subject:
[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years
	-	Giant	brainstorming - a game with rules.

body:
==WMF in 5 years==
*Board and management
The management of the Wikimedia Foundation will show new outlines on how
things will be managed. As many of the chapters have grown in prominence
and as many have a legal requirement for being independent in many of
their activities, the format of the Wikimedia Foundation is becoming
more one of a federation. A federation of chapters and projects that
share the same ideals and cooperate in realising the shared ideals of
bringing information to all people of the world in all languages. The
real strength of this federation of Wikimedians can be found in so many
efforts on so many levels by so many people all sharing this same sense
of purpose already now. For a federation however, we will need clear
guidance to ensure it?s continuing existence and growth.

The board is gaining added significance because it is more and more seen
as the glue that binds the WMF chapters, projects and communities
together. It consists of true citizens of the world and in this it has
not changed at all. There is still a lot of talk about how an ideal
board should look like but in effect it has not changed much. The
stability of the WMF is studied as a management model but it proves
quite hard to emulate.

*Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)
Even though the WMF relies on its volunteers, there has been an
increasing need for the fulfilment of requirements that need full time
attention. Some of these roles are part of the WMF some are part of
chapters and some are part of projects. As the importance of the role of
the WMF as an honest and independent broker in the information society
is growing, organisations want the WMF to fulfil roles that the WMF is
reluctant to take on. As these roles are defined and as funding is found
for the fulfilment of these roles more and more staff will be needed.
There is already some discussion if a second person should be hired to
manage the ever-increasing number of student projects relating to the
Wikimedia Foundations and its projects.

*Budget
The budget that the WMF publishes still does not reflect the true amount
of money that it takes to actually operate and make things work in the
long run. As the WMF is increasingly seen as a partner that helps
organisation realise their goals, the WMF becomes increasingly aware of
how many costs do not materialise. Next years budget for the WMF and its
chapters is estimated to be over 5.000.000 Euro.

*Fundraising scheme
Fundraising has two broad goals; there is the need for the continuation
of present services and there is the need that is project specific. The
scheme of [[Donations: putting your money where your mouth is]] proved a
success. Many projects came into being because of this grassroots
support. The support for the continuing service is mainly supported by
companies, organisations and governments that share our values. There
are some that we do not want to cooperate with and this reluctance has
made us friends and adversaries.

*Philanthropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed
As we are gaining more content in more languages, more DVD schemes like
the one premiered for the German Wikipedia are established, these do
prove a money spinner and the money earned is used to sponsor the
creation of new DVD projects. The foundation is gaining ground in many
languages through the cooperation with Universities, much content was
realised by providing scholarships for students in return for new
encyclopaedic and lexicological content. As the credibility of the
Wikimedia Foundation increases, the educational content it provides is
becoming increasingly influential. The new educational content published
under the aegis of the WMF is characterised by a neutral point of view;
this is something that is valued by some and reviled by others.

*Projects
The Wikispecies project is fulfilling the early promise after the
restart as a Wikidata project, of particular importance was the
cooperation on the taxonomy of the Caridea, where it was demonstrated
that both the ?splitters? and the ?lumpers? are of an equal importance
to taxonomy. Some projects seem to be increasingly the domain of
professionals, however study shows that these professionals have always
been there. Being a Wikimedia contributor proves to be increasingly
relevant for professional standing.

*Content objectives
As we are getting more cooperation with Universities and Standard
bodies, we gain more and more resources for inclusion in our databases.
The importance of this was shown in the lexicological content where much
of the initial data for the less well-known languages came from these
sources. An increasing amount of data is available within Wikidata
projects; these sometimes however prove divisive because some want to
combine data projects while others want to keep them "small and beautiful".

The project that really proved a hit was the WMF version of the 1986
"BBC Domesday Project ", it resulted in over three million pictures of
India and some four million pictures of China alone.

*Software objectives.
With the increasing specialisation of the projects, there is an
increasing need for developers, having a full time liaison person for
University grade students proved extremely successful in that the
retention rate of developers was over 5%. As the expectations of the
look and feel have changed, the content of the projects is becoming
increasingly a multi media experience.

*Relationship between chapters and parent organisation.
As more chapters are founded, it is increasingly difficult to hard for
the chapters to coordinate activities. This need for coordination is
however acutely felt. Problematic is that the chapters are not equal;
long established chapters have different needs from the more recent
chapters, as we assume an organic growth it is not always easy to bridge
expectations with reality.

*Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)
As the Wikimedia Foundation becomes more relevant, more organisations
seek the cooperation on all kinds of issues. Fortunately the principle
of having a neutral point of view was with the WMF from the beginning.
This proves to be the guiding principle in deciding whom we want to
partner with.

*Other (anything we did not think of)
Where to host next years Wikimania, how to find a venue for some 2500
people attending (and press)

*Relationship between projects and the parent organisation.
As the communities of the projects outside the Western world are
growing, the languages barrier between the WMF and the projects grows.
Consequently there is an increasing divergence between the policies of
the projects and it becomes more of an effort to ensure that global
principles are adhered to.

*Relationship between projects and chapters.
Projects are not bound to one country while chapters are. This will
result in legal problems. As the communities of projects are autonomous
but as it is the chapters who are addressed when there are legal
problems, it is important that the independence of the projects is
either affirmed or denied.

Thanks,
GerardM


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Gerard Meijssen


list: wikien-l

from_name: El C

subject: [WikiEN-l] situational process - laws in pencil

body:
>I like your confusing style, but I have to take it in the context of your
less rational appeals.
 You are not being intellectually honest here, I find; you are attempting to
exploit my failings in English to your own advantage, grossly distorting my
comments into something they most defintiely are not. I've made myself very
clear what I think about your debating methods.
 El_C


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Thomas Gries

subject:
[Wikitech-l] EnotifWiki 3.55 = special version of MediaWiki1.5rc4
 cvs 200508302300 released

body:
to whom it may concern, a new version is available

helpdesk hotpage
   http://www.enotifwiki.org
download
   http://developer.berlios.de/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4473
browse the cvs
   http://cvs.berlios.de/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/enotifwiki/enotifwiki/

EnotifWik 3.55 solves the following bugs and is the new recommended version:

505 (partially):  $wgTimezoneoffsetOverwrite dropped (now only using
$wgLocalTZoffset, if required)
3305 $wgLocalTZoffset issue;
3306  Add a description of "$wgLocalTZoffset = ..." to DefaultSettings.php
3307 UserMailer.php - needs a small correction
RSS/xml not working due to unsane characters in the html output
updated to mediawiki REL1_5 CVS 200508302300


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Matlock

body:
Hi all,

            I just wanted to let you all know, that I've added a partial
[[List of Matlock Episodes]] to en:

James


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
I regret my poor choice of terms in my last mail, and
the tired state during which I wrote it.

The point was that if we are balanced in our approach
we should regard all extremists as equally
reprehensible, and that merely being one of a
designated reprehensible character (as such
designations are too often subjective) should not
preclude one from participating in the project. My
definition of a "reprehensible view" (substituting for
an unreasonable term) is simply anyone which considers
anyone else inferior. Ironically, this would seem to
include myself, as I am guilty of using (for sake of
rhetorical emphasis) the very kind of reprehensible
terms which I sought to oppose in principle.

SV

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
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from_name: Phroziac

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Fwd: [Wikinews-l] Licensure straw poll

body:
See that link on the footer of every email to the list? That is,
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l . Click it.
There should be a "unsubscribe" button somewhere on that list. :P

On 8/31/05, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Good job.
> Let me know when you decide to steal credit for my writing in
> wikipedia down the road for compatibility sake.
>
> And would someone *please* take me off this fucking list? I've been
> trying to unsub for ages.
>
> On 8/30/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I'm forwarding this to Wikipedia and Foundation-l since the poll could
> > potentially make Wikinews incompatible with Wikipedia or any of our
> > other projects. Currently, content from Wikinews can be used in
> > Wikipedia (though not the other way around). CC-BY-SA is not
> > compatible with the GNU FDL, so this would not longer be the case.
> >
> > Earlier polls and discussion are at
> >
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License_straw_poll
> > and
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License
> >
> > Angela.
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Amgine <amgine at saewyc.net>
> > Date: Aug 30, 2005 11:57 PM
> > Subject: [Wikinews-l] Licensure straw poll
> > To: Wikinews mailing list <wikinews-l at wikimedia.org>
> >
> >
> > A poll is being held at
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/Licensure_Poll on whether or not
> > to adopt the CC-by-sa 2.5 licensure for the Wikinews project.
> >
> > This licensure allows any use of the articles so long as attribution
> > credit is given to the Wikinews project and any derivations or further
> > developments are released under an identical licensure.
> >
> > The poll was suggested by jwales, and is short so the board may have an
> > idea of how the community feels in time for their next meeting. Please
> > visit the poll and vote; comment on the discussion page
> > (http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Wikinews/Licensure_Poll).
> >
> > Amgine
> > ___________
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
signature


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Demis maps

body:
The company Demis in the Netherlands sells software for a map
server and also runs a demo on their own site.  The map data for
this demo have been collected from public domain sources, and the
company doesn't claim any copyright for the generated maps.  The
maps are not the very best, but good enough for many purposes.
Some maps of this origin are already at Wikimedia Commons, e.g.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Map-Hrusica-in-contex--raw.png
and have been used for further processing, e.g.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LocationArno.PNG

I developed a simple tool that makes it easier to find the right
map, and then I uploaded two dozens of them to
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_maps_from_demis.nl

However, the people at Demis are concerned about a "Slashdot
effect" that might overburden their map server if everybody starts
to use this tool.  They would prefer if somebody could buy the
Demis software and run their own server.  Unfortunately, the map
server only runs on Microsoft Windows.

Does anybody have a Demis server running already, that I can use
for my tool?  There are many WMS-compliant servers out there, but
most have very fuzzy or complicated copyright restrictions.

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


from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] underlining

body:
Thank you to all for the kind words about scn.wiki - but I am not sure if I received an answer to my original question (or if I did I havne't understood it!) - I am not sure whether it is an individual user choice thing or a choice for each wikipedia.  As I said, I have noticed that some wikis do not employ the underlining for internal links, so we had assumed that each wiki is able to control that somehow.  Please keep your explanations clear and succinct - if you start talking about terrabytes you will lose me - let's stick to terra firma - thereby reducing the risk of you lot being further terrarised by me (spelling intentionally changed so that the some incompetent spooks don't come looking for me and accidentally/intentionally put three bullets into my skull).
Thanking you again in anticipation.
Salutamu
pippu d'a

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3


from_name: Thomas Koll

subject: [Wikitech-l] Demis maps

body:
Am 31.08.2005 um 03:56 schrieb Lars Aronsson:
> However, the people at Demis are concerned about a "Slashdot
> effect" that might overburden their map server if everybody starts
> to use this tool.

The map needs to be generated only once for Wikipedia, I don't think
that
more than a dozen Wikipedians will do that anyways. Simply don't
propagate
the existence of that service to prominently.

> Unfortunately, the map
> server only runs on Microsoft Windows.

OK, that's always a reason to be concerned...

ciao, tom

--
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
http://www.tomk32.de


subject: [Wikipedia-l] underlining

body:
Am 31.08.2005 um 06:44 schrieb Giuseppe DAngelo:

> Thank you to all for the kind words about scn.wiki - but I am not
> sure if I received an answer to my original question (or if I did I
> havne't understood it!) - I am not sure whether it is an individual
> user choice thing or a choice for each wikipedia.  As I said, I
> have noticed that some wikis do not employ the underlining for
> internal links, so we had assumed that each wiki is able to control
> that somehow.  Please keep your explanations clear and succinct -
> if you start talking about terrabytes you will lose me - let's
> stick to terra firma - thereby reducing the risk of you lot being
> further terrarised by me (spelling intentionally changed so that
> the some incompetent spooks don't come looking for me and
> accidentally/intentionally put three bullets into my skull).
> Thanking you again in anticipation.

in [[Mediawiki:Monobook.css]] you have to put following line (at the
end, if there's content):

/* only for the content */
#bodyContent a { text-decoration: none; }
/* for the sidebar */
#columnOne a { text-decoration: none; }
/* for the footer */
#footer a { text-decoration: none; }

/* Of course you can shorten the example above with */
a { text-decoration: none; }

The whole thing is called CSS and you should find info about in en-
Wikipedia and if you
want to know what wizards do with CSS watch out for the CSS Zen Garden.

ciao, tom
--
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
http://www.tomk32.de


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Raul's 6th law of Wikipedia confirmed

body:
> From: Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com>
>
>> I personally think that the co-opting of Wikipedia for commercial and
>> promotional purposes is a real danger to Wikipedia.
>>
>> I am especially concerned about the articles we get about movies,
>> software, games, concert tours, reality TV shows, etc. that are
>> _about to_ be released within the next couple of months, always with
>> the assertion that they are certain to be very notable.
>
> I guess I don't see the where the danger part comes in.

That is why I said it is one of those areas where there is, I fear,
no consensus.

> It seems
> more like a self-correcting phenomenon

No, things do not correct _themselves._ They must be corrected by
_people._ Who must take time and effort that would otherwise be spent
on other things.

> If you really wanted to monitor and be able to VfD things after
> they've proven to be obscure duds, just make a new category of
> "to be released" things, perhaps subcatted by year, then review
> the following year.

"Just?"

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Legal paranoia

body:
On 8/29/05, Daniel P. B. Smith <dpbsmith at verizon.net> wrote:
>
> > From: Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org>
> >
> > Even then there is relatively little incentive for a traditional
> > encyclopedia to attack Wikipedia in the first place.
>
> I agree, but this assumes that the attacker is a) well-informed, b)
> rational, c) primarily interested in his own business interests. My
> personal interpretation is that the SCO business shows that this is
> not always true.

SCO didn't sue a non-profit charity, they sued the behometh IBM, along with
Novell and AutoZone. Then RedHat sued *them* asking for a declaratory
judgement. If you're going to draw an analogy between this and the SCO case,
it would be like if SPI (makers of Debian) started ripping out sections of
the Linux kernel in fear that SCO *might* sue them.

If anyone is going to go bankrupt there, it's SCO.

> Besides, the support would come pouring in from all over
> > the place. We'd probably get plenty of legal support donated to us.
>
> Agreed. And that sort of thing probably helped get Dmitri Sklyarov
> out of jail. But my point is, he was _in_ jail for a couple of months.

As Ray said, no one is going to go to jail here. Bringing that up only
spreads paranoia.

> The only reason we should even consider backing down on this is if
> > there's a serious legal argument that keeping this list would somehow
> > taint the rest of the encyclopedia. I highly doubt this is true, but
> > I'm not a lawyer, and if a lawyer says this is plausible it's
> > something we should look at hard.
>
> The context of my comments was Jimmy Wales' comment in regard to the
> Encarta list:
>
> >Opinions of our legal team are
> >divided about the issue,.
>
> Lawyers looked at it and said _they weren't sure._ This is a
> discussion about what a prudent persons does when the lawyers say
> _they're not sure._ You can interpret this to mean: "They're not sure
> there's a problem, so let's not worry about it, and certainly lets
> not worry about a list of _Britannica_ articles, or a _modified_ list
> of Encara articles. Or you can interpret this to mean "That means
> they're not sure this is OK so let's back away a bit?"
>
> When the lawyers say they're not sure, the question is whether the
> glass is half prudent or half paranoid,

The way I interpreted it, the lawyers said they weren't sure whether or not
it was legal for us to distribute the list. The question I was asking was
whether or not it was possible for the list to taint the rest of the
encyclopedia, such that even if we removed the list, the encyclopedia would
still be infringing. If that's true, then we definitely need to remove the
list. Of course, if that's true we have to do more than just remove the list
anyway.

> But otherwise, if it's just a list, I don't see the problem. The
> > worst reasonable case scenario is that we have to take it down.
>
> I think _that's_ a very good point.

And it's essentially the whole of my argument.

> A long drawn out legal battle; a chance to set a precedent that can be
> > used in the future; that'd probably be a good thing.
>
> And that's where I part company with you. I am interested in helping
> to write an encyclopedia, not help fight in long drawn out legal
> battles.

Simply writing an encyclopedia might be all that you're interested, but
Wikimedia goes well beyond that. In my opinion reducing the chilling effects
of copyright law goes directly to the business of the charity. The sad thing
is, we seem to be self-applying the chilling effects at this point.

Anthony


from_name: Ben E.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 25, Issue 98

body:
*sigh*
No Wikipedia contributions are copyrighted. By pressing that little "Save
page" button, you submit every single one of your contributions liscensed
under the GFDL. That means anyone (yes, anyone) can use what you wrote, as
long as they follow the licensing rules. Wikipedia using your work isn't
"theft"; it's free. Let me quote from the bottom of the page in the "edit
page" view, which you saw every time you edited a page.:

> DO NOT SUBMIT COPYRIGHTED WORK WITHOUT PERMISSION!
>
>    - All contributions to any page on Wikipedia are released under the
>    GNU Free Documentation License (see Project:Copyrights<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights>for details).
>    - *If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and
>    redistributed at will, do not submit it.*
>    - By submitting your work you promise you wrote it yourself, or
>    copied it from public domain<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_domain>resources?this does
>    *not* include most web pages.
>
>  Furthermore, now that you have been banned, you have no rights on
Wikipedia. That is the simple fact. By the ruling of the administration, you
are not welcome to edit on Wikipedia. See [[WP:BAN]]. We don't need any
other evidence posted on your talk page; your legal threats and personal
attacks stored forever in the page history stand for themselves. And yes, we
are in the habit of "suppressing" trolls on Wikipedia. That's how we keep
writing a free encyclopedia for every single person in the world.

~~~~
[[User:Bratsche|Ben]]

On 8/31/05, MAURICE FRANK <megaknee at btopenworld.com> wrote:
>
> and now that this fine-sounding investigation has
> proved that innocent users get penalty decisions
> slapped on them dictatorially on the spot without any
> dispute resolution,
> that means you are using stolen writing on article
> pages. Any writing you keep there, that comes
> originally from a wronged user. By not having any
> properly applied rules and denying that a user right
> to them exists, you cease to have any claim that
> former contributions from those users are agreed not
> to be copyright, and it is an act of ideas theft not
> to remove every word. Remember all those copyright
> worries you've been writing about in the Nazi topic?
> This is further to them.
>
> By a user whose talk page has just been locked to stop
> me continuing to post onto it links to evidence of
> unjust processes. It is a completely open act, that
> anyone can see online, of suppression of evidence, and
> done by one of the same admins whose actions were
> originally involved in my case: Redwolf24. He openly
> writes that if talk pages are used for protest instead
> of for begging "to make us want" to unblock you, they
> should be locked. I have saved a copy of the page in
> case it gets totally deleted. Now, A Nony Mouse and
> Skyring and anyone else interested in these things,
> hurry up to look at Usertalk:Tern and record this.
>
> >Message: 4
> >Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 17:41:24 -0500
> >From: "A. Nony Mouse" <mousyme at gmail.com>
> >Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Exercises in social
> >engineering
>
> > On 8/10/05, A. Nony Mouse <mousyme at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Yes, I'll admit now. I'll own up. I violated
> [[WP:POINT]] in an
> amazing
> > way.
> >
> > Amazing for one reason, that is.
> >
> > You see, my little social experiment, which was
> originally created
> > just to see how Wikipedia's elites actually behaved,
> bore more fruit
> > than I can count.
> ... So much so that
> the
> > actual procedures for dispute resolution were
> ignored. Nobody
> > attempted to contact them. They went straight from a
> backwards,
> tilted
> > RFC into a quick RFAR.
> >
> > And then of course there were no less than SIX
> innocent users who got
> > drawn in. Yep, that's right. I didn't even DO
> anything with the
> > situation, save for calling for leniency when it was
> obvious another
> > user was caught up in it.
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new
> Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Demis maps

body:
On Wed, Aug 31, 2005 at 03:56:01AM +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
> The company Demis in the Netherlands sells software for a map
> server and also runs a demo on their own site.  The map data for
> this demo have been collected from public domain sources, and the
> company doesn't claim any copyright for the generated maps.  The
> maps are not the very best, but good enough for many purposes.
> Some maps of this origin are already at Wikimedia Commons, e.g.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Map-Hrusica-in-contex--raw.png
> and have been used for further processing, e.g.
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:LocationArno.PNG
>
> I developed a simple tool that makes it easier to find the right
> map, and then I uploaded two dozens of them to
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Public_domain_maps_from_demis.nl
>
> However, the people at Demis are concerned about a "Slashdot
> effect" that might overburden their map server if everybody starts
> to use this tool.  They would prefer if somebody could buy the
> Demis software and run their own server.  Unfortunately, the map
> server only runs on Microsoft Windows.
>
> Does anybody have a Demis server running already, that I can use
> for my tool?  There are many WMS-compliant servers out there, but
> most have very fuzzy or complicated copyright restrictions.

Hi Lars,

I'm currently setting up a mapserver ( http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ )
based WMS infrastructure, integrating it into MediaWiki's GIS extension. The
idea is to remove almost all of those "City in country" images like in
     http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_am_Main
and generate those automatically from a <geo> tag within the article:

  <geo>
    50 07 N
    8 41 E
    city
    inhabitants: 650000
    altitude: 112m
    show map
  </geo>

(Syntax will probably change)

If you click the auto-generated map, you will be sent to a mapbender
( http://www.mapbender.org/ ) based map application. There you can scroll
around, explore the world. If you click on a city, the wikipedia article
for that city will be shown. If you zoom in, smaller towns or even placemarks
within towns will show up.

Currently I use NASA's blue marble for fancy background and CIA's
political borders for more boring background. Demis' hillshading would
be a real improvement to this.

Data is stored in PostGIS, since it supports geospatial indices.

Future plans:
- On large scale maps, show also the locations of images from commons
  (if geotagged)
- provide an interface to the community to also edit rivers, streets, etc
  CIA data on these is quite crappy.
- collaboration with other data-generating GIS projects, e.g. with the
  people that generate city maps from GPS tracks.

A first screenshot is available at http://jeluf.mormo.org/~jf/wikimaps3.pdf
(Yes, there are UTF-8 issues to solve. I know already how to do it. Yes,
I need help of a web designer. This still looks like an engineer-made web
page)

Tasks done:
* Compile two dozens of tools and libraries
* Store GIS data from wiki articles
* Show GIS data in mapbender
* autogenerate maps from coordinates in wikipages
* Integration of various sources for layers (Blue Marble, CIA data, some
  others)

Open tasks:
* make cities clickable (50% done, needs some more filtering)
* make extent of autogenerated maps nicer. E.g. for "city in Germany",
  show all of Germany.
* Web interface design. Not neccessarily monobook...
* Package everything, documentation

Time schedule:
* First public testbed in 2 weeks.
* Release in 2 months.

Regards,

JeLuF


list: foundation-l

from_name: Dan Grey

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia meeting today

body:
On 28/08/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I'll be frank. I think your request is not really reasonable. We have
> more than 100 languages. 8 projects. Thousands of editors. You can not
> expect Angela to go put messages one by one in possibly 300 village
> pumps. If you do expect that we do that, I suggest that we add a couple
> of full time employees to do so on the Foundation budget.

I was only suggesting putting notices on the 14 Wikinews projects.

Dan


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikinews-l] Licensure straw poll

body:
Still, there are other projects using GFDL that would benefit from a
correct - and clear - compatibility. Plus, we should not stick to your
case only and I am certain that there are some wp contributors who would
be happy to be able to re-use wn content.

Ilya Haykinson a ?crit :
> On 8/30/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I'm forwarding this to Wikipedia and Foundation-l since the poll could
>>potentially make Wikinews incompatible with Wikipedia or any of our
>>other projects. Currently, content from Wikinews can be used in
>>Wikipedia (though not the other way around). CC-BY-SA is not
>>compatible with the GNU FDL, so this would not longer be the case.
>
>
>
> For what it's worth, it makes little sense for Wikipedia to use
> Wikinews content beyond what's considered fair use. Wikinews is not an
> encyclopedia and tries to not have any encyclopedic articles, and the
> Wikipedia "current events" section is really short enough of a mention
> that it's fair use at worst and wholly original at best.
>
> -ilya haykinson
>  en.wikinews
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] What? Why? Who?

body:
On 28/08/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/08/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No, not a made up list. It's a list of "popular queries" which is what
> > they call it. That is very different from a claim that those are "most
> > searched for terms". They're popular ones, not the top ones.
> >
>
> I've e-mailed both Google and the BBC asking for clarification. I'll
> let you know what (if anything) I hear back.

BBC reply:

Hi Dan, thanks for your email. The top searches are the
most-searched-for terms over an hour long period.

Best regards,

The BBC Search Team


subject: [Foundation-l] What? Why? Who?


from_name: Valentina Faussone

subject: [Wikitech-l] grammar gender in most languages. Synonyms in every.

body:
Answering to Andrew Dunbar <hippytrail at gmail.com>:

I've found infos on differnt web pages (wiki pages
too). With Belgian I've meant Flemish, that was not
clear, my fault.
Czech has 4 genders: masculine animate, masculine
inanimate, feminine, and neuter. Yiddish seem to have
3 genders (masc, fem, neutral). Hebrew just two (masc,
fem).
Other languages has genders for some words and not for
every one (Dutch, for ex).
What really matters in wiki writing terms is that
every language has synonyms and that handling
all-the-single-words-meaning-the-same of the main one
as redirect looks to be a pointless hassle.
You will have: synonyms declined in different genders
AND numbers (singular and plural). They will be more
in some languages than in others, this will be more
important for some terms than for others, but you'll
find them anyway in every language.

Redirect has sense when different expression has to
point to a (let me use this term) technical word.
Everyday language point to proper terms: Soia cheese
(day-by-day) point to Tofu (proper name of the
object).
I guess that this point can be less important or
evident in english and for english speaking people.
For most european people is more important, because
their languages has more complex grammars.

Splitting redirect, synonyms and common errors
handling would be of help for writers and searchers. I
guess it would be easier for wiki admin to handle less
records on the server too, but since I'm not an expert
in servers matters I'm not sure.
I'm not even sure that wiki system can split red. and
syn.: what I'm sure is that it would be great. At the
end of an article you can now specify the article
category. Do you think it would be possible for the
system to specify the same way synonyms? And have them
to work as redirect?
Maybe that just seems simple, but it's not.

Reagards
Valentina Faussone

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
>The point is you wern't making much sense, translated or untranslated.

>Jack (Sam Spade)
 Ahuh.
 El_C


subject: [Wikitech-l] Gender: we're off topic.

body:
Answering to Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>

We're going off topic. The point is that handling
redirects as different "items" AND synonyms as list
"embedded" in the main article AND having a fuzzy
system for common errors would be greatly easier for
wiki writers and searchers. The genders matters is
just a part of the problem, since every language as,
anyway, synonyms and typing errors.

As far as for genders:
Hindi, Hurdu, Bengali,  has two gender (m, f). Marathi
has 3 (m, f, n).
Yiddish has 3 genders, Hebrew just 2, my foult.
Indo-Iranian languages are a subfamily of the
Indo-European group, and have numbers AND genders:
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-74600

Africa has many different languages. Many of them
belogn to the bantu group wich have genders and
numbers (handled with prefixs)

With Belgian I (probably not too clearly) meant
Flamish: not obvious, but still guessable, since the
other belgian language is French!
Romance, Germanic, or Slavic languages are
Indo-European language that are normally meant to
count all european language too (indo-EUROPEAN).

I don't think that they can be considerd a minority at
least because there a lot of terms referring to things
born or originated in Europe countries (classic music
terms are in Italian, food terms are in thier own
language like french, and so on).

But as I wrote shortly before the genders discussion
is pretty pointless: every language has synonyms and
most languages can have diffrent genders and numbers.
The problem affect millions of term so I think it has
to be considerd even by english speaking people.
English can be the most important language in the
world, but it's not the only one.

French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and so on are
not relatively small even on wikipedia: they count
nearly 340,000 articles.
Plus, what is not important today can be more
important tomorrow: the  so called third world is
growing up (lukily) pretty faster.

Don't get offended, but you sound a little bit snob
and english-culture-and-language-centric. Shouldn't be
the wiki project democratic and open to everybody
culture, even to the "not-important-people" culture
and language?

Regards,
V.F.

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: MAURICE FRANK

body:
and now that this fine-sounding investigation has
proved that innocent users get penalty decisions
slapped on them dictatorially on the spot without any
dispute resolution,
that means you are using stolen writing on article
pages. Any writing you keep there, that comes
originally from a wronged user. By not having any
properly applied rules and denying that a user right
to them exists, you cease to have any claim that
former contributions from those users are agreed not
to be copyright, and it is an act of ideas theft not
to remove every word. Remember all those copyright
worries you've been writing about in the Nazi topic?
This is further to them.

By a user whose talk page has just been locked to stop
me continuing to post onto it links to evidence of
unjust processes. It is a completely open act, that
anyone can see online, of suppression of evidence, and
done by one of the same admins whose actions were
originally involved in my case: Redwolf24. He openly
writes that if talk pages are used for protest instead
of for begging "to make us want" to unblock you, they
should be locked. I have saved a copy of the page in
case it gets totally deleted. Now, A Nony Mouse and
Skyring and anyone else interested in these things,
hurry up to look at Usertalk:Tern and record this.

>Message: 4
>Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 17:41:24 -0500
>From: "A. Nony Mouse" <mousyme at gmail.com>
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Exercises in social
>engineering

> On 8/10/05, A. Nony Mouse <mousyme at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Yes, I'll admit now. I'll own up. I violated
[[WP:POINT]] in an
amazing
> way.
>
> Amazing for one reason, that is.
>
> You see, my little social experiment, which was
originally created
> just to see how Wikipedia's elites actually behaved,
bore more fruit
> than I can count.
... So much so that
the
> actual procedures for dispute resolution were
ignored. Nobody
> attempted to contact them. They went straight from a
backwards,
tilted
> RFC into a quick RFAR.
>
> And then of course there were no less than SIX
innocent users who got
> drawn in. Yep, that's right. I didn't even DO
anything with the
> situation, save for calling for leniency when it was
obvious another
> user was caught up in it.

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
For a tad more privacy, but something that remain available should anyone
need it, what about putting in on a subpage, deleting the subpage, and then
putting an "admins only" link (ie, any admin can access it, so the
permission stays with the project even if you leave, but it is not openly
available to the public.

Just a thought.

Ian

On 8/31/05, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Theresa Knott wrote:
> >> What is the prevailing etiquette on what to do with positive responses
> >> to requests for confirmation of licensing permission?
> >
> > I think as long as you remove the IP, the email address and other
> > sensitive info, I doubt that anyone would object to the email being
> > copied to the talk page would they?
>
> No, I can't imagine they would -- but if this sensitive info is removed
> then there's essentially no difference between an emailed authorisation
> and a random anonymous editor on the talk page claiming to be the
> author. Is my word that the confirmation was real enough?
>
> Cheers,
>
> N.
>
> --
> Nicholas Boalch
> School of Modern Languages & Cultures Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
> University of Durham Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
> New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
There is some ethical validity to respecting Iranian copyright law
whether or not an obligation exists.  Iran's failure to participate in
international treaties on the matter should not be a primary concern.
Infringement of Iranian copyrights are still infringements even if US
courts would not consider those laws.  Copyright terms in Iran (life +
30) are still shorter than in most countries, so there would be no need
to extend them beyond that time.  I'm not aware of any Iranian copyright
provision regarding the depiction of women, and you admit that you don't
know about that either.  That aspect seems like a red herring.

Ec

Fastfission wrote:

>Well the English servers are in the USA, which means they are subject
>to US law, not Iranian law. If we *were* subject to Iranian law, I'm
>betting there are a number of other Iranian laws we are already
>breaking! I don't know the Iranian laws about  depictions of women but
>I'm willing to bet they've got a few that we're well afoul of.
>
>FF
>
>On 8/8/05, Roozbeh Pournader <roozbeh at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 8/6/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Why not make a special tag template for this? Something along the lines of:
>>>
>>>"This image, produced by the current government of Iran, are believed
>>>to not fall under U.S. copyright laws as Iran is not a member of WIPO.
>>>Should this change, though, the usage of this image is still believed
>>>to fall under the "fair use" clause of U.S. copyright law. Use in
>>>mediums other than on the servers of the English-language Wikipedia,
>>>hosted in the United States by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation,
>>>may not be exempt from either of these requirements."
>>>
>>>
>>There are problems with that:
>>1) I believe the Wikimedia Foundation would be breaking Iranian law by
>>distributing those material to Iran, that is, serving its pages to
>>Iranian readers. If it wishes to use the material, it should block
>>Iran from its readership.
>>2) It's not only the government, and other Iranians may wish to sue
>>the Wikimedia Foundation.
>>
>>


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
On 8/31/05, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Theresa Knott wrote:
> >> What is the prevailing etiquette on what to do with positive responses
> >> to requests for confirmation of licensing permission?
> >
> > I think as long as you remove the IP, the email address and other
> > sensitive info, I doubt that anyone would object to the email being
> > copied to the talk page would they?
>
> No, I can't imagine they would -- but if this sensitive info is removed
> then there's essentially no difference between an emailed authorisation
> and a random anonymous editor on the talk page claiming to be the
> author. Is my word that the confirmation was real enough?
>
> Cheers,
>
> N.

If we don't already have one, we should establish a "permissions trustee"
who would keep all such things confidential and in safe keeping, yet be able
to verify that the permissions stated match the permissions actually on
file.

When such permissions are explicited granted to the Wikimedia Foundation,
they should be forwarded to an officer of the foundation in any case. I
don't know enough about the Wikimedia Foundation to tell you who that is (or
as indicated above, whether such person exists at this time).

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Spell checking in MediaWiki

body:
Heiko Evermann wrote:

>Hi Gerard,
>
>
>>Actual work on UW itself is underway. Here you can find the data desisgn
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ultimate_Wiktionary_data_design This
>>design is very much open for comments and I am happy to say that many
>>comments that were given have led to changes. I name but a few changes
>>that came about this way; Can sign languages be included - now they can,
>>Can attestations be included - now they can.
>>
>>
>I want to propose (again) to make one important change:
>I think it is important that an entry within one language can be tagged as
>being correct according to several orthographies within one language. From
>what I understood so far, I find that the word
>de: "ist" (English: "(he) is") must be inserted twice, once for the new German
>spelling and once for the old (before the recent reform). Even thogh this
>word was not affected by the spelling reform. This applies to 95% of all
>German words. And each of them gets complete translation coverage into all
>languages. This is also a problem for Low Saxon (with our wide range of
>possible spellings). You have tried to make your current design plausible to
>me when we talked about it recently, but I was not convinced that this huge
>multiplication of entries is a good idea. Maybe I misunderstood you somehow,
>but I still do not understand it.
>
>
>
The German situation is a bit difficult. In actual fact there are only
two orthographies because two Bundeslander did not pass as law that the
new spelling would apply there as well. The consequence is that both old
spelling and new spelling are valid. In a typical situation, the words
that have been changed would get dated and be outdated. From a practical
point of view I would only have the changed words and the new words
included and I would treat them as if these two Bundeslander had voted
in favour. For lookup purposes the difference is a SELECT statement in
the query statement.

For Lower Saxon the situation is different. There are many "correct"
ways of spelling a word. Here it is essential that it is indicated to
what orthography or dialect a word belongs to. One reason is that many
people are quiet insistent that only one spelling should be used. This
is in a marked contrast to the practice of Neopolitan and Sicilian where
all spellings are accepted without much of a fuss.

The argument why all words have to be explicitly identified as belonging
to an orthography is because it allows us to do other things than just
producing lexicological information from the Internet. What in your
perception is an "multiplication of entries" is in actual fact no such
thing; an expression is registered only once for each language, dialect
or orthography.

>>Then again, if we create a wordcount on the Wikipedia content, run it
>>against a spellchecker, the resulting list should be spelled correctly
>>and could be included in UW. Particularly for our biggest wikipedias and
>>the amount of topics covered, it should be a list that might be close to
>>the size of what Aspell has. We will also have a long list of words
>>missing in Aspell. We will however not get a spellchecker for British or
>>American in this way.
>>
>>
>Does that mean that you think about importing huge amounts of words without
>definition and without any translation?
>
When I have lists of words that are known to be correct for instance
because an organisation actively vouches for them, this is certainly the
intention. I have a wordlist of some 222.930 Dutch words that are
certified as correct. Those I think should be no issue. When the
community identifies a list that is correct, I am sure they want to
upload it as well.

Thanks,
   GerardM


from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] New wikistats + question to site admins

body:
Finally new wikistats

See http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-August/004043.html
for an explanation why they could not be run for so long.

For some projects, like wikipedia, the newest dumps are already 6 weeks old.
Please don't ask me for next update, as it is not in my hands.

Data for French and German wikipedias are missing.
For French I will have to look into why the job failed.
For German the full xml database export is corrupt.

Does this imply that no mediawiki 1.5 full database backup for German is
available at all?
Or are sql dumps still made as well?
If not, a mediawiki 1.4 dump of June 23 is the best we have when worst comes
to worst and a restore is needed.

Even when sql dumps are also made, I still have difficulty understanding why
database dumps have such low priority.
Sure with distributed servers the change for a total collapse diminishes,
but never say never.
We may survive a power outage more comfortably now (which we did by sheer
luck only last time), but other calamities may occur,
what about deliberate sabotage, to name an unlikely but devastating
scenario?

Total database export takes more than a week, so it must be heavy on the
database servers.
If a dedicated database server would be needed to produce exports/dumps as
often as possible, that would seem a good investment to me.
If a site admin would care to comment on this, thanks in advance.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats

body:
Finally new wikistats

See http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-August/004043.html
for an explanation why they could not be run for so long.

For some projects, like wikipedia, the newest dumps are already 6 weeks old.
Please don't ask me for next update, as it is not in my hands.

Data for French and German wikipedias are missing.
For French I will have to look into why the job failed.
For German the full xml database export is corrupt.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
The point is you wern't making much sense, translated or untranslated.

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 8/31/05, El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:
> >I like your confusing style, but I have to take it in the context of your
> less rational appeals.
>  You are not being intellectually honest here, I find; you are attempting to
> exploit my failings in English to your own advantage, grossly distorting my
> comments into something they most defintiely are not. I've made myself very
> clear what I think about your debating methods.
>  El_C


from_name: Przykuta

subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New wikistats

body:
> Data for French and German wikipedias are missing.

and for Polish wiki too :(

Przykuta


subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New wikistats


subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
I agree - I like that idea better than mine :)

Ian

On 8/31/05, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> What we seem to be building towards is the idea of a central repository
> for confirmations of permission, managed by one or more responsible
> individuals at or on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation. This sounds to
> me like the most sensible solution.
>
>


subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New wikistats

body:
> > Data for French and German wikipedias are missing.
>
> and for Polish wiki too :(
>
> Przykuta
>
sorry, I found it in German version of wikistats :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/DE/TablesWikipediaPL.htm


subject: Re: [Foundation-l] New wikistats


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats

body:
> Erik Zachte wrote:
> > Finally new wikistats

Thanks very much for this Erik.

I have a general question: I'm citing the number of contributors to
the English Wikipedia from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wikistats/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm

For July 13th, under the columns C and D, I have the numbers 6,884 and
798 respectively. Below this then are two much higher figures (11,285
and 1,629) - are these the maximum estimates and the above published
figure the conservative estimate, or how does it work exactly?

Thanks

Cormac


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikidata update

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> See my CVS commit comment and the Namespace.php docs for further detail.
> There's still quite a bit of coding, hacking and testing to do, but I
> anticipate finalizing the first milestone in the coming days. This will
> also include a design whitepaper for the Wikidata table design, and some
>  GUI demos.

A couple DB-related notes on my first quick readthrough:

	# Pseudo-namespaces (title prefixes)
	$match = $dbs->addQuotes($name.":%");
	$res = $dbs->select(
		'page',
		array('page_title'),
		array('page_title LIKE '.$match),
		$fname,
		array('LIMIT'=>1)
	);

Two things you probably want to do here are to add a clause
'page_namespace' => 0 (otherwise it may end up an unindexed table scan
which will be *very* slow and may get false matches on non-main
namespaces), and to escape any _ or % chars in the name for that LIKE match.

If we don't already have a public function for LIKE escaping we probably
should add one and use that consistently.

	$match=$dbs->addQuotes("%[[$name:%");

	# Query needs to be optimized/simplified,
	# but will generally be run very rarely.
	$res = $dbs->select(
		array('page',     /* FROM */
			'pagelinks',
			'revision',
			'text'),
		array('DISTINCT page_title',
			'page_namespace'),
		array('pl_namespace='.$index,
			'page_id=pl_from',
			'rev_id=page_latest',
			'rev_text_id=old_id',
			'old_text like '.$match),
		array('LIMIT'=>1)

I'm afraid this one just isn't going to work at all... Text entries in
text.old_text will often be either compressed or indirection records
pointing to the secondary text storage cluster. You also have the issues
of case sensitivity, spaces vs underscores, etc.

>  From now on, I will commit more often -- this is important, I think, to
> ensure that people see that work is being done.

Cool!

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Ben E. wrote:

>No Wikipedia contributions are copyrighted. By pressing that little "Save
>page" button, you submit every single one of your contributions liscensed
>under the GFDL. That means anyone (yes, anyone) can use what you wrote, as
>long as they follow the licensing rules. Wikipedia using your work isn't
>"theft"; it's free.
>
This is not accurate.  All Wikipedia contributions ARE copyrighted.
GFDL is a licence or permission to use the material.  It is not an
abandonment of copyright.  By licensing you retain the right to sue some
user who does not follow the licensing rules.  This right no longer
exists when you put your work into the public domain.

Ec


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Raul's 6th law of Wikipedia confirmed

body:
Mark Pellegrini wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Raul654/Raul%27s_laws - Raul's 6th law
> of Wikipedia (formulated in November, 2004):
>
> "Wikipedia's steadily increasing popularity means that within the next
> year or two, we will begin to see organized corporate astroturfing
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing> campaigns."
>
> Prediction confirmed - August 28, 2005 -
> http://www.smh.com.au/news/icon/wikipedia-worries/2005/08/23/1124562860192.html
>
>
> "However, the concern continues. One anonymous reader contacted
> Boingboing telling them he worked at a marketing company that uses
> Wikipedia for its online marketing strategies.."That includes planting
> of viral information in entries, modification of entries to point to new
> promotional sites or 'leaks' embedded in entries to test diffusion of
> information. Wikipedia is just a more transparent version of [online
> meeting place] Myspace as far as some companies are concerned. We love it."

Is it really confirmed, though?  Bring me a clear example, and I'll have
a *lot* of fun with embarassing the company in the media.

I suspect it is not true.  Anyone can make an anonymous post to
boingboing.  They don't even let other people edit it. ;-)

--Jimbo


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: 1.5rc3 pre tag with style attributes in templates

body:
ATL wrote:
<snip>
> Why is style attribute disabled for pre and not for div?

See and cc yourself:
 http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3202

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikidata update

body:
Many people have asked me about the status of Wikidata. My response is
in CVS ;-) (wikidata branch). It's largely a redesign of the existing
namespace system to be more flexible and powerful. Namespaces form the
foundation of Wikidata, as each namespace will be associated with a
virtual table schema. This has necessitated the changes so far, but
these will also be useful for most other Wikimedia projects.

For example, these changes make it possible to define an arbitrary
number of synonyms for each namespace, so that we can finally rename
"Image:" to "File:" without breaking links (and additional synonyms like
"Video:" and "Sound:"). Another new feature are default prefixes, which
make it possible to define that any unprefixed link [[Bla]] in one
namespace will be be prefixed by "Foo:". This could be useful for
Wikibooks, esp. large spaces like Cookbook: and Jokebook:, so that you
can simply type "Carrots" and it goes to [[Cookbook:Carrots]].

Together with the existing namespace filtering, this effectively allows
the creation of "wikis within a wiki". What namespaces are needed can be
decided by each project community without developer interaction, as the
new namespace manager is a special page that a user group can be given
access to.

As you hopefully will agree, the changes that are part of Wikidata don't
just bloat MediaWiki up - they add useful functionality for all projects.

See my CVS commit comment and the Namespace.php docs for further detail.
There's still quite a bit of coding, hacking and testing to do, but I
anticipate finalizing the first milestone in the coming days. This will
also include a design whitepaper for the Wikidata table design, and some
  GUI demos.

 From now on, I will commit more often -- this is important, I think, to
ensure that people see that work is being done.

What's the timetable? My guesstimates so far have been mostly wrong, so
I'm careful not to make too exact predictions, especially when certain
design decisions haven't been made yet. But I'm fully committed to
further implementing Wikidata and Ultimate Wiktionary in the coming
months. I'll have to take a two-week-break soon to make some extra
money, however.

If you want to work on Wikidata with me, please contact me, and I can
hand out a few tasks. Also, I always appreciate comments on my code --
what is ugly, what should be refactored, etc.

Best,

Erik


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> Finally new wikistats

You are my hero :-)

elian


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats


subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
On 8/8/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Michael Turley wrote:
>
> >If we don't already have one, we should establish a "permissions trustee"
> >who would keep all such things confidential and in safe keeping, yet be
> able
> >to verify that the permissions stated match the permissions actually on
> >file.
> >
> >When such permissions are explicited granted to the Wikimedia Foundation,
> >they should be forwarded to an officer of the foundation in any case. I
> >don't know enough about the Wikimedia Foundation to tell you who that is
> (or
> >as indicated above, whether such person exists at this time).
> >
> Having this information available to all admins would likely not be any
> more secure than having it available. Being sensitive to privacy issues
> has never been a criterion for becoming an admin. On the other hand
> leaving this with one person could leave him overwhelmed once things
> start working properly. Putting this through a committee of stewards
> and bureaucrats could make more practical sense.
>
> Ec

I agree with you completely regarding denying this role to the entire admin
population in general.

While I respect the dedication and ability of Bureaucrats, Stewards, and
various committees on WIkipedia, I specifically stated "Trustee" because
that is a legally defined role with specific legal duties and
responsibilities that go with the role. Unless we're extraordinarily lucky,
I expect we'll have to pay this Trustee something to accept the legal
responsibilities that being such a Trustee entitles.

Perhaps a better title is "Custodian of Records" as exemplified by the adult
"entertainment" industry. (In the US, they're required to keep records to
prove that all the participating actors and models are over 18 years at the
time of production.) I don't know the details of these arrangements other
than to say that the role is usually filled by contracting for an attorney
to serve through a law firm, but suspect that the Custodian of Records is a
specific type of Trustee defined by the law governing that industry.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Re: Request for information/suggestions about software
	for project

body:
Jeremy J. Shapiro wrote:
> I am going to engage in a project that needs to have certain features
> of a Wiki, e.g. ability of people to start new articles and
> cross-reference each other's articles, but NOT edit each other's
> contributions.  Can someone suggest to me either what software might
> be appropriate or whom I might contact for further information and
> suggestions about this?  I don't want to take up wikitech-l time and
> space with this, so if you can help with this please write to me
> individually at jshapiro at fielding.edu.

That's probably not what a wiki is for. You want to look at a content
management system :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


body:
Still, there are other projects using GFDL that would benefit from a
correct - and clear - compatibility. Plus, we should not stick to your
case only and I am certain that there are some wp contributors who would
be happy to be able to re-use wn content.

Ilya Haykinson a ?crit :
> On 8/30/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I'm forwarding this to Wikipedia and Foundation-l since the poll could
>>potentially make Wikinews incompatible with Wikipedia or any of our
>>other projects. Currently, content from Wikinews can be used in
>>Wikipedia (though not the other way around). CC-BY-SA is not
>>compatible with the GNU FDL, so this would not longer be the case.
>
>
>
> For what it's worth, it makes little sense for Wikipedia to use
> Wikinews content beyond what's considered fair use. Wikinews is not an
> encyclopedia and tries to not have any encyclopedic articles, and the
> Wikipedia "current events" section is really short enough of a mention
> that it's fair use at worst and wholly original at best.
>
> -ilya haykinson
>  en.wikinews
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Nick Boalch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
What is the prevailing etiquette on what to do with positive responses
to requests for confirmation of licensing permission?

I just received a confirmation of permission requests for [[Brown
Berets]], which had previously been listed as a possible copyvio.
Presumably we need to keep a copy of this authorisation, but I'm
reluctant to post it to the article's talk page because of privacy
issues and general netiquette.

Any ideas? I've given myself the job of working through the [[WP:CP]]
backlog, so I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a fair few permission
requests over the next few days.

Best,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Nyenyec N

subject: [WikiEN-l] Precedents for sanctioning creative disruption

body:
I was looking for precedents for sanctioning creative disruption (as
described in [[WP:TROLL]]).
But didn't find any at: [[Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Precedents]].

What if an editor does the following for a couple of months:
* removing all mesages from their talk page (and all the talk pages of
his user pages)
* creating user subpages about alleged misbehavior of his "enemies",
giving them "hypcorisy awards", accusing them of being members of a
cabal, etc.
* [[WP:POINT]], marking pages, categories for deletion in retaliation
* [[WP:TROLL]] (marking articles of his arch-enemy as stubs en masse,
starting stupid votes on policy changes, being a pain in the neck at
the village pump (but carefully))
* Adding provocative (but not necessarily very rude) comments in
article discussions and edit summaries
* Retaliative voting against anything the people on his hit list support
* Rallying troops on internet forums for a "freedom fight" in
Wikipedia to push a particular POV

So if a user learns to do all this without violating the "hard"
policies like [[WP:NPA]] and [[WP:3RR]] too much, can he go on
forever?

Can anyone point me to the closest precedent to this behavior and what
happened to such creative trolls?

Thanks, nyenyec


from_name: Ryan Delaney

body:
I'm pretty sure this is what RFAr is for. Plautus satire is a possible
example of such a person, except his reason was chronic schizophrenia,
not trolling. But the effect is the same.

- Ryan

Nyenyec N wrote:

>So if a user learns to do all this without violating the "hard"
>policies like [[WP:NPA]] and [[WP:3RR]] too much, can he go on
>forever?
>
>Can anyone point me to the closest precedent to this behavior and what
>happened to such creative trolls?
>
>Thanks, nyenyec
>
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump progress

body:
There's been some questions recently about public backup dumps (or the
lack thereof). I've been working for the last few days on getting the
dump generation infrastructure up and running in a more consistent,
effective fashion.

Here's what's currently on my plate and the status thereof:

* Title corrections: some of the databases contain invalid page titles
left over from old bugs. This can sometimes break the import or export
process, so I'm writing a fixup script to find and rename them.

STATUS: Finding done, fixing to come.
Should be done with this later today.

* Dump filtering/processing: currently the dump has to run twice to
produce the current-only and all-revisions dump files. I'm working on a
postprocessing tool which will be able to split these two from a single
runthrough, as well as produce a filtered dump with the talk and user
pages removed.

Producing the split versions from one run should also mean that the dump
can run without having replication stopped the whole time.

It can also produce SQL for importing a dump directly into a database in
either 1.4 or 1.5 schema, for those using software based on the old
database layout. (We probably won't be hosting such files on our server
but you can run the program locally to filter XML-to-MySQL.)

STATUS: Mostly done. Some more testing and actually hooking up multiple
simultaneous outputs remains.
Should be done tonight or tomorrow.

* Progress and error reporting: The old backup script was a hacky shell
script with no error detection or recovery, requireing manually stopping
replication on a database server and reconfiguring the wiki cluster for
the duration. If something went awry, maybe nobody noticed... the
hackiness of this is a large part of why we've never just let it run
automatically on a cronjob.

I want to rework this for better automation and to provide useful
indications of what it's doing, where it's up to, and if something went
wrong.

STATUS: Not yet started. Hope to have done tomorrow or Friday.

* Clean up download.wikimedia.org further, make use of status files left
by the updated backup runner script.

STATUS: Not yet started. (Doesn't have to be up before the backup starts.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Exercises in social engineering

body:
On 8/31/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: RIPEMD160
>
> A. Nony Mouse wrote:
> > Well how about that.
> >  Come into wikipedia IRC chat, get ambushed by NicholasT who's on his usual
> > rampage, get sworn at and called names and challenged to "prove" this, then
> > kickbanned before I can respond by jerks who scream "troll"?
> >  Aren't you people real nice pieces of work, huh?
> >  A. Nony Mouse
> >  who's in the right even if the overinflated egos won't admit it.
> >
>
> I'm sorry, was there a point to this email?
>
> - --
> Alphax                      |   /"\

His grapes went sour

Sam


from_name: Theresa Knott

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
I think as long as you remove the IP, the email address and other
sensitive info, I doubt that  anyone would object to the email being
copied to the talk page would they?

Theresa

On 8/31/05, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:
> What is the prevailing etiquette on what to do with positive responses
> to requests for confirmation of licensing permission?
>
> I just received a confirmation of permission requests for [[Brown
> Berets]], which had previously been listed as a possible copyvio.
> Presumably we need to keep a copy of this authorisation, but I'm
> reluctant to post it to the article's talk page because of privacy
> issues and general netiquette.
>
> Any ideas? I've given myself the job of working through the [[WP:CP]]
> backlog, so I have a feeling I'm going to be doing a fair few permission
> requests over the next few days.
>
> Best,
>
> N.
>
> --
> Nicholas Boalch
> School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
> University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
> New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

body:
2005/8/31, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com>:
> Still, there are other projects using GFDL that would benefit from a
> correct - and clear - compatibility. Plus, we should not stick to your
> case only and I am certain that there are some wp contributors who would
> be happy to be able to re-use wn content.

Okay, I'll be bold - from a NPOV, the CC licenses are the best for us
and GFDL in its current state is way below them. But there's one
problem. Reusing content.

Still, note this - do we really want to attach 10 pages of GFDL
license to our print edition? I think a simple "Licensed under
CC-By-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/etc/etc)" would be okay - and
this is exactly what a text licensed under CC needs.

--
Pozdrawiam,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
Theresa Knott wrote:
>> What is the prevailing etiquette on what to do with positive responses
>> to requests for confirmation of licensing permission?
>
> I think as long as you remove the IP, the email address and other
> sensitive info, I doubt that  anyone would object to the email being
> copied to the talk page would they?

No, I can't imagine they would -- but if this sensitive info is removed
then there's essentially no difference between an emailed authorisation
and a random anonymous editor on the talk page claiming to be the
author. Is my word that the confirmation was real enough?

Cheers,

N.

--
Nicholas Boalch
School of Modern Languages & Cultures       Tel: +44 (0) 191 334 3420
University of Durham                        Fax: +44 (0) 191 334 3421
New Elvet, Durham DH1 3JT, UK               WWW: http://nick.frejol.org/


from_name: Alphax

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

A. Nony Mouse wrote:
> Well how about that.
>  Come into wikipedia IRC chat, get ambushed by NicholasT who's on his usual
> rampage, get sworn at and called names and challenged to "prove" this, then
> kickbanned before I can respond by jerks who scream "troll"?
>  Aren't you people real nice pieces of work, huh?
>  A. Nony Mouse
>  who's in the right even if the overinflated egos won't admit it.
>

I'm sorry, was there a point to this email?

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFDFWNw/RxM5Ph0xhMRA4n8AJ9quuovUgUq1Yj70ZP3dj7vPKbyVwCeJ8uL
Yj8FaaCvrODRvbIxGF58des=
=Y0ac
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews - Licensure straw poll

body:
> Please consider that fair use is not an option for some (a lot of?)
> Wikipedia's.

One would think that all Wikipedias would be subject to the same set
of copyright rules, since they're all operated out of Florida.  I've
never understood why people think that the language content is written
in has any impact on the law such content is required to comply
with....

Kelly


from_name: epzachte at chello.nl

subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats

body:
Cormac wrote:
> For July 13th, under the columns C and D, I have the numbers 6,884 and
> 798 respectively. Below this then are two much higher figures (11,285
> and 1,629) - are these the maximum estimates and the above published
> figure the conservative estimate, or how does it work exactly?

Cormac, the July 13th figures are actual counts.
The much higher July figures below it are forecasts for the complete month. Hence the +/- sign.

These forecasts are based on looking at previous three months and calculating the proportion of wikipedians
that fulfilled the criteria on day x, versus the number that did so at the end of the month.

The resulting multiplication factors for all wikipedias together are combined into a weighted average, to minimize distorting effects of peaks in activity in just one wikipedia in previous months.

This is better than just multiplying the actual counts for the 13th by 31/13 to arrive at full months forecasts.

Especially with columns C and D, as the increase in wikipedians that fulfill the norm for C or D is highly unlinear over a month.

This is also why for C: 6884/11285 > 0.5 and for for D: 798/1629 < 0.5
In words: more than half of the wikipedians that would count as active at the end of a month already made the grade at the 13th, most wikipedians who finally qualify for very active only do so later in the month.

When wikistats is run on 6th of month or earlier no forecasts are given as margin of error would be too high.

Erik Zachte


subject: [Foundation-l] New wikistats


from_name: Ryan Norton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocked?!?!?  Lunatics running the asylum??

body:
Hi,

I don't know what's going on here - I followed policy to the letter
here.

The page in question is -

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/
index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Votes_for_deletion&curid=1003209&action=h
istory

I was restoring comments blanked on the page by Kim Bruning, an admin,
with the summary

"BIG RV. Some id10t tried to implement voting on the "let's make sure
vfd is not voting" discussion. Um. Ok. Undoing the screwage"

(It wasn't my comment it was someone else's). Basically that dispute
was they were renaming all "votes for deletion" pages to "articles for
deletion", and assuming there was consesus to do so, but were not
holding anything formal like a VfD process or whatever.

That's irrelevant though, because I wasn't trying to prove anything at
all. I just wanted to have a VfD conversation over it, and this was on
the talk page which seemed appropriate (and evidently several other
people thought so too).

The summary before I reverted again was
"Del the requested move vote again. I didn't look too hard who put it
back, because if I did, I'd have to do really bad things to them"

To which I responded on the talk page that I thought it would be better
for them to come up with something better, rather than simply wiping it
from the talk page.

Anyway, there were NO warning on my talk page about the possiblity of
violating WP:POINT or being blocked for 24 hours. This has a left a
very bitter taste in mouth, and I don't know if I'll be coming back
after this, as I have always thought I acted in a mature and
responsible matter.

Ryan


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

body:
Dariusz Siedlecki a ?crit :
> 2005/8/31, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com>:
>
>>Still, there are other projects using GFDL that would benefit from a
>>correct - and clear - compatibility. Plus, we should not stick to your
>>case only and I am certain that there are some wp contributors who would
>>be happy to be able to re-use wn content.
>
>
> Okay, I'll be bold - from a NPOV, the CC licenses are the best for us
> and GFDL in its current state is way below them. But there's one
> problem. Reusing content.
>
> Still, note this - do we really want to attach 10 pages of GFDL
> license to our print edition? I think a simple "Licensed under
> CC-By-SA 2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/etc/etc)" would be okay - and
> this is exactly what a text licensed under CC needs.

Sure, but the CC licenses are not that clear ! Do you now what they mean
when they say they are not "revokable" for example. We just talked about
it for 2 hours on IRC yesterday.

The CC licenses were not meant to be used precisely for Wikinews and
they don't adopt the exact vocabulary we need to describe what we do. We
have a chance to make it perfect, so let's do it rather than to rely on
third parties legal work.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
Michael Turley wrote:

>On 8/31/05, Nick Boalch <n.g.boalch at durham.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>
>>Theresa Knott wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>What is the prevailing etiquette on what to do with positive responses
>>>>to requests for confirmation of licensing permission?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>I think as long as you remove the IP, the email address and other
>>>sensitive info, I doubt that anyone would object to the email being
>>>copied to the talk page would they?
>>>
>>>
>>No, I can't imagine they would -- but if this sensitive info is removed
>>then there's essentially no difference between an emailed authorisation
>>and a random anonymous editor on the talk page claiming to be the
>>author. Is my word that the confirmation was real enough?
>>
>>
>If we don't already have one, we should establish a "permissions trustee"
>who would keep all such things confidential and in safe keeping, yet be able
>to verify that the permissions stated match the permissions actually on
>file.
>
>When such permissions are explicited granted to the Wikimedia Foundation,
>they should be forwarded to an officer of the foundation in any case. I
>don't know enough about the Wikimedia Foundation to tell you who that is (or
>as indicated above, whether such person exists at this time).
>
Having this information available to all admins would likely not be any
more secure than having it available.  Being sensitive to privacy issues
has never been a criterion for becoming an admin.  On the other hand
leaving this with one person could leave him overwhelmed once things
start working properly.  Putting this through a committee of stewards
and bureaucrats could make more practical sense.

Ec


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump progress

body:
Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> On 8/31/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>There's been some questions recently about public backup dumps (or the
>>lack thereof). I've been working for the last few days on getting the
>>dump generation infrastructure up and running in a more consistent,
>>effective fashion.
>
>
> Should contributions to peripheral things like this be limited to PHP?
>  If I had a Python contribution, would it be used?

Various supplementary things are in Python, C, C++, Java, and C#. And of
course our TeX processor is in Objective CAML. ;)

> Also, on PostgreSQL schema--- is this being worked, or would it be
> useful for me to work on it?  I'm doing a project using WP data on a
> psql db.

Domas had ported MediaWiki 1.4 to PostgreSQL, minus some niceties like
the installer. It hasn't been maintained however and the schema files
are almost certainly not updated for 1.5.

If you'd like to help get this up to speed in CVS that would be cool;
Kate has added some bits for supporting Oracle as well and there may or
may not be a little more infrastructure now for supporting multiple
backends with the installation and updaters.

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

body:
On 8/31/05, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Please consider that fair use is not an option for some (a lot of?)
> > Wikipedia's.
>
> One would think that all Wikipedias would be subject to the same set
> of copyright rules, since they're all operated out of Florida.  I've
> never understood why people think that the language content is written
> in has any impact on the law such content is required to comply
> with....

One should not because it can matter. Say you made an illegal death
threat against someone in your city, but you did it by posting it to a
web site hosted in some country where that's not illegal. Which law
would apply to you? If you do something illegal in your city/country
the law applies to you there in addition to any laws from the country
which hosts the web site if it has agreements with your country. Same
thing with copyright, the editors need to abide by their laws, or
there may consequences in their country, and they need to abide by the
laws in Florida, USA or there may be consequeces for at least the
Foundation, if not the editor.

Dori


from_name: Rajesh Olafson

subject: [Wikitech-l] mediawiki database structure

body:
Hello,

Do all teh various wikimedia projects really use the identical software -
with the same database structuer? - wikipedia, wikiquote, wiktionary etc?

Thanks you in advance.

Rajesh.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Dump progress

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> Minor bug in http://download.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/af/pages_full.xml.gz
>
> About 1 in 20 edits is attributed to <ip> where <username> seems more
> appropriate:
>
> <contributor><ip>John</ip><contributor>
>
> Maybe it has been fixed already, I see lots of these in /af/, none in /nl/ .

You'll see things marked as <ip> instead of <username> where there's no
user account associated with the edit -- that is, the database contains
0 in the rev_user column.

This is mostly anonymous edits, but also includes the MediaWiki default
main page and message pages, redirects created by a mass page-move
script, and most edits dating from the old UseMod software.

(UseMod handles users very differently from MediaWiki, so converted
edits weren't initially associated with user accounts by number, just
the name copied in.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>On 31/08/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>When such permissions are explicited granted to the Wikimedia Foundation,
>>they should be forwarded to an officer of the foundation in any case. I
>>don't know enough about the Wikimedia Foundation to tell you who that is (or
>>as indicated above, whether such person exists at this time).
>>
>>
>I was just about to suggest that... have an email address at the
>foundation to serve as a drop-box for this sort of permissions mail,
>so we have a central record of it. This avoids there being a problem
>if the requesting editor vanishes/falls under a bus/storms off in a
>huff/loses all their mail, but preserves privacy in that unless
>there's a pressing need to confirm the license no-one needs to have
>access to it.
>
The requesting editor is only doing a job; the net results of a request
should remain independent of him. What happens to the copyright owner is
far more relevant.  If a copyright owner drops dead to-day his work will
be protected until Dec. 31, 2075.  His as yet unborn grandchildren won't
even know about the licence on grandpa's writings.  If they choose to
dispute our use of his writings, proving that we have been licensed will
be our burden.  A simple note from a long gone editor will prove
nothing.  Even an e-mail record from the author may not be enough.  We
have no way of knowing or proving whether an electronic permission is in
fact from a person who is authorized to give that licence.

Ec


body:
Wouldn't a more frequent backup mechanism help third parties who index
Wikipedia content, too? I'm thinking about answers.com and others.

Erik, I'd like to say thank you in the name of the Hungarian Wikipedia.
We always look forward to the next update and greatly appreciate what
you're doing.

Thanks,
nyenyec

On 8/31/05, Erik Zachte <epzachte at chello.nl> wrote:
> Finally new wikistats
>
> See http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-August/004043.html
> for an explanation why they could not be run for so long.
>
> For some projects, like wikipedia, the newest dumps are already 6 weeks old.
> Please don't ask me for next update, as it is not in my hands.
>
> Data for French and German wikipedias are missing.
> For French I will have to look into why the job failed.
> For German the full xml database export is corrupt.
>
> Does this imply that no mediawiki 1.5 full database backup for German is
> available at all?
> Or are sql dumps still made as well?
> If not, a mediawiki 1.4 dump of June 23 is the best we have when worst comes
> to worst and a restore is needed.
>
> Even when sql dumps are also made, I still have difficulty understanding why
> database dumps have such low priority.
> Sure with distributed servers the change for a total collapse diminishes,
> but never say never.
> We may survive a power outage more comfortably now (which we did by sheer
> luck only last time), but other calamities may occur,
> what about deliberate sabotage, to name an unlikely but devastating
> scenario?
>
> Total database export takes more than a week, so it must be heavy on the
> database servers.
> If a dedicated database server would be needed to produce exports/dumps as
> often as possible, that would seem a good investment to me.
> If a site admin would care to comment on this, thanks in advance.
>
> Erik Zachte
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikidata update

body:
On 31/08/05, Valentina Faussone <valentina_faussone at yahoo.it> wrote:
> Does this major change allow writers to have flexible
> synonyms handling, like an active list?

This is only talking about *namespaces*, not titles - i.e. the part
before the ":". So, "WP:" could become a proper alias for "Wikipedia:"
such that "WP:Foo" meant the same as "Wikipedia:Foo". Similarly,
"File:Foo", "Image:Foo", and "Sound:Foo" could all refer to the same
location. So no, this doesn't help with ordinary redirects between
articles.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
On 8/8/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
> There is another major difference from what you describe for the adult
> film industry: the length of time for which the records will need to be
> kept. In their case the records may not be necessary once the
> prosecution limitation period has expired. We may need to track these
> permissions for 70 years or more.

There is no limitation for prosecution for distribution of child
pornography: if the distributor is still distributing the material, the
proof of age must be in safe keeping available for inspection. Given the
nature of content (once produced, cheap to reproduce and sell), it is
entirely plausible that much adult material will require documentation on
file <i>beyond</i> the copyright period. (In fact, having the documentation
available in a vault somewhere may prove more powerful than copyright to
keep this form of content and the profits it generates in the hands of the
original distributor for long past the time when the content's copyright
expires, since no one else could distribute it without having the proof on
file!) Further, if there is profit in the future in "vintage" porn as there
is today, the adult industry may have to keep records for literally hundreds
of years, even if copyrights are never extended again.

I don't believe either has a lower standard of diligence, nor necessarily a
shorter term to keep on file.

I think this is important enough that the Wikimedia Foundation would be well
served by having a licensed attorney review this particular issue rather
than rely upon the thoughtful consideration of interested people such as you
and I.

Perhaps a layperson can serve a trustee of records, however, this person
should be fully informed of the legal ramifications and liabilities they may
expose themselves to in accepting this role.

For example, it is plausible that the trustee will have to occasionally
issue the equivalent of "sufficiently reliable permission obtained for use"
rulings regarding copyright works. If they were wrong, could the Wikimedia
Foundation be found liable for damages resulting from the error? Could they
be held personally liable for damages for the error? Would or could the
Wikimedia foundation indemnify the trustee from harm resulting from their
decisions? I don't think that these are the sort of questions a mailing list
discussion can answer with sufficient authority.

However, I do think we need an official "copyright permissions record
keeper" of some sort. Whether that is an individual or a group is less
important at this time. But it should be someone fully qualified for and
aware of the position's requirements and hazards. To me, this indicates a
possible need for an attorney on retainer, but could see where (less
cautious) others may choose to fill this role as a volunteer.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


from_name: Valentina Faussone

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikidata update

body:
Does this major change allow writers to have flexible
synonyms handling, like an active list? If so (that
would be great)  I can stop buggin everybody with the
redirect/synonyms/fuzzy-system question.
Sorry, but I'm a real dummy in wiki system spec.

Regards
V.F.

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Confirmations of permission

body:
On 31/08/05, Michael Turley <michael.turley at gmail.com> wrote:

> When such permissions are explicited granted to the Wikimedia Foundation,
> they should be forwarded to an officer of the foundation in any case. I
> don't know enough about the Wikimedia Foundation to tell you who that is (or
> as indicated above, whether such person exists at this time).

I was just about to suggest that... have an email address at the
foundation to serve as a drop-box for this sort of permissions mail,
so we have a central record of it. This avoids there being a problem
if the requesting editor vanishes/falls under a bus/storms off in a
huff/loses all their mail, but preserves privacy in that unless
there's a pressing need to confirm the license no-one needs to have
access to it.

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


subject:
[Wikitech-l] Improvement request: redirect, synonyms,
	fuzzy system (ENG/ITA)

body:
On 30/08/05, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> is an interesting one. Changing the system so that you keep the list of
> redirects inside (at end) article A would have the benefit that you see
> them at once and can maintain them better. Currently someone reading A
> doesn't (easily) see all the redirects to it.

I agree that this could be a useful feature, but I think it would need
to be a little more subtle, and I can foresee some major issues with
implementing it. Perhaps a separate box on the edit page listing
"pages that redirect here" - generated dynamically, not stored with
the page's content, as that could easily lead to inconsistencies.

Another related question is how to deal with double redirects,
particularly those caused when moving a page: Should the software fix
them automatically [or implicitly do so, as it would if they were
stored with the content]? Probably not, since a page move is sometimes
to make way for a more suitable article at the old title, so the
redirects may belong to one or the other. But in that case, how do you
display such double redirects in the "backwards" list? Perhaps you'd
not list them at all, and people could copy-and-paste them from the
new redirect's edit page if appropriate.

> If two articles have the same article name in their synonym list, an
> disambigition (sp?) page could be automatically created (with a warning
> issued to the editor that the current saved article asks for a redirect
> which an already existing article also has).

This is an important problem with editting the list backwards like
this - an edit is usually considered "complete" when you click save,
whereas this would be more of an interactive process, where you need
to look at the feedback to see whether the software has actually
allowed your changes.

And what happens if I *remove* a redirect from the list - does the
page get deleted, even though I don't have deletion rights? Or perhaps
just changed to a blank page? Remember it might have history from
before it was a redirect...

Perhaps in the end what is needed is a move-page like function that
lets you say "if any of these articles don't exist, make them redirect
to X", which would then tell you which ones it had been unable to
create so you could do them manually.

Of course, even that would be open to abuse, since it potentially
allows a user to create tons of junk redirects in very little time...

> In the future one could even do away with each redirect to be it's own
> article (which always seemed a bit awkward to me, you end up having to
> not count these in a lot of places (redirects arent articles in the sense
> of a real article, so they are no short articles, no real articles etc).
> However, this would be a quite a change.

The thing with this is that it just creates special cases elsewhere
instead - if redirects weren't articles, then every time the software
"follows" a link, it would have to first check if there was an article
with that name, and then check if there was a redirect with that name.
And any places where you *do* want to count redirects -
Special:Wantedpages, for instance - would then have to explicitly
include them. So I think this would be rather a case of swapping "six
of one for half a dozen of the other".

Also, what would happen to an article which was turned into a
redirect? Would it have to be deleted, so that the text didn't mask
the redirect - or perhaps it could still exist, but be hidden by the
fact that the redirect existed; in which case, how would you revert it
back to being an article? Although it seems weird editting the text of
an article to turn it into a redirect, it does make sense to store
that action in the edit history along with everything else, even if it
has a *side-effect* of creating better metadata than we have now.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]