lies My Teacher Told Me:Everything Your American History Textbook Got
> > > Wrong http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/liesmyteachertoldme/liesmyteacher.html
> > >
> > > A book for everyone of the American Empire.
> >
> > Sorry, but my reading time is currently spent on teaching myself the immense
> > amount of knowledge that was not covered -- if even alluded to -- in
> > my school years.
>
> A good book, though. If you didn't already know the low reliability of US
> history as it's taught in US schools, it would be worth reading. But then,
> surely *all* the people on this list know the ppor quality of the history
> that's taught in *their own country's* schools. I would not for a moment
> suggest that the only people who understand that are (a subset of)
> Americans.
>

Good point. Canadian schoolchildren, while taught (IMHO) far more American history than necessary, are pathetically unknowledgeable about their own country's.
Close to half of Canadians are unable to recall the name of our first Prime Minister. Agggh!

Denni


body:
Le Friday 27 August 2004 15:49, Fred Bauder a ?crit :
> Certain articles lend themselves to philatelic coverage, for example,
> Stellaland, after all, most folks who have ever heard of Stellaland first
> encountered it with respect to its stamps. Illustrations of a few
> representative stamps could be added.
>
> A complete stamp catalog might be going a bit far, but if the energy is
> around, which I doubt, it could be a sister project, Wikistamps...

Ok, thanks for your answer.

> If you take a photograph or scan a postage stamp that image is not
> copyrighted even though the underlying design may be. Sometimes a nice
> image, for example of a butterfly or bird or even a person can be included
> in Wikipedia in that way. The Japanese stamp you reference is just a
> photograph or scan of a stamp which anyone can make and publish, although
> perhaps, in Japan, there might be some restriction as it is a Japanese
> stamp.
>
> It occurs to me that there is a sort of disconnect here. If you take a
> photograph of painting in an museum or someone's home that is copyright
> free but if you scan a reproduction of a painting in a book it is not, yet
> there is very little difference in what you have done.

I fear that is wrong, but IANAL...
If you take photos in a modern art museum where this is allowed (in of most
them, it is not), you can't release under a free license your photos.
If the painting is in the public domain, then you can release your photos
under a free license. So the question is whether stamps are in the public
domain or not. Maybe stamps from the USA are, AFAIK, but for most other
countries, modern stamps are not in the public domain.

> Fred

Yann

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux