subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
Surely couldn't it be classed as haressment?

On 6/11/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I sympathize with Phil, I really do, but the thing is that the reason
> > governments never negotiate with terrorists isn't of some abstract
> > philosophical reason, it's because it doesn't work.
>
> Governments negotiate with terrorists all the time, and it often does
> work, which is why some terrorist campaigns come to an end.
>
> I agree with Phil and I thank him for raising the issue. I deleted
> Brandt's article back in October, when it was just Brandt and myself
> who were writing it and he asked for it to be taken down. It would
> likely have stayed deleted if he hadn't talked about it, but he posted
> about it on a blog and so of course the blog owner recreated it.
>
> Even after the Siegenthaler affair, Brandt is still only borderline
> notable. I created the stub on him only because he'd been used as a
> source in an article, and his name came up as a red link, so rather
> than delete the red link, I created a stub. There are very few
> reliable third-party sources on him. In such a borderline case, if the
> subject doesn't want the page to exist, there's no harm in taking it
> down.
>
> Wikipedia is just a website, as important as it is to the people who
> read and write it. It isn't worth a single human life. My fear is that
> someone is going to lose their livelihood, or be physically hurt or
> worse, and where any of these things is a real possibility, we have to
> be responsible. The publish-and-be-damned attitude is inappropriate.
>
> We have admins who are teenagers, single women living alone, admins in
> sensitive professional positions, admins with young children. Some of
> the people who have already been harassed have been contacted at home
> and at their work place, and their employers and parents have been
> harassed too. We shouldn't wait until someone is physically stalked or
> assaulted.
>
> In my view, we should ask Brandt to delete the hive mind pages, and
> undertake not to recreate them or assist anyone else in doing so, and
> then we should delete his article and keep it that way.
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Joe Anderson

[[User:Computerjoe]] on en, fr, de, simple, Meta and Commons.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/11/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > In some places he could be charged with obstructing justice for filing
> > false police reports.
> >
> > Ec
>
> I doubt it was him who filed the report.

If he suggested or urged it, that's criminal conspiracy.

Of course, that depends on what got filed.  If someone called up the
police department and said "One of your grad students has this story
up on the web, and it's disturbing, you might want to take a look at
it" then that's not filing a false report.  If they said "...and I
think he may have killed someone..." then that is a false report.  And
anyone who urged it to be done or suggested it is probably guilty of
conspiracy.

Of course, you have to get the police to tell you (or your attorney)
the details of the filed report to know which case it was...

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject:
[WikiEN-l] specialised encyclopaedias (was Re: To: Jimmy Wales
 - Admin-driven death of Wikipedia)

body:
G'day Joe,

[aaargh, top-poster!  Get 'im!]

> Sorry to be a geek, but 4 series? It must be more than that. 3 TOS, 7 TNG,
> 6/7 DS9, around 4 VOY.

Americans call a programme's series a "season", and the programme itself
a "series".  It actually makes sense.  Australians tend to use an
inconsistent mix of American and British terminology in this regard;
personally (and this is one of the few cases you'll hear me say this), I
prefer the American version: /Star Trek/ is divided up into series, each
of which has many seasons ...

And before TNG but after TOS, we had TAS --- /Star Trek: The Animated
Adventures/.  No, I didn't watch it either.  I read some comic books
(sorry, sorry: "graphic novels") based on it, though.

I wonder if this divide has lead to any confusing articles on Wikipedia?

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] "You wrote"

body:
On Sun, 11 Jun 2006 12:11:15 -0700, Ray wrote:

>It would be really nice if you stopped using the phrase "you wrote" with
>everything that you quote.

Default in my mail client, I never even thought about changing it
before!

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


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
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Sarah stated for the record:

> On 6/11/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>>... I didn't follow the
>>matter closely but the most recent issue seems to have been a matter of
>>misleading the police into questioning someone in an effort to cause
>>trouble with that person's employer. That's bad, of course, but a far
>>cry from threats of violence.
>>
>
> Bryan, the point is that there are a lot of nutters out there, and
> admins have already been tracked down and had their parents and
> employers contacted, and I believe, violence has been hinted at, if
> not actually threatened. It's as well to think about solutions now,
> and not wait until the situation deteriorates.
>
> Sarah

There certainly are a lot of nutters out there.  Letting them know that
threatening us will get them anything they want will place our admins in
far more frightening danger than anything they face today.  All you have
to do is look up someone's address to get Wikipedia to roll over and
beg?  They'll be on us in swarms.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Yes, I am the last man to have walked on the
 sean at epoptic.com | moon, and that's a very dubious and disappointing
                  | honor. It's been far too long. --Gene Cernan
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from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Protection Fund

body:
On 6/11/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> A separate, but related issue to the Daniel Brandt thread.
>
> It's common enough sense that Wikipedia is going to get sued someday.
> And I know we've been preparing financially for that.
>
> But with the rise of Brandt, Wikipedia Review, and whatever is going
> to come after them in this progression, the fact of the matter is
> that admins and regular editors are in danger too. Not just legal
> danger (As I assume the Foundation would use its legal resources to
> protect an admin who was sued), but personal danger.
>
> Our photos, names, and cities are being published. People are
> stalking us. Eventually, something bad is going to happen.
>
> When it does, there should be a fund to help - whether its helping
> with the medical bills of someone who's physically attacked, helping
> with the legal bills of someone who's trying to stop a stalker, or
> helping defray the costs of someone who's fired because of harassment
> at their workplace, Wikipedia needs to be able to help the volunteers
> who are put in danger by helping Wikipedia.
>
> I believe that we should, as soon as possible, start a special
> fundraiser to build this fund, and after that should devote a regular
> portion of the Foundation budget to it.
>
> Supporting Wikipedia is acquiring a high price. Simply put, Wikipedia
> needs the ability to support us.
>
> -Phil

Now this is an idea I can get behind. Wikimedia really should defend
it's users, a user fund would be a good way to do this.

How much money are we talking though? As we all know, wikimedia ain't
the richest organisation in the world, we are barely scraping by. And
a solid legal defense can be very expensive.

--Oskar


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Protection Fund

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

>It's common enough sense that Wikipedia is going to get sued someday.
>And I know we've been preparing financially for that.
>
How big is the contingency fund for this?

>But with the rise of Brandt, Wikipedia Review, and whatever is going
>to come after them in this progression, the fact of the matter is
>that admins and regular editors are in danger too. Not just legal
>danger (As I assume the Foundation would use its legal resources to
>protect an admin who was sued), but personal danger.
>
Don't count on it..

>When it does, there should be a fund to help - whether its helping
>with the medical bills of someone who's physically attacked, helping
>with the legal bills of someone who's trying to stop a stalker, or
>helping defray the costs of someone who's fired because of harassment
>at their workplace, Wikipedia needs to be able to help the volunteers
>who are put in danger by helping Wikipedia.
>
This should perhaps be left to the national chapters.  Legal costs vary
considerably from one country to another.  Some countries have better
protection available against wrongful dismissal.  Medical costs can be
excessive in a country that does not have a properly funded public
medical insurance system.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Protection Fund

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:

>On 6/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>How much money are we talking though? As we all know, wikimedia ain't
>>the richest organisation in the world, we are barely scraping by. And
>>a solid legal defense can be very expensive.
>>
>>
>The legal fees in question would probably simply amount to someone
>going through the paperwork to get a restraining order etc, small time
>stuff.
>
>This fund sounds like a nice idea in theory, but it would need a lot
>of scoping first - exactly who is covered, to what extent, at whose
>discretion, for what period of time, etc. You're basically talking
>about Wikipedia becoming an unfunded insurance policy. Perhaps the
>people who are covered by it would have to chip in, say $20 a year or
>so?
>
The serious nutcases don't pay attention to restraining orders..

$20.00 a year would be cheap compared to the cost of private medical
insurance, which can easily be 100 times that much.

Ec


list: wikitech-l

from_name: John Ky

subject: [Wikitech-l] single signon status?

body:
On 4/17/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> William Allen Simpson wrote:
> > I've searched the archives for the past several months, and cannot find
> > the status of this project, other than a busy fellow saying that it was
> > the top priority in February.  Anybody know?
>
> It'll be done when it's done.
>
> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

Hi,

Any news on the single signon?  Has coding started on it yet?  Is there a
document describing how it will work?

-John


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
Sarah wrote:
> Being utilitarian is notoriously difficult, because how many of the
> foreseeable consequences do you factor in? If you want to be
> rigorously consequentialist, factor in the serious physical assault
> (or worse) of an admin, or an admin's kids.

Has anything like this even been threatened, BTW? I didn't follow the
matter closely but the most recent issue seems to have been a matter of
misleading the police into questioning someone in an effort to cause
trouble with that person's employer. That's bad, of course, but a far
cry from threats of violence. Let's not get hysterical and play the
"won't someone think of the children?" card without some indication that
it's actually meaningful.

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from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/11/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> But, after thinking about it, its my belief that the Foundation owes
> its editors and admins the protections it can give. And one of those
> is offering to delete Brandt's article in exchange for the removal of
> the Hive Mind site.

As others have pointed out, this would incentivize the use of similar
strategies. In fact, it would lead to a collaboration on a guidebook
how to blackmail Wikipedia. This potential outcome is by far worse
than Brandt's continuing harassment. That said, the best response to
Brandt is, quite frankly, not to feed him.

For difficult admin situations, there's always [[WP:SPARTACUS]].

Erik


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

>
>Wikipedia offers no defense, and no protection. And users who have
>had nothing to do with Daniel Brandt are put in danger. I had never
>edited his article and had never spoken with him when he began
>contemplating making me leave my PhD program. But I became a target.
>I was and am powerless to stop being a target. So are about 200 other
>people. Including, let's note, a bunch of teenagers. And do you
>really think most of us, when we made our first edit or accepted our
>RFA, thought we were getting into this?
>
So how is working on WP fundamentally different from selling items on
eBay, getting into arguments on Usenet, or sending patches to a Linux
mailing list? You play around on the net, you're going to be visible
to the whole world, for better or worse. The archives still record
various stupid things I wrote in public over two decades ago, they
are never going away.

We've got all these editors who get all kinds of egoboo from the
credit for working on a top-20 website, and who apparently don't
reflect that it means they're being scrutinized by that many
millions of eyeballs, not all of them friendly. WP is a serious
endeavour, not a toy - for each WP edit, I consider whether
I would be willing to show it to a family member, discuss it
in a job interview, etc. If editors aren't thinking about all this,
perhaps the login creation page needs to explain it better.

(I thought teenagers couldn't edit without parental approval
anyway, since they don't have legal standing to agree to GFDL.)

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/11/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/11/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> > Do you ever draw the line anywhere?  Would you tell us to comply with
> > the demand "I will publish the home addresses of a handful of your
> > administrators unless you take down all of Wikipedia and swear never to
> > attempt to build a free encyclopedia ever again"?
> >
> Yes, we would draw the line somewhere, but we don't have to be slaves
> to slippery slope arguments. The current situation is that we're
> discussing the deletion of a page about a borderline-notable figure
> who has requested the deletion. We don't have to turn everything into
> a matter of principle. Rather, we should do what's good in a practical
> sense for Wikipedia and its editors and admins.
>
> We've deleted or blanked other pages that subjects haven't wanted.
> It's getting to the point where we're digging our heels in with Brandt
> because we don't want to be the victims of extortion, and while that's
> an admirable principle, it leaves the two sides with locked horns and
> no solution.
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

The thing is it's not just a matter of principle. We do this because
if we give in more and more people will do exactly the same thing.
And, as I've said, Daniel Brandt is a fanatic, he won't ever stop,
even if he wins this battle. We have to be utalitarian here, we have
to take the route where we get the least amount of trouble. We do that
by not giving in.

--Oskar


from_name: Sarah

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/11/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> ... I didn't follow the
> matter closely but the most recent issue seems to have been a matter of
> misleading the police into questioning someone in an effort to cause
> trouble with that person's employer. That's bad, of course, but a far
> cry from threats of violence.
>
Bryan, the point is that there are a lot of nutters out there, and
admins have already been tracked down and had their parents and
employers contacted, and I believe, violence has been hinted at, if
not actually threatened. It's as well to think about solutions now,
and not wait until the situation deteriorates.

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/11/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> We have already deleted or blanked pages that the subjects haven't
> wanted,

Which cases are you thinking about? I'm aware of the [[Brian Peppers]]
case, which was a Jimbo Wales decision and which concerned basic
matters of human dignity. Other cases of actual articles being deleted
because of the subject's complaints would be interesting to document,
so we can try to establish reasonable and consistent policy in those
matters.

I think in cases of borderline notability, the subject's desire not to
be included should indeed be factored into a decision. But I already
found Brandt pretty clearly notable before this whole mess (I have
been aware of his websites, NameBase and Google Watch, and some of his
other online activities for some time), and even more so now that his
latest crusade has received international press coverage. IMHO his
case is not borderline, and deleting the article now would establish
the wrong principle.

Erik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/11/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The thing is it's not just a matter of principle. We do this because
> > if we give in more and more people will do exactly the same thing.
> > And, as I've said, Daniel Brandt is a fanatic, he won't ever stop,
> > even if he wins this battle. We have to be utalitarian here, we have
> > to take the route where we get the least amount of trouble. We do that
> > by not giving in.
> >
> Being utilitarian is notoriously difficult, because how many of the
> foreseeable consequences do you factor in? If you want to be
> rigorously consequentialist, factor in the serious physical assault
> (or worse) of an admin, or an admin's kids.

I see your point, I really do. However, you are being as just as
hypothetical as I am, since there has been (so far, knock wood) no
serious physical assaults on an admin or (the horror!) their kids. And
even assuming that we do remove the article and Daniel Brandt climbes
back into the lair he came from, there is nothing that says that it
wouldn't happen in the future. Infact I'd say that it would become
more likely that something like what you describe happends in the
future, because if we give in to Brandt, people will see it works, and
they will emulate him, I guarantee it.

> We have already deleted or blanked pages that the subjects haven't
> wanted, so tell me: what is so different about Daniel Brandt that we
> absolutely refuse to do it for him, despite the chaos it has caused?
> (And if you say it's in part because of the chaos it has caused, that
> confirms that we're simply digging our heels in, which is
> understandable but irrational.)
>
> Sarah

I haven't been party too any other decision about removing an article
based on the users wishes, and so I can't comment on any other case
(unless you are talking about WP:OFFICE, which is another thing
altogether). Theoretically I suppose that if an article on a person is
barely notable (ie. an AFD could go either way), we can allow some
leeway. However, when it comes to people who clearly should be in the
encyclopedia (and Daniel Brandt should, as proven by a number of AFDs
and even admitted to by Phil himself) we should absolutly not give in
to them.

Thought experiment: Imagine if Brad Pitt started piling on hate on
wikipedia. I mean, he trashes it in interviews, he targets specific
admins, he generally behaves much like Daniel Brandt. He says he will
stop if we delete his article. This is 1000x more destructive to
wikipedia and it's users than anything Daniel Brandt could muster.
Should we delete it? I think all of us agrees that we shouldn't. It
would be insane for a modern encyclopedia not to have an article on
Brad Pitt.

I realise this is kind of a silly example but you get my point. Also,
you mention that Daniel Brandt might be "special", and that the reason
we don't nuke it is because we are irrationally stubborn (forgive me
for putting words in your mouth, I assume that was what you meant?)
Well, you're right about one thing, this is a special case. We can't
ever delete [[Daniel Brandt]] because he says so because it would mean
enourmous trouble for the encyclopedia, much more so than almost any
other article. It's something we simply CANNOT do.

In summary, this is my argument. There are two ways to go here:

1)We delete the article.
2)We keep the article.

Pros of 1)
* Daniel Brandt might stop being an ass.

Cons of 1)
* In all likelyhood, this won't even slow Brandt down.
* Other people see that what Brandt is doing is working, and they will
emulate him. Many more "Hive mind" sites will spring up, and offsite
harrasment will in the long term probably increase, thus putting our
admins in even more peril.

Pros of 2)
* People will not start to emulate Daniel Brandt
* We don't compromise our principles.
* We have a more complete encyclopedia (atmittedly a pretty bad
argument, but still)

Cons of 2)
* Daniel Brandt will certainly continue.

In summary, 1 brings only Very, Very Bad Things, and nothing good. 2
doesn't bring anything bad either, but atleast it doesn't cause as
much harm.

--Oskar


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:

> In summary, 1 brings only Very, Very Bad Things, and nothing good. 2
> doesn't bring anything bad either, but atleast it doesn't cause as
> much harm.

I obviously meant "2 doesn't bring anything good either," sorry 'bout that.


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Request to mailing list Wikipedia EN-l rejected
	("Oversight")

body:
On 6/11/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/11/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I rejected a message from Selina last night, but it appeared to be
> > gibberish, not content. (As in nonsense characters not words - not as
> > in "an incoherent rant")
>
> Not to single Selina out here, but could we have a bit more pro-active
> rejection of incoherent rants, obvious trolls and the like?  We've
> seen a lot of useful discussion here, but on the other hand there has
> been a lot of stuff from banned users who simply won't accept that the
> problem lies with their behavior and not a fundamental problem with
> the entire edifice of Wikipedia's administration and dispute
> resolution.

1. Goto your gmail page gmail.google.com
2. Click the link "Create a filter"
3. In the "From:" field enter e-mail address of $annoying_user
4. Press "Next Step" button.
5. Cross the "Delete it" checkbox.
6. Press "Create Filter" button.
7. PROFIT!!!

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:

>
>On Jun 12, 2006, at 12:40 AM, Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>>So how is working on WP fundamentally different from selling items on
>>eBay, getting into arguments on Usenet, or sending patches to a Linux
>>mailing list? You play around on the net, you're going to be visible
>>to the whole world, for better or worse. The archives still record
>>various stupid things I wrote in public over two decades ago, they
>>are never going away.
>>
>
>Or for that matter, from posting on MySpace.
>
>Which, of course, is working overtime to protect its members from
>getting killed. Similarly, eBay offers an extensive array of
>protections to its users.
>
And these are profitmaking ventures with budgets many orders of
magnitude greater than WP. Scaling down to WP size will net you
maybe 200USD/year for a protection fund, not much you can do with
that.

>>We've got all these editors who get all kinds of egoboo from the
>>credit for working on a top-20 website, and who apparently don't
>>reflect that it means they're being scrutinized by that many
>>millions of eyeballs, not all of them friendly. WP is a serious
>>endeavour, not a toy - for each WP edit, I consider whether
>>I would be willing to show it to a family member, discuss it
>>in a job interview, etc. If editors aren't thinking about all this,
>>perhaps the login creation page needs to explain it better.
>>
>
>And? I do that with everything I post on the Internet. Only problem
>is, it's tough to think "What is a psychopath going to think of this?"
>
Psychopaths have been on the net from the beginning, I've run into a
few. You want to play on the bigtime websites, you're signing up for
bigger risks.

>>(I thought teenagers couldn't edit without parental approval
>>anyway, since they don't have legal standing to agree to GFDL.)
>>
>
>We have teenage admins who I'm pretty sure we did not get permission
>slips from.
>
We should be identifying and booting all underage editors (admin
status is irrelevant, from legal pov) until their parents have
been informed of the risks and give permission.

Stan


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Protection Fund

body:
On 6/11/06, Oskar Sigvardsson <oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> How much money are we talking though? As we all know, wikimedia ain't
> the richest organisation in the world, we are barely scraping by. And
> a solid legal defense can be very expensive.

The legal fees in question would probably simply amount to someone
going through the paperwork to get a restraining order etc, small time
stuff.

This fund sounds like a nice idea in theory, but it would need a lot
of scoping first - exactly who is covered, to what extent, at whose
discretion, for what period of time, etc. You're basically talking
about Wikipedia becoming an unfunded insurance policy. Perhaps the
people who are covered by it would have to chip in, say $20 a year or
so?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 6/11/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> As a user of Canadian English I find it best to have a compromise hybrid
> where some words will have an affinity to AmE and others to BrE,
> although any single word should be spelled consistently throughout an
> article.  Insisting on all American or British spelling is really just
> another form of POV pushing.

Hmm, interesting idea. There is something inconsistent about saying
that Wikipedia supports all forms of English - except within the one
article. It would perhaps be better to allow freely mixing spellings
like this. The downside is that it would be harder to tell when
someone is changing a spelling to be obnoxious. If someone deletes
"behavior" and paraphrases to write "civilised people", is that
changing from Am->Br?

Steve


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] User Protection Fund

body:
On Jun 11, 2006, at 8:25 PM, mboverload wrote:

> Do trolls get insurance, too?  Who do we define as a troll?  Who is
> worthy
> of this kind of protection?

I would assume someone would administer the fund and choose which
cases to use money on, much like any fund along these lines.
Presumably the Foundation, in this case, unless there's a reason the
fund needs to be maintained independently.

-Phil


body:
On 6/11/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not to single Selina out here, but could we have a bit more pro-active
> rejection of incoherent rants, obvious trolls and the like?  We've
> seen a lot of useful discussion here, but on the other hand there has
> been a lot of stuff from banned users who simply won't accept that the
> problem lies with their behavior and not a fundamental problem with
> the entire edifice of Wikipedia's administration and dispute
> resolution.

I don't (currently) see my role as moderator as chairman of a debate,
but simply enforcement of standards decided by members of the list.
When enough complaints reach the wikien-l-owner list, that's when
moderators should act. In general, I would rather err on the side of a
few trollish posts getting through, than being accused of censorship
and excessive selectiveness.

That said, I have occasionally rejected messages which perpetuated
inflammatory, off-topic threads.

I'm happy for there to be a discussion about what the mods should be
doing exactly - the directions we received from David Gerard were
basically to be fairly lenient and only step in when things get out of
hand.

Steve


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/11/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:

>
> Of course, you have to get the police to tell you (or your attorney)
> the details of the filed report to know which case it was...

Florida has some pretty generous Sunshine Laws covering what's
available to the general public.  The police report is a public
record, so that should be easy enough to get. I got the university
cops to fax me one once.  IIRC, the incident began as a result of an
email, and that email, since it was (presumably) sent to a state
employee at a work email address, is a public record too.


subject: [Wikitech-l] single signon status?

body:
Thanks

I can see how complicated the migration will be, so asking for a time
frame may be expecting too much.  May I ask instead, which stage (as
described in the document) the project is currently at and which stage
I might see some single sign-on functionality supported in the
Mediawiki code.

Cheers,

-John


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-06-12

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!

Passed 391 of 404 tests (96.78%) FAILED!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On Jun 11, 2006, at 11:34 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
>
> There certainly are a lot of nutters out there.  Letting them know
> that
> threatening us will get them anything they want will place our
> admins in
> far more frightening danger than anything they face today.  All you
> have
> to do is look up someone's address to get Wikipedia to roll over and
> beg?  They'll be on us in swarms.
>

The "don't negotiate with terrorists" policy makes sense. But it
assumes some things. Specifically, it assumes a general means and
policy of defense. "Millions for defense, but not one cent for
tribute" makes sense because of the millions for defense. Yes, the US
doesn't negotiate with terrorists. It also invades their countries
and murders them.

Wikipedia offers no defense, and no protection. And users who have
had nothing to do with Daniel Brandt are put in danger. I had never
edited his article and had never spoken with him when he began
contemplating making me leave my PhD program. But I became a target.
I was and am powerless to stop being a target. So are about 200 other
people. Including, let's note, a bunch of teenagers. And do you
really think most of us, when we made our first edit or accepted our
RFA, thought we were getting into this?

If Wikipedia is adopting a policy of not negotiating with terrorists,
fine. But if it won't protect us that way, it has moral obligation to
protect us some other way. A negative answer doesn't cut it here. If
we're not negotiating with Brandt to get rid of Hive Mind, what are
we doing? Because "nothing" isn't an acceptable answer.

-Phil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On Jun 12, 2006, at 12:40 AM, Stan Shebs wrote:
>

> So how is working on WP fundamentally different from selling items on
> eBay, getting into arguments on Usenet, or sending patches to a Linux
> mailing list? You play around on the net, you're going to be visible
> to the whole world, for better or worse. The archives still record
> various stupid things I wrote in public over two decades ago, they
> are never going away.

Or for that matter, from posting on MySpace.

Which, of course, is working overtime to protect its members from
getting killed. Similarly, eBay offers an extensive array of
protections to its users.

> We've got all these editors who get all kinds of egoboo from the
> credit for working on a top-20 website, and who apparently don't
> reflect that it means they're being scrutinized by that many
> millions of eyeballs, not all of them friendly. WP is a serious
> endeavour, not a toy - for each WP edit, I consider whether
> I would be willing to show it to a family member, discuss it
> in a job interview, etc. If editors aren't thinking about all this,
> perhaps the login creation page needs to explain it better.

And? I do that with everything I post on the Internet. Only problem
is, it's tough to think "What is a psychopath going to think of this?"

> (I thought teenagers couldn't edit without parental approval
> anyway, since they don't have legal standing to agree to GFDL.)

We have teenage admins who I'm pretty sure we did not get permission
slips from.

-Phil


list: foundation-l

from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - using what we've already got

body:
On 6/11/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> OK, I have started putting together some preliminary 'packs'.

We have to make absolutely certain that the copyright on those are all
absolutely kosher before WMF burns and ships anything.

Kelly


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> In some places he could be charged with obstructing justice for filing
> false police reports.
>
> Ec

I doubt it was him who filed the report.

--
geni


list: commons-l

from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Commons-l] An idea to help solve Commons copyright woes

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 6/11/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_requests
>> frequently sees recurring copyright debates, which I believe is
>> basically because we are a bunch of amateurs trying to make decisions
>> on complex international copyright law.
>>
>> This is no slight on the people who take part in these debates (I am
>> one of them), but it simply seems to me quite silly. No one can be
>> sure who is right, we argue in circles and it's really inefficient. I
>> really feel out of my depth trying to argue on copyright cases, but I
>> do it because *someone* has to - there just isn't enough attention
>> given to these cases.
>>
> I agree that this tends to be a problem.  I think the only solution
> though is to come to a rough consensus on the major issues and then
> write them down so that the same work isn't being done over and over
> again.
>
<snip>

I agree. Several times I've looked at debates about whether certain
things are acceptable or not (eg. trademarks, sculptures, buildings,
physical objects) and thought "haven't we had this discussion before?
Hasn't this been asked of juriwiki-l and they've answered?" We need to
stick it somewhere *prominant* and permanantly protect it so that people
aren't tempted to alter it to suit their own purposes.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight

body:
Joe Anderson wrote:
[fixed top-posting, again]
> On 6/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Brion Vibber wrote:
>>> Anthere wrote:
>>>
>>>>>> * what is the procedure followed in case of abusive use of the tool ?
>>>>> Extreme bannination.
>>>> How can evidence of misuse be gathered ?
>>>
>>> If alerted, a database admin can look in the hidden table.
>>>
>>> -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
>> Brion, could not it be possible that at least all those with oversight
>> actually *see* the deleted revisions ?
>>
>> I understood this was a temp hack. Would it be possible to make hidden
>> version visible to oversight people ?
>>
>
> I think a straw poll would've being better to see if this should
> exist.

No. The idea is that we trust the oversight people enough that if
something sensitive needs deleting, they can delete it; we don't trust
them enough to see what the other people with the ability have been
deleting. The seperation of knowledge is a Good Thing. Anyway, hasn't
anyone ever told you that Polls are Evil?
<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Polls_are_evil>

> Also, there should be a Request for Oversight Privelages page.
>

Sure. How about we make a "request for permission to degauss the
servers" page while we're at it?

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/12/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's probably too late to help the people already harmed by Brandt.
> The point would be to persuade him not to collect information on
> anyone else.

It is not worth doing that persuading everyone else that it is
worthwhile to collect that kind of information

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Oversight

body:
On 6/11/06, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> > Brion, could not it be possible that at least all those with oversight
> > actually *see* the deleted revisions ?

> Likely not, as that would defeat the purpose.

How so? We have over 900 admins on en.wp. There are 17 users with the
oversight bit. Hiding the information in question from _virtually_
everyone except for 1-2% of admins may be sufficient in order to
prevent leaks of personal information.

Other possible safeguards:
- a certain number of oversight members is _notified_ whenever an
oversight change has to be made.
- a certain number of oversight members have to _approve_ an oversight
change before it is made.

Erik


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
> On Jun 11, 2006, at 4:44 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
>> 1)We delete the article.
>> Pros of 1)
>> * Daniel Brandt might stop being an ass.
> Well, I was suggesting we confirm that he'd stop before we did it, to
> clarify.
>
I for one would love to see the magic peanut which would guarantee that his
promises would stick.

Given his current _modus operandi_, why ever would you believe him if he
said that he would stop?

How ever would you confirm likewise that nobody would seek to emulate him?
How would you check that he was not passing on his information, sources and
methods to some other nut-job who would turn out ten times as pernicious?
Can you imagine an organisation with already-proven willingness to kill,
like some of those anti-abortion activists you have in the USA? Would you
like them to get the idea that they could "control the content of
Wikipedia"?

HTH HAND
--
Phil
...who doesn't usually construct an entire paragraph out of questions, but
sometimes you just gotta...
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Delete-Daniel-Brandt-t1770360.html#a4825945
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
>
> On Jun 11, 2006, at 1:38 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:
>> See also Terrorists#negotiating with
> I agree. And I made that decision for myself when I switched to using
> my real name on Wikipedia.
> But that's not a decision Wikipedia has the right to make for me. It
> is not a government, and I am not its citizen.
>
But you are proposing that we do precisely that, which is likely to put
current and future admins at more risk as less-tightly-wrapped nut-jobs
realise that there is a whole new range of tactics they can employ in their
POV-pushing.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Delete-Daniel-Brandt-t1770360.html#a4826132
Sent from the English Wikipedia forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] "selected unions"

body:
On 12/06/06, John Ky <newhoggy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, I have the problem if the words "union" and "select" - and I
> had the order wrong:  "union" must come first for the error to occur.

Your server seems to have a misconfigured security module, probably
one running attached to your httpd, which is being a bit jumpy over
the words UNION and SELECT (both of which are eligible for insertion
in SQL queries).

Check the server configuration (or ask the hosting provider or whatever).

Rob Church


subject: [Wikitech-l] Section numbering

body:
John Ky wrote:
>
> On 6/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What would this be useful for?
> There are lots of documents (eg. legislation) that have special
> numbering schemes.
>
Then your likely best bet is to request a token which inhibits the NUMBERING
of TOC entries, and add them manually, so that the numbers appear correctly
regardless of the preferences chosen by the user.

Something like __NOTOCNUMBERING__ maybe?
HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Section-numbering-t1772364.html#a4826616
Sent from the Wikipedia Developers forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: Birgitte SB

subject: [Foundation-l] Re : on (re)organizing wikimedia

body:
--- Aphaia <aphaia at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 6/12/06, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > osar's ideas as outlined below are far too general
> to
> >   It would be far too large to be effective.  I
> can't
> > see how a group of more than 20 people max could
> be
> > useful in an advisory role.  And I have no idea
> what
> > "supervision of the projects" actually entails.
> Any
> > duties I can think of that could be considered
> > supervision need a group no larger than 13.
>
> It can be representatives of the largest part(s),
> like the English
> Wikipedia is the largest and perhaps most active,
> and most of active
> members of this mailinglist are its regular, and I
> agree it will be
> efficient, but at the same time it can happen such
> body of
> representatives fail to representative the broader
> population of
> Wikimedia project editors (like Enlgish Wikipedia
> editors are less
> than the sum of editors of  all other projects). If
> it aims to reflect
> voices of users in a systematical scheme, not as
> well current sporadic
> and relying on personal relationships, it would make
> a sense. But I'm
> afraid it isn't at all the representatives of the
> entire Wikimedia
> project community, neglecting the majority of
> editors who are not
> involved into foundation activities.
>
> --
> Aphaia
> aka
> Kizu Naoko
> email: Aphaia @ gmail (dot) com
>

I certainly don't want to see an advisory group of 50%
en.WP editors!  However such token represntation as
proposed in the Wikicouncil plan would be of little
practical benifit.  It would be better to appoint (or
nominate a short list for election) an advisory board
with an purposeful effort to include editors from both
all types of sister projects and communities of
different sizes while keeping the number of people
within reason.  Another option is to encourage
different projects to each form their own sort of
council and each can endorse ideas or write proposals
with the unique goals of each project in mind.  Those
are just two rough ideas, there are certainly many
other alternatives.

I believe it is most important that the input of small
languages and non-pedia projects is taken into
conderation in any such advisory council.  Not that
every editor is given proportional representation.
The latter would either be too much dominated by en.WP
or else too large to offer useful and timely advice.
Honestly the concerns of en.WP are being heard every
day and would still be heard if they had not a single
seat on such a council (I am not suggesting that!).
The real need for such a council is to find out the
needs/opinions of the smaller projects/lang.
communities which are not currently being heard.

Birgitte SB

P.S.  If anyone believes the needs/concerns of en.WP
are not being currently responded to by the WMF,
please correct me now.

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


from_name: Farshad Bashir

subject: [Wikitech-l] Math dir is empty

body:
Hallo all,

I have Mediawiki now for 1 year and everything worked fine.

I upgraded my OS to Fedora Core 4 (from 2) and I upgraded my Mediawiki
version to 1.6.7.

I have set $whUseTex to true and then installed imagemagick, latex,
dvips, gs, and convert, TeTex, Ghostscript and AMS fonts.
I have also compiled texvc.

I next loaded one of his pages and get in red text:
Can't write to or create math output directory)

I can see the PNG-file in the ../images/tmp/ dir, but nothing in math dir...

I thing it has to do something with the new hierarchy of
../images/math/ dir, but I don't know.

images/math exist.

PHP is not runnig under "safe mode".

Please help me, beceause I become crayzy, I am now working days on this issue.

Thanks and kind regards,

Farshad Bashir


from_name: Peter Jacobi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
> Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia offers no defense, and no protection.

That's the point.

In a sense, it's best for the Foundation, when
individual editors are legally attacked and threatened,
in contrast to the Foundation itself. The Foundation and
the uninterrupted operation of Wikipedia benefits from the
view, that the individual contributors *only*, are
responsible for the content and the Foundation provides
only the infrastructure.

So, the project as a whole benefits from the "we will
never surrender"-mentality, individual editors leaving
the project, resigning from adminship, losing their job
or jumping off the bridge being the roadkill.

Regards,
Peter Jacobi,
[[User:Pjacobi]]

--

"Feel free" ? 10 GB Mailbox, 100 FreeSMS/Monat ...
Jetzt GMX TopMail testen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/topmail


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

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

Phil Sandifer stated for the record:

> If Wikipedia is adopting a policy of not negotiating with terrorists,
> fine. But if it won't protect us that way, it has moral obligation to
> protect us some other way. A negative answer doesn't cut it here. If
> we're not negotiating with Brandt to get rid of Hive Mind, what are
> we doing? Because "nothing" isn't an acceptable answer.
>
> -Phil

"It has a moral obligation."  How can an "it" have a moral obligation?
Only people have morals.  Who -- name a person, please -- has incurred
this moral obligation?  How did he or she incur this obligation?  Did he
or she volunteer for this obligation?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Yes, I am the last man to have walked on the
 sean at epoptic.com | moon, and that's a very dubious and disappointing
                  | honor. It's been far too long. --Gene Cernan
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=ujW2
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright status of drawings based on photos

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

Steve Bennett stated for the record:

> Hi all,
>   What's the copyright status of this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bowl-out-nz-wi.JPG
>
> which is closely based on this:
>
> http://usa.cricinfo.com/db/PICTURES/CMS/59200/59247.jpg
>
> Thanks,
> Steve

Derivative work, from a copyright-reserved image.  Copyvio.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Yes, I am the last man to have walked on the
 sean at epoptic.com | moon, and that's a very dubious and disappointing
                  | honor. It's been far too long. --Gene Cernan
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from_name: Zack Clark

subject: [Foundation-l] Eloquence #01 - gMaxwell #00

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 6/10/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>3) Who is developing plans to address such issues?
>>>
>>>
>>I'm working on it.
>>
>>
>
>You're an amazing guy. Saving the world, but you've still got time to
>extol your virtues and keep the useless threads alive. Amazing.
>
Sir, I too believe that Mr. Moeller is amazing albeit in a laudatory way.  Moreover, as "extol" worthy his virtues may be, I fully fail to perceive how Erik is particularly guilty of said indulgence.  I'm also too dim to see any reason to characterize this thread as "useless".  Nor is it clear if that charge insults him, me, or BOTH.  Nevertheless, could you kindly explain any positive purpose your post serves other than perpetuating the very thread you slight?

What I can better relate to are the useful & penetrating points you have recently made concerning this important issue.
So please stay tuned for "gMaxwell #01 (no libel)"


subject: [Foundation-l] rsHorning #02 - outside CEO

body:
on 5 Jun Robert Scott Horning wrote in part:

> ...................
> I hope that this isn't a serious proposal.  In almost every situation
> that I've seen an outside CEO, particularly for successful organizations
> (a bankrupt company might be an exception), the results have been simply
> disasterous.  This includes both for-profit companies and non-profit
> organizations.  ...........

I feel a bit uneasy quoting only his intro as the same good caliber is found throughout this post.  The real dismay though lies in the follow-up that never occurred.  If the topic is say "nofollow", then we're comfortable with copious comment.  So a shying away from real 'meta' issues seems evident.  Is this list mostly for off the cuff stuff, or are more substantial subjects also fair game?

Now regarding Robert's reflections, I emphatically agree.  More generally, I continue to argue that "the proof is in the pudding".  And the basic freedom forces which have fashioned your products (WP etc.) so successfully can be tuned to address a much broader range of challenges.  And while I'd like nothing better than to provoke on point discussions in this arena, the evidence suggests this is unlikely.

Finally, I closed subject 'rsHorning #00 ...' by asking for guidance on how to improve my posts.  Notably this request was not ignored, but graciously addressed by both Robert & Birgitte SB.  Robert focused on the history & nature of this list while Birgitte mostly addressed writing style.  Taken together their insights were helpful & encouraging since both well targeted salient issues.  Warmest thanks to each.  Hopefully their consul will result in improved posts.  And while private email is often apropos, this is an instance where their thoughts could have benefited list subscribers in general.

Z.Clark


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 6/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>   What's the copyright status of this:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bowl-out-nz-wi.JPG
>
> which is closely based on this:
>
> http://usa.cricinfo.com/db/PICTURES/CMS/59200/59247.jpg
>
> Thanks,
> Steve

According to the page the author released it under the GFDL and
CC-by-SA.  The original author of the photo almost surely also holds a
copyright interest in it, but I don't see any information about a
license from him/her.

Anthony


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] To Australia with love (was "refactoring" signatures)

body:
Mark Gallagher wrote:

> There's a big, wonderful, English-speaking world out there that aren't
> American, and we aren't British, either.

Apparently in that wonderful world of English for non-British
non-Americans, people has some interesting rules for subject-verb agreement.

--Michael Snow


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
We need to inform adequately administrators of the risks associated
with their responsibility. We need to caution new users regarding
personal information.

Fred

On Jun 11, 2006, at 10:18 PM, Phil Sandifer wrote:

> The "don't negotiate with terrorists" policy makes sense. But it
> assumes some things. Specifically, it assumes a general means and
> policy of defense. "Millions for defense, but not one cent for
> tribute" makes sense because of the millions for defense. Yes, the US
> doesn't negotiate with terrorists. It also invades their countries
> and murders them.
>
> Wikipedia offers no defense, and no protection. And users who have
> had nothing to do with Daniel Brandt are put in danger. I had never
> edited his article and had never spoken with him when he began
> contemplating making me leave my PhD program. But I became a target.
> I was and am powerless to stop being a target. So are about 200 other
> people. Including, let's note, a bunch of teenagers. And do you
> really think most of us, when we made our first edit or accepted our
> RFA, thought we were getting into this?
>
> If Wikipedia is adopting a policy of not negotiating with terrorists,
> fine. But if it won't protect us that way, it has moral obligation to
> protect us some other way. A negative answer doesn't cut it here. If
> we're not negotiating with Brandt to get rid of Hive Mind, what are
> we doing? Because "nothing" isn't an acceptable answer.
>
> -Phil


from_name: Jens Frank

subject: [Wikitech-l] Math dir is empty

body:
On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 05:28:36AM +0200, Farshad Bashir wrote:
> Hallo all,
>
> I have Mediawiki now for 1 year and everything worked fine.
>
> I upgraded my OS to Fedora Core 4 (from 2) and I upgraded my Mediawiki
> version to 1.6.7.
>
> I have set $whUseTex to true and then installed imagemagick, latex,
> dvips, gs, and convert, TeTex, Ghostscript and AMS fonts.
> I have also compiled texvc.
>
> I next loaded one of his pages and get in red text:
> Can't write to or create math output directory)
>
Make sure that the web server has write permissions to the math image
directory. This error message indicates that the web server does not
have the permissions to write to the math directory.

Regards,

JeLuF


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Foundation-l] fundraising

body:
On 12/06/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:

> Has any thought gone into producing printed materials (either on CD or
> even dead tree format) for high quality materials derived from Wikimedia
> project pages?

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiReader

As usual, the Germans are ahead of us. ;)

Brianna


subject: [Foundation-l] fundraising


subject: [Foundation-l] gMaxwell #01 (no libel)

body:
Message-ID: <e692861c0606090944s42fcc73fk2954121566648988 at mail.gmail.com>
Fri, 9 Jun 2006 16:44:34  - Gregory Maxwell wrote:

==================== Quote ====================
................
I usually hate me too, but Kelly really hit the mark with her comment
here. It is unreasonable to expect any board to undertake the daily
operation of the organization and the perceived need to select people
suitable for daily chores will just end up compelling us to select
people who are unsuitable for driving our long term mission.

We are not the only charitable organization in the world, yet we seem
to know so little of what has been earned by others.  ... But what
else should we expect from a group with tens of thousands of
participants which still has substantial difficulty getting 40 man
hours a week applied to resolving problems which are bringing us into
disrepute in international news. To get something as simple as libel
patrolling going we need to be slammed on three news networks, have
unilateral staff action which is met with widespread whining, and we
must receive a personal appeal from god^WJimbo... and still we still
do a fairly weak job.
================== END Quote ==================

I salute Mr. Maxwell for highlighting two important issues in a way we can all find useful.  His 1st paragraph is appreciated for its insights into the poster himself, and also for his perspective on board related issues.  It's the 2nd paragraph, however, that is the focus of this post.

Again, the only benefits I see in persistently placing WMF projects under the traditional umbrella of charitable organizations are largely all negative.  It's NOT that you've fail to be charitable.  But to the contrary, you've literally redefined charity - raising the very concept to a whole new plateau.  And its due to this -a whole new dimension of dignity- that there is no practical purpose to be served by aligning yourselves with mere redistribution networks.  What the nonprofit pontiffs have to teach you pales in comparison to what you could learn from your own strengths.  Because -unlike them- you are the antithesis of their zero sum games.

Gregory then alludes to the libel theme (as covered by Erik 20 hours earlier) and effectively expresses how ineffectual he feels we are handling this matter.  I for one, can readily relate to his frustrations regarding libel.  However, my suspicion is that "something as simple as libel patrolling" may require a bit more than "40 man hours a week" effort.  Moreover, IMHO hours have nothing to do with the crux of the problem (otherwise, our "tens of thousands of participants" would have largely solved it).  For unlike a sense for quality -which is universally innate to the human spirit- "libel" is an manufactured artificial legal concept.  Its successful defense is a case by case issue with a different complex rule set for each country.  In other words we're well equipped to freely produce clean world class quality product, but the deceptive proprietary world of enigmatic authorities is a closed irrational sphere ill suited for free rational participation.

For some follow-up on this train of thought see subject:
'Muijzenberg #00 - (re)organizing wikimedia'

Z.Clark


subject: [Foundation-l] gMaxwell #01 (no libel)


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 11 Jun 2006 at 23:17, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:

> We should be identifying and booting all underage editors (admin
> status is irrelevant, from legal pov) until their parents have
> been informed of the risks and give permission.

How, exactly, do you plan on enforcing this on a site that allows
anonymous and pseudonymous editing?

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
What harm to us follows from a 13 year old administrator? Sometimes
someone tries to claim they were unfairly censored, "And by a 13 year
old". All that means is that even a 13 year old can see through their
game. I suppose there are questions of legal liability and copyright.
Generally I have been impressed by our teenagers (at least the ones
that don't add "poop" to articles).

Fred

On Jun 12, 2006, at 8:22 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 6/12/06, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
>
>> How, exactly, do you plan on enforcing this on a site that allows
>> anonymous and pseudonymous editing?
>>
>
> Currently, we apparently *allow* underage editing. We could begin by
> stating that it's not allowed, and asking people to certify that they
> are of age. If kids choose to lie, that then becomes their problem.
>
> Just because rules can be circumvented doesn't make them useless.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Resid Gulerdem

subject: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:OURS]] - A proposal for admin-user relations

body:
Reference link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Raphael1/Workshop#Motion_by_Raphael1

I know that the proposal I started ([[WP:OURS]]) on
this list is modified and posted on Wikipedia by
another user ([[User:Raphael1]]). I would like to
clearly and explicitly state that I approve the
actions taken and have no problem with these actions.

Resid

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subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
I tried it on http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Alcib%C3%ADades.jpg.
Note the weird character in the filename.

>Image:Alcib?ades.jpg is now stored as
>http://tools.wikimedia.de/~magnus/commons_images/6ae2eda2d5.jpg
>
>You should copy the above line into a file on your local machine, as
it is the only way to recover the file at a later date!
>Delete file on commons
>The image below should be identical to the one in the upper right
corner. If not, copying was unsuccessful, and you should not delete
the file on the commons!

Neither of the images would load so I couldn't check if this was true.

OK, let's try one without a tricky name: Image:Barrett.jpg

Last edited 78 days ago... bingo!

The delete link worked fine.

OK, interesting.

> * Check the image text for "delete me" templates; list of templates has
> to be expanded, please tell me which to use

which ones do you have so far?

> The deleting admin *has* to copy the new image url line, otherwise the
> image can never be found again! That way, the image is stored away from
> public eyes but still restorable through the deleting admin.

I think instead it should make an edit to the image page saying
"BACK-UP COPY AT (url)". Because the image is about to be deleted
anyway. If time proves the image should be undeleted, you can just
undelete the image page, recover the URL and go from there. That seems
much easier than storing the URL on my local machine for example. It
would also save one manual step ;)

Also...maybe this will encourage admins to delete more stuff, which
would be good. But IMO they have no reason for hesitation where the
image is unsourced for a long time and the uploader was notified. No
hesitation at all. I personally would only use this for images where
the case was contested, such as Deletion requests. So not that many
cases overall. But if it helps admins feel more secure to go on
deletion sprees of unsourced stuff then I support it. :)

I didn't get one that was actually used, though, so I'm not sure what
the check-usage part of the interface will look like.

Do TPTB approve of this use of the toolserver? If commons admins get
into it, it seems like it could be reasonably intensive...

cheers,
Brianna


subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

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

Kirill Lokshin stated for the record:

> Not to rain on anyone's parade, but Brandt seems disinclined to
> acquiesce to our request:
>
> "Your question is so hypothetical that it boggles my mind, and I
> cannot even think about an answer at this point. It is true that last
> December I took down Hivemind. I'd still be inclined to do that,
> because now I'm more interested in Hive2 and the IRC search engine. In
> another six months, who knows what I'll be doing on Wikipedia-Watch?"
> (http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=2010)
>
> What exactly is the point of negotiating with him to take down the
> original Hivemind page if he plans to continue with his *other*
> activities?

And just in case anyone (hi, Sarah!) has any lingering doubt as to what
our enemies will demand once they know we will cave in to their demands:
"It [Wikipedia] needs to be dismantled, brickbat by brickbat, and
disabled, administrator by administrator." --Daniel Brandt
<http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=2010>

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Yes, I am the last man to have walked on the
 sean at epoptic.com | moon, and that's a very dubious and disappointing
                  | honor. It's been far too long. --Gene Cernan
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD4DBQFEjZG7MAt1wyd9d+URAmHLAJ0U2LSNz+vogG/Xw0ZmEdSbWvacHwCXbQWn
Cv+JSq/xsbK6r4OXYCVCDg==
=KIww
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Would you consider being on the Board?

body:
There is no conflict.
If you did not agree, you would not have had supported hiring a ceo ;-)

ant

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Just in case anyone might misunderstand the following as suggesting a
> conflict between Anthere and myself, I agree with her completely on all
> points. :)
>
> Anthere wrote:
>
>>I strongly believe the CEO should not be on the board. It seems to make
>>sense in small organisations, but I would say it is not suitable in our
>>case.
>>
>>Doubly when the CEO is not only on the board, but also the chair of that
>>board.
>>
>>And triply (if that term exist) when the CEO not only is the chair of
>>the board, but also the foundator of the leading project.
>>
>>It raises the issue of
>>1) suitability of the CEO (not chosen per his executive abilities in the
>>first place)
>>2) availability of the CEO for day to day tasks
>>3) performance assessment of the CEO (since he is giving tasks to
>>himself and assessing his performance himself)
>>4) Relevance of the board existence
>>
>>ant
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>foundation-l mailing list
>>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


body:
>From: mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] [[WP:OURS]] - A proposal for
admin-user relations
>Date: Sun, 11 Jun 2006 20:03:54 -0700
>
>You are welcome to contest your blocking/request to
be unblocked.  The
>wikipedia IRC channel is pretty good if you want to
discuss it with several
>admins in real time.
>
>mboverload
>

With a little bit of embarrassment I should disclose
that I am not an internet-person. I would appreciate
if you could give me more insight how I can use the
wikipedia IRC channels.

Thank you in advance,

Resid

__________________________________________________
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from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Foundation-l] Fundraising ideas - bursting the bubble

body:
All of this fundraising talk is very nice and dandy, but it sounds like plans for the local glee club, not an international foundation. No one has yet mentioned any of the legal/accounting requirements of fundraising, the costs, or the actual manhours involved. For instance:

1 Are we allowed to solicit funds anywhere? Not quite as simple as you may think.

2 What is the cost of a direct mailing? Try multiplying postage costs by 1000s, add printing costs, then add hourly rates. We can either do the mailing in-house (at which point you must consider whether it is worth paying my salary to have me stuff envelopes) or a service (which adds to the costs).

3 Are there any mails that we are required to send by law? Yes, Any donor who gives over $200 must receive written notification for IRS purposes. This includes multiple donations--for instance, if someone gives $20 a month over a period of a year, they will require such notification. That's a lot of donors to keep track of

4  Someone suggested that the committee "oversee" the sending of proper thanks, etc. Note that the average donation last year was $25 and we raised about half a million, i.e., 20,000 thank you notes. While it is good of you to volunteer overseeing me sending them out, it would be much more helpful if you would actually lick the envelopes.

These are just a few items off the top of my head. Note that donations come via Paypal, Moneybookers, direct deposit to either of two accounts (US and Europe), and checks mailed to the office. A percentage of our donors are repeats. Proper records must be kept for all donations for accounting purposes or else we risk losing our tax-free status, yet no one has considered GAAP for not-for-profits. Hey, guys, welcome to the real world.

Danny
________________________________________________________________________
Check out AOL.com today. Breaking news, video search, pictures, email and IM. All on demand. Always Free.


subject: [Foundation-l] Muijzenberg #00 - (re)organizing wikimedia

body:
on Sun. 11 June - Erik van den Muijzenberg wrote in part:

>I'm a newbie to this list, so I'll ask questions first, clueless as they
>might seem to be. And maybe come up with a proposal later on.
>
>
>Erik vdMb aka Muijz
>_______________________________________________

Erik! - I'm a newbie too!  And judging from your impressive email address, you certainly have to be a more qualified participant than I.  Anyway, I was under the impression that boldness was encouraged.  Perhaps the remainder of this email will put that tenant to the test and at the same time merit your sincerely sought commentary as well.  So -like you- I start with a question.

Isn't "a world in which every single person is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge" a sufficiently gallant goal to go far??  I submit that if one thinks about it, a lousy 1% of said knowledge would unavoidably result in world peace and the elimination of poverty.  Yet, in this instance, it's not at all insane to shoot for an impossible goal, but instead - wholly inspiring.  Yet in stark contrast to any real respect for a grand knowledge quest, there seem to be an overriding concern for things like copyright infringement, libel, and pornography.  But lets be just a bit real here - OK?  I mean, the sum of *ALL* human knowledge is clearly nothing for the (freedom hating) squeamish!  How could such grim enlightenment avoid bitterly breaking illusion loving minds?  And how is it possible to even imagine approaching your goals without unleashing an irrational world of resentment.  You're barely out of the gate on this great venture, yet you've already put your head under the boot of the archenemy of truth & knowledge - the state.  How can you serve both at the same time?  Perpetually appeasing government only makes a complete sham of your proclaimed goal.  Of course, in all practicality, very few will ever notice notice any farce.  The easiest way to maintain a semblance of integrity is to simply & truthfully state your real goal as "... the sum of politically permitted pseudo knowledge."

Alternately, if you decide to be true to your original idea in more than just lip service, it may not be too late to do so.  First and always, you'd need to distance your core knowledge bases just as morally far from coercive terrestrial jurisdictions as possible.  This may translate to new innovations in P2P technology plus extending other realms of the virtual frontier.  A big deal should be made about this being a wide open knowledge/data source with crude uncensored content; which is hence likely to be inappropriate, unreliable, and offensive for unprotected users.  (Although this sounds terrible, in reality your material would actually meet and exceed anything to date in both quantity and quality.)  In order to satisfy both huge traffic demands and a multiplicity of special censoring needs (for schools, local jurisdictions, etc.) third party prettifiers would be welcomed to provide such services and accommodate sensitivities.  Indeed, a spin-off of WMF with a portion of its server farms could well become just such a service.  Consequently, the the core knowledge/data bases would stress securing, creation & development of content plus powerful robust interfacing to the third party distributors (not heavy traffic to end users).

Obviously anything that could possibly endanger accumulating the sum of all human knowledge (like a WP:OFFICE) would need to be eliminated or spun-off.  The UNIX strategy is an attractive model; clean autonomous modules robustly interacting while executing their specific duties to perfection.

So if one believes your stated goal is sufficiently worthy then stick to that and give up the extra distraction of leaping through the status quo's endless obstacle course of insane hoops.  There are plenty (freedom blind entities) out there who are much more suitable for such silliness.  Haplessly there is noting easier than to ignore these kinds of essential meta-realities.  Equally unfortunate is the inevitability that follows.  No CEO nor board games will change the fact that your freedom serving mission is infeasible when immersed in an inhospitable coercion controlled world.  ESCAPE!

Z.Clark


subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
Also, would it be possible to get a list of all images in
[[Category:Unknown - June 2006]] that have not been edited since
before June (these would be the images with malformed/depreciated
'unknown' tags)... and that are not used on any projects? (I will
check en.wp by hand for the moment :/ )

Note that that category has 6000+-200 entries. (I just recounted it.)

I know I'm not the only admin that would do a lot more deleting if
there was an easy way to check which ones were "easier" (non-easy =
having to remove from use). And when you delete an image that no one's
using, you're far less likely to incite angry mobs :)

They're still not easy because half the time the tag is wrong, or the
uploader was never notified or something stupid... but they're easIER.

Brianna


body:
--- Zack Clark <meta at world1tours.com> wrote:

>
> Isn't "a world in which every single person is given
> free access to the sum of all human knowledge" a
> sufficiently gallant goal to go far??  I submit that
> if one thinks about it, a lousy 1% of said knowledge
> would unavoidably result in world peace and the
> elimination of poverty.  Yet, in this instance, it's
> not at all insane to shoot for an impossible goal,
> but instead - wholly inspiring.  Yet in stark
> contrast to any real respect for a grand knowledge
> quest, there seem to be an overriding concern for
> things like copyright infringement, libel, and
> pornography.  But lets be just a bit real here - OK?
>  I mean, the sum of *ALL* human knowledge is clearly
> nothing for the (freedom hating) squeamish!  How
> could such grim enlightenment avoid bitterly
> breaking illusion loving minds?  And how is it
> possible to even imagine approaching your goals
> without unleashing an irrational world of
> resentment.  You're barely out of the gate on this
> great venture, yet you've already put your head
>  under the boot of the archenemy of truth &
> knowledge - the state.  How can you serve both at
> the same time?  Perpetually appeasing government
> only makes a complete sham of your proclaimed goal.
> Of course, in all practicality, very few will ever
> notice notice any farce.  The easiest way to
> maintain a semblance of integrity is to simply &
> truthfully state your real goal as "... the sum of
> politically permitted pseudo knowledge."
>

I think you are confusing information with knowledge.
An interesting definition from the the Free On-Line
Definition of Computing is:

"If information is data plus meaning then
knowledge is information plus processing."

Not all information is knowledge.  Knowledge cannot be
copyrighted by any state.  Libelous material is a
subset of information that is unverified, which is
already against local policies.  Unverified
information is not knowledge.  From the standpoint of
what is knowledge, it does not matter at all what
courts may or may not decide is libel.  Policies
against censorship already exist although it is a
constant source of contraversy.  Such contraversy is
simply to be expected with an open project no matter
what the goals are.

By ensuring the Foundation is both legal and
respectable (as in responsible not censored!) does not
in any way make a sham of the stated goal "a world in
which every single person is given free access to the
sum of all human knowledge"  I personally do not
discern any lack of integrity in manner that WMF has
gone about this goal in a law-abiding manner.

Birgitte SB

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from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/11/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/11/06, Joe Anderson <computerjoe.mailinglist at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > Surely is Brandt comitting a criminal offense?
> Like what? Most of the information was publicaly availible any way.

He has a website up which explicitly is attempting to intimidate and
incite others to intimidate. Sounds a lot like harassment and
conspiracy to me, though I'm not a lawyer.

FF


body:
On 6/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 6/12/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > According to the page the author released it under the GFDL and
> > > CC-by-SA.  The original author of the photo almost surely also holds a
> > > copyright interest in it, but I don't see any information about a
> > > license from him/her.
> >
> > Presuming the photographer didn't license it, it's a copyvio?
> >
> > Steve
>
> Probably qualifies ans a derivative work so yes.

I think it is adequately transformative that the elements it does take
from the photo would certainly fall under a strong "fair use". I think
a judge would find the photo generic enough that such a radical
re-working of its elements would be pretty safe.

FF


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Section numbering

body:
This sounds like a feature request, which I take to be referring to
the display in the TOC. My two cents on it:
> * Some sections are un-numbered
>     ==section unumbered==

Can you explain where this would be helpful? It would also be handy to
be able to totally suppress certain sections from the TOC.

> * Sections and subsections start from a value other than 1
>     ==section 6==

What would this be useful for?

> * Subsections continue numbering upwards regardless of parent sectioning
>     ==section unumbered==
>     ===subsection 1===
>     ===subsection 2===
>     ==section unumbered==
>     ===subsection 3===
>     ===subsection 4===

Can you give examples of why this would be good?

> * Sections numbered with non-numeric numbering
>     ==section A==
>     ==section B==

Again, why?

In total, I think you're requesting a special operator which can go in
a section to control its numbering, someting like as follows:

__SECTNONUM__ (don't number)
__SECTSUBCONT__ (sub sections number continuously)
__SECTALPHA__ (use letters instead of numbers)
__SECTSTARTAT3__ (could be tricky to make work - perhaps something
like __SECTFAKE__ could be used repeatedly instead to bump up the
count)

to which I would add:

__SECTNOTOC__ (don't show the section at all in the TOC)

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Math dir is empty

body:
Hallo,

Thanks for your answere.

My images dir is chmoded 777,
images/math is chmoded 777, user apache, group apache.

The images/tmp is chmoded 753, user apache, group apache.

The program can write in images/tmp dir, but it can't copy the file to
the images/math dir.

Logfile from debugmode (last part):
==============
EditPage::edit: Checking blocks
TeX: ./math/texvc
'/var/www/vhosts/zonow.com/subdomains/nl/httpdocs/images/tmp'
'/var/www/vhosts/zonow.com/subdomains/nl/httpdocs/images/tmp' 'x^3'
'utf-8'
TeX output:
 ccd81d846781f418f883642fab802ae4ax3
---
TeX: getHashPath, hash is: cd81d846781f418f883642fab802ae4a, path is:
/var/www/vhosts/zonow.com/subdomains/nl/httpdocs/images/math/c/d/8
** private caching;  **
Request ended normally
=============

If I now look in the images/tmp/ dir, I can find the math formule, but
if I look in the images/math/ dir, there is nothing.

I don't know what to do. PHP safe mode is off.

Who know what to do?

Kind regards,

Farshad Bashir

2006/6/12, Jens Frank <jf at mormo.org>:
> On Mon, Jun 12, 2006 at 05:28:36AM +0200, Farshad Bashir wrote:
> > Hallo all,
> >
> > I have Mediawiki now for 1 year and everything worked fine.
> >
> > I upgraded my OS to Fedora Core 4 (from 2) and I upgraded my Mediawiki
> > version to 1.6.7.
> >
> > I have set $whUseTex to true and then installed imagemagick, latex,
> > dvips, gs, and convert, TeTex, Ghostscript and AMS fonts.
> > I have also compiled texvc.
> >
> > I next loaded one of his pages and get in red text:
> > Can't write to or create math output directory)
> >
> Make sure that the web server has write permissions to the math image
> directory. This error message indicates that the web server does not
> have the permissions to write to the math directory.
>
> Regards,
>
> JeLuF
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
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ontvangen? Stuur een e-mail naar bekenden-request at farshadbashir.nl met
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subject: [WikiEN-l] To: Jimmy Wales - Admin-driven death of Wikipedia

body:
On 6/12/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would disagree.  An incredible amount of money is spent every year trying
> to figure out what is popular.  "Popular culture" encompasses so many things
> I think it would be hard to say "IT" isn't studied.

Studied, analysed, critiqued, and written about in an academic
framework, if you prefer.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Protection Fund

body:
On 6/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> $20.00 a year would be cheap compared to the cost of private medical
> insurance, which can easily be 100 times that much.

On the other hand "we" would theoretically only protect against a very
specific type of accident under specific circumstances.

The whole idea is a bit dubious, and would probably work best if
editors just formed an "association of Wikipedians" amongst themselves
that had nothing to do with the foundation. They could chip in as much
as they liked, and then spend it helping each other out of
Wikipedia-caused mishaps. If you're not a member, you'd get no
coverage.

Steve


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
Not to rain on anyone's parade, but Brandt seems disinclined to
acquiesce to our request:

"Your question is so hypothetical that it boggles my mind, and I
cannot even think about an answer at this point. It is true that last
December I took down Hivemind. I'd still be inclined to do that,
because now I'm more interested in Hive2 and the IRC search engine. In
another six months, who knows what I'll be doing on Wikipedia-Watch?"
(http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=2010)

What exactly is the point of negotiating with him to take down the
original Hivemind page if he plans to continue with his *other*
activities?

--
Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Birgitte SB wrote:

>
>I certainly don't want to see an advisory group of 50%
>en.WP editors!  However such token represntation as
>proposed in the Wikicouncil plan would be of little
>practical benifit.
>
The one practical value of "Wikicouncil" that I see beyond simply
choosing board members or charter changes (presumably a useful funciton
for such a body) would also be as a source to draw upon for the various
committees that have been established for the WMF.  I have been a very
vocal critic over how the membership of these committees have been
established, mainly because they are insular in their constitution and I
believe they will have a strong anti-Wikimedia user bias, with strong
hints of eliteism.  If instead you say that you must be an elected
member of the Wikicouncil, that gives a non-discriminatory approach to
joining up, and permits newer (read smaller) projects from also
participating as well.

This isn't to say that the wikicouncil proposal doesn't have problems,
but I think the basic idea does have some merit.  It also gives a way to
"grow" board members, so that you can find people with both the
leadership skills and the knowledge of Wikimedia projects that would be
developed rather than making the leap to board member all at once.  This
would be assuming that you could follow the path of
admin/bureaucrat/steward/community representative/board member of
increasing responsibilities if you wanted to become involved.  The other
approach is to be a famous celebrity or have significant outside
accomplishments (like being a former U.S. President, as an example)
before you are appointed to the WMF board.  I don't like this type of
token board members, even though it is commonly done on other non-profit
organizations.  A third approach is to be a successful and well-liked
professional staff member of the WMF.   I think that some board
positions should be reserved for this sort of person, if only to balance
the board in its attitudes.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Nathan Carter

body:
sannse wrote:

>Nathan Carter wrote:
>
>
>>Kim Bruning wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Some aspects that might be good
>>>* Typically "older" users who have a lot of experience
>>>* People who are mild, and unlikely to enter conflict
>>>* People who have also had some amount of real life experience.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>I agree with these guidelines except for the second. There is no use
>>having someone who is just going to follow the group dynamic and agree
>>on everything just because they are afraid of being confrontational. In
>>most organisations the real changes come from conflict. Conflict when
>>constructive and directed properly is useful and should not be something
>>we shy away from.
>>Cheers,
>>Nathan.
>>
>>
>
>There is a big difference between being assertive and active, and being
>confrontational and aggressive.
>
>--sannse
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
The point is conflict is not something to be avoided in the business world.
Cheers,
Nathan


body:
On 11/06/06, James D. Forrester <james at jdforrester.org> wrote:
> This would significantly blur the line between the Foundation and the
> community, and (for the obvious reasons) almost certainly make the
> Foundation legally liable for copyright violations without anything like
> the elasticity that we currently enjoy. I would strongly counsel against
> it, but then I'm sure the legal group is aware of the issues anyway.

I really hope you're wrong about this. Are we only going to treat
copyright issues seriously when they're raised by outsiders
threatening to sue? Do I have to ask some copyright holders to
complain to the Board before any action is taken or help offered? I
should hope not... I don't think the line is blurred. We already have
WP:OFFICE on en.wp and the fr.wq project was closed down. Oh wait they
are both due to threats of legal action... this really smacks of a
"don't ask, don't tell, we don't want to know" kind of attitude, which
hardly seems like a good way to run anything. I hope it is not
accurate.

Maybe my idea of a CLO is a bad idea. OK fine. But if there is
community consensus that we need some help dealing with these
copyright issues, and we go to foundation-l and say, "As a community
and a project, we are explicitly asking for your help," I would be
very disappointed if WMF was to say, "Actually, we would prefer to let
you struggle along, it makes it easier for us to feign ignorance, you
see." Maybe someone can come up with some other idea that is more
palatable to the Legal folk.

I will just repeat that my intention with this topic is to establish
whether or not there is community consensus that we need some help, at
the moment I'm only speaking for myself.

Brianna


from_name: Death Phoenix

subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 6/12/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
> Yes, but inadvertantly.  I'm sure some helpful anon will be along soon
> to "correct" the "misspelling" and give us yet another one of those zs
> (sorry, zees).
>
> By the way, could we kinda stop using "Br" or "BrE" or "British English"
> to refer to variants of English that aren't American?  There's a big,
> wonderful, English-speaking world out there that aren't American, and we
> aren't British, either.
>

And there's also Canadian English. I've written in both Canadian English and
Australian English, and to tell you the truth, I don't remember all the
exact differences apart from the obvious ones. I just know than Canadian
English and Australian English have a lot more in common with British
English than American English, and therefore I say that I prefer "British
English". I'm not going to say "I prefer to use Australian English, British
English, and Canadian English", when quite clearly, the style I prefer to
use has a lot to do with British English than American English (although it
would be cool to say that I use "ABC-English").


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Delete Daniel Brandt

body:
On 6/12/06, BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> Such is life. IMHO, Wikipedia could still do a better job in helping
> its contributors protect their identities. Publishing "anonymous"
> contributors IP numbers should have been fixed a long time ago.
> Reminding users of the carelessness of putting personal information on
> Wikipedia pages is another no-brainer. Encouraging users *not* to
> reveal their real identity by using their real name as their Wikipedia
> account name. Actually punish contributors who, without permission,
> publishes personal details about another contributor. I don't know,
> people are responsible for their own actions. But things could still
> be improved.

I know that people being pseudonymous is currently the rage, but this
set of ideas seems a bit insane.

My first active online postings are now old enough to drink in the US.
 During that entire time, I've had my real name up attached to my
handles from the first discussions, and been using my real name as my
handle for the last 18 years except in one chat program which has been
running for 20 years and everyone knows everyone else in real life
anyways.  I have had exactly four significant negative encounters in
that time; in none of those cases was my identity being public a
significant problem.

Brandt has power over people because they're afraid of being "outed".
If you're never "in the closet" as it were, that threat has no power.

If your relationship with your workplace is negative enough that your
hobby activities being disclosed might cause you grief, then that's a
problem with your workplace.  Though I don't discuss WP in detail with
my employers, I have fought for PR and online community activities to
be part of my job description, and won.

You may not all be in the same position, but you should be.

If you chose to remain behind a pseudonym, I won't think less of you
for it.  I think WP would benefit if more people used their real
names, because I think it makes people think in a more personally
accountable manner and helps reassure critics that WP's editors are
responsible.  And help render Brandt irrelevant.

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] "refactoring" signatures

body:
On 6/12/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Death Phoenix wrote:
> <snip>
> > And there's also Canadian English. I've written in both Canadian English
> and
> > Australian English, and to tell you the truth, I don't remember all the
> > exact differences apart from the obvious ones. I just know than Canadian
> > English and Australian English have a lot more in common with British
> > English than American English, and therefore I say that I prefer
> "British
> > English". I'm not going to say "I prefer to use Australian English,
> British
> > English, and Canadian English", when quite clearly, the style I prefer
> to
> > use has a lot to do with British English than American English (although
> it
> > would be cool to say that I use "ABC-English").
> >
>
> I tend to call it Commonwealth English, except when something gets me
> really annoyed, and then I'm liable to call it Proper Bloody English.
>

PBE's a good one.


body:
Hi all,
  What's the copyright status of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bowl-out-nz-wi.JPG

which is closely based on this:

http://usa.cricinfo.com/db/PICTURES/CMS/59200/59247.jpg

Thanks,
Steve


body:
On 6/12/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> Usually the courts give a lot of leeway to derivative works which do a
> lot of transformation, especially when pitted up against claims from
> works which don't do a lot of transformation.

Good example here is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogers_v._Koons

Koons turned Rogers' photographic postcard into a sculpture, with a
couple of tiny details changed, but the other details intentionally as
close as possible.  Courts held it to be copyright violation.

In the case of the inspired drawing, the details are intentionally as
far as possible, given the reinterpretation in .. charcoal?   The only
carried over elements are compositional, and it's pretty transformed.

The lack of any commercial value of the derived product also makes it
more likely to pass muster.

I would say, no worries, for using it on WP.  It might be a marginal
concern for commercial use of that drawing, but not for noncommercial
use.

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com


subject: [Wikitech-l] Section numbering

body:
On 6/12/06, John Ky <newhoggy at gmail.com> wrote:
> There are lots of documents (eg. legislation) that have special
> numbering schemes.  Here's an example:

OIC, I was thinking in terms of Wikipedia. Yes, what you request seems
quite reasonable. :)

Steve


subject: [Commons-l] some statistics

body:
Also (I am really warming up to this :)), it would be good to be able
to override the "last edit 14 days ago" thing when necessary. For
example when I see logos labelled *-self, I have a strong prejudice
not to believe this and to delete on sight. If I could delete on sight
with a backup handy just in the odd occasion ;) I'm wrong, it would be
incredibly handy to calm the screaming hordes down.

Brianna


subject: [WikiEN-l] User Protection Fund

body:
More valuable than a few dollars would be finding some
free-speech-friendly attorneys and organizations, and making friends
with them proactively and before a particular problem blows up to
crisis proportions.

EFF?
ACLU?
Wikipedia editors who are attorneys already?

--
-george william herbert
gherbert at retro.com / george.herbert at gmail.com