from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>Matt R wrote:
>
>
>
>>Doesn't seem overly "spikey" to me, unless I've missed further debate
>>elsewhere. Why exactly do these Wikipedians need to "cool it"? As AfD goes, it
>>seems pretty harmless. I'm sorry, but I don't really think it's constructive to
>>shout and swear at Wikipedians based on what appears to be an unconvincing
>>example of us treating outsiders badly.
>>
>>
>
>
>Whether he's overreacting or not is actually not so relevant. When we
>piss off people with an audience, they will tend to say so to their
>audience. Is this something to be avoided if possible?
>
>  [  ] yes
>  [  ] no
>
>Feel free to stay in self-righteous denial about a PR nightmare.
>
>
>- d.
>
>
Telling people to cool it won't solve anything, from my experience --
especially in a volunteer project. As I've been saying on [[WT:AFD]], we
need to reduce the volume on AfD so people:

   1. Don't get stressed out and all tense from voting "delete" on a
      dozen garage bands, and carry this attitude over to possibly valid
      article deletion debates;
   2. Are able to devote more time to reviewing the points of fact on
      each controversial debate, and thus come to a more reasoned
      conclusion;
   3. Don't have to worry about brevity for the sake of ensuring all "nn
      bio" articles are deleted -- many AfD regulars keep their comments
      brief because they have to spread their attention over almost 200
      debates everyday.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ben Emmel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Domain names

body:
On 1/27/06, John Knouse <jaknouse at frognet.net> wrote:
>
> I apologize for this off-topic post, but I think everyone involved in the
> Internet has a right to know this:
>
> Athens' Own, a business that has had a domain registered with Register.com
> for the past few years, attempted to transfer it to Dotster.  Register
> refused to allow the transfer, despite repeated (and correctly-done)
> attempts, then auctioned the name athensown.com off to another bidder.
> Register.com is a bunch of crooks, and I urge everyone not to do business
> with them.
>
> John Knouse
> jknouse at frognet.net
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Why are you posting this here, and was this moderated?

--
Ben Emmel
Wikipedia - User:Bratsche
bratsche1 at gmail.com
"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees."
-- William Blake


list: foundation-l

from_name: Mihai Floran

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Stewards policy proposal

body:
Hmm... anyway.... as a second tought...
(I still support Anthere's proposal)
what will the stewards do afterwards?

There is not so much activity at Requests for permissions nowadays... exception - of course - big discutions about desysoping some users.

M


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:

>>   [[Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Fonseca Rendeiro]]
>>
>>
>
>A model AfD, except for the word "vanity" which was unnecessary and
>irrelevant (though, as it turned out, true).
>
>If you are unhappy with the way this article was deleted, David, maybe you
>could tell us how you would have preferred it to be deleted? I'm asking in
>good faith. How would you have expressed a delete opinion on that page if
>you had done so? And, if AfD were replaced with some other system of your
>choosing, how would you have handled this article in that system? Or do
>you think that deleting this article under any system does more harm than
>good?
>
>Anyone who's been on this mailing list for 15 seconds knows you don't like
>AFD but I'm still not quite sure what you want to replace it with. You've
>suggested disbanding it altogether with the argument that it only deletes
>some 200 articles a day anyway. But disbanding it and replacing it with
>nothing would greatly increase the influx of new marginal articles. People
>who've previously been turned off by having their stuff deleted would be
>"back in business". The place would start filling up with articles on
>non-notable people, dolls, webcomics etc. ;)
>
>But I know you're not actually a super-inclusionist. Just a couple of days
>ago you said on [[WT:AFD]]:
>
>"Note: my personal opinion is that almost everything nominated on AFD does
>in fact deserve as quick, messy and painful a death as can be managed."
>
>I'm not sure what to make of that. What system do you envision to achieve
>the following two aims?
>
>a) Solve the PR problems currently generated by AFD.
>
>b) Deal a quick, messy and painful death to almost everything currently
>handled by AFD.
>
>But I'm probably misinterpreting, considering the opinions you've
>expressed elsewhere - like cautioning against haste in deletion - you were
>probably being ironic. Presumably what you want to do is:
>
>b) Deal a slow, clean and painless death to almost everything currently
>handled by AFD.
>
>Regards,
>Haukur
>
>
>
As I've been saying, I believe if we get more individual attention to
the 1% of all debates that stir up these problems, we can effectively
resolve this without cannibalising the existing system. The problem is
that due to our consensus decision-making process, major deletion
process reform cannot move forward (this was already true 1.5 years ago
with [[Wikipedia:Preliminary Deletion]], which would probably have
effectively tackled a lot of obvious "nn bio" articles). Tinkering
around the edges only works for so long -- CSD can't be expanded forever.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: Fastfission

subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
They aren't "galleries" -- they are small thumbnails which are a
product of being able to sort the images.

I added a modified fair use template to the top of the category page
which explains the copyrighted status of all of the images. We could
play with something like this -- a big notice which says that this is
a category of thumbnails for images which are used in Wikipedia
articles etc. etc. Anyway it is an idea.

If we are going to have fair use images (which it seems we are), we
can't not have categories for them, because it would make identifying,
sorting, keeping track of, etc. impossible, which would create an even
worse legal problem (not being at all aware of what we have, how many
we have, being able to monitor them) than having the category
thumbnails would, in my opinion.

FF

On 1/27/06, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
> > Look at this yummy gallery of 200 copyrighted images:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images
>
> And I know this isn't anything new, we've been talking about this problem
> for a long time. So is anyone working on a technical solution?
>
> I mean, it's not like these galleries are hidden to the reader or even
> hard to find. Go to [[Pikachu]], click on the image and then click on
> [[Pok?mon images]] - a very natural thing to do.
>
> Better still - do a straight Google search for "Pok?mon images". Our
> gallery is the second hit. I repeat - if you're searching for Pok?mon
> images on Google you'll find that Wikipedia has a very nice gallery of
> them.
>
> We're seeing revert wars and blocks over fair use images on user pages. I
> assert that our fair use galleries are a bigger problem.
>
> Regards,
> Haukur
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/27/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> That beiing so, I'd gently suggest that the Foundation *must* get
> involved in this.  Deletion is a mess and the various deletion-related
> forums have become a law unto themselves.  We can't do anything,
> arbcom is scared to do so, and so outside action is required.

Personally, it's not so much /scared/ as concerned it is outside the
arbcom's jurisdiction/mandate.  The arbitration committee has not
considered content disputes within its remit, for one thing.
Behaviour and adherence to policy ARE, but I think it would require an
actual, specific case to be brought before the arbcom.

Gross incivility to others is obviously in contravention of Wikipedia
policy, and if such is occuring within *FD I suspect the current
arbcom would consider it within our jurisdiction to rule upon.

-Matt


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Being able to see an article whose undeletion is being
	actively discussed

body:
I am hugely in favor of this. There are some categories of deleted
article which might be harmful to keep up, but otherwise there is no
harm keeping the content available, especially if marked as being
temporarily visible while an undeletion discussion is underway.

-Matt


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:AFD and public relations

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Matt R

> How about we talk about something that vaguely matters? I
> think it's a much more serious PR problem for the English
> Wikipedia that the German Wikipedia is lightyears ahead of us
> in distributing CDs/DVDs/print editions. Where's English
> Wikipedia 1.0? I heard that the plan was to have it finished
> by December 2004...

Is there an update on this? I just got a question on HelpDesk about this,
saying that Jimbo had given an interview in mid 2005 nominating about now as
a target.

Peter (Skyring)


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/27/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> Agreed. There have been tentative advances on this front, for instance
> in the recently concluded webcomics case where two issues were
> addressed: attempts to alter deletion policy without discussion, and
> alienating newcomers by smearing them as trolls and ridiculing them.

The alienating newcomers part is what particularly concerns me.  I
think those on the 'front lines' of fighting vandalism and spam get
very rapidly jaded and cynical, and start assuming bad faith
automatically.  In truth, I find, most newcomer editors are operating
in good faith.  Not being that familiar with the Wikipedia project, of
course, many are in good faith attempting to do things we don't want
or in ways that aren't the ways Wikipedia uses, but that should not
allow us to think they mean any harm.

It is a mistake to put these people on the defensive, to make them
feel attacked.  Not all of them are capable or interested in being
Wikipedia editors, but some of them will be - among whom may be many
people capable of being excellent content editors once they understand
the project better.  It is not in our best interests to burn these
people.

Even if their ultimate goals are not compatible with the Wikipedia
project and they won't make useful contributors, we should endeavor to
handle them politely.

Of course, some contributors are not acting in good faith.  However,
we should keep in mind that they may simply be misguided.  Those
adding spam links, for example, may not realise how much this is
frowned upon here; seeing external links in many articles, they might
simply have assumed that linking to on-topic external sites is
acceptable.

Even with bad-faith contributors, it would be a good thing to handle
them with as little drama and provocation as possible.  If we have to
show them the door, let's do it quietly and politely.

> There have been some cases of editors using the laudable principle
> that the debate is not a vote as a kind of two-by-four with which to
> browbeat people who make too-brief statements.  While it is desirable
> to have a good debate, this is not facilitated by having some
> participants haranguing others in this manner.

Again, goes back to assuming good faith.  Encouragement to elaborate
is a good thing, but not browbeating.

> References to specific items in the undeletion policy are almost
> absent from the Deletion Review page, and some of the statements that
> are there go directly against the principles of the undeletion policy.
>  A notice by me informing editors that I am temporarily undeleting
> pages that are subject to good faith nominations for undeletion has
> been removed twice on the pretext that my notice "wasn't discussed".
> There is in short a palpably abusive atmosphere in these forums.  at
> least one such undeleted article has been deleted as "improperly
> undeleted." The presumption of bad faith is the norm.

I personally feel that Deletion Review has a worse record than AFD or
the other deletion forums.

-Matt


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Googlebomb

body:
Sorry? That was a little too succinct for me. Can you be more explicit?

Steve

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of stevertigo
> Sent: Friday, 27th January 2006 9:20 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: [WikiEN-l] Googlebomb
>
>
> I'm pretty pleased with how WP:Shortcuts google.
> Wondering if we can't get "wp" to do the same replace "wordpress."
>
> SV


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Fair use has come back to bite us

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>>Some kind soul wishes to link to us because we have an excellent
>>collection of posters. I've removed the personal details, but I think
>>the legal ramifications of this are pretty clear.
>>
>>-------- Original Message --------
>>Subject: [HelpDesk-l] Important Information about your site
>>Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 21:11:16 -0600
>>From: (NAME REMOVED)
>>Reply-To: Help desk for questions about Wikimedia projects
>><helpdesk-l at Wikimedia.org>
>>To: Helpdesk-l <helpdesk-l at wikimedia.org>
>>
>>Hello my name is (NAME REMOVED). I am seeking out possible link
>>partners that our visitors would be interesting in visiting. I've
>>found your website to be a very good fit for our visitors. I have
>>already gone ahead and added your link to our website at (WEBSITE REMOVED)
>>
>>I am contacting you to see if its ok to have done so, Also, I
>>would like to ask if you mind linking back to us? If so, please
>>use the linking details below and send me the location of our
>>link on your website.
>>
>>Here is our linking details:
>>Tilte: Where Can I Buy Posters?
>>Description: Where Can I Buy Posters website gives you the chance
>>to choose from 300,000 Posters & Prints, Designer-Framed Prints,
>>Canvas Transfers and More...100% Guaranteed!
>>
>>We've got several PR6 and 7 websites, so we expect this site to
>>become atleast a PR5 within 1 month and we eventually become a 6
>>or 7 in 2-3 months.
>>
>>I hope this can be a way for us to benefit our visitors with
>>excellent content. Hope to hear from you soon.
>
>
> That looks like link exchange spam to me. Some of the OTRS queues get it every day. I very much
> doubt the sender knew anything more about Wikipedia's image use policy than he knew about the
> thousands of other email addresses he spammed. Besides, Wikipedia has long since passed the point of
> being impressed by PR 6 or 7 ;)
>

Oh, it is, but it's the reason they want to link to us which is
worrying. We should *not* be a collection of movie posters or album covers.

--
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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from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [WikiEN-l] Googlebomb

body:
On 28/01/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> >>>>I'm pretty pleased with how WP:Shortcuts google.
> >
> > I see. I think that's the first time I've seen "google" used as an
> > intransitive verb. :)
>
> Intransitive?  It appears to me that "NPOV or 3rr" is the object of the
> verb "google" in that fragment....

Looking back, I think he was referring to the original message (as
quoted above) - rather than talking about "[a person] googling [a
search term]", SV talked about "[a search term] googling"
(intransitively); specifically, "googling well", meaning something
like "showing up well in Google".

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Googlebomb

body:
> Google WP - wordpress, not Wikipedia, is the top google hit
> (for the time being, at least).  If you google NPOV or 3rr on
> the other hand...
> > > I'm pretty pleased with how WP:Shortcuts google.
> > > Wondering if we can't get "wp" to do the same replace "wordpress."

I see. I think that's the first time I've seen "google" used as an
intransitive verb. :)

Steve


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Being able to see an article whose undeletion is
	beingactively discussed

body:
On 1/28/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> I created a small template (I find large in-your-face boxes repellant) at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_under_review
>
> I see that it's already been listed for deletion.  Oh how fun! :)

I must say that the recent trend to IMMEDIATELY LIST FOR DELETION any
template or category associated with a policy or procedure suggestion
someone doesn't like is rather disturbing.

-Matt


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
>
> Yes
>
> <subliminal message>
>
> Local bureaucrats should be the ones to give bot status on local
> projects. It makes little sense that stewards do it.
>
> </end of subliminal message>
>
> :-)

And I absolutely agree with Anthere there! I want to put all my wight
behind that ........ and believe me that is quite a few kilo's ;)
...............

mmmmmm I have an idea for votes. Someone's vote weighs as much as the
person heheheheheheheheh

Waerth/Walter


body:
On 1/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Can you IMMEDIATELY BLOCK THEM for violating [[WP:POINT]]?
>
> (Or will they sue us IN A COURT OF LAW?)

In Trenton, New Jersey?

-Matt


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] John R. Leopold

body:
I've temporarily deleted this article because it has been notified as
a possible hatchet job on the politician.

The article is quite opinionated and certainly not worthy of
Wikipedia.  This isn't another Seigethaler but it certainly seems like
some politically motivated bit of tripe that has been on Wikipedia for
far too long.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
I'm not going to get involved with this.  At this stage the only thing
that can help Wikipedia's deletion process is to have it nuked from
orbit.  Only the Foundation can do that, if the new arbitration
committee is too scared to act.


body:
I've had a few complaints from people who said that, not being
administrators, they felt unable to participate fully in
[[Wikipedia:Deletion review]] because they could not see the content
of the article under discussion.

I've decided to act on this, and have placed the following notice on the page:

"Some administrators take all good faith requests for undeletion on
this page as de facto requests for temporary undeletion for the
purpose of debate, and will honor such requests, unless the content is
defamatory, copyright, a personal attack, or otherwise unsuitable for
publication, for the duration of the debate. They reserve the right to
will be not undelet if there is reason to suspect that this forum is
being abused. Pages undeleted for this purpose should be clearly
marked with a link to [[Wikipedia:Deletion review]].".

This should solve the problem.  Basically I'll undelete stuff that
satisfies the above criteria while it is being discussed on the forum,
in the interests of encouraging full participation by all editors.


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/28/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
> >I'm not going to get involved with this.  At this stage the only thing
> >that can help Wikipedia's deletion process is to have it nuked from
> >orbit.  Only the Foundation can do that, if the new arbitration
> >committee is too scared to act.
> >
> >
> This attitude is not helpful. Furthermore, the arbcom doesn't really
> have jurisdiction over deletion process or any form of policy, IIRC --
> Jimbo only delegated his judicial powers to it.
>

That beiing so, I'd gently suggest that the Foundation *must* get
involved in this.  Deletion is a mess and the various deletion-related
forums have become a law unto themselves.  We can't do anything,
arbcom is scared to do so, and so outside action is required.


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Poll for Wikistandards

body:
--- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> We will soon have the Special Projects Committee
> <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Special_projects> to
> decide things like this, so I can't see the results of the poll going
> directly to the stage of Board decision anyway. Since we're delegating
> authority away from the Board, my view on the matter, as someone not
> intending to be on the SP Committee, isn't any more relevant than that
> of anyone else voting.

Well the fact that you are a board member and such a swell person, does carry a great deal of
influence even in cases where you have no real authority. :)

-- mav

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


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

body:
Angela wrote:

>On 1/28/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
>
>>One other issue that needs to be dealt with immediately is the
>>opposition vote by a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board.
>>
>>
>
>Two members of the Board were elected by the community, so,
>unsurprisingly, those two people are going to be involved in community
>matters like this poll. I realise some people would prefer the Board
>be made only of external people, but with the current situation,
>you're going to have to accept that at least two people on the Board
>have dual roles of being on the Board and being Wikimedians. I am not
>going to accept the constant attempts to prevent me expressing any
>opinion outside of official meetings.
>
>We will soon have the Special Projects Committee
><http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Special_projects> to
>decide things like this, so I can't see the results of the poll going
>directly to the stage of Board decision anyway. Since we're delegating
>authority away from the Board, my view on the matter, as someone not
>intending to be on the SP Committee, isn't any more relevant than that
>of anyone else voting.
>
>Angela.
>
>
As for having members of the board being outsiders, I think that should
not happen at all or under exceptional circumstances.  I support the
concept of Wikimedians being involved with the board, and I understand
the role of being both a leader and a contributor... and having opinions
as well.  We live with that on all of the Wikimedia projects anyway,
where admins and bureaucrats are also ordinary editors and contributors
as well... each with their own opinion and often vote on things like
VfDs and policy questions within projects.

I was just trying to point out as a practical matter that if you already
have objections to some proposal, unless some very convincing arguments
are offered between when you register that objection and when you will
see this proposal before the board formally I don't see that you are
going to change your mind.  And with only four other members on that
same board this proposal for Wikistandards has an uphill intellectual
battle to fight to convince at least three members of the board (for a
simple majority... I know the board tries to reach concensus instead in
most matters anyway) to support the proposal.  In addition, just because
you are in a leadership role you will have some supporters that will
simply follow your lead on opinions as well.  This has also happened
with Wikistandards and is nothing to be ashamed of.  You lead and others
follow, that is by definition leadership.  I've seen it happen with
votes I've done on Wikibooks myself, and in other areas of life.

BTW, I like the idea of a specialized committee that would review
project proposals like Wikistandards.  It would at the very least
provide a single source of contact to ask questions about proposing new
projects, rather than posting comments on Meta and having the question
sit unanswered for several months with just random opinions from other
users that come up from time to time, or get into a flame war on this list.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

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

Tony Sidaway stated for the record:

> I'm not going to get involved with this.  At this stage the only thing
> that can help Wikipedia's deletion process is to have it nuked from
> orbit.  Only the Foundation can do that, if the new arbitration
> committee is too scared to act.

The Arbitration Committee is a judiciary, not a legislature.  We weren't
elected to design and implement organizational structures and processes.

Until we have a case, we have nothing to do.  When are we going to see
"Tony Sidaway v. Afd" on our docket?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Some days it's just not worth filing
 sean at epoptic.org | the environmental impact statement.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/28/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/27/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That beiing so, I'd gently suggest that the Foundation *must* get
> > involved in this.  Deletion is a mess and the various deletion-related
> > forums have become a law unto themselves.  We can't do anything,
> > arbcom is scared to do so, and so outside action is required.
>
> Personally, it's not so much /scared/ as concerned it is outside the
> arbcom's jurisdiction/mandate.  The arbitration committee has not
> considered content disputes within its remit, for one thing.
> Behaviour and adherence to policy ARE, but I think it would require an
> actual, specific case to be brought before the arbcom.

Agreed. There have been tentative advances on this front, for instance
in the recently concluded webcomics case where two issues were
addressed: attempts to alter deletion policy without discussion, and
alienating newcomers by smearing them as trolls and ridiculing them.

There have been some cases of editors using the laudable principle
that the debate is not a vote as a kind of two-by-four with which to
browbeat people who make too-brief statements.  While it is desirable
to have a good debate, this is not facilitated by having some
participants haranguing others in this manner.

References to specific items in the undeletion policy are almost
absent from the Deletion Review page, and some of the statements that
are there go directly against the principles of the undeletion policy.
 A notice by me informing editors that I am temporarily undeleting
pages that are subject to good faith nominations for undeletion has
been removed twice on the pretext that my notice "wasn't discussed".
There is in short a palpably abusive atmosphere in these forums.  at
least one such undeleted article has been deleted as "improperly
undeleted." The presumption of bad faith is the norm.


body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Alphax
> (Wikipedia email)
> > That looks like link exchange spam to me. Some of the OTRS
> queues get
> > it every day. I very much doubt the sender knew anything more about
> > Wikipedia's image use policy than he knew about the
> thousands of other
> > email addresses he spammed. Besides, Wikipedia has long
> since passed
> > the point of being impressed by PR 6 or 7 ;)
>
> Oh, it is, but it's the reason they want to link to us which
> is worrying. We should *not* be a collection of movie posters
> or album covers.

I hate to gainsay a lady, but I couldn't see anything in their message to us
which indicated that they saw us in such a light.

Having said that, it might be worth checking to see if album covers or movie
posters are stored in a high-resolution format and asking that they be
deleted or downgraded if so. I wouldn't wish this on anybody as a project,
but it's something to think about next time you pass by (say) Star Wars
and/or Elton John.

Peter (Skyring)


subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Haukur
> ?orgeirsson

> > Look at this yummy gallery of 200 copyrighted images:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok%C3%A9mon_images
>
> And I know this isn't anything new, we've been talking about
> this problem for a long time. So is anyone working on a
> technical solution?
>
> I mean, it's not like these galleries are hidden to the
> reader or even hard to find. Go to [[Pikachu]], click on the
> image and then click on [[Pok?mon images]] - a very natural
> thing to do.
>
> Better still - do a straight Google search for "Pok?mon
> images". Our gallery is the second hit. I repeat - if you're
> searching for Pok?mon images on Google you'll find that
> Wikipedia has a very nice gallery of them.
>
> We're seeing revert wars and blocks over fair use images on
> user pages. I assert that our fair use galleries are a bigger problem.

I can't see this instance as a major problem, even though it goes well
beyond fair use. It is essentially free advertising for the copyright holder
and they are not likely to complain.

Besides, anyone deleting them is going to get their name on the shitlist of
all the Pokemon fen.

Peter (Skyring)


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

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

Tony Sidaway stated for the record:

> On 1/28/06, John Lee <johnleemk at gawab.com> wrote:
>
>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I'm not going to get involved with this.  At this stage the only thing
>>>that can help Wikipedia's deletion process is to have it nuked from
>>>orbit.  Only the Foundation can do that, if the new arbitration
>>>committee is too scared to act.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>This attitude is not helpful. Furthermore, the arbcom doesn't really
>>have jurisdiction over deletion process or any form of policy, IIRC --
>>Jimbo only delegated his judicial powers to it.
>>
>
>
> That beiing so, I'd gently suggest that the Foundation *must* get
> involved in this.  Deletion is a mess and the various deletion-related
> forums have become a law unto themselves.  We can't do anything,
> arbcom is scared to do so, and so outside action is required.

Assume good faith, Tony.  Accusing us of being scared is not going to
persuade us to do what you want us to do.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Suicide is the most sincere
 sean at epoptic.org | form of self-criticism.
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from_name: Michael Lindeen

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
This is my first post here. Heya. I'm woohookitty. He of 10 gazillion
edits. :) Anyway, I agree with Sean here. The arbcom cannot get rid of
afd even if they wanted to. They cannot nuke it from orbit. I can't
even see how it could come up in an arbcom case. They take user
conduct disputes, not policy disputes per se. Mike

On 1/28/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Tony Sidaway stated for the record:
>
> > I'm not going to get involved with this.  At this stage the only thing
> > that can help Wikipedia's deletion process is to have it nuked from
> > orbit.  Only the Foundation can do that, if the new arbitration
> > committee is too scared to act.
>
> The Arbitration Committee is a judiciary, not a legislature.  We weren't
> elected to design and implement organizational structures and processes.
>
> Until we have a case, we have nothing to do.  When are we going to see
> "Tony Sidaway v. Afd" on our docket?
>
> - --
>  Sean Barrett     | Some days it's just not worth filing
>  sean at epoptic.org | the environmental impact statement.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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> AJ4uCucC/+Yv96Hggg6mAS0=
> =dUOd
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 1/28/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is there perhaps a template for this, datestamped with words to the
> effect that if no consensus for undeletion is established within 7 days
> of the addition of the template, it should be redeleted?
>

I created a small template (I find large in-your-face boxes repellant) at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_under_review

I see that it's already been listed for deletion.  Oh how fun! :)

There is a shortcut for it: {{dur}}


subject: [WikiEN-l] A Wikipedia lynching

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

Rob Smith stated for the record:

> The record is clear enough; as Mr. Bauder said, "some do their
> best",engaging in incivility and name calling
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/Proposed_decision&diff=next&oldid=32355780
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> Others who respond once are [[Bowdlerized|Baudlerized]].
>
> nobs

Dear List Moderators:

Is this person contributing anything useful to this mailing list,
or is he using it only to whin(g)e and launch personal attacks?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | "Oh, bugger," said Pooh, feeling a
 sean at epoptic.org | little more forthright than usual.
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subject: [OT] RE: [WikiEN-l] Googlebomb

body:
> Intransitive?  It appears to me that "NPOV or 3rr" is the
> object of the verb "google" in that fragment....
>
> Or am I too drunk to parse the [[English language]] correctly
> (thank Thoth for spieling chuckers)?

I meant this sentence:

> >>>>I'm pretty pleased with how WP:Shortcuts google.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
Suit yourself.  Deletion policy is a festering sore and I see no will
within the community to bang heads together and wag fingers with
sufficient severity to remedy the fundamental atmosphere of bad faith.


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] A Wikipedia lynching

body:
The record is clear enough; as Mr. Bauder said, "some do their
best",engaging in incivility and name calling
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/Proposed_decision&diff=next&oldid=32355780
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
Others who respond once are [[Bowdlerized|Baudlerized]].

nobs


body:
Is there perhaps a template for this, datestamped with words to the
effect that if no consensus for undeletion is established within 7 days
of the addition of the template, it should be redeleted?

Steve

> I am hugely in favor of this. There are some categories of
> deleted article which might be harmful to keep up, but
> otherwise there is no harm keeping the content available,
> especially if marked as being temporarily visible while an
> undeletion discussion is underway.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wik> ien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
Beg pardon, but the author of this incivility states at least a half dozen
times in Talk he is well aware of the sourcing; here for example
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:List_of_Americans_in_the_Venona_papers&diff=35704092&oldid=35701818

The question is, can he again use Wikipedia prescribed Dispute Resolution
Processess to impugn his own professional critics, not further the writing
of an encyclopedia, and get the NLG good 'ol boy network to assist his
smears
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/Proposed_decision&diff=29531355&oldid=29476030

For those concerned about Wikipedia's credibility as a viable source, this
bares watching.  I have opted to work within the project to call attention
to this abuse, and not tell my story outside.

nobs

On 1/23/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> "Rob Smith" <nobs03 at gmail.com> wrote in
> message news:52a8cf060601221206t3fe7d93bm41bfe58f23696658 at mail.gmail.com
> ...
> [snip]
>
> I selected this because it's the quickest to refute:
> > Here he refers to Prof. Klehr's work as "outrageous McCarthyite POV
> > Red-baiting defamatory Blacklist
> > "
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Americans_in_the_Venona_papers&diff=34527735&oldid=34519165
>
>
> No he doesn't.
>
> He earlier added some commentary on the list which according to the edit
> summary "added critical POV to balance page list".
>
> This was then removed with the comment "this page is a list of names, not
> a
> forum to debate their significance".
>
> The edit in question restres the commentary with the summary"Revert:
> Otherwise this is an outrageous McCarthyite POV Red-baiting defamatory
> Blacklist".
>
> In other words, the words you quote above refer to our article on the
> subject, not to the list itself, with the disclaimer that this description
> covers a version of the list without commentary.
>
> My phrase of the week: ingenuous cobblers [1]
>
> HTH HAND
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
> [1] definitional nitpickers can go hang, I like it and I'm taking it home
> for a pet :-)
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] New anti-spam initiatives

body:
I've written two new spam cleanup scripts, an aggressive one and a targeted one. The aggressive one,
which edits as "Spam cleanup script", checks every article on the wiki against [[m:Spam blacklist]],
and reverts any matching articles back to the last revision which didn't match, or blanks the
article if they all match. It drew complaints when I ran it on some wikis, for blanking articles
which contained links to free domain services since their creation, and rightly so. It takes many
hours to run so it's difficult to monitor closely. I don't think I'll run it again on Wikimedia,
except perhaps on small, heavily spammed wikis.

The second script is a targeted script which takes advantage of the new externallinks table to
quickly find links to a given domain. It then removes the spam in the same manner as the first
script. It edits as "MediaWiki spam cleanup". In my initial test, it took 12 minutes to remove all
links to *.f859.info on all wikis. It should be possible to make it a fair bit faster than that.

I'll leave Brion to tell you about his CAPTCHA extension.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: New anti-spam initiatives

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> The second script is a targeted script which takes advantage of the new externallinks table to
> quickly find links to a given domain. It then removes the spam in the same manner as the first
> script. It edits as "MediaWiki spam cleanup". In my initial test, it took 12 minutes to remove all
> links to *.f859.info on all wikis. It should be possible to make it a fair bit faster than that.

OK, it now takes about 2 seconds for the search plus maybe another 2 seconds per revert. Feel free
to request this on #wikimedia-tech.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
> I personally feel that Deletion Review has a worse record than AFD or
> the other deletion forums.

The problem is that it has a split personality, dealing both with process
and content, and often has trouble keeping its eyes on the ball. It must
be a place where you can come and say things like:

"WTF? My article was speedied though it obviously doesn't meet any speedy
deletion criterion. Can't I at least get a chance to defend it in an AfD?"
(a process-oriented request)

But you must also be able to say things like this:

"I think AfD really dropped the ball when it deleted <X>. This is actually
quite a notable whatsit as shown by <Y> and <Z>. Can I have it back?" (a
content-oriented request)

The problem is that some people treat the process oriented requests as
content-oriented and say: "No, we won't undelete it - it doesn't look like
a worthwhile article to me." And some people treat the content-oriented
requests as process-oriented and say: "No, we can't undelete it because
the AfD was legit."

This is not good, DRV has to be able to handle both types of requests
sensibly.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: david weiss

body:
fred,

my screen name is KnessetP.R.Guy

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

Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:05:20 -0700
From: Fred Bauder
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Eliezer is not a suitable administrator
To: English Wikipedia
Cc: Fred Bauder
Message-ID: <5B24E546-2E9E-4507-B724-E95D01340D41 at ctelco.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed

Again what is your user name?

Fred

On Jan 27, 2006, at 4:02 AM, david weiss wrote:

> sorry i accidently sent more than one message. it wasn't clear to me
> that my first message got through. now i know better how to use this
> tool (i think).
>
> in response to your e-mail, you gave one of six incidents i observed
this
> past week where Eliezer silenced a dissenting voice. most of them
> involved different users. let me focus upon my own problem with
> Eliezer. he currently has me under a 24-hour block because he claims i
> violated the 3rr rule (though the 3rr rule permits me to revert
vandalism
> by OpenInfo. e.g. "he claims to be from the knesset" "opinion of ONE
> israeli", etc. instead of permitting me to entitle my own comments
> "reason for alert" and the like) if i violated the 3rr rule, then so
did
> OpenInfo and the 3rr rule specifies Eliezer must apply the rule fairly
to
> all offending parties. Eliezer deleted my tags, blocked me without
> warning and did not block OpenInfo. what's the difference between
> OpenInfo and me? OpenInfo shares Eliezer's anti-messianic agenda and
> admits on the talk page that he supports outreach judaism - an
> anti-messianic group. i expressed the mainstream voice of judaism that
> is pluralistic.
>
> on this same note, i tagged the alert and went to the talk page to
> explain the reason for my tag. as i was typing part 2 of my reason,
> Eliezer blocked me. my full explanation never saw the light of day. the
> partial explanation i managed to get onto the talk page was ignored by
> Eliezer and criticized by OpenInfo. this certainly does not represent
> the voice of the community who watches this article.
>
> (please note: i never stated that i personally sibscribe to any of the
> above-mentioned views. Eliezer and OpenInfo ASSUME i'm expressing my
own
> religious views. while i have my own religious convictions this forum
is
> not the appropriate place since all of us are supposedly neutral.)
>
> finally, your question about the messianic jews executed during the
> spanish inquisions is a valid question (though i never got the chance
to
> address that issue either in the article or on the talk page.) the
> inquisions exclusively tagerted jews who were in the church - i.e. jews
> who confessed belief in Jesus. while the majority of jews in spain at
> that time refused to join the church or confess belief in Jesus, the
> spaniards focused exclusively on jews within the church. they rounded
up
> 1500, killed 500 who refused to renounce their jewish identity while
> believing in Jesus and released 1,000 under a death threat who agreed
to
> renounce their jewish identity while believing in Jesus (at least
> publicly). did the term "messianic jew" exist at the time? no. by
> PROPER definition, were their religious beliefs and practices
consistant
> with messianic judaism or hebrew christianity? they certainly weren't
> behaving like orthodox jews (though they could have). if we apply a
> consistant and fair logic, then the article inaccurately asserts
> messianic judaism "began" in the 1860's and came from the church of
> england. the term "messianic jew" didn't exist at that time, either.
> we'd have to say messianic judaism started in the 1970's when the
> movement adopted the name and was clearly in full swing for a long
time.
> if we more appropriately analyze the CHARACTERISTICS of messianic
> judaism, then we find this unique religious expression has existed
2,000
> (which predates christianity by over 300 years). we further discover
> messianic judaism has always existed over the past 2,000 years -
whether
> in large or small numbers.
>
> give unbiased third parties who have done over 10 years research into
> messianic judaism a voice in this article and i believe the end result
> will be an article that preserves the intrigrity of wikipedia and does
> not serve the radical agenda of Eliezer and OpenInfo.
>
> Date: Fri, 27 Jan 2006 09:32:05 +0100
> From: MacGyverMagic/Mgm
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Eliezer is not a suitable administrator
> To: English Wikipedia
> Message-ID:
>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Sending one message to the list is quite enough.
> If you are talking about reversions like
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Messianic_Judaism&diff=36540336&oldid=36537686
> then
> Eliezer was quite right to make them. Articles are about facts, and
> questioning the validity of any of them, should happen on the talk
> page.
>
> Where and when did you post those concerns on the talk page? Just
> tagging is
> not enough.
> I've seen several people tag the article as totally disputed without
> putting
> any discussion on the talk page.
>
> It would help a lot of you posted diff links to the edits you are
> referring
> to see WP:DIFF.
>
> About the first editorial comment. If the article says Messianic
> Judaism
> started in the 1800s, then are you sure Judaism was actually called
> Messianic in the 1490s? Jews may have died during Crusades or at the
> hands
> of Queen Isabelle, but they may simply be a completely different form
> of
> Judaism altogether.
>
> Mgm
>
>
> On 1/26/06, david weiss wrote:
>
>>
>> eliezer imposes an unfair, seriously biased and inaccurate article
>> dealing with messianic judaism. when i had previously raised my
>>
> concerns
>
>> in the discussion page and point out the gross misinformation in
>>
> the main
>
>> article, eliezar would delete my tag. (as a side note, i observed
>>
> others
>
>> tag this article as violating the npov policy only to have their
>>
> tags
>
>> deleted without explanation.)
>>
>> i expressed my concerns on the talk page, only to be vandalised by
>> OpenInfo and blocked by Eliezer. Eliezer prevented me from
>>
> explaining:
>
>> 1. where the npov policy was violated in several places; 2. show
>>
> where
>
>> the facts were seriously inaccurate and, 3. show where the author
>> contradicted himself. eliezer blocked me without sufficient warning
>>
> per
>
>> the blocking policy.
>>
>> while i strongly disagree with eliezer's anti-messianic agenda, i
>>
> do not
>
>> feel i vandalized the article or site in any way. this site's
>>
> policy
>
>> allows me the freedom to edit articles that violate the npov in a
>>
> good
>
>> faith effort to make them more accurate.
>>
>> i believe eliezer will only force his anti-messianic agenda upon
>>
> the
>
>> public and a new administrator needs to be appointed who will
>>
> fairly
>
>> address the topic. thank you for your prompt and open-minded
>>
> attention
>
>> to this matter.

--
___________________________________________________
Play 100s of games for FREE! http://games.mail.com/


from_name: Angela

subject:
[WikiEN-l] fwd: I would like to propose printing and binding the
	Encyclopedia into a real book

body:
On 1/28/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> I'm relaying the following message, which was posted at
> [[Wikipedia:WikiReader]]. -- Matt

Thanks for relaying this here. The suggestion sounds great, but again
we run into the problem of who should be taking legal liability for
the content once it's moved into the riskier world of print? I've
emailed Mike Zimmermann to ask if his company had taken this into
consideration.

Angela.


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
I may recuse should the matter come to arbitration, but it will not
be because I am a friend of Chip Berlet, we may have briefly
encountered one another 30 years ago, but there was no further
personal or political relationship, although I admire his work. You
make much of the notion that mere membership in the same organization
signifies a close conspiratorial relationship. I am more likely to
recuse because I admire Haynes and Klehr and might feel that I could
not be fair to Chip if I ruled on the matter. You just don't get it.
If I feel I can be fair I don't recuse, if I feel I can be, I don't.

And you don't understand the Lawyers Guild. For example one matter
involved a group of illegal immigrants who had joined a union. The
employer then turned them into immigration and tried to fire them
because they were illegals. Now, as long as they didn't join a union.
he was just fine with that. That's the sort of stuff we worked on.
That sort of work has nothing to do with the issues you are fussing
over.

Fred

On Jan 28, 2006, at 11:17 AM, Rob Smith wrote:

>
> The question is, can he again use Wikipedia prescribed Dispute
> Resolution
> Processess to impugn his own professional critics, not further the
> writing
> of an encyclopedia, and get the NLG good 'ol boy network to assist his
> smears
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/
> Proposed_decision&diff=29531355&oldid=29476030


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Googlebomb

body:
On 1/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Michael Snow wrote:
> > Sean Barrett wrote:
> >
> >> (thank Thoth for spieling chuckers)
> >>
> >>
> > Pliez dunt tyke thu naim uv Djehuty inn vein lyck theiss.
> >
>
> We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for
> sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.
>
> PS. Wi n?t trei a h?liday in Sweden this y?r ?

See the l?veli lakes.

Garion (couldn't stop myself from sending this)


from_name: Brion Vibber

references:
<drefhg$d9b$1@sea.gmane.org> <43DACE5B.5050303@pobox.com>
	<loom.20060128T224353-713@post.gmane.org>

body:
Aerik Sylvan wrote:
> You guys might be able to do better or suggest some improvements, but I think
> this is probably good enough to do some short term data collection.  It requires
> one file with write permissions turned on.  I'm thinking running it for about a
> week on a large wiki would yield lots of data.  Any takers?  I'm running it on
> mine, but I've got so many other spam filters in place that the data isn't as
> meaningful.

I've got the captcha logging similar information to a file like this:

2006-01-28 21:45:28 testwiki: ConfirmEdit: new captcha session; 1x url trigger
by '80.58.14.170' at [[Gooermc]]: http://a.bitofspam.com/
2006-01-28 21:46:58 testwiki: ConfirmEdit: passed; 1x url trigger by
'80.58.14.170' at [[Gooermc]]: http://a.bitofspam.com/

The really interesting part will be checking to see which ones never get the
captcha form submission.

It could be useful to get comparison data for some other wikis as well.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Fastfission

subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
On 1/28/06, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
>
> At least that's something. Here's a part of the text:
>
> "The use of a small number of low-resolution Pok?mon images to illustrate
> articles about the subjects of the images in question ... is believed to
> fall under the fair use clause ... Any other uses of these images, on
> Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement."
>
> This works for the articles but the category page itself does not have a
> small number of images, it has 200 images. And the images there are not
> illustrating articles, they're just there, without any commentary. I just
> don't see how this can be fair use under our usual rationales. If it was a
> maintenance page inaccessible to the public then that would be one thing
> but it's actually a perfectly accessible page which you can even find with
> a Google search.

They're thumbnails, they are in no particular order, they are clearly just a
database backend. I really, really doubt it would ever be a legal problem in
a way the images in the articles aren't.

I agree, removing the category is definitely not the way to go. Nor do I
> want to delete all fair use images or anything like that. What I'd like is
> a technical option which allows us to turn off auto-display of thumbnails
> for selected categories.

This would still defeat the goal of monitoring. Not being able to see at a
glance what shouldn't belong in a category is a bad idea. Removing the
thumbnails puts one at the mercy of the filename or checking each image
individually.

Lesser of two evils, in my opinion. And likely a very low legal risk.

FF


from_name: Andrew Venier

subject: [WikiEN-l] Image:Wp ayb.gif

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> IIRC there's a way to Base64 encode images so that they can be pasted as
> text onto a webpage; loading them as a URL displays the image in question.
>
> (Someone help me out here? What's this called again?)
>
It's done using the URI "data:" scheme.  See RFC 2397.  Supported by
Gecko, Opera, Safari.  Not supported by IE until v7.


list: commons-l

from_name: Puzzlet Chung

subject:
[Commons-l] Re: "(image) quotation policy" proposed in Korean
	Wikipedia and Commons

body:
See also:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-January/043439.html

On 1/24/06, Puzzlet Chung <puzzlet at gmail.com> wrote:
> User:WonYong, who insisted that the contents of Wikipedia should be
> restricted by National Security Law weeks ago (
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-January/043321.html
> ), claims that copyrighted images can be uploaded to Korean Wikipedia
> and Wikimedia Commons,  through "quotation policy."


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: "(image) quotation policy" proposed in Korean
	Wikipedia and Commons


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: "(image) quotation policy" proposed in Korean
	Wikipedia and Commons


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] "(image) quotation policy"
	proposed in Korean Wikipedia and Commons

body:
copyright.or.kr is ?????(maybe "committee established by law"?). Its
establishment, organization, purpose, etc. are stated in the law.

On 1/25/06, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, being a lawyer and a PhD candidate in copyright law, I think
> do have "legal mind" :-)
>
> And there are some others on juriwiki-l too :-)
>
> Is copyright.or.kr a governement institution?
>
> Anyway, I know some legal scholars in Korea, and I can contact them to
> obtain more precise information. But it will take some time.
>
> I'll follow the link and I forward this to juriwiki-l
>
> Best,
>
> Jean-Baptiste Soufron
>
> Puzzlet Chung wrote:
> > User:WonYong, who insisted that the contents of Wikipedia should be
> > restricted by National Security Law weeks ago (
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikipedia-l/2006-January/043321.html
> > ), claims that copyrighted images can be uploaded to Korean Wikipedia
> > and Wikimedia Commons,  through "quotation policy."
> >
> > Some months ago, WonYong wanted to upload image files from South
> > Korean government, but found that they are copyrighted and not allowed
> > to be uploaded. Now he came up with a new (proposed) policy that
> > allows uploading almost any image files. His point is that even
> > copyrighted images can be _quoted_ in Wikipedia articles, just like
> > citations in academic articles. He says that he won't no longer need
> > fair use, which he had proposed in Korean Wikipedia before.
> >
> > South Korean copyright law states that publicized materials may be
> > quoted for report, research, or educational purposes, within a
> > reasonable scope. A bulletin board in the Copyright Discussion and
> > Arbitration Committee website (http://copyright.or.kr/) answered that
> > this "quotation" article of the bill is not suitable for writing
> > encyclopedias.
> >
> > The problem is that he pushes his policy in not only Korean Wikipedia
> > but Wikimedia Commons. He says he distrusts copyright.or.kr, and
> > doubts that other Wikipedians and those in Commons do have "legal
> > mind."
> >
> > Ongoing discussion in Wikimedia Commons is here:
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump#ALLOW_COPYRIGHTED_IMAGES.21.21
> >
> > And the diff is here:
> > http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons%3AVillage_pump&diff=1233753&oldid=1233434
> >
> > Puzzlet Chung
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: J Apple

subject: [Wikitech-l] How to use Mwdumper?

body:
Hello,
I'm a newbie.
I installed MW 1.5.5

then I downloaded an SQL dump from wikipedia and
extracted the bzip2 to xml.

Then how do I open/install/use mwdumper to get the DB
into my mediawiki?

Thanks!

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


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Domain names

body:
Ben Emmel wrote:

>On 1/27/06, John Knouse <jaknouse at frognet.net> wrote:
>
>
>>I apologize for this off-topic post, but I think everyone involved in the
>>Internet has a right to know this:
>>
>>Athens' Own, a business that has had a domain registered with Register.com
>>for the past few years, attempted to transfer it to Dotster.  Register
>>refused to allow the transfer, despite repeated (and correctly-done)
>>attempts, then auctioned the name athensown.com off to another bidder.
>>Register.com is a bunch of crooks, and I urge everyone not to do business
>>with them.
>>
>>John Knouse
>>jknouse at frognet.net
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>
>>
>
>Why are you posting this here, and was this moderated?
>
>
Presumably John thought that if Wikipedia's domain names are registered
with them, this would be useful. On the other hand, he might be trying
to bad-mouth register.com on the mailing list.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>I'm not going to get involved with this.  At this stage the only thing
>that can help Wikipedia's deletion process is to have it nuked from
>orbit.  Only the Foundation can do that, if the new arbitration
>committee is too scared to act.
>
>
This attitude is not helpful. Furthermore, the arbcom doesn't really
have jurisdiction over deletion process or any form of policy, IIRC --
Jimbo only delegated his judicial powers to it.

John Lee
([[User:Johnleemk]])


from_name: sivagowri_hai gowri

subject: [Wikitech-l] hi

body:
sir,
help me to do a digital calculator

__________________________________________________________
Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your partner now. Go to http://yahoo.shaadi.com


references:
<43D9BF3C.8040903@gmail.com> <drcnfu$sou$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<43DA3020.8080706@gmail.com>

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
[...]
>>That looks like link exchange spam to me. Some of the OTRS queues get it every day. I very much
>>doubt the sender knew anything more about Wikipedia's image use policy than he knew about the
>>thousands of other email addresses he spammed. Besides, Wikipedia has long since passed the point of
>>being impressed by PR 6 or 7 ;)
>>
>
>
> Oh, it is, but it's the reason they want to link to us which is
> worrying. We should *not* be a collection of movie posters or album covers.

They want to link to us because we're on a list of websites that have high pagerank, and they're
hoping we might repay their link to us with one in the reverse direction. It has nothing to do with
our content. The only thing they had to say about our site was "I've found your website to be a very
good fit for our visitors." The thing about the posters was how they wanted us to link to them, not
the other way around.

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 1/28/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:

> One other issue that needs to be dealt with immediately is the
> opposition vote by a member of the Wikimedia Foundation board.

Two members of the Board were elected by the community, so,
unsurprisingly, those two people are going to be involved in community
matters like this poll. I realise some people would prefer the Board
be made only of external people, but with the current situation,
you're going to have to accept that at least two people on the Board
have dual roles of being on the Board and being Wikimedians. I am not
going to accept the constant attempts to prevent me expressing any
opinion outside of official meetings.

We will soon have the Special Projects Committee
<http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution_Special_projects> to
decide things like this, so I can't see the results of the poll going
directly to the stage of Board decision anyway. Since we're delegating
authority away from the Board, my view on the matter, as someone not
intending to be on the SP Committee, isn't any more relevant than that
of anyone else voting.

Angela.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
> They aren't "galleries" -- they are small thumbnails which are a
> product of being able to sort the images.

Whatever you want to call it it's a collection of 200 copyrighted images
on a webpage. They're only slightly smaller than the size we use for them
in the articles.

> I added a modified fair use template to the top of the category page
> which explains the copyrighted status of all of the images. We could
> play with something like this -- a big notice which says that this is
> a category of thumbnails for images which are used in Wikipedia
> articles etc. etc. Anyway it is an idea.

At least that's something. Here's a part of the text:

"The use of a small number of low-resolution Pok?mon images to illustrate
articles about the subjects of the images in question ... is believed to
fall under the fair use clause ... Any other uses of these images, on
Wikipedia or elsewhere, may be copyright infringement."

This works for the articles but the category page itself does not have a
small number of images, it has 200 images. And the images there are not
illustrating articles, they're just there, without any commentary. I just
don't see how this can be fair use under our usual rationales. If it was a
maintenance page inaccessible to the public then that would be one thing
but it's actually a perfectly accessible page which you can even find with
a Google search.

I think that in practice the courts would be very sympathetic to
Wikipedian claims of fair use and maybe we could even sell them some
Chewbacca defence like "well, the page doesn't really exist until the user
clicks on it because it's dynamically generated" but we're generally
trying to play it as safe as possible and I don't see this fitting in with
that.

> If we are going to have fair use images (which it seems we are), we
> can't not have categories for them, because it would make identifying,
> sorting, keeping track of, etc. impossible, which would create an even
> worse legal problem (not being at all aware of what we have, how many
> we have, being able to monitor them) than having the category
> thumbnails would, in my opinion.

I agree, removing the category is definitely not the way to go. Nor do I
want to delete all fair use images or anything like that. What I'd like is
a technical option which allows us to turn off auto-display of thumbnails
for selected categories.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] "(image) quotation policy" proposed in Korean
	Wikipedia and Commons

body:
If I understand him correctly he seems to think that taking an image
from a work constitutes quoting it, which isn't really the case since
the image is a work in itself and taking the whole thing and
reproducing is not the equivalent of quoting a paper but to reproduce
it completely.

Even if his assumption about quotes held the images in question would
still not be free content, which means they can't be hosted on the
commons[1].

1. There are some non-free images there however, but that's not relevant here.


from_name: Oscar Quintanilla

subject: [Wikitech-l] Lettre

body:
Madames, monsieurs:
vous m'avais envoy?z une lettre pour confirmer mon
inscripcion a wikipendia et m'est impossible me
conecter avec vous
 que peut je faire?

___________________________________________________________________________
Nouveau : t?l?phonez moins cher avec Yahoo! Messenger ! D?couvez les tarifs exceptionnels pour appeler la France et l'international.
T?l?chargez sur http://fr.messenger.yahoo.com


body:
Aerik Sylvan wrote:
> Brion - it looks like you're collecting the same info I set out to get, plus
> some more - but is this running live anywhere?  I was under the impression that
> the captcha is still totally in development?

Running currently on all but the top 20 Wikipedias plus meta, commons, and a few
misc.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] How to use Mwdumper?

body:
J Apple wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm a newbie.
> I installed MW 1.5.5
>
> then I downloaded an SQL dump from wikipedia and
> extracted the bzip2 to xml.
>
> Then how do I open/install/use mwdumper to get the DB
> into my mediawiki?

See the README.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/28/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> The alienating newcomers part is what particularly concerns me.  I
> think those on the 'front lines' of fighting vandalism and spam get
> very rapidly jaded and cynical, and start assuming bad faith
> automatically.

No. They stop assuming anything. Assuming bad faith will mean you make
mistakes as will assuming good faith. The the shear number of
descissions the people on the front line have to make means that it is
ilogical to do anything that will increase the number of mistakes you
make.

--
geni


from_name: Evan Prodromou

subject: [Wikitech-l] Recentchangescamp

body:
On Thu, 2006-26-01 at 16:07 -0800, Brion Vibber wrote:

> I was considering it but I'm just too busy with things I've promised to get done
> to spend three days finding new things to promise to code. ;)

Then again, you could use the conference time to write code.

~ESP

--
Evan Prodromou <evan at wikitravel.org>
Wikitravel (http://wikitravel.org/) -- the free, complete, up-to-date
and reliable world-wide travel guide


from_name: Michael Lindeen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A Wikipedia lynching

body:
I'm with Sean here. Nobs is a banned user. He has a long long history
of personal attacks. If he's just going to use this list to attack
people (no matter if it's a valid reason or not), I'm not sure how
helpful it is to let him post here. Mike

On 1/28/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I may recuse should the matter come to arbitration, but it will not
> be because I am a friend of Chip Berlet, we may have briefly
> encountered one another 30 years ago, but there was no further
> personal or political relationship, although I admire his work. You
> make much of the notion that mere membership in the same organization
> signifies a close conspiratorial relationship. I am more likely to
> recuse because I admire Haynes and Klehr and might feel that I could
> not be fair to Chip if I ruled on the matter. You just don't get it.
> If I feel I can be fair I don't recuse, if I feel I can be, I don't.
>
> And you don't understand the Lawyers Guild. For example one matter
> involved a group of illegal immigrants who had joined a union. The
> employer then turned them into immigration and tried to fire them
> because they were illegals. Now, as long as they didn't join a union.
> he was just fine with that. That's the sort of stuff we worked on.
> That sort of work has nothing to do with the issues you are fussing
> over.
>
> Fred
>
> On Jan 28, 2006, at 11:17 AM, Rob Smith wrote:
>
> >
> > The question is, can he again use Wikipedia prescribed Dispute
> > Resolution
> > Processess to impugn his own professional critics, not further the
> > writing
> > of an encyclopedia, and get the NLG good 'ol boy network to assist his
> > smears
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
> > title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Nobs01_and_others/
> > Proposed_decision&diff=29531355&oldid=29476030
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] RFC: Principles of mass content adding on small
	Wikipedias

body:
Millosh, you make an excellent point.

I was looking at the Swahili Wikipedia last night (< 200 articles).  Their
featured article is Eritrea, a country in Africa, and someone made the  effort
to translate most of the country table.While they do not even have  articles
about most of the other countries in Africa, I was thinking about how  easy it
would be to add that table to the existing articles like Togo or Ghana,  or
even to countries that do not yet have articles, since the table can be  a great
source of initial information. I was wondering if I could do it myself,  but
obviously, your idea of a bot doing that would be much more effective and  less
prone to any clumsy mistakes I might make. As for non-existent articles, I
am sure some of our linguists could come up with the names of those countries
in  Swahili as well.

Of course, Swahili is only an example. This can be implemented in almost  all
other languages. Thanks for raising this.

Danny


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/28/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> That beiing so, I'd gently suggest that the Foundation *must* get
> involved in this.  Deletion is a mess and the various deletion-related
> forums have become a law unto themselves.  We can't do anything,
> arbcom is scared to do so, and so outside action is required.

Who is the "we" who can't do anything? The community? I do not want to
believe that the community as a whole is in such a bad state that it
could fail to reform its own processes without interference from some
perceived "higher body" - a body that was certainly not elected to
reform deletion processes on the English Wikipedia. If you really
think a body is needed to do that, perhaps it time to elect one of
those instead of relying on one elected to do something entirely
different.

Angela.


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Our Pokémon gallery

body:
For anyone who missed the context, FF and I are talking about this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Pok?mon_images

> They're thumbnails, they are in no particular
> order, they are clearly just a database backend.

Not so long ago we were using indexes from other encyclopedias to get
ideas for articles to write on Wikipedia. The indexes, which had already
be pruned to exclude articles we already had, were just on some "backend"
page and weren't intended for our readers at all. It seemed like fair use
to me. But then we got an edict from above that those had to be removed or
we might get sued IN A COURT OF LAW IN TRE... sorry, got carried away
there. Anyway, the indexes were removed.

Intuitively I would think that these 200 copyrighted images on the same
page, even if they are small and arranged in alphabetical order by
filename, would be a bigger problem than pruned indexes.

> I really, really doubt it would ever be
> a legal problem in a way the images in
> the articles aren't.

*shrug* I have actually a lot of respect for your judgment and you're
better read in this than I am so maybe you're right.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
On 1/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sean Barrett wrote:
> > Until we have a case, we have nothing to do.  When are we going to see
> > "Tony Sidaway v. Afd" on our docket?
> >
>
> When all other forms of dispute resolution have been tried, of course.

The arbcom has, on occasion, taken cases where not all other forms of
dispute resolution have been tried.

-Matt


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] On politeness

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Matt Brown
> Sent: Saturday, 28 January 2006 19:18
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD
>
> On 1/27/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Agreed. There have been tentative advances on this front,
> for instance
> > in the recently concluded webcomics case where two issues were
> > addressed: attempts to alter deletion policy without
> discussion, and
> > alienating newcomers by smearing them as trolls and ridiculing them.
>
> The alienating newcomers part is what particularly concerns
> me.  I think those on the 'front lines' of fighting vandalism
> and spam get very rapidly jaded and cynical, and start
> assuming bad faith automatically.  In truth, I find, most
> newcomer editors are operating in good faith.  Not being that
> familiar with the Wikipedia project, of course, many are in
> good faith attempting to do things we don't want or in ways
> that aren't the ways Wikipedia uses, but that should not
> allow us to think they mean any harm.
>
> It is a mistake to put these people on the defensive, to make
> them feel attacked.  Not all of them are capable or
> interested in being Wikipedia editors, but some of them will
> be - among whom may be many people capable of being excellent
> content editors once they understand the project better.  It
> is not in our best interests to burn these people.
>
> Even if their ultimate goals are not compatible with the
> Wikipedia project and they won't make useful contributors, we
> should endeavor to handle them politely.
>
> Of course, some contributors are not acting in good faith.
> However, we should keep in mind that they may simply be
> misguided.  Those adding spam links, for example, may not
> realise how much this is frowned upon here; seeing external
> links in many articles, they might simply have assumed that
> linking to on-topic external sites is acceptable.

Hear hear! During my all too brief stint on the help desk (before being
kicked off by Mr Wales for being too obviously Skyring) I saw any number of
people whose hearts were firmly in the right place but just needed a bit of
guidance. A lot of them weren't game to hit that "edit" button and wanted
someone to correct mistakes on their behalf. I felt myself warming to these
folk and did my best to encourage them to dive in. I told them that they
would be met with mutual respect and a helping hand.

And I truly hope that they find this to be so.

But I fear that all too many of these bright new editors will run into
people who resent them, people who have been here for a year or two and have
staked out their own little bit of content or stylistic territory and stand
ready to bark and snarl at any interloper. Do you know, I found one new
editor who was brutally reverted and abused because he had the temerity to
put full stops on the end of section headings? An admin simply picked up the
Manual of Style and swatted the poor guy flat, repeatedly using the edit
summaries to label him a numbskull.

I couldn't help feeling that a little politeness and gentle guidance would
have gone a long way there. Ignorance of the finer points of wikistyle
doesn't make a well-intentioned new editor a "numbskull".

I found a few angry people who had had bad experiences. One or two of them
were obviously pushing some sort of agenda and were smarting because they
had been legitimately seen off, but on checking the stories of others, I
couldn't help but feel that things could have been done better.

I spent a couple of days manning the helpdesk and enjoying it, but I've got
to say that the workload is huge, and more volunteers are sorely needed.

Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

body:
I think we've got some really cool and useful, but still pretty soft, anti-spam
measures brewing.  I think it would be ideal if, as these roll out, we look to
create kind of a cohesive and configurable solution.  I imaging a section in
localsettings where one could tweak the settins for all sorts of anti-spam
behaviour to match the problems in a given wiki.  Certainly some wikicities
could benefit from some fairly aggressive settings.

I've got a first pass of the url logging script that runs on 1.5 - I posted the
code on Meta:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Aerik/Urllogger

You guys might be able to do better or suggest some improvements, but I think
this is probably good enough to do some short term data collection.  It requires
one file with write permissions turned on.  I'm thinking running it for about a
week on a large wiki would yield lots of data.  Any takers?  I'm running it on
mine, but I've got so many other spam filters in place that the data isn't as
meaningful.

Best Regards,
Aerik


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

references:
<43D9BF3C.8040903@gmail.com>
	<drcnfu$sou$1@sea.gmane.org>	<43DA3020.8080706@gmail.com>
	<drepec$1p8$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>> Tim Starling wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>>> That looks like link exchange spam to me. Some of the OTRS queues
>>> get it every day. I very much doubt the sender knew anything more
>>> about Wikipedia's image use policy than he knew about the
>>> thousands of other email addresses he spammed. Besides, Wikipedia
>>> has long since passed the point of being impressed by PR 6 or 7
>>> ;)
>>>
>>
>>
>> Oh, it is, but it's the reason they want to link to us which is
>> worrying. We should *not* be a collection of movie posters or album
>> covers.
>
>
> They want to link to us because we're on a list of websites that have
> high pagerank, and they're hoping we might repay their link to us
> with one in the reverse direction. It has nothing to do with our
> content. The only thing they had to say about our site was "I've
> found your website to be a very good fit for our visitors." The thing
> about the posters was how they wanted us to link to them, not the
> other way around.
>

Fair enough. I wish we could send all this link exchange spam to Google
as evidence of people trying to rig their pageranks (and get them
removed entirely...) :)

--
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] Domain names

body:
John Lee wrote:
> Ben Emmel wrote:
>
>> On 1/27/06, John Knouse <jaknouse at frognet.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I apologize for this off-topic post, but I think everyone involved in
>>> the
>>> Internet has a right to know this:
>>>
>>> Athens' Own, a business that has had a domain registered with
>>> Register.com
>>> for the past few years, attempted to transfer it to Dotster.  Register
>>> refused to allow the transfer, despite repeated (and correctly-done)
>>> attempts, then auctioned the name athensown.com off to another bidder.
>>> Register.com is a bunch of crooks, and I urge everyone not to do
>>> business
>>> with them.
>>>
>>
>> Why are you posting this here, and was this moderated?
>>
>>
> Presumably John thought that if Wikipedia's domain names are registered
> with them, this would be useful. On the other hand, he might be trying
> to bad-mouth register.com on the mailing list.
>
>

I don't have a problem with bad-mouthing The Register (they keep doing
the same to us, don't they?), but we're talking about completely
different people here... :)

--
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] Re: Googlebomb

body:
Michael Snow wrote:
> Sean Barrett wrote:
>
>> (thank Thoth for spieling chuckers)
>>
>>
> Pliez dunt tyke thu naim uv Djehuty inn vein lyck theiss.
>

We apologise again for the fault in the subtitles. Those responsible for
sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked.

PS. Wi n?t trei a h?liday in Sweden this y?r ?

--
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] Being able to see an article whose undeletion
	is	beingactively discussed

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 1/28/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I created a small template (I find large in-your-face boxes repellant) at:
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_under_review
>>
>>I see that it's already been listed for deletion.  Oh how fun! :)
>
>
> I must say that the recent trend to IMMEDIATELY LIST FOR DELETION any
> template or category associated with a policy or procedure suggestion
> someone doesn't like is rather disturbing.
>

Can you IMMEDIATELY BLOCK THEM for violating [[WP:POINT]]?

(Or will they sue us IN A COURT OF LAW?)

--
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] Image:Wp ayb.gif

body:
Philip Welch wrote:
>>> Wouldn't they purge the entire User: namespace anyway? We're not  so
>>> interesting as for our user pages be republished in an actual
>>> encyclopedia.
>>
>>
>> Yeah, but the images are not stored in the User: namespace.  Currently
>> there is no way to selectively download images that are  just used in
>> articles (unless you use a spider to grab content  instead of the
>> database dumps, wich realy is not a good idea as it  kills our servers).
>>
>> Now granted our image dump already contains a *lot* of copyright
>> problems (like our 30.000+ untagged images), so orphanded fair use
>> parody images from userpages might not be the biggest problem for
>> re-users at the moment, but at least we are working toward the goal
>> of cleaning up that mess. However if we allowed fair use on user
>> pages those would never be cleaned up on our end (unless a better
>> image dump system gets developed), meaning we would basicaly force
>> reusers to download a bunch of files they can't use and have to
>> delete just because some Wikipedia users wanted to have something
>> funny on theyr userpage. Personaly I don't think can rely be  justified.
>
>
> Perhaps in addition to the Image: namespace, each page could have an
> additional image page much like the talk page, where images intended
> for use only on that page (i.e. fair use in articles, but also  userpage
> images) could be uploaded. I have no idea how this would  work with
> respect to our db and image dumps but it might be a partial  solution.
>

IIRC there's a way to Base64 encode images so that they can be pasted as
text onto a webpage; loading them as a URL displays the image in question.

(Someone help me out here? What's this called again?)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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body:
Brion Vibber <brion at ...> writes:

>
> I've got the captcha logging similar information to a file like this:
>
> 2006-01-28 21:45:28 testwiki: ConfirmEdit: new captcha session; 1x url trigger
> by '80.58.14.170' at [[Gooermc]]: http://a.bitofspam.com/
> 2006-01-28 21:46:58 testwiki: ConfirmEdit: passed; 1x url trigger by
> '80.58.14.170' at [[Gooermc]]: http://a.bitofspam.com/
>
> The really interesting part will be checking to see which ones never get the
> captcha form submission.
>
> It could be useful to get comparison data for some other wikis as well.
>

Brion - it looks like you're collecting the same info I set out to get, plus
some more - but is this running live anywhere?  I was under the impression that
the captcha is still totally in development?

Best Regards,
Aerik


from_name: Rob Church

body:
Only on the Test wiki, at http://test.wikipedia.org, at this time.

Rob Church

On 28/01/06, Aerik Sylvan <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:
> Brion Vibber <brion at ...> writes:
>
> >
> > I've got the captcha logging similar information to a file like this:
> >
> > 2006-01-28 21:45:28 testwiki: ConfirmEdit: new captcha session; 1x url trigger
> > by '80.58.14.170' at [[Gooermc]]: http://a.bitofspam.com/
> > 2006-01-28 21:46:58 testwiki: ConfirmEdit: passed; 1x url trigger by
> > '80.58.14.170' at [[Gooermc]]: http://a.bitofspam.com/
> >
> > The really interesting part will be checking to see which ones never get the
> > captcha form submission.
> >
> > It could be useful to get comparison data for some other wikis as well.
> >
>
> Brion - it looks like you're collecting the same info I set out to get, plus
> some more - but is this running live anywhere?  I was under the impression that
> the captcha is still totally in development?
>
> Best Regards,
> Aerik
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] More on WT:AFD

body:
Jesus. If we did that, it would involve about half of the site. If
people don't like the deletion policy, they can get it changed through
consensus just like anything else we do. I don't understand why it
automatically becomes "we have to use dispute resolution". There is no
"dispute" per se. Mike

On 1/28/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/29/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/28/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Sean Barrett wrote:
> > > > Until we have a case, we have nothing to do.  When are we going to see
> > > > "Tony Sidaway v. Afd" on our docket?
> > > >
> > >
> > > When all other forms of dispute resolution have been tried, of course.
> >
> > The arbcom has, on occasion, taken cases where not all other forms of
> > dispute resolution have been tried.
> >
> > -Matt
>
> well I seem to recall there has already been an RFC on deletionists so
> that would just leave medation.
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] FeloniousMonk's admin powers

body:
Just like anything else, you can open up a Request for Comment on him
if you feel like he's been abusing powers. Just saying he should have
his powers removed doesn't do anything. Mike

On 1/26/06, STEFAN CLAUDIU TIULEA <wizzard_bane at yahoo.com> wrote:
> You're not the first to have problems with this admin
> and you won't be the last one. I hold the same opinion
> as you do when concerning Monk.
>
> --- Itake <tchakolli at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Username: Itake
> > IP: 213.67.50.30.
> >
> > I was banned by the user "FeloniousMonk" because he
> > felt I violated
> > wikipedia's civility code even though I was warned
> > several times. Not only
> > is this untrue, but it is clear that the user in
> > question has a bias against
> > me because he and I are involved in an ongoing AfD
> > dispute.
> >
> > First off, I'd like to say that I did indeed violate
> > the rules in question.
> > At that time, I wasn't aware that there even existed
> > rules for civil conduct
> > on wikipedia. I was warned that my behavior was
> > against the rules.
> > I replied to the warnings on my talk page. I didn't
> > even edit the AfD
> > disputes any further, or violate the civil conduct
> > rules again, but then
> > suddenly I was banned. So user FeloniousMonk is
> > lying. I wasn't warned
> > several times, I was told I violated it one time and
> > continious violations
> > would lead to my ban. I didn't continue to violate
> > it, yet I was banned.
> >
> > Further, I belive the user FeloniousMonk should have
> > his admin powers
> > removed. He is quite clearly abusing them. I direct
> > your attention first to
> > examples of uncivil conduct found on the wikipedia
> > page about it:
> >
> > rudeness
> > judgmental tone in edit summaries ("fixed sloppy
> > spelling," "snipped
> > rambling crap")
> > belittling contributors because of their language
> > skills or word choice
> > ill-considered accusations of impropriety of one
> > kind or another
> > starting a comment with: "Not to make this personal,
> > but..."
> > calling someone a liar, or accusing him/her of
> > slander or libel. Even if
> > true, such remarks tend to aggravate rather than
> > resolve a dispute.
> > More serious examples include:
> >
> > Taunting
> > personal attacks
> > racial, ethnic, and religious slurs
> > profanity directed at another contributor
> > lies
> > defacing user pages
> > calling for bans and blocks
> > First off, the users Feloniousmonk is grouping with
> > fit in on several of
> > these criteries. Yet he didn't ban them. For
> > example:
> >
> > From my user talk page:
> > ::Both of you need an objectivity lesson. And Itake
> > needs a civility lesson.
> > [[User:Daycd|David D.]] [[User talk:Daycd|(Talk)]]
> > 17:05, 21 January 2006
> > (UTC)
> >
> > ::: What's the matter, Daycd?  Can't you just feel
> > that "Christian" love?  -
> > [[User:WarriorScribe|WarriorScribe]] 19:14, 21
> > January 2006 (UTC)
> >
> > That's it, you've pushed it too far
> >
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/J._Otis_Ledbetter&diff=36030780&oldid=36027828
> > this time].  Continue violating [[WP:CIVIL|the
> > civility guidelines]] and you
> > will be blocked from editing Wikipedia.  --<font
> > style="background: #000000"
> > face="Impact" color="#00a5ff">[[User:Cyde|Cyde
> > Weys]]</font> 04:19, 21
> > January 2006 (UTC)
> >
> > ::::: Interesting.  So you interpret Matthew 5:39 as
> > not applying to you,
> > then? - [[User:WarriorScribe|WarriorScribe]] 01:05,
> > 22 January 2006 (UTC)
> >
> > Delete pity we can't delete the author. ? Dunc|
> > ? 22:21, 19 January 2006
> > (UTC)
> >
> > (last one was from here:
> >
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Thomas_Ice)
> >
> > Secondly, the admin himself violated several of
> > these principles in a very
> > serious way. As can be shown by his comments on the
> > AfD in question, he does
> > not only have a serious bias that no doubt played a
> > role in my ban, but he
> > also does some uncivil conduct himself:
> >
> > Delete Neither diploma mills nor their presidents
> > warrant articles. Another
> > non-notable from our most prolific creator of
> > articles on non-notables,
> > Gastrich. FeloniousMonk 22:11, 20 January 2006 (UTC)
> >
> > Delete. Another non-notable from our most prolific
> > creator of non-notable
> > bios, Gastrich. FeloniousMonk 22:08, 20
> >
> > Your campaign here to promote your diploma mill is
> > its most notable aspect.
> > Who knows, maybe they'll name a "hall" in your
> > honor... FeloniousMonk 22:33,
> > 19 January 2006 (UTC)
> >
> > Delete Another tool off the diploma mill
> > assemblyline. FeloniousMonk 22:42,
> > 19 January 2006 (UTC)
> >
> > Delete Though I was impressed with the fact that "he
> > regularly reads
> > academic papers at Oxford University." But since I
> > regularly read the Pixley
> > Press and the ingredients on the back of cereal
> > boxes and I don't get an
> > article here, why should he? FeloniousMonk 03:53, 19
> > January 2006 (UTC)
> > The admin in question is quite clearly being rude,
> > he's throwing around
> > accusations, he's doing blatant lying, he is
> > taunting and he is being
> > judgemental. In my opinion, he has violated more of
> > these criterias then I
> > have. But because of his admin powers, not only does
> > he escape justice but
> > all the users who favor his side of the argument and
> > violate these criterias
> > seem to escape being banned aswell.
> >
> > Further, FeloniousMonk has just banned the User
> > "Jason Gastrich" on equally
> > poor basis. In the wake of this ban, and before the
> > ban, FeloniousMonk
> > himself continued to violate Wikipedia rules and
> > throw around unfounded
> > accusations. The admin FeloniousMonk is abusing his
> > admin powers, both to
> > punish users he doesn't like and to influence AfD
> > disputes in his favor.
> >
> > I feel the entire AfD dispute around the Louisiana
> > Baptist University
> > articles is being handled very poorly, and it gets
> > even worse when admins
> > like FeloniousMonk comes along to abuse their
> > powers. I hope this dispute,
> > FeloniousMonk's status as an admin, and my ban all
> > gets the attention it
> > deserves.
> >
> > Yours sincerely,
> >
> > Itake.
> >
> > (ps. I didn't quite get the procedure for these
> > kinds of things. There was
> > something about a mailing list, but I think that
> > signing up to it wasn't
> > necessary? If my inquiries are going to the wrong
> > place or so, please tell
> > me so I know who to send them to .ds)
> > > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> __________________________________________________
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>


body:
Brion Vibber <brion at ...> writes:

> Running currently on all but the top 20 Wikipedias plus meta, commons,
> and a few misc.
>
Great!  How do I go about getting the logs?

Thanks!
Aerik