from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Delphine:

> I find it indeed important that in the case of paid developpers
> (which, imho there should be more of) the development needs addressed
> be that of as many "communities" as possible, so that no project feels
> left out in the end.

That's why I want to organize community meetings as soon as possible,
where we will discuss with members of each community the needs of their
project.

> However, in the light of what has been said on the other threads about
> official positions, I find the use of a logo quite strange.

The logo says "Research", it can be used by anyone in the Wikimedia
context for research-related activities. Note that Jakob placed it on
the general [[m:Research]] page as well without being a member of the team.

Erik


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Research Team: Getting started


list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems

body:
I'm forwarding this to Foundation-l since Wikisource has no list of
its own yet. Is anyone able to help with this issue or provide
comments on it please?

Angela

---- Forwarded message from tanter <tanter at tarleton.edu> ----

Date:
From: tanter
To: board
Cc:
Reply-To:
Subject: [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems

> Hello.  On your site, you have posted poems by Emily Dickinson at this
> URL:
> http://wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Emily_Dickinson.  You need to be aware
> that
> these poems are NOT in the public domain.  Harvard University owns the
> copyright to all of Emily Dickinson's poems published in the 1955 and
> later
> editions of her poetry.  The editions from the 1890s are public domain
> but the
> ones you seem to have posted are from the Harvard edition. I haven't had
> time
> to go through them all, but I suggest you have an editor review this
> because
> you may be violating copyright.
>
>
>
>
>
---- End forwarded message ----


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Sergey Samoylov

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia dump!

body:
Hi, there....

I've installed cur en.wikipedia from http://download.wikimedia.org/
but when I tried to load Categories, there was loaded just first text
"Without Subcategories " and "Articles in category"
For Example, for link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Astronomy
was loaded just text  before Subcategories.
What should I install for correct displaying this type of pages?

Thanks
     Sergey


list: wikien-l

from_name: John R. Owens

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fwd: A survey about Wikipedia

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> You miss my point, I think.  This is come chap using the name of a
> prestigious university to perform a "survey", even successfully exploiting
> the goodwill of Wikipedia editors to have information about this survey
> published on our mailing list. All we're told is that this is part of a
> "non-commercial cross-cultural research project" and we're supposed to go
> to a non-secure http site registered in Michigan (not, aas far as I'm
> aware, part of Israel) to fill it in.

The _domain_ is registered in Michigan. Check where the actual _site_
is, you might be surprised. (But I'm not claiming it's in Israel, either.)
(Traceroute is your friend.)

--
John R. Owens
ProofReading Markup Language : http://prml.sourceforge.net/
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from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fwd: A survey about Wikipedia

references:
<a4a707705052507105a629b53@mail.gmail.com>
	<KMEIIIOFMCLGAOOMADDLEEKOCBAA.ihayat@com.haifa.ac.il>
	<a4a7077050526182472939460@mail.gmail.com>

body:
> I have been asked to forward this message to the WikiEN-l mailing
> list. A research institute at Haifa University are conducting a study
> of Wikipedia, and request the participation of the Wikipedia
> community.

Cool!  How much are they paying for this?


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] bambara

body:
Just to keep up with information.... I saw an announcement today in two websites, so thought it worth to say a bit about it

.... Perhaps to divert our gentle editors from daily life in France or in the USA ... (grin)

News from a very minor wikipedia (I think this deserves to be reported in next Quarto Sj, I'll write up a bit....)

The association Geekcorps recently (it started possibly 2 months ago) made a lot of efforts to try to stimulate a minor wikipedia in an african language.
Along with work in translation of the interface, addition of major rules and principles of Wikipedia, Geekcorps also decided to motivate editors speaking bambara in Mali to participate to the bambara wikipedia (http://bm.wikipedia.org) in a *financial* way.

The conditions : to live in Mali and to be able to write in bambara.
The prize is : 200 CFA to earn per article written with at least 200 words (max 5000 CFA per person) plus a bonus prize for specific actions.
Specific actions are
1) translation of document or interface
2) start a wikibooks on Bamanankan
3) start Bamanankan Wikiquotes
4) start Bamanankan Wiktionary
5) start another wikipedia in other languages spoken in Mali

(Note that there are no requirement of quality to get the prize per article, but the length)

Geekcorps also remind to Mali editors that Mali people might be interested in the following languages
* french (fr)
* english (en)
* fulfude (ff)
* wolof (wo)

----------------

The bambara version is still not very active, but Guaka is working on it from time to time. But what I find interesting is the organisation proposal... this way might be one of the good ones to really get such versions off the ground. Ie, a wikipedia being babysitted by a local organisation.

I think there is much interest in following such initiatives. What do you think ?

Please also look at the site of MaliWiki : http://mali.geekcorps.org/mediawiki/index.php/Accueil (based on mediawiki)

----------------

Note that there are a couple of slightly embarassing little issues related to these attempts by local organisations.
For example, when an organisation (ANAFA) made some work on the wolof version about 3 months ago, someone asked me a sysop account, which I gave (usual process for small projects).
I however noticed soon after that the main page was a bit cluttered with quite a bit of advertisement for their organisation. (see for example http://wo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=1482)
I tried to discuss to them about that, and since we did not really reached an agreement, I had to remove the sysop status.

Since then, the wo is inactive.

Ant

---------------------------------
Do You Yahoo!?
 Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new Resources site!


from_name: Ronald Chmara

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Jimbo interview on NPR Friday?

body:
On May 26, 2005, at 8:17 AM, David Monniaux wrote:

> [Offtopic]
>
>>> Come on. All official sites, all political debates, all major news
>>> etc. are in English.
>> Not true. See Telemundo, Univision.
> Yes, there are channels catering to latinos. Similarly, there are
> channels
> catering to Arabs in Paris. These channels are not "mainstream" in the
> sense that you do not have a Spanish edition of a major newspaper like
> the
> New-York Times. This is not the same as having a multilingual country.

So, "France sucks".

But Why?

There are only "non-mainstream" channels in France, and the USA? What
an odd argument.

>>>  Can a latino legislator do a speech in Spanish in the
>>> Capitol US? I doubt so; at least, I doubt it could happen in
>>> practice.
>> Why? Many ami's are bilingual, if not more. Even the shrub speaks
>> spanish.
> Well, it hasn't happened so far. This is not like in countries like
> Belgium, where legislators speak in several languages.

I think you might be confusing terms.

>> Most americans speak in many dialects
> Do they? Most Americans speak English, period.

Den you not up on dat.

Point made.

>>> I mean, radios, newspapers etc. for immigrant communities also exist
>>> in Europe. Go to Paris, you'll see Chinese and Arabic newspapers,
>>> Arabic radios.
>> Visit more of the US. We have the same.
> Yes, I know. That's exactly what I was pointing to. You were making a
> spurious distinction between the US and European countries.

As the US grew, so will the EU. Many new languages and dialects will be
a result.

>> You lived in tri-city Texas, IIRC, which is like saying "I lived in
>> Nice, therefore, I have seen all of Europe".
> Actually, the SF bay area and NYC. And, yes, non-English content is
> mostly
> geared for poorer immigrant communities. It's actually evident from the
> fact that, say, public transportation in the south bay (mostly used by
> the
> poor and ethnic minorities) has subtitles in, say, Spanish and
> Vietnamese,
> while mostly everything catering to the higher classes of society is
> English only.

My friends pulling in 120K a year, while riding public transit, might
disagree. There might be a different way of thinking involved.

-Bop
--
Ronin Professional Solutions LLC
4245 NE Alberta Ct.
Portland, OR 97218
678-522-1322/503-282-1370


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikipedia-l] US Education system (was NPR interview)

body:
They are not taught about their own country, or even their own town.
In Colorado, at least, they are taught about the state.

Fred

On May 27, 2005, at 2:34 AM, Alphax wrote:

> Is it true that in the US, students are not taught anything about
> other
> countries?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Lists of computer science educators?

body:
Hi,

I would like us to slowly and experimentally (!) begin a systematic
effort to contact computer science educators who might be interested in
assigning MediaWiki-related work to their students. Professors I've
talked to so far were cautiously interested, and my intuition is that a
global outreach effort could lead to some real outside participation.

So, my question is, are any of you aware of lists of professors and
teachers in the field of computer science, particularly software? It can
be country-specific or limited in other ways, but any list as a starting
point would be very useful. Even a proprietary database might be
interesting.

All best,

Erik


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Introduction

body:
--- David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:
> Maybe it would be a good idea to point test edits away from
> [[Wikipedia:Introduction]] and to the sandbox? Adding test edits to the page
> can easily result in a newcomer removing the introduction, and although thats
> easily reverted, some potential new contributors might end up reading a bunch
> of tests instead of the introduction. As the page a lot of newcomers see
> first, a link to the sandbox and protection might be a good idea, as its a
> common vandal target.

Yes, please. I can't remember the number of times I've reverted that page from
inappropriate tests.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail Mobile
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/learn/mail


from_name: iMeowbot

references:
<a4a707705052507105a629b53@mail.gmail.com>
	<KMEIIIOFMCLGAOOMADDLEEKOCBAA.ihayat@com.haifa.ac.il>
	<a4a7077050526182472939460@mail.gmail.com>
	<3693.62.252.0.4.1117159486.squirrel@happy.minority-report.co.uk>
	<d76dm2$hsd$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<50133.62.252.0.4.1117180583.squirrel@happy.minority-report.co.uk>

body:
On May 27, 2005, at 3:56 AM, Tony Sidaway wrote:

>
> You miss my point, I think.  This is come chap using the name of a
> prestigious university to perform a "survey", even successfully
> exploiting
> the goodwill of Wikipedia editors to have information about this
> survey
> published on our mailing list. All we're told is that this is part
> of a
> "non-commercial cross-cultural research project" and we're supposed
> to go
> to a non-secure http site registered in Michigan (not, aas far as I'm
> aware, part of Israel) to fill it in.
> I wouldn't respond to a chap with a clipboard in the street who
> told me
> this.  I'd laugh in his face.
> Who is he?  Why won't Haifa university's servers do?

For what it's worth, the University of Haifa do claim shil.info as
their own.  See http://infosoc.haifa.ac.il/research_eng.htm


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Edit & move rate limiter

body:
I've whipped up a fairly basic rate limiter which can be used to provide
a brake to mass-floods of edits or page moves.

It's experimental and probably still needs some work. Since it's
relatively self-contained and I think some people would like to have it
yesterday ;) I've gone ahead and checked it into the REL1_4 branch as
well as HEAD.

This is not a comprehensive antispam or antivandalism solution; it's
part of a soft security system to keep things from getting too far out
of human control: for instance you can specify that a new user account
can only perform up to 2 pages in 90 seconds (or 1 page in 3600 seconds
;) so a malicious script would not be able to as easily flood things at
a rate of say one move per second.

Currently it requires using memcached, though that's not really
necessary and will be fixed soon.

Over the next few days I'll also be working on improvements to the open
proxy blacklist checking and the shared spam URL blacklist system.

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

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: BOPM and Malicious user javascript

body:
Neil Harris wrote:
>
> And, just to link several discussion threads together, how about a nice
> hook routine, set_BOPM_candidate(), that could be called from various
> places in the code to mark an IP as eligible for a BOPM scan?

How about an offline script that anyone can run to check IPs for being
an open proxy? That way it's not Wikimedia's responsibility because the
"portscans" will be coming from Wikimedians' own home computers.

> A failed BOPM scan would then apply only a _short term_ IP block to the
> open proxy: perhaps a week

I don't like this because then vandals only need enough proxies to fill
a week, and then they can re-use the old ones because the blocks will
expire.

Instead, I think they should be blocked indefinitely, but anyone wishing
to edit from such an IP should get a sensible message about the
open-proxy problem and NOT a screen telling them they're "blocked".

Timwi


from_name: Sean Barrett

body:
Alphax stated for the record:

> Is it true that in the US, students are not taught anything about other
> countries?

There are no other countries, only rebellious territories.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Blizok lokot', da ne ukusish'.
  sean at epoptic.com |


body:
Tony Sidaway stated for the record:

> Who needs geography lessons when you can just watch the Simpsons? :)

At least you'll know where Springfield is, eh?

--
  Sean Barrett     | Illiud Latine dici non potest.
  sean at epoptic.com |


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Official Positions

body:
Sj a ?crit:
 > On 5/26/05, Anthere
<anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
 >
 >>I am not very convinced. I think the positions selected really stick to
 >>the Foundation issues. And it is not the Foundation role imho to get
 >>involved with "content" or "quality" or "usability" directly. These are
 >>more communities issues. Imho.
 >
 >
 >>From the bylaws, as good a starting point as any :
 >     "The goals of the foundation are to encourage the further growth
 > and development of open content, social sofware WikiWiki-based
 > projects (see http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki) and to provide the
 > full contents of those projects to the public free of charge."
 >
 > "further growth" - why encourage 'further growth', and not just
 > 'growth'?   Growth is not merely in size.   The projects should
 > continue to find new dimensions in which to grow; in audience and
 > quality and a variety of verbosity levels and more... as well as in
 > breadth and depth.
 >
 > "and development" - it is not enough for projects to grow, they should
 > also develop in accordance with with other goals.  improved interfaces
 > and improved usability, for instance, also improve the ability of the
 > projects to 'provide their contents to the public.'
 >
 > "social sofware" - (a typo in the original pdf)  the social aspects of
 > the project are not incidental to the foundation, but central to its
 > growth and success.  Any collection of contact points tasked by the
 > Board with keeping up with developments on the projects should include
 > someone with a sense of how the social aspects of the existing
 > software are working, how users feel about it, and how this can be
 > improved.

Okay :-)

 > As to Chris M's suggestion of an additional government-relations
 > focus, I agree that this subject too merits regular attention, and a
 > few people who attend specifically to keeping up with it.  Many
 > governments have subsections devoted to archiving, librarianship,
 > promotion of free knowledge and education, and other goals closely
 > aligned with those of Wiki[mp]edia.
 >
 > SJ

Hmmm, I must have been distracted and missed this. where is this
discussion ?

Ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Official Positions


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: next superpower

body:
/me wonders if she might not be extremely unloyal is she confesses she
prefers italian coffee to french one by very far.

/me wonders why she gets home very day for lunch as the food chain in
the street gives disgusting food which makes her sick.

/me plans to go to the cinema for the first time in a year in a couple
of weeks to see StarsWars.

ant

Giuseppe DAngelo a ?crit:
 > Anthere
 >
 > I am wondering if it is within your capacity to somehow engineer
France becoming the world's next superpower.  We might then have cafe
franchises that serve good coffee; food chains that serve real food; a
film industry that produces good films; etc.
 >
 > Also, I would like to publicly nominate you as the United States of
Earth's first president.
 >
 > Salutamu
 >
 > pippu d'angelo, canberra
 >
 > wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org ha scritto:
 > Send Wikipedia-l mailing list submissions to
 > wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
 >
 > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
 > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
 > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
 > wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org
 >
 > You can reach the person managing the list at
 > wikipedia-l-owner at Wikimedia.org
 >
 > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
 > than "Re: Contents of Wikipedia-l digest..."
 >
 >
 > Message: 1
 > Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 12:50:36 +0200
 > From: Anthere
 > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Jimbo interview on NPR Friday?
 > To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
 > Message-ID: <4295A9FC.9080003 at yahoo.com>
 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
 >
 > Nod. Most of your arguments are valid to me.
 >
 > But, reading them, I thought of asking a question.
 >
 >
 >
 >>4. Most Americans live in a very, very large contiguous span of
 >>English-speaking regions. There is little or no need for most US
 >>citizens to ever speak another language in day to day life. While this
 >>may or may not be a bad thing, it is a true thing nonetheless, and that
 >>being the case I'm not surprised if US citizens tend to pay little
 >>attention to matters that involve other languages most of the time. The
 >>same cannot be said so easily of other languages (with a couple of
 >>notable exceptions, perhaps): Europe, for instance, consists of a large
 >>number of countries, many of whom have their own associated languages
 >>largely distinct from the languages of their neighbors, and yet much of
 >>Europe would fit within the borders of one of the larger states in the
 >>US. This forces a certain amount of multilingual awareness on
 >>Europeans, whereas the opposite tends to be true of Americans, pretty
 >>much through no fault of their own.
 >
 >
 >
 > Since you are focusing more on an american perspective, though english
 > is the only official language in the usa, many more or less recent
 > immigrants only poorly manage english.
 >
 > When I lived in Arizona, I was in the part of the city most inhabited by
 > teachers and students, as it was the city where the university was
 > located (Tempe).
 >
 > However, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in two other
 > cities located in the south and east, essentially because the medical
 > center and the children care center was located in east (Mesa) and the
 > hospital in the south (Chandler, where my son finally born).
 >
 > Admittedly, most cheap clothes and most cheap cars were also in Mesa,
 > which is also why it was a key area for me :-)
 >
 > However, what was striking is that most of this area was inhabited by
 > mexican immigrants, some legal and some illegal; and many of them did
 > not manage english well, or even not at all, as they only recently
came in.
 >
 > I particularly remember supermarkets entirely in spanish (which was easy
 > to manage for me), but also a supermarket entirely in chinese near my
 > appartment (which was much harder to manage :-)).
 >
 > I went to a church in that area as well, it was a bit different approach
 > from the way we usually practice religion in France, but it was better
 > than nothing (I am catholic). Many catholics there were from Mexico or
 > San Salvador. And some of the meetings were in spanish to address their
 > needs. The church also organised some courses for them, to try to help
 > them manage better in english (sort of adult courses of english).
 >
 > Most of those families listened to radio station in spanish or watched
 > tv in english. The kids got integrated amazingly quickly thanks to
 > school (french people would do well to understand how americans can
 > integrate immigrants so quickly), but it was much tougher for adults and
 > most of time these were poorly educated immigrants.
 >
 >
 > So, my question is this one, and it is addressed to spanish editors as
 > much as english ones. Do you know how much impact the spanish wikipedia
 > has amongst spanish speakers in the usa ? Are they participants amongst
 > rather recently immigrated people ? Do you know if there were some
 > articles on wikipedia in spanish speaking american press (I suppose
 > there is press in spanish) ? Or radio interviews ?
 >
 >
 > I know there are sometimes some little disagreements between the spanish
 > editors from Spain and the spanish editors from latine american. Are
 > they some fully spanish editors from USA ? And what is their
 > representation in the USA media ?
 >
 > Ant
 >
 >
 >
 > ---------------------------------
 > Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Complaint: Cyberderk

body:
Adrian Midgley wrote:
>
> What I want(ed) was for someone looking for an article on Evidence Based
> Health to find the material that exists.

This isn't the first time I hear a newbie was "bitten" just because they
didn't know how to create a redirect. When I was new, the same happened
to me; I created the page [[Extrema]], writing "Plural of [[Extremum]]".
The proper response should have been to turn it into a redirect, but
instead an overzealous sysop just deleted the page.

I think sysops need to learn to recognise what kinds of contributions
should really be redirects (as opposed to deleted, much less blocked),
and to actually turn them into redirects.

Timwi


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>I have been asked to forward this message to the WikiEN-l mailing
>>list. A research institute at Haifa University are conducting a study
>>of Wikipedia, and request the participation of the Wikipedia
>>community.
>
> Cool!  How much are they paying for this?

Wow. I wouldn't have expected this kind of response from a Wikimedian.
When I read it, money hadn't even crossed my mind. Did anyone else think
there might be money to be earned from this?


from_name: El C

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
Please see my two unironic comments here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR#User:Sam_Spade

El_C

>I have been reblocked. Thats kinda ironic, eh?

>Jack


references:
<a4a707705052507105a629b53@mail.gmail.com>	<KMEIIIOFMCLGAOOMADDLEEKOCBAA.ihayat@com.haifa.ac.il>	<a4a7077050526182472939460@mail.gmail.com>
	<3693.62.252.0.4.1117159486.squirrel@happy.minority-report.co.uk>
	<d76dm2$hsd$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Timwi said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>>I have been asked to forward this message to the WikiEN-l mailing
>>>list. A research institute at Haifa University are conducting a study
>>>of Wikipedia, and request the participation of the Wikipedia
>>>community.
>>
>> Cool!  How much are they paying for this?
>
> Wow. I wouldn't have expected this kind of response from a Wikimedian.
> When I read it, money hadn't even crossed my mind. Did anyone else
> think  there might be money to be earned from this?

You miss my point, I think.  This is come chap using the name of a
prestigious university to perform a "survey", even successfully exploiting
the goodwill of Wikipedia editors to have information about this survey
published on our mailing list. All we're told is that this is part of a
"non-commercial cross-cultural research project" and we're supposed to go
to a non-secure http site registered in Michigan (not, aas far as I'm
aware, part of Israel) to fill it in.
I wouldn't respond to a chap with a clipboard in the street who told me
this.  I'd laugh in his face.
Who is he?  Why won't Haifa university's servers do?


list: commons-l

from_name: Allan Patrick Medeiros Lucas

subject: [Commons-l] Poll about minimal criterions for admin requests

body:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons_talk:Administrators#Poll_about_minimal_criterions_for_admin_requests

2005/5/27, Frieda Brioschi <ubifrieda at gmail.com>:
> Please, link?
>
> On 5/26/05, Jean-Christophe Chazalette
> <jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net> wrote:
> > Thanks to take part to the poll about minimal criterions for admin requests
> > that I've launched until June 10.  An approval would make my bureaucrat job
> > easier ...
> >
> > villy ~~ JC

--
Allan Patrick Medeiros Lucas
allan.patrick at gmail.com
User:Patrick-br
Caruaru-PE (Brazil)


from_name: ultrablue at gmail.com

body:
I have been asked to forward this message to the WikiEN-l mailing
list. A research institute at Haifa University are conducting a study
of Wikipedia, and request the participation of the Wikipedia
community.

~Mark Ryan
WikiEN-l mailing list administrator

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Tsahi Hayat <ihayat at com.haifa.ac.il>
Date: May 27, 2005 4:29 AM
Subject: RE: A survey about Wikipedia
To: ultrablue at gmail.com

Dear Wikipedians,

We cordially invite you to answer a short questionnaire which is a
part of a non-commercial cross-cultural research project conducted at
INFOSOC  (The Center for the Study of the Information Society),
exploring Wikipedia community aspects.

The findings of this study will be published in Wikipedia to the
benefit of everyone, personal copies will be also available via e-mail
(wiki at shil.info).

Click here for the questionnaire: http://wikien.shil.info/

Thank you in advance.

Research Team, INFOSOC
Haifa University


from_name: MHart

body:
Works published prior to Jan 1, 1923, that had a copyright notice, enter the
public domain in 75 years. ALL works published prior to 1930 are now in the
public domain. If they didn't have a copyright notice, then they immediately
entered the public domain.

However, if a work was NOT published prior to 1930 - for instance, if a work
was discovered after the author's death and published in 1955, then it is
subject to to the 1978 copyright law of 28 years from the date of
publication plus potential renewal of up to 47 more years.

So... if Harvard published the poems in 1955, and they were never previously
published, then they can potentially have a copyright that lasts until 2030.

Republishing does not generate a new copyright, although new materials
included in the republished works, such as commentary, are protected.

http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html
http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/copyright-howto

- MHart
- http://taxalmanac.org

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
To: "Angela" <beesley at gmail.com>; "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>; <tanter at tarleton.edu>
Sent: Thursday, May 26, 2005 11:06 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems

> Dear Mr. Tanter:
>    You may be pleased to know that Emily Dickinson died in 1886.  What
> determines the copyright on a work of literature is the date of original
> publication.  The fact that Harvard University republished some of her
> poems in 1955 would not give them any copyrights in the poems themselves
> unless perhaps they included poems that had not been previously published
> such as in the 1924 edition of her complete works published by Little,
> Brown and Co.
>
>    We note too that Harvard would have copyrights to any prefaces,
> introductions, indexes, and editorial notes that may have accompanied
> their edition.  We sincerely hope that you have not found such materials
> in our files.  We also sincerely hope that our presentation does not
> infringe on the arrangement and selection process which Harvard undertook,
> although I would think that the term "complete" attached to the 1924
> edition would be self-explanatory.
>
>    I also trust that you have also reviewed the files of the Copyright
> Office of the Library of Congress to verify that whatever copyrights
> Harvard may have had were properly renewed in or about 1983.
>
>    I am not personally an Emily Dickinson scholar, nor was I a party to
> the posting of these poems.  That certainly puts me at a disadvantage in
> the face of someone such as you, whose scholarship is evidently more
> familiar with that corpus of works.  That being said, we look forward to
> your response identifying precisely which poems are identical copies of
> the Harvard poems without being identical to those found in any earlier
> edition.  We would be glad to make any adjustment to ensure that our
> version of the poems conforms to the earlier version.
>    Should this response not be satisfactory, and you believe that the
> material should be the subject of a take down order, please note that such
> an order requires that you indicate a statement of your legal standing in
> this matter in relation to either Miss Dickinson or Harvard University.
>
>    Yours very truly,
>    Ray Saintonge
>    a Wikisource editor
>
> Angela wrote:
>
>>I'm forwarding this to Foundation-l since Wikisource has no list of
>>its own yet. Is anyone able to help with this issue or provide
>>comments on it please?
>>
>>Angela
>>
>>---- Forwarded message from tanter <tanter at tarleton.edu> ----
>>
>>Date: From: tanter
>>To: board
>>Cc: Reply-To: Subject: [Ticket#: 126217-FW] Emily Dickinson poems
>>>Hello.  On your site, you have posted poems by Emily Dickinson at this
>>>URL:
>>>http://wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Emily_Dickinson.  You need to be aware
>>>that these poems are NOT in the public domain.  Harvard University owns
>>>the copyright to all of Emily Dickinson's poems published in the 1955 and
>>>later editions of her poetry.  The editions from the 1890s are public
>>>domain
>>>but the ones you seem to have posted are from the Harvard edition. I
>>>haven't had
>>>time to go through them all, but I suggest you have an editor review this
>>>because you may be violating copyright.
>>>
>>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
Jack would be well advised to note that I posted that message
to-and-for the benefit and easy linking convinience of the mailing
list. He is well aware of my comments there? Good for him, other
members of the list may not be.

I did not, nor do I have any intention to, contact him "directly" (!)
My comments here are the same --and I insist they must be treated the
same by him-- as they would be on any Wikipedia talk page. Frankly, I
find his reaction hysterical, and outragouesly hypocritical.

He dares to speak of indignity with such impunity. He breaks the 3RR,
he titles a propper block as a "Wrongful Block," David Gerard unblocks
him, assuming I'm sure that good behaviour is forthcoming --it seems
Jack convinced David that he made comrpomises or something to that
effect (?) with his reverts, which he did not; he made one useful
addition with his revert, but I still reverted it just the same and
kept the addition as it has nothing to do with the reversion-- and
then what does Jack do?  He makes that snide "certainly" remark to
Mel.

Now, Mel reblocked him, the right and just thing to do in the case of
Jack's contempt for the rules everyone else is expected to adhere to,
the rules I have always adhered to. I also note that David Gerard (who
seems to mistakingly think I'm accusing him of something sinister -- I
am not) is not objecting to the re-blocking, now that he had a closer
looked at the evidence.

Jack "suspect[s] the circumstances amuse [me] too much to refrain" ?
If a reprieve from his circularities in that article for 24 hours is
amusment, then count me as ROFL-ing.

Epiprologue: It all begins yesterday. I went and congratulated Chip
Berlet on a fine article in the article's talk page, 4 days after
Charles did (I only noticed it at that time). Mine was the 2nd comment
in that talk page following Charles', and I intended to edit the intro
(no content changes whatsoever, just make it less conversational:
which I did) later that day, but when I got back home, I found Jack
already start editing it. Ahhuhh. And so it begins, again.

And all this is nothing, it dosen't even pretend to scratch the
surface about Jack.

El_C

>I am well aware of your comments there. Why you are simultaneously
>escalating our bad relations whilst contacting me directly off the
>wiki, I have no clue. I suspect the circumstances amuse you too much
>to refrain? I do feel a bit sad that I am involved with a project that
>rewards persons such as yourself and mel with authority, if that gives
>you any satisfaction. I have often considered leaving, but there are
>so many excellent friends I have met, and so much I have learned, and
>so many others I have helped ... The indignity of circumstances such
>as this weighs more lightly than all of that.

>Jack


from_name: Michael Keppler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Template variable tables?

body:
Magnus Manske schrieb:
> Whould we add tables to the database that store the values of variables
> passed to templates for each page? Like:
>
> template_used : ID of page, ID of template page, unique ID
> template_values : ID of template_used, variable name, value name

Very interesting! I would also like to use user input in a wiki of mine
for some kind of database retrieval and thought about a similar approach
this week. As the number of templates is relatively small and doesn't
change structure often I thought about storing the template values in a
table for each template, but your approach of using a generalized table
for all fields of all templates seems to be better as it handles the
changes in template structure more easily.

> I would implement the database side, if there are no concernes about the
> database getting Yet More Bloated, and MySQL Even More Sluggish (both
> (TM) MediaWiki;-).

I'd be happy to help you by reviewing, coding or whatever. Please notify
me even if the whole idea gets discarded as I would then start coding
something like that myself.

Ciao, Michael.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
Okay, now that I've posted that, I see a new email in my inbox from
Jack himself (a somewhat unwelcome intrusion/direct contact, but no
big deal)  where he mentions  he misunderstood how the mailing list
works. Fine. 90% of my comments still stand though.

El_C

>ah, my mistake, I thought that was a personal email. Still getting
>used to the mailing list.

>Jack


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 06:24:08AM -0700, Sean Barrett wrote:
> Tony Sidaway stated for the record:
>
> >Who needs geography lessons when you can just watch the Simpsons? :)
>
> At least you'll know where Springfield is, eh?

Actually . . .

I know where Springfield is, but considering how rarely it's mentioned
in the show, I'm not sure the regular viewers have any idea.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Fred Bauder said:
>
>
>>On May 27, 2005, at 2:34 AM, Alphax wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Is it true that in the US, students are not taught anything about
>>>other countries?
>>>
>>>
>>They are not taught about their own country, or even their own town.
>>In Colorado, at least, they are taught about the state.
>>
>>
>Who needs geography lessons when you can just watch the Simpsons? :)
>
>
A few years ago there was a news story about a school shooting in the
small town of Springfield, OR.  It was easy to draw the conclusion that
Bart Simpson was somehow involved. :-)

During the Gulf War there was also a story that Iraqi broadcast
propaganda was trying to demoralize US troops by suggesting that Bart
Simpson was trying to get into bed with their wives. :-)

Ec


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Problème de copyright dans l'usage de vos sources Wikipedia

body:
> Bonjour,
>
> Nous sommes ravis que votre site utilise du contenu de
> Wikipedia (http://www.wikipedia.org/), l'encyclop?die
> libre, en n?erlandais, fran?ais et allemand.
>
> Toutefois, nous aimerions signaler que lorsque vous
> utilisez du mat?riel provenant de Wikipedia, il est
> n?cessaire de citer d'une part la source et d'autre
> part la licence.

-----

> Mais l'utilisation du mat?riel provenant de Wikip?dia est
> subordonn?e au respect d'un certain nombre d'?l?ments. Les contenus
> disponibles sur le site appartiennent toujours ? leur auteur qui
> ont autoris?s leur diffusion dans le cadre du respect des
> conditions du contrat de mise ? disposition GNU FDL.

-----

> Nous aimerions notamment signaler deux petits
> probl?mes.
>
> D'une part, vous remplacez ? de nombreux endroits le
> terme "Wikipedia" par "encyclopedie", ce qui d'une
> part ne garantie pas correctement le respect de la
> citation de la source...

-----

> D'une part, vous remplacez ? de nombreux endroits le
> terme "Wikipedia" par "encyclopedie", ce qui d'une
> part ne garantie pas correctement le respect de la source et
> s'av?re contraire aux prescriptions de la GNU FDL

------

> exemple :
> *http://encyclopedie.izynews.be/nl/lexImpressum.htm
>
> Mais en plus aboutit ? des articles inexacts.
>
> exemple :
> *http://encyclopedie.izynews.be/fr/lexw.aspx?doc=Wikipedia

> Le deuxi?me probl?me a trait avec la licence de nos
> images. Contrairement au texte qui est toujours sous
> GFDL, nos images peuvent ?tre de diff?rentes licenses,
> par domaine public ou variations des creative commons.
>>
> ----
>
> Le deuxi?me probl?me a trait avec les conditions accompagnant la
> diffusion de nos
> images. Contrairement au texte qui est toujours sous
> GNU FDL, les images de wikipedia peuvent utiliser diff?rentes
> contrats de mise ? dispositionos (comme les diff?rentes variations
> des creative commons) ou appartenir au domaine public.

-----

> Or, vous indiquez toujours la GNU FDL.
>
> Examples :
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image%
> 3ACopenhagen_statue_of_Absalon.jpg
>
>
> http://lexicon.izynews.be/nl/lexw.aspx?doc=Afbeelding%3aCopenhagen%
> 20statue%20of%20Absalon.jpg
>
>
> Serait il possible que vous corrigiez ces deux
> probl?mes ?

> Merci encore d'utiliser notre contenu.
>
> En vous remerciant par avance de votre attention.
>
> Florence Devouard
> VP Wikimedia Foundation
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Template variable tables?

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>I've asked this before, and got some vaguely positive answers, so I'll
>try again...
>
>Whould we add tables to the database that store the values of variables
>passed to templates for each page? Like:
>
>template_used : ID of page, ID of template page, unique ID
>template_values : ID of template_used, variable name, value name
>
>This would allow for searching the meta data that is stored in the
>templates. My prime example would be the "Personendaten" (person data)
>template on the German wikipedia. For "Albert Einstein", it looks like this:
>
>{{Personendaten|
> NAME=Einstein, Albert
>|ALTERNATIVNAMEN=
>|KURZBESCHREIBUNG=[[Physiker]]
>|GEBURTSDATUM=[[14. M?rz]] [[1879]]
>|GEBURTSORT=[[Ulm]]
>|STERBEDATUM=[[18. April]] [[1955]]
>|STERBEORT=[[Princeton (New Jersey)|Princeton]], [[USA]]
>}}
>
>so one could generate a list of all people sorted by *last* name, with
>key information like description, alternative names, time and place of
>birth/death.
>
>
>I thought of this again when I was contacted yesterday about a way to
>improve wiktionary. I gathered that short of rewriting the whole
>MediaWiki, one could (by default) change the edit function to display a
>"real" input form, in contrast to the Big Text Box (tm) for a more
>data-driven wiki site like wiktionary. The form info could then be
>merged into a single text using a template, and taken apart again when
>the page is edited further.
>
>
Hoi,
At this moment in time Erik Moeller is working on Wikidata and this in
turn will enable the "Ultimate Wiktionary" and a functional
Wikispecies... This system is not based on templates but it uses a
database to store information. What is needed for an enhanced Wiktionary
functionality is a bit more than flat file functionality. If I
understand well what you propose, I do not see what the added value of
your proposal is given that Wikidata is being developped. One of the
things your proposed functionality does not provide is a potential to
localise the information or use information in more than one project or
language.
Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
>I didn't think you were accusing me of anything sinister :-) I chose not to
>re-unblock so as not to continue a cycle of blocking/unblocking. If someone
>agrees with me they'll unblock, if not they won't. There's lots of admins.

Oh, okay, good! :) Then I misread that, because you said I
charactarized your unblock, so I thought you meant bad. That said, I
did hope the reason you didn't didn't unblock again was because you
had a closer look at the evidence, information which, as I mentioned
on your talk page, you were not privy to at the time of unblocking. If
not, oh well, it dosen't matter. As I also said, you're not obliged to
get involved and immerse yourself in the details if you don't intend
to unblock the re-block anyway.

>Even though *usually* if another admin removes a block the first one
>shouldn't reblock, just to avoid the appearance of a blocking war. But if
>Mel judges it's severe enough then I'm happy to wait until/if someone else
>thinks Sam should be unblocked.

Usually, but usually an admin such as yourself, dosen't get persuaded
to unblock only to discover such severity -- I'm positive you have
scarcely enocuntered that in the past. Yes, if another admin thinks he
should be unblocked, they can do so, this is how the wiki runs.

>Sam can rub people up the wrong way, but I don't doubt his sincerity.
>"Assume good faith" can require gritted teeth when someone is really
>annoying you ...

>- d.

David, if this was really limited to the realm of annoyance, I would
not be going through this lenghts, I hope you believe me.

El_C


body:
MHart wrote:

> Works published prior to Jan 1, 1923, that had a copyright notice,
> enter the public domain in 75 years. ALL works published prior to 1930
> are now in the public domain. If they didn't have a copyright notice,
> then they immediately entered the public domain.

The Sonny Bono extension changed this period to 95 years.  The 75 year
period now applies only to libraries and archives for works that are not
available at a reasonable price.

The failure to include a copyright notice voided the copyright for works
published before 1989.

> However, if a work was NOT published prior to 1930 - for instance, if
> a work was discovered after the author's death and published in 1955,
> then it is subject to to the 1978 copyright law of 28 years from the
> date of publication plus potential renewal of up to 47 more years.

The need to have been renewed only applies to works published before 1964.

> So... if Harvard published the poems in 1955, and they were never
> previously published, then they can potentially have a copyright that
> lasts until 2030.

Yes, but the copyright had to be renewed in 1983

> Republishing does not generate a new copyright, although new materials
> included in the republished works, such as commentary, are protected.

This is a key point.

> http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html
> http://www.gutenberg.org/howto/copyright-howto

See also

> http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/okbooks.html#whatpd

Ec


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: HistoryBlobStubs in MediaWiki 1.5

body:
Hello,

> Speaking of which, are we going to have a report about external storage in 1.4 from JeLuF or Domas?

I did merge my ExternalStorage support from HEAD to 1.4, and
JeLuF did nice work with specialized DB class, which allows
having archives (in 1.4) and all text (in 1.5). Currently we have
ability to simply move HistoryBlobs to external storage and
place ExternalStorage locators in main database. On live site
we started with building 3-node mysql cluster on top of some
apache hosts and JeLuF is already moving archive data
(concatenated gzips) to it.

Currently we haven't finalized the blob format in external storage,
as PHP archiving API isn't that handy, and serialized content sucks.

Anyway, idea of ExternalStore is really simple. You have a external
storage locator string either in 'text' or 'old' tables, with flags set to
'external', or in future we might be adding special location field to
revision table (or even make use of snowflake design ;-) The locator is like:

megastore://___put_anything_here___

When framework notices such content, it fires up
ExternalStorageMegastore.php (or any other, according to protocol),
and then storage class parses remaining part. Remaining part can specify
_anything_, and may be purely specific to ES class. In DB case, it specifies
MySQL cluster name and object id inside. In future it may specify content id
(in case of blob retrieval), etc. There is sample HTTP class as well, which
allows putting content on some external web server.

I would not be that surprised if someone would implement
ExternalStorageGmail ;-)

Anyway, keeping main relational databases as lean as
possible should be one of our primary concerns.
It doesn't matter that much in case of single server
setups though :)

Cheers,
Domas


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Template variable tables?

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

Gerard Meijssen schrieb:
> Hoi,
> At this moment in time Erik Moeller is working on Wikidata and this in
> turn will enable the "Ultimate Wiktionary" and a functional
> Wikispecies... This system is not based on templates but it uses a
> database to store information. What is needed for an enhanced Wiktionary
> functionality is a bit more than flat file functionality. If I
> understand well what you propose, I do not see what the added value of
> your proposal is given that Wikidata is being developped.

At the very least, it would make it easier to fill wikidata tables from
existing data.

> One of the
> things your proposed functionality does not provide is a potential to
> localise the information or use information in more than one project or
> language.

Information could be queried by special pages, but no, there's no
central repository like wikidata. It would be more for simple, local
issues. Have a list of people in wikidata central? Great. Have a list of
people in the German wikipedia? I'd have to either update wikidata on
every edit in de.wikipedia, or check wikidata and then de.wikipedia
again, to see which people articles actually exist here. Sounds like an
unnecessary step to me, and considering server load, this is a bad thing ;-)

Magnus
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFClu2SCZKBJbEFcz0RAiYBAJ98L5nB0xfPcdpwJiURw/IDiyXVegCfafSm
7k5v0RsYJ+4XS1BzF4bfHrg=
=8qDS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
Blocking for 3RR is a technical enough procedure, regardless who
implements the block, so long as the 3RR has been breached.

Jack states that: "I do not feel that I had violated the 3rr," and of
course, he is more than free to substantiate that claim with pertinent
evidence, one which indicates that his 'feeling' corresponds to
objective reality as others percieve it (i.e. that there was no 3RR).

As for Jack and questionable emails, I'm sure User:FeloniousMonk has a
thing or three to say about that.

El_C

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR#User:Sam_Spade

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Controversial_blocks

>I feel I am a "logged-in user(s) with a substantial history of valid
>contributions, regardless of the reasoning for the block"

>I feel that Mel Etitis has a long history of conflict with myself, and
>should not be blocking me once, much less twice. Comments he made to
>me by email after the incident (a conversation which I feel should be
>fully disclosed) make this especially clear. I further feel that I
>could have been warned, and challenge anyone to suggest that i was
>aware that my edits were seen to be a 3rr violation, or that if I had
>been advised thusly that I would have continued to revert. As I made
>clear in my comment to David here, I do not feel that I had violated
>the 3rr, and I have no intent to resume the questioned behaviours. I
>request that I be unblocked.

>Jack (User:Sam Spade)


from_name: Samuel Meyer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking policy violated

body:
Brian0918 claims that I was blocked because of multiple vandalisms.  http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=146.142.65.198

According to policy, any good faith-effort to improve the encylcopedia is not considered vandalism.  If you look at my edits, they were each an attempt to clean up information about Michael Behe, the Discovery Institute, and the Intelligent Design movement, which is often confused and misrepresented.  Edits were made to delete information that was unsubstantiated and that was dismissive of these views without warrant.

Nothing I did could be considered vandalism, and I request this block be reconsidered and reviewed.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Template variable tables? кінь

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>Gerard Meijssen schrieb:
>
>
>>Hoi,
>>At this moment in time Erik Moeller is working on Wikidata and this in
>>turn will enable the "Ultimate Wiktionary" and a functional
>>Wikispecies... This system is not based on templates but it uses a
>>database to store information. What is needed for an enhanced Wiktionary
>>functionality is a bit more than flat file functionality. If I
>>understand well what you propose, I do not see what the added value of
>>your proposal is given that Wikidata is being developped.
>>
>>
>
>At the very least, it would make it easier to fill wikidata tables from
>existing data.
>
>
>
This is only true if the scheme you talk about already exists. At this
moment you request some comments.... I do not understand how your
proposal adds value to our projects.

>>One of the
>>things your proposed functionality does not provide is a potential to
>>localise the information or use information in more than one project or
>>language.
>>
>>
>
>Information could be queried by special pages, but no, there's no
>central repository like wikidata. It would be more for simple, local
>issues. Have a list of people in wikidata central? Great. Have a list of
>people in the German wikipedia? I'd have to either update wikidata on
>every edit in de.wikipedia, or check wikidata and then de.wikipedia
>again, to see which people articles actually exist here. Sounds like an
>unnecessary step to me, and considering server load, this is a bad thing ;-)
>
Hoi,
The current server load is a problem at this moment in time. This is a
problem that needs to be solved and that propably will be solved. When
considering how things could work it is not a strong argument. Take the
Commons pictures, it is one of the Wikimedia success stories and, it is
exactly the scheme that you describe as being something we do not want ..

So when you want sharable data between the different projects, you can
use Wikidata. It does not mean that you cannot edit its content. The
great idea of shared data is that you benefit from the work done in
other projects. This sharing of data, information and the collobaration
of our effort is what makes our projects so amazingly great.
Concentrating on improving information in one project is great up to a
point. It would be so more cool if much of this effort is made available
to all projects ..

One example of this convergence of effort and better functionality can
be found in
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Using_Ultimate_Wiktionary_for_Commons
This describes how you can use the Ultimate Wiktionary for the
localisation of keywords for Commons. This will allow an eight year old
kid to enter ???? and it will find pictures with horses on it.

Now to find people to work on these kinds of functionality .. :)

Thanks,
    GerardM


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
JAY JG wrote:

>> From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>>
>> Sam can rub people up the wrong way, but I don't doubt his sincerity.
>
> Lots of editors doing pretty objectionable things on Wikipedia are
> quite "sincere"; I don't think sincerity is a great excuse for policy
> violation.

Some people think that rules are more important than anything else;
strict adherence to rules is the pinacle of NPOV.

Others of us do teribly POV things like listening and caring.  Shame!
We'll never become properly globalized machines that way.

Ec


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: next superpower

body:
>
>/me wonders if she might not be extremely unloyal is she confesses she
>prefers italian coffee to french one by very far.
>
>/me wonders why she gets home very day for lunch as the food chain in the
>street gives disgusting food which makes her sick.
>
>/me plans to go to the cinema for the first time in a year in a couple of
>weeks to see StarsWars.
>
>
>ant
>
OK then, let's quit talking about superpowers. Superpowers are so last
century. Power is achieved for a big deal by approval of the world
community, not by military force. And of course by internal harmony in the
relevant country (recently seen the US tearing apart in a progressive coast
communiy and a conservative heart...). Cultural imperialism from either side
is undesirable. I don't really like this discussion, even though it is
clearly for fun.

W

>Giuseppe DAngelo a ?crit:
> > Anthere
> >
> > I am wondering if it is within your capacity to somehow engineer France
>becoming the world's next superpower.  We might then have cafe franchises
>that serve good coffee; food chains that serve real food; a film industry
>that produces good films; etc.
> >
> > Also, I would like to publicly nominate you as the United States of
>Earth's first president.
> >
> > Salutamu
> >
> > pippu d'angelo, canberra
> >
> > wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org ha scritto:
> > Send Wikipedia-l mailing list submissions to
> > wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >
> > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
> > wikipedia-l-request at Wikimedia.org
> >
> > You can reach the person managing the list at
> > wikipedia-l-owner at Wikimedia.org
> >
> > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> > than "Re: Contents of Wikipedia-l digest..."
> >
> >
> > Message: 1
> > Date: Thu, 26 May 2005 12:50:36 +0200
> > From: Anthere
> > Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Jimbo interview on NPR Friday?
> > To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> > Message-ID: <4295A9FC.9080003 at yahoo.com>
> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
> >
> > Nod. Most of your arguments are valid to me.
> >
> > But, reading them, I thought of asking a question.
> >
> >
> >
> >>4. Most Americans live in a very, very large contiguous span of
> >>English-speaking regions. There is little or no need for most US
> >>citizens to ever speak another language in day to day life. While this
> >>may or may not be a bad thing, it is a true thing nonetheless, and that
> >>being the case I'm not surprised if US citizens tend to pay little
> >>attention to matters that involve other languages most of the time. The
> >>same cannot be said so easily of other languages (with a couple of
> >>notable exceptions, perhaps): Europe, for instance, consists of a large
> >>number of countries, many of whom have their own associated languages
> >>largely distinct from the languages of their neighbors, and yet much of
> >>Europe would fit within the borders of one of the larger states in the
> >>US. This forces a certain amount of multilingual awareness on
> >>Europeans, whereas the opposite tends to be true of Americans, pretty
> >>much through no fault of their own.
> >
> >
> >
> > Since you are focusing more on an american perspective, though english
> > is the only official language in the usa, many more or less recent
> > immigrants only poorly manage english.
> >
> > When I lived in Arizona, I was in the part of the city most inhabited by
> > teachers and students, as it was the city where the university was
> > located (Tempe).
> >
> > However, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time in two other
> > cities located in the south and east, essentially because the medical
> > center and the children care center was located in east (Mesa) and the
> > hospital in the south (Chandler, where my son finally born).
> >
> > Admittedly, most cheap clothes and most cheap cars were also in Mesa,
> > which is also why it was a key area for me :-)
> >
> > However, what was striking is that most of this area was inhabited by
> > mexican immigrants, some legal and some illegal; and many of them did
> > not manage english well, or even not at all, as they only recently came
>in.
> >
> > I particularly remember supermarkets entirely in spanish (which was easy
> > to manage for me), but also a supermarket entirely in chinese near my
> > appartment (which was much harder to manage :-)).
> >
> > I went to a church in that area as well, it was a bit different approach
> > from the way we usually practice religion in France, but it was better
> > than nothing (I am catholic). Many catholics there were from Mexico or
> > San Salvador. And some of the meetings were in spanish to address their
> > needs. The church also organised some courses for them, to try to help
> > them manage better in english (sort of adult courses of english).
> >
> > Most of those families listened to radio station in spanish or watched
> > tv in english. The kids got integrated amazingly quickly thanks to
> > school (french people would do well to understand how americans can
> > integrate immigrants so quickly), but it was much tougher for adults and
> > most of time these were poorly educated immigrants.
> >
> >
> > So, my question is this one, and it is addressed to spanish editors as
> > much as english ones. Do you know how much impact the spanish wikipedia
> > has amongst spanish speakers in the usa ? Are they participants amongst
> > rather recently immigrated people ? Do you know if there were some
> > articles on wikipedia in spanish speaking american press (I suppose
> > there is press in spanish) ? Or radio interviews ?
> >
> >
> > I know there are sometimes some little disagreements between the spanish
> > editors from Spain and the spanish editors from latine american. Are
> > they some fully spanish editors from USA ? And what is their
> > representation in the USA media ?
> >
> > Ant
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi, antispam, antivirus, POP3
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l

_________________________________________________________________
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: next superpower

body:
And excuse me for sending the same silly message twice.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger overal en altijd beschikbaar http://webmessenger.msn.com/


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
--- Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
>I have often considered
> leaving

Oh, nooooooo!  How would we possibly survive?

RickK

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from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
On 5/27/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> I feel that Mel Etitis has a long history of conflict with myself, and
> should not be blocking me once, much less twice. Comments he made to
> me by email after the incident (a conversation which I feel should be
> fully disclosed) make this especially clear.

Block by an administrator who has a history of dispute with you?
... Welcome to wikipedia!

There are plenty of admins (esp of the sort that are glad to undertake
blocks but don't do much of the real grunt work like closing VFDs they
are uninterested in), we need to avoid the perception of misuse by
admins by enforcing a rule against administrative action against users
where the admin has had a history of dispute with the same unblinking
grind as we've used with 3rr.

Admins who unblock themselves or take administrative action against a
user they are in dispute with should be subject to a self-enforced
administrative suspension (which backed up by deadminship).

Sadly this is not the case and we currently have a few admins who
regularly block people that they have had numerous arguments with,
admins who unblock themselves after violating other rules, and admins
who close VFDs that they have been vocally involved with. Hopefully
this is just a temporary illness.


from_name: Delirium

body:
Alphax wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA1
>
>Christopher Mahan wrote:
>
>
>>How do you explain to somebody that Toyota != Toyota Motor
>>Corporation when their level of expertise is limited to US High
>>School education level?
>>
>>
>>
>
>Is it true that in the US, students are not taught anything about other
>countries?
>
>
No, that is not true.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
--- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>*usually* if another admin removes a
> block the first one
> shouldn't reblock, just to avoid the appearance of a
> blocking war.

Why not word it the other way:  If an admin blocks,
another admin shouldn't unblock.

RickK

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
1. Revert of [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]]

2. Revert of [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]]

3. Revert of [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]]

4. Revert of [[Right-wing politics|right-wing]]

No complexity there that I can observe, sorry, I don't see it.

El_C

>The third listed revert is not a direct revert. You could claim it is
>a complex revert but it doesn't meet my standards (which normaly
>involve past history of gameing the rule). If a block is disputed it
>is standard practice that the user remains unblocked.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
This isn't the same as weiging carefuly contested VfD one was involved
in, etc., this was a clear and very technical case of 3RR violation.
The incessant tendency to personalize intellectual and procedural
matters is -also- something that Wikipedia can see improvement in.

El_C

>Sadly this is not the case and we currently have a few admins who
>regularly block people that they have had numerous arguments with,
>admins who unblock themselves after violating other rules, and admins
>who close VFDs that they have been vocally involved with. Hopefully
>this is just a temporary illness.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Fred Bauder said:
>
> On May 27, 2005, at 2:34 AM, Alphax wrote:
>
>> Is it true that in the US, students are not taught anything about
>> other
>> countries?
>
> They are not taught about their own country, or even their own town.
> In Colorado, at least, they are taught about the state.

Who needs geography lessons when you can just watch the Simpsons? :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
--- geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> The third listed revert is not a direct revert. You
> could claim it is
> a complex revert but it doesn't meet my standards
> (which normaly
> involve past history of gameing the rule). If a
> block is disputed it
> is standard practice that the user remains
> unblocked.

You REALLY believe Jack Lynch doesn't have a history
of gaming the entire Wikipedia?  Do you have any idea
what you're saying?

RickK

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from_name: Joseph Reagle

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article rating topics - speak now!

body:
On Thursday 26 May 2005 08:41, David Gerard wrote:
> I particularly want to hear from academic researchers interested in
> Wikipedia - you folk will LOVE this data. What things would you
> particularly like to see reader/editor ratings of?

At first blush, it would make sense to rate articles with respect to the
criteria of what makes a good article as documented on:
  [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_is_a_featured_article
  [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_articles

So it would be nice if the ratings captured whether it was well written, an
appropriate reading level, an appropriate size, NPOV, the appropriate use
of references, etc. However, that said, I don't think it should include
anything that could be done by machine. (Lih's (2004) quality (rigor,
diversity), Newberry's (2004) mass and luminosity, and Emigh's & Herring's
(2005) formality don't seem to apply in this case of users' subjective
ratings.) So for example, that would remove the reading level and
appropriate size which could be generated automatically. Also, it should be
kept relatively simple. A single subjective rating informed by [1,2] might
be good enough.

On second thought, the question is very relevant to some of my experiences
at the W3C. Since we advocated valid HTML, it was embarrassing that some of
our pages were not valid HTML. So after time we began generating reports of
the most popular invalid pages, and who owned them. This enabled us to
drastically reduce the likelihood of the public encountering an invalid W3C
page. So, it would be really interesting to see what are the most popular
stub articles. (This to could be generated automatically from referrer, but
can also be used so as to find the most popular poorly rated articles once
we have that data.)


from_name: Jack Lynch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrongful block

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sam_Spade#3RR_violation

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neofascism_and_religion&diff=14269478&oldid=14265550
- Revision as of 16:55, 26 May 2005, revert #1

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neofascism_and_religion&diff=14283708&oldid=14282740
- Revision as of 23:35, 26 May 2005 (compromise edit, inserting
corporatist, which is complimented by El_C)

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neofascism_and_religion&diff=14283990&oldid=14283866
- Revision as of 00:00, 27 May 2005 Revert #2

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neofascism_and_religion&diff=14307784&oldid=14307708
- Revision as of 12:12, 27 May 2005 Revert #3

I feel this was a wrongful block.

Jack / User:Sam Spade


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikitech-l] Template variable tables?

body:
Magnus:
> I've asked this before, and got some vaguely positive answers, so I'll
> try again...

Ah yes, that sounds familiar:
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2004-March/021553.html
;-)

As Gerard has pointed out, I'm working on Wikidata. My current line of
thinking is at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/Notes (not really
meant for public consumption yet, but feel free to point out obvious
stupidities).

Wikidata does not necessarily require a central repository, you can have
project-local or global schemas, though in most cases, having data
centrally stored will be preferable. Take, for example, country
statistics: The population, the currency, the GDP, the head of state
etc. are not language-dependent. You will not want to have redundant
copies of all this data or you end up with a high maintenance system
like the interlanguage links. ;-) Instead you will want to be able to
distinguish between
* data which is highly language-specific (leave it blank even if data in
other languages exists)
* data which is rarely language-specific (make a copy from other
language(s))
* data which is never language-specific (everyone edits the same version).
Ideally, you would be able to group subsets of languages together
according to these criteria, and define orders of preference.

The user does not necessarily have to notice that they are using a
global repository. You could have the script access the DB transparently
as needed. But all this is still quite a while away, the Ultimate
Wiktionary is priority number 1, and that's a separate database of its own.

When I've finished the specs (I may have to go back to the drawing board
if the current fixed table approach turns out to be unworkable), I'll
send out a call for open participation. I'd like to ask you to be
patient until then with your own implementation. As for importing
existing data, we could use a server-side script to extract data from
templates, though this should be done cautiously as much of it is
currently not very high quality (templates have no parameter validation).

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrongful block

body:
Thannk you very much, I am going to go way out of my way not to revert
more than once every 24 hours, and to avoid this particular subject
for awhile as well. Your action gives me a very positive feeling about
the project, its rules, and the spirit behind them. Frankly, if it
were up to me, non-vandalism reverts wouldn't be allowed at all. I
really wish there could be some final say on differences of opinion,
or at least a more functional and civil manner of achieving concensus
than the current approach. I don't have an easy answer, and am aware
of the dangers of instruction creep, but I do think this is an
important problem, with reprecussions both in article quality and
editor stress and satisfaction.

Jack

On 5/27/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> Jack Lynch (jack.i.lynch at gmail.com) [050527 21:08]:
>
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Sam_Spade#3RR_violation
> > I feel this was a wrongful block.
>
>
> I've unblocked, though to keep the peace I would suggest you not be the one
> to make it back that way again for now, but make your case on the talk
> page. You'll know you've made your case when someone else makes the change.
> (One of the points of 3RR is that not everything in the article has to be
> correct right now :-)
>
>
> - d.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Frieda Brioschi

body:
Please, link?

On 5/26/05, Jean-Christophe Chazalette
<jean-christophe.chazalette at laposte.net> wrote:
> Thanks to take part to the poll about minimal criterions for admin requests
> that I've launched until June 10.  An approval would make my bureaucrat job
> easier ...
>
> villy ~~ JC
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>


from_name: Robert Brockway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] GFDL Clarification

body:
Hi all.  The file SchapelleCorbyInCell.jpg which is used in article
[[Schapelle Corby]] has been flagged for removal.  I am surprised at this
as it had previously been tagged with "non-free permission to use".

I was the one who obtained permission to use this image (and two others)
from Mercedes Corby, Schapelle's sister.  I had intended to get the status
of the images clarified but I must admit I had not considered it a high
priority as I felt we had at least the equivalent of fair use.

Anyway I now reproduce part of the conversation between Mercedes Corby and
myself in which she allowed permission for the images to be used:

I said "I'd like to use a picture in the [Wikipedia] article. Would you be
able to provide a picture of Schapelle that can be legally used in the
Wikipedia article (ie, without copyright concerns)? If such a picture is
available just email it back to me".

Mercedes Responded (in part): "Attached is a photo taken at Schapelle's
cell. This was taken by our camera.. Also if you are able to find the
photo on the web of Schapelle, brother James and 2 freinds Katrina and
Ally that was taken by Mums camera at the Brisbane airport so that one is
fine to use aswell."

Attached to the email from Mercedes were 2 of the 3 images I uploaded to
Wikipedia, the 3rd being the mentioned group image which I did locate.

After reviewing the wording of my request and Mercedes' response it is my
contention the pictures are licenced under the GFDL.

Comments?

Rob

--
Robert Brockway B.Sc.
Senior Technical Consultant, OpenTrend Solutions Ltd.
Phone: +1-416-669-3073 Email: rbrockway at opentrend.net http://www.opentrend.net
OpenTrend Solutions: Reliable, secure solutions to real world problems.
Contributing Member of Software in the Public Interest (http://www.spi-inc.org)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
I have been reblocked. Thats kinda ironic, eh?

Jack


from_name: Michael P. Hopcroft

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>> Timwi said:
>>
>>> Wow. I wouldn't have expected this kind of response from a
>>> Wikimedian. When I read it, money hadn't even crossed my mind. Did
>>> anyone else think  there might be money to be earned from this?
>>
>>
>> You miss my point, I think.  This is come chap using the name of a
>> prestigious university to perform a "survey", even successfully
>> exploiting the goodwill of Wikipedia editors to have information
>> about this survey published on our mailing list. All we're told is
>> that this is part of a "non-commercial cross-cultural research
>> project" and we're supposed to go to a non-secure http site
>> registered in Michigan (not, aas far as I'm aware, part of Israel) to
>> fill it in. I wouldn't respond to a chap with a clipboard in the
>> street who told me this.  I'd laugh in his face. Who is he?
>
>
> Even wower. You're completely assuming bad faith. Very untypical of a
> Wikimedian. May I remind you of [[Wikipedia:Assume good faith]]?
>
>> Why won't Haifa university's servers do?
>
>
> The site is hosted on com.haifa.ac.il, which is not only in Israel,
> but even a Haifa university server.

This is why John Dvorak thinks wikis are a bad idea. While Wikipedia
asks its users to assume good will, Dvorak contends that on the Internet
the only safe policy is toa ssume total malice unless proven otherwise.

I don't agree with him, and enjoy Wikipedia and am glad that I can help
edit it, but I do see his point. There are a lot of creeps on the Net.


from_name: Christopher Mahan

body:
--- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

> The site is hosted on com.haifa.ac.il, which is not only in Israel,
> but
> even a Haifa university server.

So that must be the server that went down hard when I tried in vain
to submit my survey...

Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Sergey Samoylov

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia dump!

body:
Thank you, Brion!
Another problem as you can see edit action on this link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Category:Astronomy&action=edit
there are many text like:
[[ar:تصنيف:فلك]]
[[an:Category:Astronom?a]]
[[ast:Category:Astronom?a]]
which wikipedia hides. But on mywikipedia it's showed as broken links.
Why?

Thanks
     Sergey

On 5/27/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Sergey Samoylov wrote:
> > I've installed cur en.wikipedia from http://download.wikimedia.org/
> > but when I tried to load Categories, there was loaded just first text
> > "Without Subcategories " and "Articles in category"
> > For Example, for link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Astronomy
> > was loaded just text  before Subcategories.
> > What should I install for correct displaying this type of pages?
>
> You could regenerate all the links tables by running refreshLinks.php,
> but this takes a long time on a large wiki.
>
> To get these quickly, you need to import also the categorylinks dump.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
I am well aware of your comments there. Why you are simultaneously
escalating our bad relations whilst contacting me directly off the
wiki, I have no clue. I suspect the circumstances amuse you too much
to refrain? I do feel a bit sad that I am involved with a project that
rewards persons such as yourself and mel with authority, if that gives
you any satisfaction. I have often considered leaving, but there are
so many excellent friends I have met, and so much I have learned, and
so many others I have helped ... The indignity of circumstances such
as this weighs more lightly than all of that.

Jack

On 5/27/05, El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please see my two unironic comments here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR#User:Sam_Spade
>
> El_C
>
>
> >I have been reblocked. Thats kinda ironic, eh?
>
> >Jack
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
ah, my mistake, I thought that was a personal email. Still getting
used to the mailing list.

Jack

On 5/27/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> I am well aware of your comments there. Why you are simultaneously
> escalating our bad relations whilst contacting me directly off the
> wiki, I have no clue. I suspect the circumstances amuse you too much
> to refrain? I do feel a bit sad that I am involved with a project that
> rewards persons such as yourself and mel with authority, if that gives
> you any satisfaction. I have often considered leaving, but there are
> so many excellent friends I have met, and so much I have learned, and
> so many others I have helped ... The indignity of circumstances such
> as this weighs more lightly than all of that.
>
> Jack
>
> On 5/27/05, El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Please see my two unironic comments here:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/3RR#User:Sam_Spade
> >
> > El_C
> >
> >
> > >I have been reblocked. Thats kinda ironic, eh?
> >
> > >Jack
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

subject: [WikiEN-l] Controversial block

body:
On Fri, May 27, 2005 at 12:39:58PM -0400, Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> There are plenty of admins (esp of the sort that are glad to undertake
> blocks but don't do much of the real grunt work like closing VFDs they
> are uninterested in), we need to avoid the perception of misuse by
> admins by enforcing a rule against administrative action against users
> where the admin has had a history of dispute with the same unblinking
> grind as we've used with 3rr.

Agreed.

If administrative access is supposed to be "no big deal", then it
mustn't be usable to get one's way in a dispute.

It would be much better if people who are in a dispute and happen to
have administrative access would just temporarily forget that they have
that access, so as not to give any impression of abusing it.  In a
dispute, an administrator should do the same things that any other
experienced user would do -- including, if necessary, calling for some
other administrator to take action such as blocking an offender.

> Admins who unblock themselves or take administrative action against a
> user they are in dispute with should be subject to a self-enforced
> administrative suspension (which backed up by deadminship).

Deadmin?  Isn't he that DC Comics character with the red suit and the
pale expression?  :)

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


from_name: Kate Turner

subject: [Wikitech-l] image dumps (redux)

body:
the initial copy was too slow and would've taken weeks to finish, so i've
restarted it at a slightly faster rate.

the remaining problem is that some images have files with names longer than
100 characters, which standard tar(1) can't represent (the maximum length
is 155 characters for directory + 100 for filename).

given the wide availability of GNU tar, i don't see a problem outputting
GNU-format tar files instead of POSIX ones, but i can't find any
documentation on their format.  at least, the tar info files are not very
enlightening.  so, in the interests of useful image dumps, does anyone know
where this is documented? :-)

thanks,
kate.


from_name: Stephen Forrest

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Izynews and template "For wikipedia use only"

body:
On 5/27/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

[snip]
> Putting images under a "for wikipedia use only" has a name. It is called
> a "copyright". So, in creating a tag "for wikipedia use only" to tag your
> pictures, you are specifically putting copyrighted content in Wikipedia.
> This is not alright as our goal is to provide "free" content.

I think it would be beneficial to be clearer about what you mean here.
 When you use 'copyrighted' in this and following paragraphs, you
appear to not be referring to copyrighted works in general, but
non-free copyrighted works.

Any image released under the GFDL or any Creative Commons licence must
be copyrighted; if it were not, it would be public domain.  Clearly we
want to encourage these sorts of images (most of them) on Wikipedia.
The three categories into which images and other works are divided
are:

(a) Public domain works
(b) Copyrighted works with 'free' licences (e.g. GFDL, certain
Creative Commons licences)
(c) Copyrighted works that are not 'free' (e.g. fair use images, and
all other images)

(where 'free' is, of course, free libre, not free gratuit)

Please use some phrase other than 'copyrighted' to describe category
(c).  There is already far too much confusion about the use of the
terms 'copyright' and 'public domain'.  We should really make a point
of trying to use precise terminology when proscribing behaviour.

Steve


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] bambara

body:
Hi Anthere

I have heard about the project and am skeptical if it will really work
or not, but I totally support it because I hope it does. (this could
mean growth opportunities for other Wikipedias, primarily in languages
spoken mostly in third-world areas: so far there is no single
African-language Wikipedia, other than Afrikaans, with over 100
articles, even Swahili which drew some attention for a while; also
some other Wikipedias might be candidates, ie central asian languages,
native american languages could get a lot of grant money probably)

We do need to be careful though that bm.wikipedia does not turn into a
portal for telling people about GC Mali. It isn't quite so bad (the
way the Wolof Wikipedia got, I mean), but we should still be careful.

Also we should have to consider the issue of Bambara in the context of
Mande. Should t there be one Wikipedia for all varieties of Mande
(includes Bambara)? Or should there be a multitude of smaller
Wikipedias for each variety? With either option (but especially the
first!)  NKo script conversion needs to be considered.

Mark

On 27/05/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Just to keep up with information.... I saw an announcement today in two websites, so thought it worth to say a bit about it
>
> .... Perhaps to divert our gentle editors from daily life in France or in the USA ... (grin)
>
> News from a very minor wikipedia (I think this deserves to be reported in next Quarto Sj, I'll write up a bit....)
>
> The association Geekcorps recently (it started possibly 2 months ago) made a lot of efforts to try to stimulate a minor wikipedia in an african language.
> Along with work in translation of the interface, addition of major rules and principles of Wikipedia, Geekcorps also decided to motivate editors speaking bambara in Mali to participate to the bambara wikipedia (http://bm.wikipedia.org) in a *financial* way.
>
> The conditions : to live in Mali and to be able to write in bambara.
> The prize is : 200 CFA to earn per article written with at least 200 words (max 5000 CFA per person) plus a bonus prize for specific actions.
> Specific actions are
> 1) translation of document or interface
> 2) start a wikibooks on Bamanankan
> 3) start Bamanankan Wikiquotes
> 4) start Bamanankan Wiktionary
> 5) start another wikipedia in other languages spoken in Mali
>
> (Note that there are no requirement of quality to get the prize per article, but the length)
>
> Geekcorps also remind to Mali editors that Mali people might be interested in the following languages
> * french (fr)
> * english (en)
> * fulfude (ff)
> * wolof (wo)
>
> ----------------
>
> The bambara version is still not very active, but Guaka is working on it from time to time. But what I find interesting is the organisation proposal... this way might be one of the good ones to really get such versions off the ground. Ie, a wikipedia being babysitted by a local organisation.
>
> I think there is much interest in following such initiatives. What do you think ?
>
> Please also look at the site of MaliWiki : http://mali.geekcorps.org/mediawiki/index.php/Accueil (based on mediawiki)
>
> ----------------
>
> Note that there are a couple of slightly embarassing little issues related to these attempts by local organisations.
> For example, when an organisation (ANAFA) made some work on the wolof version about 3 months ago, someone asked me a sysop account, which I gave (usual process for small projects).
> I however noticed soon after that the main page was a bit cluttered with quite a bit of advertisement for their organisation. (see for example http://wo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=1482)
> I tried to discuss to them about that, and since we did not really reached an agreement, I had to remove the sysop status.
>
> Since then, the wo is inactive.
>
> Ant
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do You Yahoo!?
>  Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new Resources site!
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] bambara

body:
Kaspar Souren (are you on this list?  :), who I believe is
spearheading the Bambara effort, is hoping to come to Wikimania this
summer to talk about how that project is going.

The combination of getting small grants from outside organizations,
and working with people on the ground who are already doing other
volunteer work in countries where the language is spoken, seems both
natural and scalable.

I wonder how many others on this list are volunteers or non-profit
employees in parts of the world where the local languages have small
or dormant Wikipedias; and what we can do to help them get funding and
publicity for similar projects.

SJ

On 5/27/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Just to keep up with information.... I saw an announcement today in two websites, so thought it worth to say a bit about it
>
>
> .... Perhaps to divert our gentle editors from daily life in France or in the USA ... (grin)
>
>
> News from a very minor wikipedia (I think this deserves to be reported in next Quarto Sj, I'll write up a bit....)
>
> The association Geekcorps recently (it started possibly 2 months ago) made a lot of efforts to try to stimulate a minor wikipedia in an african language.
> Along with work in translation of the interface, addition of major rules and principles of Wikipedia, Geekcorps also decided to motivate editors speaking bambara in Mali to participate to the bambara wikipedia (http://bm.wikipedia.org) in a *financial* way.
>
> The conditions : to live in Mali and to be able to write in bambara.
> The prize is : 200 CFA to earn per article written with at least 200 words (max 5000 CFA per person) plus a bonus prize for specific actions.
> Specific actions are
> 1) translation of document or interface
> 2) start a wikibooks on Bamanankan
> 3) start Bamanankan Wikiquotes
> 4) start Bamanankan Wiktionary
> 5) start another wikipedia in other languages spoken in Mali
>
> (Note that there are no requirement of quality to get the prize per article, but the length)
>
> Geekcorps also remind to Mali editors that Mali people might be interested in the following languages
> * french (fr)
> * english (en)
> * fulfude (ff)
> * wolof (wo)
>
> ----------------
>
> The bambara version is still not very active, but Guaka is working on it from time to time. But what I find interesting is the organisation proposal... this way might be one of the good ones to really get such versions off the ground. Ie, a wikipedia being babysitted by a local organisation.
>
>
> I think there is much interest in following such initiatives. What do you think ?
>
> Please also look at the site of MaliWiki : http://mali.geekcorps.org/mediawiki/index.php/Accueil (based on mediawiki)
>
>
>
> ----------------
>
> Note that there are a couple of slightly embarassing little issues related to these attempts by local organisations.
> For example, when an organisation (ANAFA) made some work on the wolof version about 3 months ago, someone asked me a sysop account, which I gave (usual process for small projects).
> I however noticed soon after that the main page was a bit cluttered with quite a bit of advertisement for their organisation. (see for example http://wo.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&oldid=1482)
> I tried to discuss to them about that, and since we did not really reached an agreement, I had to remove the sysop status.
>
> Since then, the wo is inactive.
>
>
> Ant
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do You Yahoo!?
>  Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new Resources site!
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
+sj+
 _ _ :-------.-.--------.--.--------.-.--------.--.--------[...]


body:
Sean Barrett said:
> Tony Sidaway stated for the record:
>
>> Who needs geography lessons when you can just watch the Simpsons? :)
>
> At least you'll know where Springfield is, eh?

Gore Vidal should sue for plagiarism.


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>
>Sam can rub people up the wrong way, but I don't doubt his sincerity.

Lots of editors doing pretty objectionable things on Wikipedia are quite
"sincere"; I don't think sincerity is a great excuse for policy violation.

Jay.


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
elwp at gmx.de wrote:
> Why does MW 1.5 still use HistoryBlobStubs?

Because the code was already there.

> Wouldn't it be better
> to add another id (or hash) column to the revision table that
> references a specific text in a HistoryBlob, and move the flags column
> there, too? This way one would also get rid of the $mDefaultHash
> variable.
>

Yes it would be better, we know this. Maybe for 1.6. The nice thing
about the revision table is that it's small enough to be altered
quickly. I think you can expect to see a VARCHAR(255) field containing
something similar to a URI.

Speaking of which, are we going to have a report about external storage
in 1.4 from JeLuF or Domas?

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] history compression

body:
elwp at gmx.de wrote:
> Tim Starling:
>
>>The nice thing
>>about the revision table is that it's small enough to be altered
>>quickly. I think you can expect to see a VARCHAR(255) field containing
>>something similar to a URI.
>
> Is such a field really needed?

Yes, unless you store that information somewhere else.

 > The software could assemble an URI
> from existing information like http://$server/$project/$rev_id.

Now you're back to square one, with the requirement to store the actual
location somewhere else and do two data fetches. Remember that revision
records are independent of backend storage (multiple revisions may
reference the same text, for metadata-only updates or reversions, and
some text records may not be hooked to a currently active revision, for
deletions). Backend storage may be in multiple places or different
formats (compression, in-progress upgrades from previous storage
systems, etc).

> This
> would also be more flexible because if data needs to be transferred to
> another server there is no need to update all rows in the revision
> table.

You've got to update it *somewhere*.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] history compression

body:
Tomer Chachamu wrote:
> On 27/05/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
>>>This
>>>would also be more flexible because if data needs to be transferred to
>>>another server there is no need to update all rows in the revision
>>>table.
>>
>>You've got to update it *somewhere*.
>
> Updating $serverurl or similar in a PHP file is easier than using
> str_replace or similar for every entry of your revision table to
> change the URL from the old to the new one.

The opposite is actually true.

If you have a global setting that controls where you look, you have to
migrate everything in one chunk. That means a lot of downtime
(copying... copying... copying...), which helps nobody and gives you NO
flexibility in paritioning or migrating data smoothly.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: John R. Owens

body:
Christopher Mahan wrote:
> --- Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>The site is hosted on com.haifa.ac.il, which is not only in Israel,
>>but
>>even a Haifa university server.
>
> So that must be the server that went down hard when I tried in vain
> to submit my survey...

Not really, since the form submits to
http://www.free-cgi.com/freecgi/form2mail/form2mail.asp. So that'd be
the www.free-cgi.com server that went down hard.

--
John R. Owens
ProofReading Markup Language : http://prml.sourceforge.net/
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Blocking edit war

body:
>From: Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net>
>
>JAY JG wrote:
>
>>>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>>>
>>>Sam can rub people up the wrong way, but I don't doubt his sincerity.
>>
>>Lots of editors doing pretty objectionable things on Wikipedia are quite
>>"sincere"; I don't think sincerity is a great excuse for policy violation.
>
>Some people think that rules are more important than anything else; strict
>adherence to rules is the pinacle of NPOV.
>
>Others of us do teribly POV things like listening and caring.  Shame! We'll
>never become properly globalized machines that way.

Some of us like to present strawman arguments, in order to defend
indefensible behaviour.
Shame!  We'll never become a credible source that way.

Jay.


from_name: Cranston Snord

subject: [WikiEN-l] Notice to an Admin

body:
Apparently, for the crime of disagreeing with a few Admins, I am now being
targeted for abuse and harassment, including bogus inclusion in a RFAr which
I believe was started under dubious motivation.

I have left notice on Mel Etitis' talk page that I will not stand for what
he has done, but I am informing you all on here as well. Mel Etitis is not
allowed to edit my User page, nor is he allowed to delete messages or
content from my Talk page. I want his, and the rest of his fellow admins',
harassment of me to end.

-Enviroknot

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