from_name: will at avery.homelinux.org

body:
Quoting Fredrik Josefsson <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se>:
<snip>
> This is all based on some persistant users alleged
> comprehension of German jurisdiction where (according
> to the users) "sweat of the brow" is required to
> render something copyrightable.
<snip>

Just the opposite I believe. Merely having created something ("sweat of the
brow") is enough in the UK, but does not suffice in Germany.

Will

----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Challenge: explain NPOV in a sentence.

body:
On Aug 8, 2006, at 7:11 AM, Sarah wrote:

> "Teach the controversy"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy is the name of a
> campaign and strategy fashioned by the [[Discovery Institute]] for
> teaching creationism in schools. Perhaps not quite the image we want
> to associate with. :-)
>
> Sarah

Heh, definitely a related matter. Points of view that are nonsense
but a lot of people believe in them and campaign vigorously for them.

Fred


from_name: Sarah

body:
On 8/8/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> On Aug 7, 2006, at 10:40 PM, SPUI wrote:
>
> >> Explain NPOV in a sentence.
> >>
> >
> > "Teach the controversy."
>
> Outstanding!
>
"Teach the controversy"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy is the name of a
campaign and strategy fashioned by the [[Discovery Institute]] for
teaching creationism in schools. Perhaps not quite the image we want
to associate with. :-)

Sarah


body:
On Aug 8, 2006, at 7:16 AM, Dabljuh wrote:

> On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 08:11:25 -0500
> Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> "Teach the controversy"
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy is the name of a
>> campaign and strategy fashioned by the [[Discovery Institute]] for
>> teaching creationism in schools. Perhaps not quite the image we want
>> to associate with. :-)
>>
>> Sarah
>>
>
>
> But isn't that exactly what NPOV is about?
> Wikipedia is NOT a public school...

I think we are always going to cheat a bit. Flat Earth, Creationism
and Holocaust denial are always going to be slighted somewhat.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
On Aug 8, 2006, at 7:38 AM, Mathias Schindler wrote:

> On 8/8/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Aug 8, 2006, at 3:20 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Would it be possible to get in touch with them and arrange for
>>> them to
>>> tell us which pages they've created? Overall, it sounds good for us.
>>>
>>> Remember, a moderately biased article about a topic which meets our
>>> inclusion guidelines - if it is biased *towards* the topic - is much
>>> better than no topic at all.
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>
>> http://mywikibiz.com/contactus.html
>>
>>
>
> Their main page refers to an article "Farsight Hotel" which happens to
> be deleted. The talk page is deleted too, but seems to be in a
> Reminder Page of some editor.
>
> Is this related to mywikibiz in any way?
>
> Mathias

The creator and editor of that article, Thekohser, does make some
business related edits, but also edits a wide variety of articles.

Fred


subject: [WikiEN-l] mywikibiz (was Fwd: WikiEN-l commentary)

body:
On Aug 8, 2006, at 8:22 AM, David Gerard wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thekohser

Fred


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] MIME search

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

Steve Bennett wrote:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MIMEsearch

/*
 * A special page to search for files by MIME type as defined in the
 * img_major_mime and img_minor_mime fields in the image table
 *
 * @package MediaWiki
 * @subpackage SpecialPage
 *
 * @author ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason <avarab at gmail.com>
 * @license http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html GNU General Public
License 2.0 or later
 */
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFE2IXNqTO+fYacSNoRAsB4AJ9HRztqeEdTX/t318OF3qJUrkJwPACeK/zm
aPBG96+YjbCg/CpmqMZ6zGA=
=B/xp
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] GFW upgrade block level for
 Wikipedia

body:
roc wrote:

>According to several Wikipedians living in Mainland China (excluding
>Hong Kong and Macao), the GFW block on Wikimedia has been upgraded to
>a new a level, it seems that:
>
>* Official Wikimedia proxies are blocked;
>* "zh.wikipedia.org" becomes a URL-level keyword for GFW.
>
>The upgrade was noticed and reported as early as August 7, 2006 9:30 UTC.
>
>This upgrade coincided with a Beijing News (???) report on Wikipedia.
>
>Sources cited: the forwarded message below (in English), and a
>discussion at zh_wikipedia at googlegroups (in Chinese).
>
>More information should be available.
>
>Please feel free to post messages in Chinese on this discussion
>thread, they will be translated into English. (?????????????????.)
>
>If it is not appropriate to discuss this matter in public here, we may
>continue the discussion in private methods, please advise.
>
>Best regards and wishes.
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: mingli yuan <mingli.yuan at gmail.com>
>Date: 2006/8/8 ?? 12:52
>Subject: [Wikipedia-l] GFW upgrade block level for Wikipedia
>To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
>
>
>After a report from Xinjingbao(The Beijing News,
>http://www.thebeijingnews.com/ ) on Wikipedia, yesterday afternoon the Great
>firewall of Chinese government upgrades its block level for Wikipedia. Today
>many Wikipedia users in China report that they can not access Wikipedia via
>the official proxy provides by MediaWiki Fundation.
>
>This is a another bad news for Mainland Chinese Wikipedians again. Seems
>hopeless for them.
>_______________________________________________
>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
>
>
Well,

Two sites in Korea and China have been mirroring the entire English
wikigadugi site and I have been allowing them to do so
based on this situation in China.  I was  also constantly under DOS
attacks from various folks on ChinaNet, all of them from
ranges in Bejing.    They are still getting content and images from me
second hand, and I have blocked most of ChinaNet,
including two large schools in Bejing whose students sole purpose seems
to be to destroy my site through ssh hacking and
DOS attacks.  I moved the ssh ports to the internet network and blocked
most of these ranges in the firewall for all ports except
port 80 READ commoands.  Over the past month, these sites making mirrors
of the english version of wikigadugi have only
downloaded about 20% of the total English Wikipedia.  I am guessing
someone over there is build a mirrored library of the
site in South Korea for use in China.    I am happy to help them.

Jeff


list: wikimedia-l


list: commons-l

from_name: Patrick-Emil Zörner

subject: [Commons-l] Deletion of still-used images

body:
--- Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> schrieb:

> On 08/08/06, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I fully agree - every day I'm trying to see all newimages on
> > special:newimages and I try to delete all copyvio-looking images.
> I
> > know that it's a bit agressive, but I think, that blanking user's
> > upload is the best method of saying ''hi, something is wrong with
> your
> > images''.
>
> Er, I hope you write them a note explaining what they're doing
> wrong?!
> Simply deleting someone's images tells them nothing about what
> mistakes they're making, and therefore does not help them to avoid
> making them in the future.

Tell people twice? There is a big fat notice telling you what to do
when you upload an image. The consequences are known (BTW red and even
fat letters):

"If you do not provide suitable license and source information, your
file will be deleted without further notice. Thanks for your
understanding."

in czech in a big fat red box:

"UPOZORNĚN?: Pokud pravdivě neuvedete licenci a přesn?
informace o zdroji, v?? soubor bude bez dal??ho varov?n? smaz?n.
Děkujeme za pochopen?."

in german again red and even fat letters:

"Dateien mit unpassenden oder ohne ausreichende Lizenzinformationen
werden ohne weitere Nachfrage gel?scht."

...

Any language I missed? At what point do people not understand? Maybe I
should explain "your file will be deleted without further notice" to
all people again? Sorry there is no way anyone can tell me that they
did not see the big notice because I was there in the beginning of WM
Commons and tried (together with Bdka who put the biggest efford into
the matter) to make sure that nobody could tell us that there is no
way of understanding which files are apt for commons and which are
not.

Those files must be deleted! Period. You may talk to the people after
the deletion. The administrators of WM-Commons and especially Bdka
(many thanks to him) have done everything in the past to make sure the
terms and conditions of WM-Commons are clear in any language and to
the stupidest person possible (worst case). No way we have to tell
them again. We can I we want to but we do not have to.

greetings

Paddy

___________________________________________________________
Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de


body:
On Aug 8, 2006, at 9:27 AM, Phil Sandifer wrote:

> Graff's view would be
> better described as teaching multiple SPOVs.

This is what we ought to do, multiple hatchetjobs aren't worth much.

Fred


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [Wikitech-l] MIME search

body:
Anyone know what this is? I can't seem to make it do anything useful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MIMEsearch

Steve


from_name: Dabljuh

body:
"NPOV is a recipe to create self-contradictionary,
unreadable articles that misrepresent the Truth(TM)"

Here's a question:

Can you even say "X" is "not npov"?
When X is a view, then according to npov,
it should be included when it is relevant.

Is npov a recipe for contradiction?
Example, fictional article [[Is pie good?]] with
the contents of:

"Pie is good [1]. Pie is bad [2]."

It doesn't get better if you add attributions:

"Bill says, pie is good[1]. Bob says, pie is bad[2]"

Or 'biased attribution' style that is recommended.

"Bill who is very knowledgeable says, pie is good[1].
Bob, who is no pie expert, claims pie is bad[2]."

Or the 'typical wikipedia style as of now'

"Pie experts insist that pie is good[1],
while critics argue that pie is bad[2]."

Usefulness of the article in all cases? Zero.
My question whether pie is good or not (which
is why I went to that article) have not been answered.

My suggestion for an alternative to the current
implementation of npov is the signed pov fork.
So at [[is pie good?]] you get a pov-ambiguation page,
that contains a wiktionary-like entry, that redirects
you to the various takes on the subject, like this:

---
Is pie good? is an age old question for bakeries.
[[is pie good? (Bill's take)|Bill's take]] concludes that pie is good
[[is pie good? (Bob's take)|Bob's take]] argues that pie is bad
---

And in the individual articles, bill and bob get to represent their
indvidual views and arguments independently. The advantage being,
that each view is given the opportunity to make a coherent
argument: I can read bill's take, and I can read bob's take,
and decide for myself which one of them is more credible.

This would practically resolve the problem of increasing editor density,
that is, multiple editors with opposing convictions editing the
same article, turning it into an unreadable mess. With 'signed',
pov-forked articles, individual editors or pov factions can express
them coherently if they show to be incompatible with each other.


from_name: Tim 'avatar' Bartel

subject:
[Commons-l] Concerning trademarked images unrestricted by
	copyrights

body:
Hi,

Fredrik Josefsson schrieb am 08.08.2006 02:18:
> What is the deal with trademarked images that are not
> procted by copyrights? Should they find a haven on
> Commons, or should they be wiped out?
>
> An ambitious user created template:trademarked (
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Trademarked
> ) that he then applied to some images he did not
> consider possible to copyright because of a "lack of
> creativity". The template was applied to, for example,
> the logotypes of Opel and Mazda.
>
> It was also suggested that the logotype of the
> Wikimedia foundation is not copyrightable because it
> does not containt sufficient creative authorship.
>
> This is all based on some persistant users alleged
> comprehension of German jurisdiction where (according
> to the users) "sweat of the brow" is required to
> render something copyrightable.
>
> So what are the legal definitions on copyrightability,
> and what to do with images that are only trademark
> protected but not copyright protected?

About a year ago it was common sense to delete Logos in german Wikipedia
and at the Commons. This changed in german Wikipedia (I don't think this
is wise) - Logos like http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:GIGAlogo.jpg are
keeped and won't be deleted because the supporters argue that regarding
german law the "amount of creativity" to create this logo is too low.

I am argueing, the "amount of work, money and nerves" caused by a
possible law suit - which won't have to be taken by the supporters - is
too high.

In my opinion theese pictures should be deleted from commons (...and de)
on sight.

Bye, Tim.

--
Nie haette ich daran gedacht,
einer Sache zuzustimmen,
die gegen mein Gewissen waere.
-> Thomas Morus

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 546 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20060808/c4b20bb2/attachment.pgp


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/view_press_release.php?rID=16892

"Yet, Wikipedia lists only an estimated 12,000 of these notable
entities. At least 30,000 noteworthy companies and non-profits are
completely absent from the Wikipedia revolution!

As of July 2006, there is a new firm that will remedy this problem.
MyWikiBiz.com authors Wikipedia articles for companies and
organizations that presently lack exposure on the world's largest
encyclopedia."


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 8/8/06, Patrick-Emil Z?rner <paddyez at yahoo.de> wrote:
> The "keine Sch?pfungsh?he" [[Threshold of originality]] is a term that
> does not exist as such in the english language. But the reason the
> german wikipedia does not care is because the german "Urheberrecht"
> (copyright) is not infringed. We do not even infringe any law
> including the "Markenrecht" (trademarks).

Is there solid legal precedent that under German law, trademarked
logos cannot be copyrighted, under any circumstances?  In other words,
has more analysis gone into this than a few de: users reading the law
for themselves and working out what they think it means?

> I do not care about that [a lawsuit] at all. It is the responsibility of the
> uploader. Wikimedia projects do not even need logo images IMHO. And
> even if the uploader is sued I do not know on what grounds. If someone
> prints a logo on a t-shirt and sells the stuff he infringes the
> "Markenrecht". That is of no concern of the uploader whatsoever.

The uploader may be the first responsible person, but not the only
person who could be sued, I'm sure.  If de: image policy is changed to
allow such use, and it is later found to be incorrect to consider
logos as uncopyrightable, it's possible that those involved in that
enabling decision - or the foundation itself, or the German
equivalent, could be sued.  Even if such a lawsuit is unsuccessful, it
would require time and money we'd rather not spend.

> >From commons yes. But that is because commons needs to think about
> international law. And in other countries such a thing as "keine
> Sch?pfungsh?he" does not exist. So please do not confuse issues like
> WP de and WM commons.

WP de needs to respect international law as well, for that matter,
unless all the servers are now located in Germany and have severed all
ties to the Florida-based Foundation, which I don't believe has
happened.

I would especially argue caution for trademarks of non-German
entities, but I think that caution is required all round.

-Matt


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 8/8/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> On Aug 7, 2006, at 10:40 PM, SPUI wrote:
>
> >> Explain NPOV in a sentence.
> >>
> >
> > "Teach the controversy."
>
> Outstanding!
>
That presupposes there's a controversy. Or a legitimate controversy.

Wikipedia has, and naturally should, a strong bias towards verifiable
information.


body:
--- Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> schrieb:

> On 08/08/06, Raimond Spekking <raimond.spekking at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I agree with you but with one exemption: the deletion of copyvios.
> In my
> > opinion we have to delete them as far as possible to show all
> others
> > that we do not accept copyvios. Redlinks are more acceptable than
> copyvios.
>
> Well, how do you define a copyvio?

We do not define it at all. That is defined by law.

> Almost everything that we delete
> has, in the end, been decided to be a copyvio or a suspect copyright
> violation.

No, we do not delete because we have the suspicion! This makes the
thing very tricky. Because the commons-community must prove that we
have a clear copivio.

On one hand this is bad because the commons pics have been used on
several pages in the internet and nobody can tell us wich pic was
first. On the other hand we have the problem that people ignore the
warning (and this is the more likely way things happen) and upload
pics without asking people from commons first.

I therefore suggest adding to the notice "If unsure contact an
administrator see Commons:Administrators".

> That is after all why we delete no-source/no-license
> images.

Yep. And that is good!

> That is why we delete screenshots and derivative works and
> photos of public art in certain parts of the world, and images once
> believed to be free but found out to be actually not.

Acknowledgement to the first part and but do not understand the second
part. I will never delete a photo take of 2D art. Taking a picture of
the e.g. "Mona Lisa" makes nobody get new copyright. Even if the
museums claim it (the threshold of originality is far to low). But
maybe you are talking about 3D statues?

> Because we
> suspect or believe they infringe someone's copyright. So, this is
> rather where we are right now, rather than a new position.

As I said we must not delete on suspicion.

> > In case of any complains by original authors we can say "sorry for
> the
> > violation, but we do our very best to fight against copyvios,
> every day."
>
> Hm, that's a good point, at least morally. I don't know if it holds
> any legal weight.
>
> I also don't know how many, if any, serious legal problems the WMF
> ever has with regards to images. But that's why my second escape
> clause was for "OFFICE" style actions, where Jimbo et al intervene
> due
> to avoid imminent legal action and the like.
>
> > An idea *poke D?sentrieb*: Is it possible to show at CheckUsage if
> the
> > project has a CommonsTicker? This can reduce the work to en: and
> smaller
> > wikis.
>
> I think that's a great idea!

greetings

Paddy

___________________________________________________________
Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de


body:
> About a year ago it was common sense to delete Logos in german
> Wikipedia and at the Commons. This changed in german Wikipedia (I
> don't think this is wise) - Logos like
> http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bild:GIGAlogo.jpg
> are keeped and won't be deleted because the supporters argue that
> regarding german law the "amount of creativity" to create this logo
> is too low.

The "keine Sch?pfungsh?he" [[Threshold of originality]] is a term that
does not exist as such in the english language. But the reason the
german wikipedia does not care is because the german "Urheberrecht"
(copyright) is not infringed. We do not even infringe any law
including the "Markenrecht" (trademarks).

> I am argueing, the "amount of work, money and nerves" caused by a
> possible law suit - which won't have to be taken by the supporters -
> is too high.

I do not care about that at all. It is the responsibility of the
uploader. Wikimedia projects do not even need logo images IMHO. And
even if the uploader is sued I do not know on what grounds. If someone
prints a logo on a t-shirt and sells the stuff he infringes the
"Markenrecht". That is of no concern of the uploader whatsoever.

> In my opinion theese pictures should be deleted from commons (...and
> de) on sight.

>From commons yes. But that is because commons needs to think about
international law. And in other countries such a thing as "keine
Sch?pfungsh?he" does not exist. So please do not confuse issues like
WP de and WM commons.

greetings

Paddy

___________________________________________________________
Der fr?he Vogel f?ngt den Wurm. Hier gelangen Sie zum neuen Yahoo! Mail: http://mail.yahoo.de


subject:
[WikiEN-l] In 2006,
	Wikipedia started to exist (according to the world of Britannica)

body:
On 8/8/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> > And I don't think Wikipedia being "closed source" (say there were no
> > db dumps, contributors retained full copyright over contributions,
> > and there was no GFDL in play) would radically alter anything.
>
> For the most part, contributors still /do/ retain fully copyright; but
> if you made it "one author per article" we'd become E2.

I guess "contributors retain full rights over contributions" was what
I meant. Is that more accurate?

Steve


body:
On 8/8/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> And in the individual articles, bill and bob get to represent their
> indvidual views and arguments independently. The advantage being,
> that each view is given the opportunity to make a coherent
> argument: I can read bill's take, and I can read bob's take,
> and decide for myself which one of them is more credible.

That's the extremely optimistic view. In reality, all bob supporters
go to the bob page, and the bill supporters go to bill's page, and
both pages end up containing masses of unsupported hero worship and
being useless to anyone.

There's no reason not to explain both sets of arguments on the one
page. Your argument was a bit flawed in that you were contrasting
"Bill thinks pie is good" (one page model) with "bill gets to present
his individual views" (multiple page model). That's not a real
comparison.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
On 8/8/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:

> As of July 2006, there is a new firm that will remedy this problem.
> MyWikiBiz.com authors Wikipedia articles for companies and
> organizations that presently lack exposure on the world's largest
> encyclopedia."

Would it be possible to get in touch with them and arrange for them to
tell us which pages they've created? Overall, it sounds good for us.

Remember, a moderately biased article about a topic which meets our
inclusion guidelines - if it is biased *towards* the topic - is much
better than no topic at all.

Steve


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Aug 8, 2006, at 9:11 AM, Sarah wrote:

> On 8/8/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>>
>> On Aug 7, 2006, at 10:40 PM, SPUI wrote:
>>
>>>> Explain NPOV in a sentence.
>>>>
>>>
>>> "Teach the controversy."
>>
>> Outstanding!
>>
> "Teach the controversy"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy is the name of a
> campaign and strategy fashioned by the [[Discovery Institute]] for
> teaching creationism in schools. Perhaps not quite the image we want
> to associate with. :-)

The Discovery Institute was actually ripping off of Gerald Graff,
however, and the phrase is tremendously respected within humanities
instruction. (I hear it several times each time new TA orientation
rolls around) And the article is kind of hopelessly borked in
focusing on the Discovery Institute over Graff.

The problem is that Graff's phrase isn't exactly what we want.
Graff's vision of teaching the conflict (Which is the actual phrase
as it's most often heard) is in many ways much more radical than we
want to be. At its heart, Graff is dealing with a more
epistemological approach, and with interpretation of facts. We are
dealing with basic presentation of facts. Graff's view would be
better described as teaching multiple SPOVs.

Best,
Phil Sandifer
sandifer at english.ufl.edu

You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.

 >


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
On 08/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> Would it be possible to get in touch with them and arrange for them to
> tell us which pages they've created? Overall, it sounds good for us.
> Remember, a moderately biased article about a topic which meets our
> inclusion guidelines - if it is biased *towards* the topic - is much
> better than no topic at all.

Yes. Alison found their advertising pitch odious, but the proof will
be in the articles. And if editors know these articles are being
written, you can be sure they will be NPOVed out the wazoo. (As well
as nominated for deletion whether they should be or not, but anyway.)

Hey, it's someone writing GFDL material. We don't lose by at least
considering it.

- d.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 11:20:58 +0200, "Steve Bennett"
<stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

>Remember, a moderately biased article about a topic which meets our
>inclusion guidelines - if it is biased *towards* the topic - is much
>better than no topic at all.

As long as it's only moderately biased, for sure.  A copy & paste of
the company's press release is more of an issue.  I wonder which we'll
get?

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


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2006/8/7, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com>:

> Another easy and obvious way is to get [[User:Orgullobot]] delinking
> for us.  User:Orgullomoore is happy to implement the bot with
> translations and we have a good 40 languages already done. I have
> thought we should wait until the single login is implemented before we
> do this, but it's been 6+ months "coming soon", so I think we should
> go ahead and if single login happens, well good for it.

I am willing to offer my services here. I am an admin (even
bureaucrat) on Commons, but have not been active recently simply
because there's so much more to do; however, I think I can be of much
use here because I already have logins on basically all Wikipedia
languages, so I can act as if single logon already exists. If you can
inform me of images that should be deleted but currently are not
because they are still in use, I'd be happy to go around and unlink
them. Letting me do so would I think be better than having a bot for
it, because I will go and check whether there is any replacement
available, and replacing is much harder than delinking to do by bot
(because one has to check whether the subtitle is still applicable).

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels


subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
On 08/08/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:

> As long as it's only moderately biased, for sure.  A copy & paste of
> the company's press release is more of an issue.  I wonder which we'll
> get?

If they want to GFDL their press releases, that's up to them, and
articles in that style are more likely to catch the attention of new
article patrollers and AFD nominators.

If they're not as displeased as S*ll*g was by the results of NPOV
applied to a press release article, that's fine ;-)

I see no evidence of a disaster here as yet. If MyWikiBiz really want
to maintain that "zero deletions," it'll be in the interests of their
business to keep their content good.

- d.


from_name: Julien Lemoine

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
* Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> [2006-08-08 17:27:12 +1000]:

> > > I.e. the NULL character, and the LF / linefeed character.
> > >
> > > No idea if that is something that could or should be fixed or not.
> >
> > Strange, thank you for the report. I will have a look at this problem.
>
> I think this may just be the socket timing out. For example, if I do
> "telnet localhost <whatever-port-tcpQuery-is-on>", then after 1 second
> it times out and closes the connection. So no idea if it's a real
> problem or not to ignore NULL character + LF / linefeed character in
> the input, but I think that's what it's doing, and then the socket
> times out.

In fact, this is the way I got the query from socket. I used a library that
wait for some delimitors. And these two delimitors are not in the list, I
put a timeout of 1s to do not freeze the connection since it is not a
multi-threaded application. I don't think it is a problem, I can add 0 and 10
to the list of delimitors.

> Also, I've made a few small changes to the web UI (extra directory),
> and the diff is at:
> http://files.nickj.org/MediaWiki/wikipedia-suggest-0.2-extra-diff.txt
>
> It changes a few small things, namely:
> * Added strict mode (for PHP5), changed from 'var' to 'private' to
> keep PHP5 strict mode happy, and added quick accessor method for $res
> attribute.
> * Remove leading "/" from paths for image directory and query.php.
> This allows the web files to be placed in a subdirectory as well as
> the root directory, by using relative paths instead.
> * When the user made a search (e.g. "fish"), then highlighted all
> their search terms, then pressed delete (so that the search field was
> now blank), then pressed arrow up or arrow down, then it would show
> the old results (e.g. Fishing / FishBase / etc). To prevent this added
> an "if" clause to only show results when there is something in the
> query field.
> * Added one JS var declaration for 'i' loop variable.
> * Problem with quotes. For example, if I search for: "The devil", then
> it returns many links, including "The Devil's Rejects", the "The
> Devil's Advocate (film)", and so forth. However when I search for "The
> devil's", then the results become empty, but we know from before that
> there are suitable matches. The reason is because the query string
> comes through as "The Devil\'s" (e.g. can see this at
> http://suggest.speedblue.org/query.php?query=The%20Devil's ), so one
> way to avoid this is just to use stripslashes in query.php, so I added
> this.
> * I also tried experimenting with adding a "changeHighlight" function
> and HTML IDs to each table row (to save redrawing the table when the
> user presses the up or down arrow keys), but it doesn't seem to make
> much difference either way (doesn't seem any slower or faster), so you
> might not want to use that.

Thank you for all these great changes, I will add them this evening on
suggest.speedblue.org and put them in the tarball.

Best Regards.
Julien Lemoine.


body:
On 08/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/8/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:

> > "Don't be a POV dick"
> > I mean, it's not that hard.  Don't be an asshole.

> No, it's much more than that. There are plenty of ways of violating
> NPOV in good faith. You may have simply left out a viewpoint you
> didn't know about, or let your own world experience (such as living in
> a certain country) distort the perceptions present in the article.

Yep. It's easy to start on, but you do get less worse with practice.

And the Cunctator is, of course, right: it's an ideal, a compass to
follow - you never get there.

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: mingli yuan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] GFW upgrade block level for Wikipedia

body:
After a report from Xinjingbao(The Beijing News,
http://www.thebeijingnews.com/ ) on Wikipedia, yesterday afternoon the Great
firewall of Chinese government upgrades its block level for Wikipedia. Today
many Wikipedia users in China report that they can not access Wikipedia via
the official proxy provides by MediaWiki Fundation.

This is a another bad news for Mainland Chinese Wikipedians again. Seems
hopeless for them.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Interesting behaviour of "ISBN" magic word

body:
On 8/8/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> > *From the same page, text like this would actually work: "ISBN
> > 0312174403 / 0-312-17440-3". It's actually a good example of where an
> > {{ISBN}} template would actually be useful: you could make that second
> > number a link, which currently it isn't, because it's not directly
> > preceded by the magic word.
> >
> That was broken because whoever entered it failed to realise that the ISBN
> magic word works just fine with an ISBN containing hyphens: if you check
> that, it's actually the same number.

Heh, ok - didn't notice that. Presume that they had actually meant to
give two slightly different ISBN's, such as for two different editions
of the same book.

Ok, now it's time I stop boring everyone with this issue :)

Steve


body:
On 8/8/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Don't be a POV dick"
>
> I mean, it's not that hard.  Don't be an asshole.

No, it's much more than that. There are plenty of ways of violating
NPOV in good faith. You may have simply left out a viewpoint you
didn't know about, or let your own world experience (such as living in
a certain country) distort the perceptions present in the article.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
On 8/8/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> As long as it's only moderately biased, for sure.  A copy & paste of
> the company's press release is more of an issue.  I wonder which we'll
> get?

It's still not much of an issue. Nothing much really *bad* happens
when we have an article that says "J&F Enterprises is a fantastic
business based in California that fights global poverty and reduces
greenhouse emissions while producing the best donuts in the world".
Sooner or later someone will stumble upon it, whack {{NPOV}} and
{{fact}} all over it, and it will be fixed. And no one is going to sue
us in the meantime, and the average reader can *see* that it's not
neutral.

In the scale of things that can go wrong with our articles, positive
bias is not that important. Certainly well behind defamation,
copyright infringements, hoaxes (deliberate misinformation) and
incorrect medical advice, for instance.

Steve


body:
On 08/08/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe I'm the only one that can tell when any article is biased?

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

;-p

- d.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 08/08/06, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
> I fully agree - every day I'm trying to see all newimages on
> special:newimages and I try to delete all copyvio-looking images. I
> know that it's a bit agressive, but I think, that blanking user's
> upload is the best method of saying ''hi, something is wrong with your
> images''.

Er, I hope you write them a note explaining what they're doing wrong?!
Simply deleting someone's images tells them nothing about what
mistakes they're making, and therefore does not help them to avoid
making them in the future.

Brianna


body:
On 08/08/06, Raimond Spekking <raimond.spekking at gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree with you but with one exemption: the deletion of copyvios. In my
> opinion we have to delete them as far as possible to show all others
> that we do not accept copyvios. Redlinks are more acceptable than copyvios.

Well, how do you define a copyvio? Almost everything that we delete
has, in the end, been decided to be a copyvio or a suspect copyright
violation. That is after all why we delete no-source/no-license
images. That is why we delete screenshots and derivative works and
photos of public art in certain parts of the world, and images once
believed to be free but found out to be actually not. Because we
suspect or believe they infringe someone's copyright. So, this is
rather where we are right now, rather than a new position.

> In case of any complains by original authors we can say "sorry for the
> violation, but we do our very best to fight against copyvios, every day."

Hm, that's a good point, at least morally. I don't know if it holds
any legal weight.

I also don't know how many, if any, serious legal problems the WMF
ever has with regards to images. But that's why my second escape
clause was for "OFFICE" style actions, where Jimbo et al intervene due
to avoid imminent legal action and the like.

> An idea *poke D?sentrieb*: Is it possible to show at CheckUsage if the
> project has a CommonsTicker? This can reduce the work to en: and smaller
> wikis.

I think that's a great idea!

Brianna


from_name: Fredrik Josefsson

subject:
[Commons-l] Concerning trademarked images unrestricted by
	copyrights (correction)

body:
--- will at avery.homelinux.org skrev:

> Quoting Fredrik Josefsson
> <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se>:
> <snip>
> > This is all based on some persistant users alleged
> > comprehension of German jurisdiction where
> (according
> > to the users) "sweat of the brow" is required to
> > render something copyrightable.
> <snip>
>
> Just the opposite I believe. Merely having created
> something ("sweat of the
> brow") is enough in the UK, but does not suffice in
> Germany.
>
> Will
>
You're right. This misunderstanding was pointed out to
me later. "Sweat of the brow" is not applied in
Germany, it is other countries such as the U.K. that
make use of it.

The German thinking is explained in
Template:Logo-Germany (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Logo-Germany
). The template was however created only a few days
ago, and is now listed for deletion.

/ Fred
Fred-Chess


subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
On 08/08/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:

> http://mywikibiz.com/contactus.html

I've just added a comment on that form:

I'm a Wikipedia editor and admin. I like that you're contributing GFDL
content, and if you really have a zero-deletion record you're doing
well ;-) You may want to read the commentary on the wikien-l mailing
list and possibly participate -
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-August/thread.html#51824
- thanks! - David

- d.


body:
On 08/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:

> I would have gone more with "Describe the controversy, don't become part of it."

It might be worth someone taking the results of this thread and doing
a refactor on WP:NPOV (hitting the talk page, of course, because you
can bet there's a lot of watchers). If it's like any other Wikipedia
policy/guideline mix page it'll have been instruction-crept out the
wazoo.

- d.


from_name: Ed Sanders

subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
The article was created, and then blanked and listed for deletion by
User:Thekohser ("{{nonsense}} There is no such hotel.  This article was
intended for Sandbox.  My apologies."), presumably so they could make
the demonstration screenshots on their website (it is indeed the same
article).

Ed (ed_g2s)

Mathias Schindler wrote:
> On 8/8/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>> On Aug 8, 2006, at 3:20 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>>
>>> Would it be possible to get in touch with them and arrange for them to
>>> tell us which pages they've created? Overall, it sounds good for us.
>>>
>>> Remember, a moderately biased article about a topic which meets our
>>> inclusion guidelines - if it is biased *towards* the topic - is much
>>> better than no topic at all.
>>>
>>> Steve
>> http://mywikibiz.com/contactus.html
>>
>
> Their main page refers to an article "Farsight Hotel" which happens to
> be deleted. The talk page is deleted too, but seems to be in a
> Reminder Page of some editor.
>
> Is this related to mywikibiz in any way?
>
> Mathias
> _______________________________________________
> 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: [Wikitech-l] MIME search

body:
On 8/8/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
* A special page to search for files by MIME type as defined in the
* img_major_mime and img_minor_mime fields in the image table

Oh. I guess if the Special Pages description could easily updated, I
would add that there.

Thanks.

Steve


body:
On 08/08/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> On Aug 8, 2006, at 7:11 AM, Sarah wrote:

> > "Teach the controversy"
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy is the name of a
> > campaign and strategy fashioned by the [[Discovery Institute]] for
> > teaching creationism in schools. Perhaps not quite the image we want
> > to associate with. :-)

> Heh, definitely a related matter. Points of view that are nonsense
> but a lot of people believe in them and campaign vigorously for them.

Oh, definitely. Creationism is a good example - politically and
socially important, but not necessarily relevant in any given article
about science.

- d.


body:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 08:11:25 -0500
Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Teach the controversy"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy is the name of a
> campaign and strategy fashioned by the [[Discovery Institute]] for
> teaching creationism in schools. Perhaps not quite the image we want
> to associate with. :-)
>
> Sarah

But isn't that exactly what NPOV is about?
Wikipedia is NOT a public school...


body:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com>
Date: 08-Aug-2006 15:20
Subject: WikiEN-l commentary
To: dgerard at gmail.com

Dear David,

I appreciate your feedback.  There has been a lot of "buzz" within the
Wikipedia admin community about our service, MyWikiBiz.com.  I've
counted two different discussion pages where our intent has been
questioned, and now your mailing list.  Thankfully, in each of these
discussions, it seems that we're getting "support" comments in about a
2-to-1 ratio to "disapprove" comments.

While I'd like to join your mailing list, honestly, I'm just too busy
right now trying to get the marketing side of the business working.
So far, the results of our efforts have been on the disappointing
side.  All of the Wikipedians in a panic over what we're embarking on
may have nothing to worry about if we can't even get sales to come in
at a steady pace.

However, I'd like you to rest assured that MyWikiBiz.com does NOT
intend to write "press release" style articles for our clients.  We
understand that Wikipedia is an ENCYCLOPEDIA, and not a advertising
flyer.  (Granted, we will try to sell our prospects on the "traffic"
and "exposure" aspects of Wikipedia, but they are not going to get a
rose-colored-glasses, non-NPOV posting from MyWikiBiz.)  Examples of
our articles can be found at "Norman Technologies" and at "The Family
and Workplace Connection".  The "Farsight Hotel" article was intended
merely as a "mock" example.  I meant to have it created in the
Wikipedia sandbox, but it went to the actual database by another
employee's mistake.  I quickly deleted the article, once we had
captured the screen shots we wanted.

If you'd like, please re-post this message to WikiEN-l -- you have my
permission to act as our agent at this time.  ;-)

Kindly,

    Greg

--
Gregory Kohs
Founder, MyWikiBiz.com

Office: 484.840.4369
Home: 610.696.1644
Cell: 302.463.1354


body:
On 8/8/06, Sarah <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Teach the controversy"
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teach_the_Controversy is the name of a
> campaign and strategy fashioned by the [[Discovery Institute]] for
> teaching creationism in schools. Perhaps not quite the image we want
> to associate with. :-)

I would have gone more with "Describe the controversy, don't become part of it."

Steve


body:
On 08/08/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/8/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> > On Aug 7, 2006, at 10:40 PM, SPUI wrote:

> > >> Explain NPOV in a sentence.

> > > "Teach the controversy."

> > Outstanding!

> That presupposes there's a controversy. Or a legitimate controversy.
> Wikipedia has, and naturally should, a strong bias towards verifiable
> information.

"Teach the controversy, if its existence can be verified." This is
already enforceable using verifiability, to find *notable* critical
opinions to describe. It works okay.

- d.


body:
I noted on wikien-l that I had sent mywikibiz the following comment:

I'm a Wikipedia editor and admin. I like that you're contributing GFDL
content, and if you really have a zero-deletion record you're doing
well ;-) You may want to read the commentary on the wikien-l mailing
list and possibly participate -
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-August/thread.html#51824
- thanks! - David

- d.

On 08/08/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com>
> Date: 08-Aug-2006 15:20
> Subject: WikiEN-l commentary
> To: dgerard at gmail.com


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> On 08/08/06, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I fully agree - every day I'm trying to see all newimages on
>> special:newimages and I try to delete all copyvio-looking images. I
>> know that it's a bit agressive, but I think, that blanking user's
>> upload is the best method of saying ''hi, something is wrong with your
>> images''.
>
> Er, I hope you write them a note explaining what they're doing wrong?!
> Simply deleting someone's images tells them nothing about what
> mistakes they're making, and therefore does not help them to avoid
> making them in the future.
>

Writing notes is hard when you have to do it hundreds of times; are
there any decent templates which explain these things for various cases?
If so, what are they and where are they listed?

--
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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20060808/ae92eb81/attachment.pgp


subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
On 8/8/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
>
> On Aug 8, 2006, at 3:20 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> > Would it be possible to get in touch with them and arrange for them to
> > tell us which pages they've created? Overall, it sounds good for us.
> >
> > Remember, a moderately biased article about a topic which meets our
> > inclusion guidelines - if it is biased *towards* the topic - is much
> > better than no topic at all.
> >
> > Steve
>
> http://mywikibiz.com/contactus.html
>

Their main page refers to an article "Farsight Hotel" which happens to
be deleted. The talk page is deleted too, but seems to be in a
Reminder Page of some editor.

Is this related to mywikibiz in any way?

Mathias


from_name: David Spencer, MediaWiki User

subject: [Wikitech-l] Break out links-How are they done?

body:
August 8, 2006

Hello:

Break out links-How are they done?

I would like to create an external link from my wiki to an external web
site. I would like a new web browser to open up.

What is the wiki code I should use to perform this action?

For example, in HTML a breakout link code would look like this.

To read more about ice cream, please visit here

How do I make a break out link to open a new browser window from a wiki?

To read more about ice cream, please visit
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_Cream here].

The above wiki code will not open a new web browser.

I look forward to your response!

David Spencer


subject:
[WikiEN-l] In 2006,
 Wikipedia started to exist (according to the world of Britannica)

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/7/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
<snip>
>> Looking at the rest of the snippet though, I see "Open source
>> refers to both a model of software development and an ideology of
>> intellectual property."  There again are those two things which I
>> think are the most striking difference(s) in Wikipedia.
>
> I don't think most Wikipedians are open source fanatics.

No, but Wikipedia has certainly opened us up to such things :) It's a
great example of "open source really can work".

> And I don't think Wikipedia being "closed source" (say there were no
> db dumps, contributors retained full copyright over contributions,
> and there was no GFDL in play) would radically alter anything.

For the most part, contributors still /do/ retain fully copyright; but
if you made it "one author per article" we'd become E2.

> It would reduce the motivation for many contributors, but it would
> not actively interfere with getting the job done.
>

I disagree on the second point.

--
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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060808/228ff55c/attachment.pgp


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 8/8/06, David Spencer, MediaWiki User <wikipedia.org at davidspencer.ca> wrote:
> August 8, 2006
>
> Hello:
>
> Break out links-How are they done?

They aren't.  You'd have to hack the software.  This is a deliberate
design decision, I believe: the user's browser gives them ways to
decide where to open a link, and overriding them should be
unnecessary.  Let the user decide whether they want a new window or
not.


from_name: Patrick-Emil Zörner

body:
--- Fredrik Josefsson <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se> schrieb:

>
> --- will at avery.homelinux.org skrev:
>
> > Quoting Fredrik Josefsson
> > <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se>:
> > <snip>
> > > This is all based on some persistant users alleged
> > > comprehension of German jurisdiction where
> > (according
> > > to the users) "sweat of the brow" is required to
> > > render something copyrightable.
> > <snip>
> >
> > Just the opposite I believe. Merely having created
> > something ("sweat of the
> > brow") is enough in the UK, but does not suffice in
> > Germany.
> >
> > Will
>
> You're right. This misunderstanding was pointed out to
> me later. "Sweat of the brow" is not applied in
> Germany, it is other countries such as the U.K. that
> make use of it.

Correct. But many logos do not get what germans call "Sch?pfungsh?he"
by law. There is nothing like it in other countries. So it is stupid
trying to translate it even though the german article links on
[[threshold of originality]] which IMHO is not the same.

I to explain with an example. I take a photograph devide it into x
squares so that I can get the exact proportions on the canvas and make
a raw sketch with a felt tip. Then I just fill the colors with oil
paint. That is hard but dull work involving no creativaty whatsoever.
Therefore no "Sch?pfungsh?he" is involved. Same for scribble scatches
that have their origin during a phone call with the mother in law.

> The German thinking is explained in
> Template:Logo-Germany (
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Logo-Germany
> ). The template was however created only a few days
> ago, and is now listed for deletion.

WTF! Why has it not been speedy deleted? It is commons policy not to
have logos. Now we need to explain why in a deletion process? They may
have discussion first and then create such a stupid template. The
other way round it is totally ignoring policies that have been
accepted by a brought community for years. What has happened to
commons?

greetings

Paddy

___________________________________________________________
Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/8/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> It might be worth someone taking the results of this thread and doing
> a refactor on WP:NPOV (hitting the talk page, of course, because you
> can bet there's a lot of watchers). If it's like any other Wikipedia
> policy/guideline mix page it'll have been instruction-crept out the
> wazoo.

Yes, ironically NPOV is actually a disaster for Wikipedia policy
pages. It's exactly what we *don't* want: a description of
disagreement over policy, but no firm statement that we all agree to
accept.

WP:NOT has some classic examples, especially in how it rules
"glossaries" in but "lists of definitions" out. This apparently
satisfies everyone - if you write a list of definitions, WP:NOT lets
you keep it. If you hate someone's glossary, WP:NOT justifies your
deleting it. (and yes, I deliberately swapped those over).

Steve


from_name: Rob Church

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Fwd: HOWTO MediaZilla: MediaWiki extensions - New
	component

body:
On 08/08/06, Cyril DANGERVILLE <cyril.dangerville at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
> I'd like to register a new extension (DynamicPageList2) on the
> MediaZilla for bug reports. So my question is: how do I add a new
> "Component" under Product "MediaWiki extensions"?
> Thanks for your help.

Ask Brion.

Rob Church


from_name: Dabljuh

body:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 10:16:05 -0400
"The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wikipedia has, and naturally should, a strong bias towards verifiable
> information.

Here I disagree. When someone reads anything on Wikipedia that goes
against social consensus (the mainstream view, if you want),
increasingly, the first reaction is to go "Oh Wikipedia's got it wrong!"

In a way, that's good - Wikipedia has got it wrong a lot of the
time and people should change it. But then there's the cases
- and they're frequent - where the mainstream opinion is
terribly wrong because of various reasons, and people fight
"The Truth (tm)" vigorously.

Consider the regrowth of neurons - only ten years ago, the
scientific consensus was that neurons would not regrow in
adults. Now we have pretty hard scientific proof that this
is simply wrong. There was never any hard proof for the
traditional view - according to the portrayal of a neurologist -
this traditional view was simply asserted by a single individual
at a time without evidence and, rather unscientifically,
accepted by the scientific community and transported to
popular media where it became mainstream 'knowledge'.

Yet the article on neurons reads as if new evidence was challenging
old and acting all controversial on the subject - I have little
doubt that this is because of WP's bias towards mainstream ignorance
rather than towards scientific knowledge. A neurologist changing
the article would soon to be bullied out of Wikipedia for "pushing
his POV..."

In science, the single most important sentence you can ever use or
hear is this one: "We don't know!" and the second most important
"We were wrong" But the mainstream doesn't work like that:
People want absolute answers for everything, even if they're
completely fabricated (read the bible for further info)

I disagree with a certain interpretation of NPOV that basically
says that the mainstream view should be viewed as the right POV.
The only POV that can claim to be the rightest of all, is the one
that is supported by most of the evidence - not the number of
people who believe it. I would go as far as promoting a
"scientific point of view" in favor of NPOV.

And to imply Wikipedia had a bias in favor of scientific opinion
instead of popular, is simply delusional tbh.


body:
On 8/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Just because I'm controversial I'll disagree. Gmail, for example,
> always opens *every* external link in a new window. It works extremely
> well - you never have to worry about "losing your gmail window". It
> wouldn't be a bad thing if MediaWiki did similar - you're unlikely to
> really want to navigate away from Wikipedia, for instance, when you
> follow a link - most likely you'll read it then want to come back.
>
> The user's browser can override any behaviour, but that's not to say
> that providing good default behaviour isn't necessary.

Gmail is a special case because it makes such heavy use of Ajax, which
isn't typically stored in the browser history in case you want to go
back.  But as for the general rule, it would be true that providing
good defaults is a must, except that browsers tend not to provide as
effortless a way to stay in the same window as to open a new one.

For instance, in Firefox I can middle-click on a link to open it in a
new tab, regardless of where it would normally go, but if I want to
stay in the same window when clicking a target="_blank" I have to 1)
realize that it will open a new window beforehand and 2) select "Open
in this tab" from the context menu, which is only even possible due to
an extension.  It's annoying.  The Web would be a better place if
there were no default-target specifications: I know what I want to
open in a new window, you don't.

See also: http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3213


from_name: Ben Garney

body:
On 8/8/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just because I'm controversial I'll disagree. Gmail, for example,
> > always opens *every* external link in a new window. It works extremely
> > well - you never have to worry about "losing your gmail window". It
> > wouldn't be a bad thing if MediaWiki did similar - you're unlikely to
> > really want to navigate away from Wikipedia, for instance, when you
> > follow a link - most likely you'll read it then want to come back.
> >
> > The user's browser can override any behaviour, but that's not to say
> > that providing good default behaviour isn't necessary.
>
> Gmail is a special case because it makes such heavy use of Ajax, which
> isn't typically stored in the browser history in case you want to go
> back.  But as for the general rule, it would be true that providing
> good defaults is a must, except that browsers tend not to provide as
> effortless a way to stay in the same window as to open a new one.

More importantly, what percentage of people use wikipedia as a hub like they
do gmail?

I typically visit through on my way to bigger and better things - and don't
really care if I lose my window. With gmail, it's a hub page for me (I run
my life out of it) and the view I have open is stateful. These things don't
apply to mediawiki, unless I'm editing, in which case I'm not likely to be
clicking new links from that window. Even on the intranet instance of it I
run, I'm perfectly content for it to link in the same window - if I happen
to want it to be otherwise, I can control-click, use a context menu, etc.

For a highly interactive site, new-windows make sense... but I don't really
see it making sense for MW.

--
Ben Garney
Torque Technologies Director
GarageGames.Com, Inc.


body:
David Gerard wrote:
> The press concentrate on the wiki method and editability as the most
> amazing thing about Wikipedia.
>
> But I think NPOV is possibly a more important innovation. Other
> sources aim to explain the view they hold or to be authoritative; NPOV
> describes the views and has whatever authority that confers.
>
> I'm sorely lacking in snappy quotes, though. I ask your assistance:
> Explain NPOV in a sentence.
>
<snip>

Raul's Razor - An article is neutral if, after reading it, you cannot
tell where the author's sympathies lie. An article is not neutral if,
after reading it, you can tell where the author's sympathies lie.

- Raul's 13th 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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060808/ac44ab80/attachment.pgp


from_name: Cyril DANGERVILLE

body:
Hello,
I'd like to register a new extension (DynamicPageList2) on the
MediaZilla for bug reports. So my question is: how do I add a new
"Component" under Product "MediaWiki extensions"?
Thanks for your help.

--
Cyril Dangerville


from_name: Nick Jenkins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Wikipedia Suggest

body:
Hi Julien,

> I will keep the match case insensitive but will keep all differents
> capitalization,
> it will be in version 0.3 :)
> ...
> Ok, thanks for this precision. I will work on this next week.
> ...
> You are right, I will add a command line argument to choose between disk or
> memory implementation.
> ...
> Oops, I will also fix that :)

That all sounds good to me.

> > I.e. the NULL character, and the LF / linefeed character.
> >
> > No idea if that is something that could or should be fixed or not.
>
> Strange, thank you for the report. I will have a look at this problem.

I think this may just be the socket timing out. For example, if I do
"telnet localhost <whatever-port-tcpQuery-is-on>", then after 1 second
it times out and closes the connection. So no idea if it's a real
problem or not to ignore NULL character + LF / linefeed character in
the input, but I think that's what it's doing, and then the socket
times out.

Also, I've made a few small changes to the web UI (extra directory),
and the diff is at:
http://files.nickj.org/MediaWiki/wikipedia-suggest-0.2-extra-diff.txt

It changes a few small things, namely:
* Added strict mode (for PHP5), changed from 'var' to 'private' to
keep PHP5 strict mode happy, and added quick accessor method for $res
attribute.
* Remove leading "/" from paths for image directory and query.php.
This allows the web files to be placed in a subdirectory as well as
the root directory, by using relative paths instead.
* When the user made a search (e.g. "fish"), then highlighted all
their search terms, then pressed delete (so that the search field was
now blank), then pressed arrow up or arrow down, then it would show
the old results (e.g. Fishing / FishBase / etc). To prevent this added
an "if" clause to only show results when there is something in the
query field.
* Added one JS var declaration for 'i' loop variable.
* Problem with quotes. For example, if I search for: "The devil", then
it returns many links, including "The Devil's Rejects", the "The
Devil's Advocate (film)", and so forth. However when I search for "The
devil's", then the results become empty, but we know from before that
there are suitable matches. The reason is because the query string
comes through as "The Devil\'s" (e.g. can see this at
http://suggest.speedblue.org/query.php?query=The%20Devil's ), so one
way to avoid this is just to use stripslashes in query.php, so I added
this.
* I also tried experimenting with adding a "changeHighlight" function
and HTML IDs to each table row (to save redrawing the table when the
user presses the up or down arrow keys), but it doesn't seem to make
much difference either way (doesn't seem any slower or faster), so you
might not want to use that.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
On 8/8/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> The page was created by "Thekohser", and deleted on his request -
> "There is no such hotel. This article was intended for Sandbox. My
> apologies." - which is fair enough, we've all accidentally created
> something in the wrong namespace. I assume it was only ever intended
> as a fictional mockup.
>
> "Thekohser" is Gregory Kohs, who is a reasonably active editor and
> seems to have clue a'plenty. He is also the founder of, guess who...
> http://mywikibiz.com/aboutus.html
>
> The edits for the company seem to be, nicely and transparently, done
> under User:MyWikiBiz. Look through the contributions - there's nothing
> hideously bad there.
>
> Paid-for editing is going to happen. We have it being done publicly,
> cleanly, with standards and with clue. Not sure we've got much to
> worry about.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk

Paid for editing has already happened. 'tis a done deal. We have
bounties, a reward board, the Encyclopedia Project, wikimoney etc. not
to mention whatever isn't publicly recorded on Wikipedia or that I
simply don't know about off hand, in addition to MyWikiBiz.

Frankly, we should embrace this. Is not the Linux kernel much the
better for the contributions by programmers whose companies have paid
them to contribute? Is not Red Hat a pillar of the Free software
community for sponsoring the development of so many things? Why not
us?

~maru


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 8/8/06, Dabljuh <dabljuh at gmx.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 10:16:05 -0400
> "The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Wikipedia has, and naturally should, a strong bias towards verifiable
> > information.
>
> Here I disagree. When someone reads anything on Wikipedia that goes
> against social consensus (the mainstream view, if you want),
> increasingly, the first reaction is to go "Oh Wikipedia's got it wrong!"
>
[snip]
>
> I disagree with a certain interpretation of NPOV that basically
> says that the mainstream view should be viewed as the right POV.
> The only POV that can claim to be the rightest of all, is the one
> that is supported by most of the evidence - not the number of
> people who believe it. I would go as far as promoting a
> "scientific point of view" in favor of NPOV.
>
> And to imply Wikipedia had a bias in favor of scientific opinion
> instead of popular, is simply delusional tbh.

I'm not sure how you think you're disagreeing with me. I wrote:

"Wikipedia has, and naturally should, a strong bias towards verifiable
information."

You wrote:

"The only POV that can claim to be the rightest of all, is the one
that is supported by most of the evidence - not the number of people
who believe it."

Verifiability flows from evidence.


from_name: Raimond Spekking

subject: [Wikitech-l] MIME search

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

Edward Z. Yang schrieb:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MIMEsearch
>
> /*
>  * A special page to search for files by MIME type as defined in the
>  * img_major_mime and img_minor_mime fields in the image table

But do it works? On deWP, enWP and Commons the resultlist is always
empty. It seems that the output is cached but don't see if and when last
updated...

Raymond.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFE2LXVp+qUcbEr56YRAmNUAJ90byMRORUPLArLySPGLB2s+DPGKACgu8I3
sNCBZkxxc8HQ7PLpcHUT4dU=
=GrpO
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] en: well on the way to ... 2 million!

body:
On 8/7/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> The old days are gone, when
> you could start a new article, like [[Colorado]].

I started Berufsverbot and, more recently, Holding the Fort.  The
former is a controversial German law barring political radicals from
public sector employment, and the latter is an ITV situation comedy
that ran for three seasons and starred two very famous actors.

I was very surprised on both occasions that we didn't have articles on
the subjects.  There are still yawning gaps.


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Tue, Aug 08, 2006 at 10:44:25PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/8/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> > They aren't.  You'd have to hack the software.  This is a deliberate
> > design decision, I believe: the user's browser gives them ways to
> > decide where to open a link, and overriding them should be
> > unnecessary.  Let the user decide whether they want a new window or
> > not.
>
> Just because I'm controversial I'll disagree. Gmail, for example,
> always opens *every* external link in a new window. It works extremely
> well - you never have to worry about "losing your gmail window". It
> wouldn't be a bad thing if MediaWiki did similar - you're unlikely to
> really want to navigate away from Wikipedia, for instance, when you
> follow a link - most likely you'll read it then want to come back.
>
> The user's browser can override any behaviour, but that's not to say
> that providing good default behaviour isn't necessary.

The user can *not*, in fact, override "open in a new window", and newer
versions of FireFox (to my annoyance), don't even warn you.

That said, I'm all about configurability.

There's some javascript floating around that you can hang on the onblur
ov a checkbox on your page that walks the DOM and toggles this flag on
all A HREF links; that's my preferred approach.

Oh, <elitist>and anyone who "loses their gmail" window is <strike>too
stupid to breathe</strike> in need of some basic training in how their
tools work.</elitist>

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On 8/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> That annoyance rings a bell, but I don't seem to have it - just using
> 1.0.7 here, and ctrl+click on "break out" links works fine (like in
> gmail for instance).

Right, but try opening it in the same *tab*.


from_name: Jimmy Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l]Fwd: HOWTO MediaZilla: MediaWiki extensions - New component

body:
hi rob,

welome back :-)

cheers,
jimmy

> -----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
> Von: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
> Gesendet: 08.08.06 17:25:24
> An: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
> Betreff: Re: [Wikitech-l] Fwd: HOWTO MediaZilla: MediaWiki extensions - New component

> On 08/08/06, Cyril DANGERVILLE <cyril.dangerville at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello,
> > I'd like to register a new extension (DynamicPageList2) on the
> > MediaZilla for bug reports. So my question is: how do I add a new
> > "Component" under Product "MediaWiki extensions"?
> > Thanks for your help.
>
> Ask Brion.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
On 08/08/06, Jimmy Collins <Jimmy.Collins at web.de> wrote:
> hi rob,
>
> welome back :-)

I'm not "back" per se.

Rob Church


body:
On 8/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Btw someone asked about other magic words like ISBN's - patent numbers
> might be an example.

RFCs and PMIDs are supported.


from_name: Sarah

subject: [WikiEN-l] Guardian article about Wikipedia

body:
Guardian article about Wikipedia.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,1840193,00.html


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] sign: Will Edit for Food

body:
On 08/08/06, Mathias Schindler <mathias.schindler at gmail.com> wrote:

> > http://mywikibiz.com/contactus.html
>
> Their main page refers to an article "Farsight Hotel" which happens to
> be deleted. The talk page is deleted too, but seems to be in a
> Reminder Page of some editor.
>
> Is this related to mywikibiz in any way?

The page was created by "Thekohser", and deleted on his request -
"There is no such hotel.  This article was intended for Sandbox.  My
apologies." - which is fair enough, we've all accidentally created
something in the wrong namespace. I assume it was only ever intended
as a fictional mockup.

"Thekohser" is Gregory Kohs, who is a reasonably active editor and
seems to have clue a'plenty. He is also the founder of, guess who...
http://mywikibiz.com/aboutus.html

The edits for the company seem to be, nicely and transparently, done
under User:MyWikiBiz. Look through the contributions - there's nothing
hideously bad there.

Paid-for editing is going to happen. We have it being done publicly,
cleanly, with standards and with clue. Not sure we've got much to
worry about.

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


body:
On Wed, Aug 09, 2006 at 01:22:06AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/9/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > That annoyance rings a bell, but I don't seem to have it - just using
> > > 1.0.7 here, and ctrl+click on "break out" links works fine (like in
> > > gmail for instance).
> >
> > Right, but try opening it in the same *tab*.
>
> Err, I mean ctrl+click opens it in a new tab. I'm not sure why I'd
> want to open another window in the *same* tab. I think with new FF you
> can drag/drop the other tab back onto the first. Fwiw, the extension
> that highlights external links differently is awesome and highly
> recommended...

Because lots of people do *not* want the website breaking the customary
semantics of a link (take this browser window to the new place).

> >From Jay:
> >Oh, <elitist>and anyone who "loses their gmail" window is <strike>too
> stupid to breathe</strike> in need of some basic training in how their
> tools work.</elitist>
>
> Consider my use of "lose" in the sense of "losing your keyboard under
> a pile of paper". Not irretrievable loss, just temporary
> inaccessibility.

Yeah, I had that.  Hence my pre-emptive strike of labelling it elitist.
(Though why expecting people to be competent in using their tools is
elitest these days eludes me -- what is this, high school?)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On 8/8/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> They aren't.  You'd have to hack the software.  This is a deliberate
> design decision, I believe: the user's browser gives them ways to
> decide where to open a link, and overriding them should be
> unnecessary.  Let the user decide whether they want a new window or
> not.

Just because I'm controversial I'll disagree. Gmail, for example,
always opens *every* external link in a new window. It works extremely
well - you never have to worry about "losing your gmail window". It
wouldn't be a bad thing if MediaWiki did similar - you're unlikely to
really want to navigate away from Wikipedia, for instance, when you
follow a link - most likely you'll read it then want to come back.

The user's browser can override any behaviour, but that's not to say
that providing good default behaviour isn't necessary.

Steve


from_name: Any File

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> Heh, ok - didn't notice that. Presume that they had actually meant to
> give two slightly different ISBN's, such as for two different editions
> of the same book.

two diferent editions of the same book always have a different ISBN number.

the ISBN number is meant to distinguish among different book in
commerce. Since commercially two different editions of the same book
are a different thing, they have a different ISBN.

The hypens are use to separate the different parts of the number
(language, editor, book_id, checksum). The fild dimensions are not
fixed.
By the way since the last digit may also be an X (the checksum is done
module 11), it is not strictly a number.

Any File


body:
On 8/8/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> For instance, in Firefox I can middle-click on a link to open it in a
> new tab, regardless of where it would normally go, but if I want to
> stay in the same window when clicking a target="_blank" I have to 1)
> realize that it will open a new window beforehand and 2) select "Open
> in this tab" from the context menu, which is only even possible due to
> an extension.  It's annoying.  The Web would be a better place if
> there were no default-target specifications: I know what I want to
> open in a new window, you don't.

That annoyance rings a bell, but I don't seem to have it - just using
1.0.7 here, and ctrl+click on "break out" links works fine (like in
gmail for instance). I've got a couple of extensions, but afaik,
that's just the normal behaviour.

I'm starting to think that "break out" for *all* external links would
be a good default for all my browsing, and a modifier to reuse the
same window would be handy on those rare instances. *shrug*

Steve


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-09

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

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 413 of 429 tests (96.27%) FAILED!


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
> NPOV is the radical notion that people can draw conclusions from
> information.
>

You're obviously an absurdist. People can't draw their own conclusions;
that's what politicians and the media are for!

--
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

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 569 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/attachments/20060809/59307d30/attachment.pgp


from_name: HappyDog

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Warhog (aja Julian Fleischer)" <mediazilla at warhog.net>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: 09 August 2006 00:33
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Break out links-How are they done?

> But that is now possible in any browser. For example in Internet
> Explorer it is really annoying when pages popup in a new window... on
> the other hand it is not as easy as in firefox to open a page in a new
> window in MSIE. I guess there are at least 2 clicks needed to perform
that.

Not true - Shift-Click opens in a new window.

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/9/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That annoyance rings a bell, but I don't seem to have it - just using
> > 1.0.7 here, and ctrl+click on "break out" links works fine (like in
> > gmail for instance).
>
> Right, but try opening it in the same *tab*.

Err, I mean ctrl+click opens it in a new tab. I'm not sure why I'd
want to open another window in the *same* tab. I think with new FF you
can drag/drop the other tab back onto the first. Fwiw, the extension
that highlights external links differently is awesome and highly
recommended...

Anyway.

>From Jay:
>Oh, <elitist>and anyone who "loses their gmail" window is <strike>too
stupid to breathe</strike> in need of some basic training in how their
tools work.</elitist>

Consider my use of "lose" in the sense of "losing your keyboard under
a pile of paper". Not irretrievable loss, just temporary
inaccessibility.

Now, back to pointing out trivial bugs in the software...

Steve


body:
On 8/8/06, Any File <anysomefile at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> >
> > Heh, ok - didn't notice that. Presume that they had actually meant to
> > give two slightly different ISBN's, such as for two different editions
> > of the same book.
>
> two diferent editions of the same book always have a different ISBN number.
>
> the ISBN number is meant to distinguish among different book in
> commerce. Since commercially two different editions of the same book
> are a different thing, they have a different ISBN.

Right, what I was trying to get at, was that an editor might want to
do something like this:

* Bill Smith: Green grapes (ISBN 123456789, 1457589 and 131456032) to
indicate three different possible ISBN's for the same book. You'd need
to manually link (or repeat the word ISBN) to make those second two
actually link.

Btw someone asked about other magic words like ISBN's - patent numbers
might be an example.

> The hypens are use to separate the different parts of the number
> (language, editor, book_id, checksum). The fild dimensions are not
> fixed.
> By the way since the last digit may also be an X (the checksum is done
> module 11), it is not strictly a number.

Oh, cool.

Steve


from_name: Warhog (aja Julian Fleischer)

body:
There is a simple answer on the question: Look at the definition of
attributes for the a-element in XHTML Strict, you won't find the
target-element there.

XHTML (which MediaWiki is supposed to deliver i think) is designed to be
platform-indepentend, this means it can be displayed at any media, be it
a console or a three dimensional hologram (if that was possible). As
there are no windows in some of these medias, target has no reason to
exist, just like the <font>-tag etc. That's also why CSS exists.

On the question of wether it is overidable or not.. Firefox (and
therefore most gecko-browser) do have a configuration-option which
forces to open ANY link in the same windows (or tab in the context of
tabbed browsing). MIddle-Clicking will always open it in a new tab.

But that is now possible in any browser. For example in Internet
Explorer it is really annoying when pages popup in a new window... on
the other hand it is not as easy as in firefox to open a page in a new
window in MSIE. I guess there are at least 2 clicks needed to perform that.

regards, Warhog

Simetrical schrieb:
> On 8/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Just because I'm controversial I'll disagree. Gmail, for example,
>> always opens *every* external link in a new window. It works extremely
>> well - you never have to worry about "losing your gmail window". It
>> wouldn't be a bad thing if MediaWiki did similar - you're unlikely to
>> really want to navigate away from Wikipedia, for instance, when you
>> follow a link - most likely you'll read it then want to come back.
>>
>> The user's browser can override any behaviour, but that's not to say
>> that providing good default behaviour isn't necessary.
>
> Gmail is a special case because it makes such heavy use of Ajax, which
> isn't typically stored in the browser history in case you want to go
> back.  But as for the general rule, it would be true that providing
> good defaults is a must, except that browsers tend not to provide as
> effortless a way to stay in the same window as to open a new one.
>
> For instance, in Firefox I can middle-click on a link to open it in a
> new tab, regardless of where it would normally go, but if I want to
> stay in the same window when clicking a target="_blank" I have to 1)
> realize that it will open a new window beforehand and 2) select "Open
> in this tab" from the context menu, which is only even possible due to
> an extension.  It's annoying.  The Web would be a better place if
> there were no default-target specifications: I know what I want to
> open in a new window, you don't.
>
> See also: http://bugs.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3213
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [Wikitech-l] Reject for tweaking of checkuser feature

body:
I have been doing range blocks to identify the new accounts that the
vandal General Tojo is creating. He makes about 20 new accounts a day
including sleepers. The trouble is that doing a checkuser on the
range of a popular provider not only takes a lot of time, but is also
doing a lot of grinding as it goes back 30 days. Could an option for
checkuser be coded to permit checkuser for the last 24 hours? That
would suffice for an ongoing problem like a persistent vandal.

Fred


subject: [Wikitech-l] Request for tweak to checkuser


from_name: Dabljuh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Challenge: explain NPOV in a sentence.

body:
On Tue, 8 Aug 2006 17:52:50 -0400
"The Cunctator" <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Verifiability flows from evidence.

Right right - but you say WP would have
a bias towards verifiable information. That
is just wrong - WP has not a bias towards
verifiable information, but towards mainstream
ignorance.


from_name: Death Phoenix

body:
On 8/7/06, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/7/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a
> > boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
>
>
> "You have new mail," says the mailbox.
>
> > open mailbox
>
> There is a piece of paper inside the mailbox.
>
> > take paper
>
> You have a letter.
>
> > read paper
>
> "Dear unblock-en-l sir, my account kroz at aol.com is blocked and unable to
> post to Wikipedia..."
>

Oh my god, *I'VE* been getting the same mail too! You hacked into my
account, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?!?

(checks to see if you have the same framed certificate as DG)

Mail-hacking bastard


body:
On 8/9/06, Ben Garney <beng at garagegames.com> wrote:
> my life out of it) and the view I have open is stateful. These things don't
> apply to mediawiki, unless I'm editing, in which case I'm not likely to be
> clicking new links from that window. Even on the intranet instance of it I
> run, I'm perfectly content for it to link in the same window - if I happen
> to want it to be otherwise, I can control-click, use a context menu, etc.
>
> For a highly interactive site, new-windows make sense... but I don't really
> see it making sense for MW.

Ah. Wikipedia is very much a "hub" for me, as is another wiki run at
work. Once they're open, they don't get closed for weeks.

Steve


body:
On 8/9/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/8/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Btw someone asked about other magic words like ISBN's - patent numbers
> > might be an example.
>
> RFCs and PMIDs are supported.

Ah, so I see. Is all this documented anywhere?

Steve


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki

body:
Christiaan Briggs wrote:

>On 9 Aug 2006, at 2:00 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>
>>On 8/9/06, Christiaan wrote:
>>
>>>Monday, and who got a preview version of Mac OS X Server. And they're
>>>under a NDA.
>>>
>>A leaky one! :)
>>
>
>I hope so! :)
>
But beware, this mailing list includes an Apple employee who's right
now sitting at a table in Moscone Center watching WWDC attendees
straggle in... :-)

Stan


from_name: Patrick-Emil Zörner

body:
--- Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> schrieb:

> On 8/8/06, Patrick-Emil Z?rner <paddyez at yahoo.de> wrote:
> > The "keine Sch?pfungsh?he" [[Threshold of originality]] is a term
> > that does not exist as such in the english language. But the
reason
> > the german wikipedia does not care is because the german
> > "Urheberrecht" (copyright) is not infringed. We do not even
> > infringe any law including the "Markenrecht" (trademarks).
> Is there solid legal precedent that under German law, trademarked
> logos cannot be copyrighted, under any circumstances?

No.

> In other words, has more analysis gone into this than a few de:
users
> reading the law for themselves and working out what they think it
> means?

No.

> > I do not care about that [a lawsuit] at all. It is the
> > responsibility of the uploader. Wikimedia projects do not even
need
> > logo images IMHO. And even if the uploader is sued I do not know
on
> > what grounds. If someone prints a logo on a t-shirt and sells the
> > stuff he infringes the "Markenrecht". That is of no concern of the
> > uploader whatsoever.
> The uploader may be the first responsible person, but not the only
> person who could be sued, I'm sure. If de: image policy is changed
> to allow such use, and it is later found to be incorrect to consider
> logos as uncopyrightable, it's possible that those involved in that
> enabling decision - or the foundation itself, or the German
> equivalent, could be sued.  Even if such a lawsuit is unsuccessful,
> it would require time and money we'd rather not spend.

They are not uncopyrightable if the "Sch?pfungsh?he" is big enough.
Some logos consist of a simple letter like the german telecom but in
that case they need to use the german "Geschmacksmuster"-law
(registered design) but we do not care about that in WM-projects
AFAIK. Furthermore I think that you would need at least a whole 256
character set before you could use "Geschmacksmuster"-law. The
deutsche Telekom infact tried to protect the letter and the used color
but failed in a lawsuit (If you whant to know which laws I would have
to do some research).

I agree on the latter that if there is a lawsuit we would see how
usless these logos are in WM-projects. For companies it is the best
advertising ever having an article with logo in WP. Therefore suppose
the risk is so low, that it is more dangerous to cross the street a
billion times. But as a german saying translates "people have seen
horses throw up" (a very unlikely but possible event).

Nevertheless we do not disuss the german situation but the commons
situation which must consider international law.

> > From commons yes. But that is because commons needs to think about
> > international law. And in other countries such a thing as "keine
> > Sch?pfungsh?he" does not exist. So please do not confuse issues
> > like WP de and WM commons.
> WP de needs to respect international law as well, for that matter,
> unless all the servers are now located in Germany and have severed
> all ties to the Florida-based Foundation, which I don't believe has
> happened.

I am not 100% sure if it is like you say. Being a german citizen
writing german articles does not make me liable in a country like e.g.
Australia no matter if the foundation server is in St. Petersburg or
in
Canberra. At least not concerning copyright matters. Otherwise it
would be OK for germans to use "fair use"-images in german articles
which we do not even though the server is in America.

> I would especially argue caution for trademarks of non-German
> entities, but I think that caution is required all round.

Very wise ;-)

greetings

Paddy

___________________________________________________________
Telefonate ohne weitere Kosten vom PC zum PC: http://messenger.yahoo.de


from_name: Sean Whitton

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary

body:
I would say that this feature should remain - they shouldn't be an
admin at all if they get blocked and start using their powers
irresponsibly. Because this kind of incident is rare and isolated, the
steward response of dropping the sysop flag worked to stop it
spreading further. IMO, this system works quite well.

On 08/08/06, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> That already is true, at least one part. Admins are not allowed to protect,
> move, or delete pages if there's an outstanding block on the account, and
> they are not allowed to rollback while blocked either. However, the
> block/unblock feature was left to allow administrators to unblock themselves
> in case they found themselves on the receiving end of an AOL autoblock or
> something similar.
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
> [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Wildrick Steele
> Sent: Monday, August 07, 2006 3:39 PM
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary
>
> On 07/08/06, Sean Whitton <sean at silentflame.com> wrote:
> >
> > According to IRC user Connel, there is a rogue admin loose on the
> > English Wiktionary and several dangerous actions have been performed
> > (main page deletion, open proxy unblocks etc.). A RfP has been up for
> > several days and the admin has not been desysopped. I don't have any
> > evidence of this right now and am trusting the user's words as a
> > steward is needed *now*.
> >
> > Thanks,
> > Xy
> >
> > --
> >         -Xyrael ~ <xyr>
> >                 sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net
> >
> >
> Evidence enough at
>
> http://en.wiktionary.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=&user=Danghero
> us&page=
>
> With this in mind, I've been thinking whether it would be wise to have some
> kind of feature that disallows admins from unblocking themselves and while
> blocked not being able to perform admin actions.
>
> Cheers,
> Wildrick
> http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Vildricianus
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
	?Xyrael ~ <xyr>
		sean at silentflame.com | xyrael.net


subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary


body:
On 8/9/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > RFCs and PMIDs are supported.
> >
> > Ah, so I see. Is all this documented anywhere?
>
> Do you mean formally or informally ?
>
> If you mean informally, then:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:PMID
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:ISBN
> (couldn't see one for RFC, as [[WP:RFC]] is about a Wikipedia process).

Oh, actually what I basically meant was, "where would I find a
comprehensive list of all these magic words?". The mediawiki page for
magic words doesn't seem to mention any of these.

Thanks for the info though.

Steve


from_name: Tim 'avatar' Bartel

subject:
[Commons-l] Concerning trademarked images unrestricted
	by	copyrights

body:
Hi,

Patrick-Emil Z?rner schrieb am 09.08.2006 09:41:
> --- Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> schrieb:
> For companies it is the best
> advertising ever having an article with logo in WP. Therefore suppose
> the risk is so low, that it is more dangerous to cross the street a
> billion times.

You assume that the company likes the article. Most probably this won't
be the case if the article mentions unlawfull events, "bad behaviour" in
history like the Third Reich or something like that.

Also the problem most probably isn't the use of the image in our
articles but the use by other persons because of the license.

> But as a german saying translates "people have seen
> horses throw up" (a very unlikely but possible event).

Offtopic: Is this possible? To throw up you need two basic features:
1) The stomach ... ah well, too complicated in english. Because
offtopic, now in german: Zum kotzen brauchst du mindestens zwei
zugrundeliegende Faehigkeiten: Zum einen muss sich der Magen heftig und
schnell zusammenzihen koennen und gleichzeitig muss der Muskel, der
Magen und Speiseroehre verbinded sich oeffnen. Bei Pferden ist es meines
Wissens nicht moeglich, dass sich durch diesen Muskel Mageninhalt wieder
in die Speiseroehre begibt. Aber vielleicht sollten wir das off-list
weiterdiskutieren ;-)

Bye, Tim.

--
Es ist nie was in der Welt so gekommen, wie die Propheten und
die Fuehrer meinten und wollten, aber ohne die Propheten und
Fuehrer waere es ueberhaupt nicht gekommen.
-> Georg Simmel

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 546 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/commons-l/attachments/20060809/76065bbb/attachment.pgp


from_name: Andrew Dunbar

body:
On 8/9/06, Any File <anysomefile at gmail.com> wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> >
> > Heh, ok - didn't notice that. Presume that they had actually meant to
> > give two slightly different ISBN's, such as for two different editions
> > of the same book.
>
> two diferent editions of the same book always have a different ISBN number.
>
> the ISBN number is meant to distinguish among different book in
> commerce. Since commercially two different editions of the same book
> are a different thing, they have a different ISBN.

This is how ISBNs are expected to work. But those of us who have been
cataloguing our books on http://librarything.com have come to learn that
publishers are a little slack in this area and do in fact use one ISBN for
more than one edition more often than you might expect. Rarely we have
even found the same ISBN on different books I believe.

Andrew Dunbar.

> The hypens are use to separate the different parts of the number
> (language, editor, book_id, checksum). The fild dimensions are not
> fixed.
> By the way since the last digit may also be an X (the checksum is done
> module 11), it is not strictly a number.
>
> Any File
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
http://linguaphile.sf.net