body:
I'm not sure about the particulars, but my feeling is that the Vatican is
suggesting that it's always been copyrighted, and now they're just going to
enforce it.

Wikipedia/Wikisource doesn't make a profit itself, but in this situation I
don't see the Vatican agreeing to the commercial redistribution portion
of GFDL.

-k

On 1/25/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Katefan0 wrote:
> > All,
> >
> > CNN this morning was reporting that the Vatican has decided to assert
> > copyright on basically all papal communications (speeches, encyclicals,
> > etc.) made by every pope during the last 50 years, with the exception of
> > "the news media."  I don't know how much material we might have that
> could
> > fall afoul of this new declaration, or whether the Vatican would
> consider
> > Wikipedia and Wikisource under that umbrella, but someone more familiar
> with
> > Catholic information in Wikimedia areas should probably get involved.
> >
> > I don't know if there's any reason to think the Vatican would be willing
> to
> > grant a PD or GFDL licensing exception for Wikipedia. The spokesman said
> > that "newspapers have the right to publish texts as news" (such as
> > encyclicals), presumably because there's no profit made specifically
> from
> > their use.  But I'm not sure how this would apply to WP or WS.
> >
> > -k
> >
> > http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/01/25/ap2475804.html
> > _______________________________________________
>
> ...
> Is that legal to retrospectively apply a copyright on communications ?
>
> ...
> I must say I am abashed by this news...I seem to remember that the key
> point of a religion was to carry on a deity words so as to ensure a good
> number of believers...
>
> Weird
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [Foundation-l] Thoughts on admin-only IRC channels and RC patrol

body:
Hi all,

My decision to found the admin IRC channel has meant that I've had to
take a lot of flak from some of my friends which has been quite
upsetting. I thought I would write this email to the list to explain
what I see its purpose as. This also serves to highlight the importance
of RC patrol.

I started the channel following Danny's suggestion that there should be
a private place for discussion of confidential issues which we don't
want the public (and by extension, the media) to know about. Such issues
include complaints to the Foundation about libel in articles. Everyone
should know this is one of Wikipedia's greatest problems, that anyone
can say nasty things about someone else and quite often this isn't
picked up on RC patrol.

Danny's suggestion for a private method of communication between
"trusted users" given the issues we face was an excellent one in my
opinion and I thought that an IRC channel is an ideal medium for this
type of discussion to occur. Admins form a pretty diverse group of
trustworthy users (all admins have the best interests of their project
at heart) so for simplicity I created the channel for admins only.

The suggestion of a "trusted user" group is an interesting idea but
unfortunately very selective. Who is responsible for choosing who is a
trusted user? Whoever it was, there would be a large number of people
who would be missed off even though they are perfectly trustworthy.
Also, think of the consequences if someone found out if they weren't
considered trustworthy as they weren't given channel access - it would
be quite demoralising for one. Rationally, there may be perfectly solid
reasons why they weren't given access but emotionally it is still
demoralising. That's why I went by the simple, easily-defined standard
of admins on the English-language Wikipedia.

Later Danny and I talked about the scope of the channel and raised the
point that people who work the OTRS lists should be given access, since
they get the bulk of the libel complaints and are best placed to notify
people of potential issues. This is an entirely sensible argument.

Some people have raised concerns about backroom decisions, cliques and
the lack of transparency this channel will create. These are fair
comments to raise but I believe they are unfounded. Firstly, the
channel's purpose is not a decision-making one. Unrelated chit-chatter
and non-confidential discussions are pointed out as inappropriate for
the channel and go on to take place in #wikipedia. Some admins have
refused to join because they think the channel is closed and hidden. I
think a better action for them to take would be to join, and
self-regulate what the channel discusses. If it's not appropriate, ask
the people discussing to talk in a different channel.

On a related note, the entire reason this channel exists is due to the
problem we face from libel. This is why we must be grateful for the
existing work people who work RC patrol do, and we should do everything
we can to help them out. Problems which are ending up in OTRS and the
admin channel are due to edits slipping through RC patrol. What we need
to do is make their job easier. Admins who help out on RC patrol know
the huge difference admin rollback makes, compared to having to do it
manually. This is why we should either make the majority of RC
patrollers admins, or give them access to rollback. Because of the
rising standards for becoming an admin on the English language
Wikipedia, the former is becoming more hard. Arguments of "adminship is
no big deal" have now become "adminship should be no big deal". We have
to recognise that this shift has taken place - and those who hold this
principle should take part in RFA more, supporting more candidates.

Another - and better - solution, however, is to grant the rollback
privilege to good contributors who are not admins. This would make the
jobs of RC patrollers much easier - and will have the knock-on effect of
lowering the amount of complaints the Foundation gets. The Foundation
agrees that this is a great solution to the big problem we face. There
is a poll to gauge community consensus on the issue:
  -->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_rollback_privileges/Poll

Chris (Talrias)

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Thoughts on admin-only IRC channels and RC patrol


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Thoughts on admin-only IRC channels and RC patrol


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] note I've just placed on [[WT:AFD]]

body:
==Jimbo on the warpath re *FD==

*FD, AFD/DRV in particular, is causing noticeable problems for the
Foundation, as Jimbo has noted of late on wikien-l. (See archive -
there's a lot of posts on the subject this month.) The idiocy over
Category:Living people's nomination was the last straw.

I realise AFD/DRV regulars don't like this sort of discussion
happening outside WT:AFD and similar places, but it does happen and it
will affect *FD -- call this a notice to participate in the
discussions that are happening.

So the question is how to better ensure (a) intelligence-insultingly
crap nominations don't get in or can be killed quickly (b) better
behaviour from AFD contributors (assuming better faith of non-regulars
editing, and so forth) (c) cutting down the crippling weight of
deletion/undeletion process which leads some admins (e.g. me) to go
"fuck it".

Ideas? Assume for this discussion that nothing changing is not an
option, because it isn't.

(Note: my personal opinion is that almost everything nominated on AFD
does in fact deserve as quick, messy and painful a death as can be
managed. But the edge cases are causing real and serious problems
across Wikipedia and for Wikipedia.) - David Gerard 13:11, 25 January
2006 (UTC)

- d.


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Vatican is asserting copyright

body:
On 1/25/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/25/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Claims to own" is a slight misrepresentation, given that this is, you
> > know, actual law in a real country.
>
> That law is also covered by copyright though.

In those countries in which this applies, this over-rides the normal
rule of copyright.  It does not, however, affect dealings wholly
outside the UK or its dependents.

-Matt


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: #wikipedia-en-admins

body:
Nick Boalch wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
>
>>We need more people on OTRS and helpdesk-l, and no the two are NOT
>>mutually exclusive, so long as they both exist they will both get
>>traffic. The more sets of eyeballs the faster things will get done - I'm
>>trying to sort through a backlog of 2300 messages, which may or may not
>>have been dealt with already, including a heck of a lot of noise, and
>>there's a heap of stuff I can't deal with directly (eg. tricky deletions
>>and moves) because I'm not even an admin, not to mention that which I'm
>>having to forward to board people like Danny.
>
>
> While I suppress a parenthetical shudder at the extra work, the 'right
> thing' to do with helpdesk-l mail that is too complex or time-consuming
> to deal with, or that can't be dealt with directly by helpdesk-l
> volunteers, is probably to forward it to info-en.
>

As I've found in the past, info-en don't seem to handle forwarded emails
correctly... oh well, I can give it a try.

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

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR, a proposed update

body:
On 1/20/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
>
> The 3RR policy is valid. By pragmatic review, not every admin blocks
> under the same conditions. This gives the effect of favoritism, either
> personal or political.
>

This could be resolved if admins were to be less thoughtless in their
blocking.  I've seen 3RR blocks of 24 hours handed out like parking
tickets.  Usually two or three hours is ample for a first-time block.
In the case of a second offence, bump it up to 12 or even 24 hours.
I'll normally respond to requests for an unblock if the editor in
question has shown good faith or there are reasons to suspect an
innocent error (though I would need some convincing the someone could
accidentally revert an article more than once!)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] An outsider's view on en-admin-only
	whatever and the rest

body:
I strongly believe helpdesk-l should be shut down.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] It now only takes a simple majority to delete

body:
Search terms for these kinds of things come and go and are only of
ephemeral interest.  Thus, they should not be in Wikipedia; by the
time they get here, they are no longer in use and of interest to
nobody. Quite seperately from whether we WANT to be useful for that
purpose, of course!

-Matt


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] 3RR, a proposed update

body:
On 1/25/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/20/06, Jonathan <dzonatas at dzonux.net> wrote:
> >
> > The 3RR policy is valid. By pragmatic review, not every admin blocks
> > under the same conditions. This gives the effect of favoritism, either
> > personal or political.
> >
>
> This could be resolved if admins were to be less thoughtless in their
> blocking.  I've seen 3RR blocks of 24 hours handed out like parking
> tickets.  Usually two or three hours is ample for a first-time block.
> In the case of a second offence, bump it up to 12 or even 24 hours.
> I'll normally respond to requests for an unblock if the editor in
> question has shown good faith or there are reasons to suspect an
> innocent error (though I would need some convincing the someone could
> accidentally revert an article more than once!)

24 hours forces the person to sleep before coming back to wikipedia.

--
geni


body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:
> While I support this idea (and I would even approve of a measure where the
> software automatically granted rollback to all users after they passed a
> certain number of edits), this can also be accomplished with godmode light.
> I suggest that more non-admin vandal patrollers familiarise themselves with
> this and other powerful monobook.js scripts.

Thanks for the compliment Ryan!

Two of the points you have asked above have quite reasonably been made
before. I'll give short answers here and point you to where it is
discussed in more detail.

Firstly, using javascript does not work for all contributors, and for
those it does work for, it doesn't offer any advantage if you are on a
slower connection (that is, the same amount of data is transferred
whether you do it manually or use a script). Rollback, as it is a
server-side implementation, will work for all contributors it is given
to, and also uses less bandwidth to 'operate'.

Regarding giving rollback automatically, I think this is a bad idea.
Basically, rollback should only be used in certain circumstances because
of its lack of edit summary. Granting it automatically (for example, at
the same time someone gets the ability to move pages) will mean that
people unfamiliar with our policy on it will use it in 'content
disputes'  - which is itself Wikipedia lingo - and this may become
uncontrollable. It's best to give it out if people ask for it, so they
will have to be familiar with our policy on using it. Also, giving it
out automatically means it is unfortunately gameable and exploitable by
trolls and vandals.

For more detail on this, see:
  -->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_rollback_privileges#Replies_to_common_objections

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


body:
On 1/25/06, SPUI <drspui at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see. We now have a cabal that can decide what stays and what goes.

Might be nice if we did, but we don't.  That was my expressing an
argument for the articles' deletion through process.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: #wikipedia-en-admins

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>There are many many times when I need to quietly ask a group of trusted
>>editors to look at a problematic article -- for example, we get a
>>complaint from someone fairly obscure, on a topic I know nothing about,
>>and I look at the article and it is obvious crap.  The channel is
>>already proving useful in that regard.
>
>
>
> There's an obvious security problem here, of course, in that you have
> no way of knowing that someone who claims to be a given admin and who
> then gets into the channel is actually that admin.
>

My solution would be to only accept people with Wikipedia hostmasks. The
verification policy for that seems to work.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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body:
On 1/25/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> All right, so back to the topic at hand -- should we just delete every quote
> from every pope cited on Wikipedia and Wikisource?

On Wikipedia: absolutely not.  We are not including whole texts within
Wikipedia, we are selectively quoting from and referencing them, which
is well within the normal scope of fair use.

We might want to consider the status of some things on Wikisource, however.

-Matt


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> There is a problem of potential copyright violation of putting to the
>> Wikisources and other Wikimedia projects encyclis and other documents
>> signed by Pope. According to:
>>
>> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html
>>
>> and several other newspapers all these documents are copyrighted, and
>> Vatical officials are currently trying impose strict copyright.
>>
>> We have quite a lot of this stuff in Wikisources. See for example:
>>
>> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_Encyclicals
>>
>> and
>>
>> http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Kategoria:Religia
>>
>> What should we do with this? Send a formal letter to the Vatican,
>> asking for GFDL or PD licence agreement - or we should simply delete
>> all these documents?
>>
>> --
>> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
>> http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html
>>
>>
> As an independent soverign nation, the Vatican is free to do many
> things in regard to copyright law that would normally not be
> acceptable in most other countries, including retroactive copyright
> and other weird issues as well.  The problem here is to see what sort
> of copyright enforcement would generally be enforced through
> international treaties (is the Vatican a member of the international
> copyright convention?) and general common sense on things like this.
> Common sense would seem to indicate that the older encyclicals from
> the 19th Century and earlier would be reasonable to keep on
> Wikisource, although I could see the Vatican even trying to assert
> copyright on that as well.
>
> As far as sending a letter to the Vatican, I think it would be a very
> good idea, but try to really do a good job of explaining the goals of
> Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and point out how we are
> trying to make faithful reproductions of these documents and to try
> and keep them in context as well.  In addition, point out that by
> having this documentation available on Wikisource that we are making
> this content available to people in not just wealthy countries, but
> some of the poorer countries of the world including to people who
> don't necessarily even have internet access and through multiple
> languages.  There are many other points I'm sure you could come up
> with to really hit the point home, and I would recommend that you get
> some Roman Catholics, preferably some Catholic clergy who are also
> active Wikimedians (there must be a few somewhere) to help draft the
> letter.  The purpose here is to try to use language styles that fits
> within the heirarchical culture of the Church rather than catch
> phrases common to Wikimedians.
>
> It is likely that the Vatican is simply going to reply that they have
> their own website, and internet users can download the content from
> there instead if they really want to get network access to the
> documents.  It is worth a try to ask somebody from the Vatican however.
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Saqib

subject: [Wikitech-l] Parsing article text outside MediaWiki?

body:
I'm looking to parse the text contents ("old_text" field) of articles in the
"text" table from a pages_articles.xml dump into MySQL, without using MediaWiki.

How exactly would I do this? I tried extracting functions from parser.php but
this proved fairly complicated given the dependencies involved (with includes
and global variables); and I'm not sure how the functions work anyway.

What I need is something that can ignore stuff like Image and WikiQuote code,
replace the headers with h1/h2/h3/etc. tags, and maybe parse external and
internal links.

In other words, I'm looking for something that takes the text field and parses
it to be able to display in basic readable HTML output without any bells and
whistles.

Is there any function like this available anywhere? Or some guide on the specs
of such a function?

Saqib


from_name: Patrick, Brad

body:
Babelfish says:

Any text that has for author the Pope or a whichever ministry of the
Sede Saint of hour in then e' protect from the copyright. No publishing
house potra' piu' to publish the text of a enciclica and a papal speech
without previo contracted to payment with the Publishing Bookcase
Vatican (Lev). To establish it e' a decree signed slid 31 May from the
Secretary of State Vatican, cardinal Sodano Angel.

What is a publishing house under Vatican law? Does this apply to
for-profit only?  Online works too?

Fascinating that his Holiness would lock up IP rights in the first year
of his Papacy.  Ugh.

-----Original Message-----
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
[mailto:foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
valdelli at bluemail.ch
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 2:02 PM
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff

Sorry, the copyright will be applied only to NEW Vatican's documents.

Please, read this:

http://www.ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/topnews/news/2006-01-22_2439593.
html

it's in italian but it's the more importante italian information bureau.

If someone need to bring out Vatican's documents he must contact the
Libreria Editrice Vaticana.

Ilario

>-- Messaggio originale --
>Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:49:45 +0100
>From: Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org>
>To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff
>Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
><foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
>
>> Honestly? Ignore it. The Vatican can't make laws outside it's few
>> quadratmeters and outside there are other copyright laws that we obey

>> anyways.
>> Of those on wikisource only Pacem in Terris is younger than 50 years.
>> ciao, tom
>
>Polish Wikisource has more.
>
>--
>Ausir
>Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
>http://pl.wikipedia.org
>
>_______________________________________________
>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

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from_name: Tomasz Ganicz

body:
Hello,

There is a problem of potential copyright violation of putting to the
Wikisources and other Wikimedia projects encyclis and other documents
signed by Pope. According to:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html

and several other newspapers all these documents are copyrighted, and
Vatical officials are currently trying impose strict copyright.

We have quite a lot of this stuff in Wikisources. See for example:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_Encyclicals

and

http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Kategoria:Religia

What should we do with this? Send a formal letter to the Vatican,
asking for GFDL or PD licence agreement - or we should simply delete
all these documents?

--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html


from_name: Sean Barrett

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

SPUI stated for the record:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:VFU#R.40ygold_etc. - these articles were
> speedy deleted with the reason "Delete as gives info useful to child
> pornographers". Thanks to VFU being intended as an appeals court, meant
> to deal with process, only a majority is needed to keep deleted. Goodbye.

I've examined the articles.  They should have been speedy-kept because
"gives info useful to child pornographers" is an invalid and utterly
absurd reason for deletion -- we have articles on an enormous variety of
weapons that give info useful to terrorists, but we don't delete them in
spasms of self-loathing.

Then the articles should have been deleted because they are unsourced,
unverifiable, and unencyclopedic.  WP:NOT a random collection of code words.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | A mouse trap placed on top of your alarm clock
 sean at epoptic.org | will prevent you from rolling over and going
                  | back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
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from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] note David Gerard's just placed on [[WT:AFD]]

body:
>> Properly done each fact (or set of facts) will point somehow to
>> the source, including the page in the source.
>
> How? And how will the article still be readable? And what is a
> fact? And what use is the page number
> when there are loads of editions of a source?
>
> No encyclopaedia is written like this.

I agree that it would be difficult to achieve this, and far too labor-
intensive. (This was, from what I've heard, one of the major flaws of
Nupedia.) From today's featured article:

Until the mid-19th century, the area around Kalimpong was ruled
intermittently by the Sikkimese and Bhutanese kingdoms. Present-day
Kalimpong is believed to have once been the forward position of the
Bhutanese in the 18th century, overlooking the Teesta Valley. The
area was sparsely populated by the indigenous Lepcha community and
migrant Bhutia and Limbu tribes. After the Anglo-Bhutan War in 1864,
the Treaty of Sinchula (1865) was signed in which Bhutanese held
territory east of the Teesta River was ceded to the British East
India Company. At that time, Kalimpong was a hamlet, with only four
families known to reside there. The first recorded mention of the
town was a fleeting reference made that year by Ashley Eden, a
government official with the Bengal Civil Service.

I count nine statements of fact there, and no specific citations or
sources. Do we really want to have, at minimum, one footnote per
sentence? Unless MediaWiki gets fixed fast and we can have, say,
implied metadata for any piece of text in an article, it would be
unreadable.

That said, it would be nice to eventually have such a system.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


body:
Tomasz Ganicz wrote:

>Hello,
>
>There is a problem of potential copyright violation of putting to the
>Wikisources and other Wikimedia projects encyclis and other documents
>signed by Pope. According to:
>
>http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html
>
>and several other newspapers all these documents are copyrighted, and
>Vatical officials are currently trying impose strict copyright.
>
>We have quite a lot of this stuff in Wikisources. See for example:
>
>http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_Encyclicals
>
>and
>
>http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Kategoria:Religia
>
>What should we do with this? Send a formal letter to the Vatican,
>asking for GFDL or PD licence agreement - or we should simply delete
>all these documents?
>
The best thing is not to panic or send hurried letters until you have a
better idea of what's going on.  Sending letters before that will only
create more confusion.  The Vatican has been a party to the Berne
Convention since 1935, so it does have a right to copyright protection.
They also refer to 50 years, so they do not appear to be using the 70
year extension adopted by the EU.  No mention is made of Pius XII.  The
range of things that they appear to be covering suggests that they may
be treating the encyclicals as works for hire, (servus servorum dei).

It's encouraging that the Vatican is asking for a levy of 3 to 5 percent
of the cover price to reproduce material, and that this would increase
to 15% in the case of infringement.  I think we should be able to afford
that. :-)

I think that they are most pissed-off with the Milan publisher that
scooped the forthcoming encyclical.  Let's see what the Italians do with
this before we take very much action.

Ec


body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> As far as sending a letter to the Vatican, I think it would be a very
> good idea, but try to really do a good job of explaining the goals of
> Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and point out how we are trying
> to make faithful reproductions of these documents and to try and keep
> them in context as well.  In addition, point out that by having this
> documentation available on Wikisource that we are making this content
> available to people in not just wealthy countries, but some of the
> poorer countries of the world including to people who don't necessarily
> even have internet access and through multiple languages.  There are
> many other points I'm sure you could come up with to really hit the
> point home, and I would recommend that you get some Roman Catholics,
> preferably some Catholic clergy who are also active Wikimedians (there
> must be a few somewhere) to help draft the letter.  The purpose here is
> to try to use language styles that fits within the heirarchical culture
> of the Church rather than catch phrases common to Wikimedians.

Essjay (on English-language Wikipedia) isn't clergy, but he is a
professor of theology with a speciality in Catholicism. He's probably a
great person to get in touch with:
  --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Thoughts on admin-only IRC channels and RC
	patrol

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Aside from all other comments you made (in which I do not wish to enter,
> at least not now), I must absolutely ask where does the statement "the
> Foundation agrees it is a great solution to the big problem we face".

Jimbo and I have discussed this on several occasions.

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


body:
On 1/25/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> This sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure how it comports with their
> announcement:

Never trust a copyright holder to accurately inform you of the law.

We have exactly the same rights under US law to quote and reference as
we do with any other source.

Note that Italian law may differ; I have no idea.

-Matt


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
Properly done each fact (or set of facts) will point somehow to the
source, including the page in the source.

Fred

On Jan 25, 2006, at 1:56 PM, Justin Cormack wrote:

>
> On 25 Jan 2006, at 17:54, Jon wrote:
>
>>
>>   The other thing worth cracking down on is new edits - Our
>> policies already allow
>>   us to revert a new edit that adds new information without a
>> reference. We should
>>   be doing this automatically.
>>
>
> How are you supposed to tell if a new edit comes from an existing
> source for the
> article though? (Except in the case the article has no references
> at all).
>
> Justinc
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jay Converse

body:
On 1/25/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ryan Delaney wrote:
> > First off, thank you for a very thoughtful and polite email. At the risk
> of
> > taking this off-topic, I would like to address one point you made at the
> end
> > with a quick point:
> >
> > On 1/25/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> >
> >>Another - and better - solution, however, is to grant the rollback
> >>privilege to good contributors who are not admins. This would make the
> >>jobs of RC patrollers much easier - and will have the knock-on effect of
> >>lowering the amount of complaints the Foundation gets. The Foundation
> >>agrees that this is a great solution to the big problem we face. There
> >>is a poll to gauge community consensus on the issue:
> >>  -->
> >>
> >>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_rollback_privileges/Poll
> >>
> >
> >
> > While I support this idea (and I would even approve of a measure where
> the
> > software automatically granted rollback to all users after they passed a
> > certain number of edits), this can also be accomplished with godmode
> light.
> > I suggest that more non-admin vandal patrollers familiarise themselves
> with
> > this and other powerful monobook.js scripts.
> >
>
> The page notes that this and others exist; however these place
> considerable load on the servers and often break as soon as some part of
> Mediawiki changes.

Not to mention there are plenty of editors who just plain can't get godmode
light to work for them at all.

--
I'm not stupid, just selectively ignorant.


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: An outsider's view on en-admin-only whatever
	andthe rest

body:
"Delphine M?nard" <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote
in message
news:453b6e50601250604k30a77fc0o4e32c185818f19e6 at mail.gmail.com...
On 1/25/06, Maru Dubshinki
<marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > If the problem is really apparent, why can't you tag the page
> > appropriately?
> > I don't think adding a new layer of procedure will help anything;
> > people who already have the time and such will already be working on
> > the cleanup category.
> Sure.
> Let me just take a look...
> [[Category:NPOV disputes]] 1800 articles tagged.
> [[Category:Articles which may be biased]] 196 articles tagged
> [[Category:Accuracy disputes]]  1000 articles tagged
> [[Category:Pages needing attention]]  198 articles tagged
> [[Category:Possible copyright violations]] 199 articles tagged
> Of course, my "urgent request" will be taken care of within the hour.

So modify your reply to the complainer: instead of saying "oh yes, I've
taken care of it personally; you don't need to do anything" try saying "as
per normal Wikipedia procedure I've tagged it for urgent treatment. Please
feel free to help out yourself."

Maybe you can recruit editors this way, and at least they'll start with some
sort of motivation. Obviously someone would want to check that said
motivation didn't carry them away :-)
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] An outsider's view on en-admin-only whatever and
	the rest

body:
On 1/25/06, Maru Dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:

> If the problem is really apparent, why can't you tag the page appropriately?
> I don't think adding a new layer of procedure will help anything;
> people who already have the time and such will already be working on
> the cleanup category.

Sure.
Let me just take a look...
[[Category:NPOV disputes]] 1800 articles tagged.
[[Category:Articles which may be biased]] 196 articles tagged
[[Category:Accuracy disputes]]  1000 articles tagged
[[Category:Pages needing attention]]  198 articles tagged
[[Category:Possible copyright violations]] 199 articles tagged

Of course, my "urgent request" will be taken care of within the hour.

Cheers,

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Ivan Krstic

body:
Saqib wrote:
> I'm looking to parse the text contents ("old_text" field) of articles in the
> "text" table from a pages_articles.xml dump into MySQL, without using MediaWiki.

It's polite to read the list archives before asking questions; a
question to this effect was asked 13 days ago.

You'll want to read Magnus' message:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-November/032395.html

Fully outside of MediaWiki, building on Magnus' code is your best bet.
You could either replace what gets emitted directly, or use XSLT to do
the simple transformations you need on the XML and produce HTML.

--
Ivan Krstic <krstic at fas.harvard.edu> | 0x147C722D


from_name: henna

body:
On 1/25/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
>
> >Hello,
> >
> >There is a problem of potential copyright violation of putting to the
> >Wikisources and other Wikimedia projects encyclis and other documents
> >signed by Pope. According to:
> >
> >http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html
> >
> >and several other newspapers all these documents are copyrighted, and
> >Vatical officials are currently trying impose strict copyright.
> >
> >We have quite a lot of this stuff in Wikisources. See for example:
> >
> >http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_Encyclicals
> >
> >and
> >
> >http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Kategoria:Religia
> >
> >What should we do with this? Send a formal letter to the Vatican,
> >asking for GFDL or PD licence agreement - or we should simply delete
> >all these documents?
> >
> >--
> >Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> >http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html
> >
> >
> As an independent soverign nation, the Vatican is free to do many things
> in regard to copyright law that would normally not be acceptable in most
> other countries, including retroactive copyright and other weird issues
> as well.  The problem here is to see what sort of copyright enforcement
> would generally be enforced through international treaties (is the
> Vatican a member of the international copyright convention?) and general
> common sense on things like this.  Common sense would seem to indicate
> that the older encyclicals from the 19th Century and earlier would be
> reasonable to keep on Wikisource, although I could see the Vatican even
> trying to assert copyright on that as well.
>
> As far as sending a letter to the Vatican, I think it would be a very
> good idea, but try to really do a good job of explaining the goals of
> Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and point out how we are trying
> to make faithful reproductions of these documents and to try and keep
> them in context as well.  In addition, point out that by having this
> documentation available on Wikisource that we are making this content
> available to people in not just wealthy countries, but some of the
> poorer countries of the world including to people who don't necessarily
> even have internet access and through multiple languages.  There are
> many other points I'm sure you could come up with to really hit the
> point home, and I would recommend that you get some Roman Catholics,
> preferably some Catholic clergy who are also active Wikimedians (there
> must be a few somewhere) to help draft the letter.  The purpose here is
> to try to use language styles that fits within the heirarchical culture
> of the Church rather than catch phrases common to Wikimedians.

We have at least one clergy user on the dutch wikipedia
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebruiker:broederhugo
not sure wich specific religion tho.

henna
--
"Maybe you knew early on that your track went from point A to B, but
unlike you I wasn't given a map at birth!" Alyssa, "Chasing Amy"
http://hekla.rave.org/cookbook.html - my crossplatform dieet/recipe app


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Thoughts on admin-only IRC channels and RC patrol

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Another - and better - solution, however, is to grant the rollback
> privilege to good contributors who are not admins. This would make the
> jobs of RC patrollers much easier - and will have the knock-on effect of
> lowering the amount of complaints the Foundation gets. The Foundation
> agrees that this is a great solution to the big problem we face. There
> is a poll to gauge community consensus on the issue:
>  -->
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_rollback_privileges/Poll
>
>
> Chris (Talrias)

Aside from all other comments you made (in which I do not wish to enter,
at least not now), I must absolutely ask where does the statement "the
Foundation agrees it is a great solution to the big problem we face".

Afaik, the board members never discussed the issue between themselves
(and I actually doubt they should); and even less issued a statement on
the matter.

Libel accusations and their legal consequences directly impact the
Foundation. And yes, deserve much more attention that they currently get
(a dual system involving both the new channel and OTRS members from all
languages is definitly interesting in that prospect).

However, a new feature to improve vandalism fight is more of a community
issue. Community which must find a way to convince the developers to set
up the feature. If you give good arguments, I am sure you can convince
them. But I do not remember the Foundation saying anything on the
matter. Nor do I think it is its job at all.

Ant


body:
2006/1/25, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org>:
> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> > As far as sending a letter to the Vatican, I think it would be a very
> > good idea, but try to really do a good job of explaining the goals of
> > Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and point out how we are trying
> > to make faithful reproductions of these documents and to try and keep
> > them in context as well.  In addition, point out that by having this
> > documentation available on Wikisource that we are making this content
> > available to people in not just wealthy countries, but some of the
> > poorer countries of the world including to people who don't necessarily
> > even have internet access and through multiple languages.  There are
> > many other points I'm sure you could come up with to really hit the
> > point home, and I would recommend that you get some Roman Catholics,
> > preferably some Catholic clergy who are also active Wikimedians (there
> > must be a few somewhere) to help draft the letter.  The purpose here is
> > to try to use language styles that fits within the heirarchical culture
> > of the Church rather than catch phrases common to Wikimedians.
>
> Essjay (on English-language Wikipedia) isn't clergy, but he is a
> professor of theology with a speciality in Catholicism. He's probably a
> great person to get in touch with:
>   --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
>

OK. I will contact him - but I guess if it make sence to send a letter
to the Vatican it should be done officialy by Foundation?

--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blue sky thinking around "neutral point of view"

body:
I've begun making a conscious effort to stop using "POV" and instead use the
word bias, which is really more appropriate as a descriptor for bad behavior
vis a vis this policy.

-k

On 1/25/06, Haukur ?orgeirsson <haukurth at hi.is> wrote:
>
> I, too, am sick and tired of the acronym "POV" thrown around as an insult.
> I doubt we can gather enough steam to deprecate the [[WP:NPOV]] shortcut
> but my suggestion for an alternative would be [[WP:NEUTRAL]].
>
> Regards,
> Haukur
>
>
> > Just some blue sky thinking:
> >
> >   Our neutral point of view policy has aroused a fair bit of discussion
> at
> > [[WP:NPOV]]
> >   recently, and this has got me thinking:
> >
> >   We've all seen arguments where people keep arguing that this is "POV"
> or
> > someone
> >   is being "POV" where in normal English we'd just call something an
> > "opinion" and
> >   note that someone has an opinion on something. Indeed, the made-up
> term
> > POV
> >   is bandied around usually to mean something along the lines of - you
> are
> > wrong,
> >   I am right, and because it is a NPOV issue, the point is
> non-negotiable,
> > which isn't
> >   a very good place to start from if the issue is to be resolved. Plus
> far
> > too many
> >   people read NPOV as equating to "no point of view" as opposed to the
> > real requirement, which is to write from a neutral viewpoint.
> >
> >   My blue sky thinking (which I don't claim to be a panacea, just an
> > interesting thought) is why don't we rename the policy page
> > [[Wikipedia:Neutral viewpoint]] and make
> >   the shortcut link to it [[WP:NEUVIEW]] (or [[WP:NEUTVIEW]]). It goes
> > without
> >   saying that the underlying concept behind the policy would remain
> > completely
> >   unchanged - just the name of the page would change - plus it would
> > enhance
> >   people's perceptions that it is about requiring a neutral viewpoint,
> > rather than no
> >   viewpoint, or neutrality more generally: it would help define the
> policy
> > in positive terms
> >   and (and perhaps I'm going too far here:) ) may help stop content
> > disputes escalating
> >   in scale and viciousness.
> >
> >   Kind regards
> >
> >   Jon
> >   (jguk)
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Yahoo! Messenger  NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with
> > voicemail
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
2006/1/25, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net>:
> Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
>
> >2006/1/25, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org>:
> >
> >
> >>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I would recommend that you get some Roman Catholics,
> >>>preferably some Catholic clergy who are also active Wikimedians (there
> >>>must be a few somewhere) to help draft the letter.  The purpose here is
> >>>to try to use language styles that fits within the heirarchical culture
> >>>of the Church rather than catch phrases common to Wikimedians.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Essjay (on English-language Wikipedia) isn't clergy, but he is a
> >>professor of theology with a speciality in Catholicism. He's probably a
> >>great person to get in touch with:
> >>  --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
> >>
> >>
> >
> >OK. I will contact him - but I guess if it make sence to send a letter
> >to the Vatican it should be done officialy by Foundation?
> >
> >--
> >Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> >http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html
> >
> >
> This doesn't have to be an "official" contact.  Simply write the letter
> as a group of interested Wikimedia users who are interested in adding
> original content that comes from official Vatican sources.  That just
> keeps the legal hassles of writing a formal letter representing the
> foundation and lets the Vatican know that this is a volunteer project as
> well.
>

Well - I though we have legal department of Wikimedia Foundation for
some reasons...
What should we do if the answer from Vatican is "no" ?

--
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html


from_name: Chip Berlet

body:
This is a bit snide (what a shock coming from me) but it makes some good points about relative value of material. It was in answer to a question about my editing philosophy (no, really stop laughing, I have one).

The issue is not just NPOV, but evaluating the importance of data. That's what editorial judgement for an encyclopdia is about: both NPOV and relative value.

= =

	Maybe I am reading Wiki policies in an odd way, and I am happy for others to offer their views, but I think there are essentially five levels.

	1.	The majority view of the recognized experts in a field, and reputable authors in "mainstream" edited publications.

	1.	Minority views of published scholars in a field, and authors in "mainstream" edited publications.

	1.	Minority views of published scholars and authors in marginal but edited publications.

	1.	Minority views of authors in marginal publications and websites that nonetheless provide valuable insights or which have received public attention.

	1.	Idiosyncratic views that are essentialy self-published, overly conspiracist, or lunatic.

	In regular encyclopedias, the focus is on detailing the first category, with some small mentions of the second category, and sometimes a brief discussion of publicized controversies in any of the categories. Here on Wikipedia, there is more latitude, and more room for detailing the lesser categories.

	But I do not believe that minor theories should displace majority scholarship on main pages. And since there are plenty of websites, I do not think that every minority view needs to be detialed here. That's what search engines provide. The goal of a universal online encyclopedia such as Wiki is to help readers find the most reliable majority views on a subject, important minority views, with pointers to lesser views.

	The claim that dissident scholars and authors are "censored" in the United States is hyperbolic. Attacked, vilified, sometimes not rehired or even fired, yes; but not censored. Take an example of the political left, with publishers such as Routledge, The New Press, South End Press, Common Courage Press, etc, and magazines such as the Nation, In These Times, Z Magazine, Mother Jones, etc. there are plenty of edited published sources for dissident minority views. This is also true on the political right, with numerous book and periodical publishers.

	The problem is with Wiki editors who insist that every one of their pet theories, and the blobs of original POV research they have stumbled across while surfing the Web, deserves extended text entries on Wikipedia. This is a false--and frankly irritating and disruptive--notion that demonstrates that there is an endless supply of people whose egocentrism and sense of self importance vastly exceeds their competance and intellect.

-Cberlet

________________________________

From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org on behalf of Katefan0
Sent: Wed 1/25/2006 3:51 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Blue sky thinking around "neutral point of view"

I've begun making a conscious effort to stop using "POV" and instead use the
word bias, which is really more appropriate as a descriptor for bad behavior
vis a vis this policy.

-k

<<SNIP>>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] We aren't here to write an encyclopaedia, are we?

body:
>I think your approach is the right one.  For things like "List of ethnic
>slurs" the only approach I've ever seen to turn them into good articles
>is to get positively hardcore about cites.  Ask around for help, a lot
>of good editors will back you up.
>[[Inherently funny words]] used to be nonsense, but now it is (usually)
>a quite interesting and quirky article, because it has sources.

[[List of movies considered the worst ever]] also has hardcore
citation requirements, just to keep the thing NPOV and sane. I try
similar at [[List of longest novels]], but some idjit keeps removing
the citations and imposing an arbitrary cutoff point.

- d.


from_name: Rowan Collins

body:
On 25/01/06, Saqib <web at saqibkadri.net> wrote:
> What I need is something that can ignore stuff like Image and WikiQuote code,
> replace the headers with h1/h2/h3/etc. tags, and maybe parse external and
> internal links.
[...]
> Is there any function like this available anywhere? Or some guide on the specs
> of such a function?

See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Alternative_parsers

As Ivan says, Magnus' wiki2XML is probably the most complete
parsing-wise, but depending what you need it for, some of the others
might be "good enough".

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: #wikipedia-en-admins

body:
On 1/25/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> Trusted editors == admins? Should I feel vaguely insulted?

Admins == trusted editors (well, admins *should* == trusted editors),
but trusted editors > admins.

--
Sam


from_name: SPUI

body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> Search terms for these kinds of things come and go and are only of
> ephemeral interest.  Thus, they should not be in Wikipedia; by the
> time they get here, they are no longer in use and of interest to
> nobody. Quite seperately from whether we WANT to be useful for that
> purpose, of course!

I see. We now have a cabal that can decide what stays and what goes.


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Try reading the discussion at WP:DRV. I think there's some very good reasons
> to keep them deleted. Basically those words are just search terms.

And I think the cabal is real. Want something deleted? Delete it. Only
non-admins complain? WHo cares - they don't have the power to undelete!


body:
All right, so back to the topic at hand -- should we just delete every quote
from every pope cited on Wikipedia and Wikisource?

-k

On 1/25/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 1/25/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > "Claims to own" is a slight misrepresentation, given that this is, you
> > > know, actual law in a real country.
> >
> > That law is also covered by copyright though.
>
> In those countries in which this applies, this over-rides the normal
> rule of copyright.  It does not, however, affect dealings wholly
> outside the UK or its dependents.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

body:
Angela wrote:
> Does anyone have experience or knowledge of how Executive Committees
> in other non-profit organizations are organized? Is there any benefit
> of one approach over the other?

I've been a member of a number of organizations, 501(c)3, 501(c)4, 527,
charitable, educational, political, etc. Most of them had a three-tier
command structure:

Board/Executive Officers - a fairly small number (4-12) of people, each
with a defined role in the organization, have authority to act in the
scope of their role and as authorized by the broader org (see EC and CC
below), little role as a group beyond their individual jobs and often
some charter requirements. Tend to stay in frequent contact and take on
a lot of urgent things that can't be dealt with in committee in time.

Executive Committee - consists of the Executive Officers plus a number
of directors, representatives of different subunits within the
organization, the means of selection varies depending on the nature of
the organization and its relative orientation (top-down or bottom-up;
whether the org is a project of the Board and the rest of the org
members are just those they've enlisted to help them in it or whether
it's an association of people with a specific cause/interest/goal and
the officers are chosen by the body of those to represent them). The EC
can set rules, change policy, etc. Often the EC and the Board become
conflated in people's minds, and often they're effectively the same
entity, but the Board is the body with actual power under the rules and
bylaws.

Central Committee - A much larger body of org members, nearly always a
superset of the EC. In small organizations, this may consist of all
members; in larger organizations it consists of elected representatives.
It's not unusual for a CC to be a hundred people; in very large orgs
with a lot of subunits, this may be several hundred. Its power varies
greatly depending on how the body is organized. In some, the CC has no
actual power and serves largely as a discussion place and sounding board
for the EC, being informed as to the EC's activities and then being the
ones, in turn, to share it with non-committee membership. (This is most
common in top-down orgs.) In others, the CC has the full power of the
organization and sets bylaws, elects EC members, and the EC can't do
anything outside is granted authority without recieving authorization
from the CC.

It's not unusual for an org to require all financial expenditures be
authorized (not necessarily approved individually) by the CC.

Going back to your mail, now that I've drifted greatly... I've never
seen an org with a smaller EC than Board. I know they exist, I just
haven't been involved with any. One I can think of had a 30-person
Board... when they decided to found an EC, they cut the Board down to 8
members and made the EC 40 members. The EC had most of the authority the
Board had had previously; in effect, you could say that the Board
expanded slightly and was renamed the EC, with a new Board being made of
only the highest-ranking members (in this case, chair, vice chair,
finance director, executive director, communications director, research
director, personnel director, properties director).

That probably wasn't too clear, but maybe it's helpful.

-- Jake Nelson


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees

body:
Angela wrote:
> Ideas are also welcome on how the Executive Committee should fit in
> with the other committees, and whether additional committees are
> needed.

Almost forgot in the other mail. In the orgs mentioned, special-purpose
committees are permanent subcommittees of either the Executive Committee
(if it's an organization with a large EC or most of the power vested in
the EC - which nearly always end up being the same thing) or the Central
Committee (if most authority is vested in the CC). Generally, they've
been granted a certain degree of autonomy within their field, and the
power to act within certain boundaries. Most matters that pertain to one
will get referred to them from a larger committee, and they'll report
back with recommendations (often required to be a draft motion which the
larger committee should adopt), which are usually approved.

-- Jake Nelson


subject: [Foundation-l] New Wikimedia Committees


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Jimbo is Jimbo.

Indeed.  :)  It is never ever a good idea to take something that I say
as foundation policy or opinion, particularly when I've merely expressed
vague agreement with a general idea in an irc chat.

My support of the concept of rollback privileges is of the form: "If, in
the judgment of a broad cross section of the community, similar to the
nearly unanimous support we saw for semi-protection, this is a good
feature, then of course I will gladly endorse it.  In the meantime it
sounds more or less like a good idea to me, but I defer to the judgment
of those who know better."

--Jimbo


from_name: - Essjay -

references:
<43D77353.8070803@starglade.org> <dr82ga$26o$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<43D78E06.5020506@starglade.org> <dr8dh0$o80$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cbffa3750601251104t639a27f3r8e7d6df1ef62b4ea@mail.gmail.com>
	<dr8pmb$gd9$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<cbffa3750601251331v699ca256m76a0fff70df441f7@mail.gmail.com>

body:
I have to agree with Sam; I myself have been guilty of saying "the Board" or
"the Foundation" when what I mean is "Jimbo." Unfortunately, it is from
Jimbo that we outside the "Foundation walls" most often hear, and it is from
Jimbo that most "executive orders" issue. We can't help but be confused at
exactly where Jimbo's authority to bind the Foundation begins and ends. When
he says "We should do this, it shall be done" (as he does from time to
time), is it inappropriate to say "The Foundation says that..." For example,
when page creation by anons was turned off on EN, (at least acording to
Brion) it was done by order of Jimbo; are we (and the press as well) wrong
in saying "The Wikimedia Foundation ordered..."

Not being privvy to the internal discussions, it becomes very hard for us to
figure out where Jimbo stops and the Foundation starts, particularly because
we don't know if he has discussed it with the rest of the Board (consulted
with Congress?) or if he is doing it on his own authority (issuing an
Executive Order?).

Perhaps we need to force him to put disclaimers on all his statements: "I'm
Jimbo Wales, and I approved this message" vs. "I'm Jimbo Wales, and the
Foundation approved this message." Better, however, would be to realize that
as frustrating as it may be to see the two confused, it goes a lot farther
to gently correct the mistake, rather than dressing down the person who made
the mistake. After all, they are a person, too, and they have feelings, too.
We should all try harder (our hardest, every day) to set the best example we
can, whether that be to look back over what we're saying and make sure we
have our terms straight, or biting our tongue when our toes have been
stepped on.

Now, (as I love to say) "Everybody back to work!"

Essjay

On 1/25/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > I am *sure* it was an honest mistake.
> > This is nevertheless not the first time, not even the first time *this*
> > week. And this is disheartening.
>
> I think most of these "honest mistakes" are due to the fact that there
> are very few statements by the Board as a whole.  Thus statements by
> individual Board members are understood as being on behalf of the
> Board as a whole.
>
> Though I recognise the difficulty presented, I do think it would
> reduce these confusions if a definitive statement "by the Board" could
> be presented more often.
>
> --
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


body:
This sounds reasonable, but I'm not sure how it comports with their
announcement:

Publishers will have to negotiate a levy of between 3 per cent and 5 per
cent of the cover price of any book or publication "containing the Pope's
words". Those who infringe the copyright face legal action and a higher levy
of 15 per cent.

The Italian publishing house that got slapped with a $18.4k suit only
contained 30 lines of papal decree.  Obviously a Wikipedia article would
never have even that much verbatim verbiage, but it does seem rather a small
amount for an almost $20k suit.  It then begs the question of what the
quoted cutoff might be.  I think regardless we would be all right as long as
we were paraphrasing.  But ... quoted matter may be a different story.

On 1/25/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/25/06, Katefan0 <katefan0wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> > All right, so back to the topic at hand -- should we just delete every
> quote
> > from every pope cited on Wikipedia and Wikisource?
>
> On Wikipedia: absolutely not.  We are not including whole texts within
> Wikipedia, we are selectively quoting from and referencing them, which
> is well within the normal scope of fair use.
>
> We might want to consider the status of some things on Wikisource,
> however.
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Thanks for thinking of me guys, but this one is way over my head. True, my
specialty is canon law, but there is a big difference between canon law and
Vatican law; assuming they plan to enforce it, the Vatican isn't going to be
issuing excommunications for violation of the new rules, it's going to be
suing. What you need is a copyright attorney (Soufron?), not a canon lawyer.
That said, if anyone gets excommunicated over it, I'm your man.

By the way, if we're worried about the implications of the Vatican's rules
under US law (and we usually hear "it's US law that matters, since the
servers are in the US") the USCCB (United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops) would be a good place to contact; they should be able to offer
guidance. The Office of the General Counsel can be reached at
ogc at usccb.orgor by phone/mail at (202)
541-3000 / Office of the General Counsel, 3211 4th Street N.E., Washington
DC 20017-1194.

If there is anything else I can do, let me know.

Essjay

On 1/25/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
> > Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
> >
> >> Hello,
> >>
> >> There is a problem of potential copyright violation of putting to the
> >> Wikisources and other Wikimedia projects encyclis and other documents
> >> signed by Pope. According to:
> >>
> >> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2005615,00.html
> >>
> >> and several other newspapers all these documents are copyrighted, and
> >> Vatical officials are currently trying impose strict copyright.
> >>
> >> We have quite a lot of this stuff in Wikisources. See for example:
> >>
> >> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_Encyclicals
> >>
> >> and
> >>
> >> http://pl.wikisource.org/wiki/Kategoria:Religia
> >>
> >> What should we do with this? Send a formal letter to the Vatican,
> >> asking for GFDL or PD licence agreement - or we should simply delete
> >> all these documents?
> >>
> >> --
> >> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
> >> http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html
> >>
> >>
> > As an independent soverign nation, the Vatican is free to do many
> > things in regard to copyright law that would normally not be
> > acceptable in most other countries, including retroactive copyright
> > and other weird issues as well.  The problem here is to see what sort
> > of copyright enforcement would generally be enforced through
> > international treaties (is the Vatican a member of the international
> > copyright convention?) and general common sense on things like this.
> > Common sense would seem to indicate that the older encyclicals from
> > the 19th Century and earlier would be reasonable to keep on
> > Wikisource, although I could see the Vatican even trying to assert
> > copyright on that as well.
> >
> > As far as sending a letter to the Vatican, I think it would be a very
> > good idea, but try to really do a good job of explaining the goals of
> > Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, and point out how we are
> > trying to make faithful reproductions of these documents and to try
> > and keep them in context as well.  In addition, point out that by
> > having this documentation available on Wikisource that we are making
> > this content available to people in not just wealthy countries, but
> > some of the poorer countries of the world including to people who
> > don't necessarily even have internet access and through multiple
> > languages.  There are many other points I'm sure you could come up
> > with to really hit the point home, and I would recommend that you get
> > some Roman Catholics, preferably some Catholic clergy who are also
> > active Wikimedians (there must be a few somewhere) to help draft the
> > letter.  The purpose here is to try to use language styles that fits
> > within the heirarchical culture of the Church rather than catch
> > phrases common to Wikimedians.
> >
> > It is likely that the Vatican is simply going to reply that they have
> > their own website, and internet users can download the content from
> > there instead if they really want to get network access to the
> > documents.  It is worth a try to ask somebody from the Vatican however.
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] An outsider's view on en-admin-only whatever and
	the	rest

body:
I like your idea Notafish ....... I would certainly volunteer for this

Waerth/Walter

>crossposting to wikipedia-l as this is an international issue
>=========
>Hi all,
>
>as a totally non-en person, admin on other wikis and actually working
>"behind the scenes", I would like to give my view on what I believe is
>needed, and why an en-admin-only channel and list won't help to the
>extent that is needed. This is long, but please bear with me.
>
>Let me try to make this more concrete.
>
>OTRS (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/OTRS) receives a lot (and here I
>mean "A LOT") of complaints.
>
>Those range from:
> "there's a mistake in this article, please fix it", to:
>"You're defaming me, delete this article/those revisions, or I will
>sue you!"  through
>"this page is an enormous copyvio from my site!"
>
>with as Sam Korn already pointed out, various degrees of civility.
>
>The problem is the following:
>
>Only a few people have agreed to help on OTRS. It's one thing to spend
>hours editing wikipedia, it's another to want to spend hours alone on
>a boring screen answering (most of the time) crazy emails. We have
>appealed to the en population several times (why en? because it is the
>one most attacked, but actually, other wikipedias are suffering from
>the same problem, and as we grow, these will get bigger and more
>numerous) and have gotten only very few answers. Fine, I can
>understand that.
>
>The people who *are* working on OTRS are for some "good editors", for
>others "better e-mail answerers" than "editors" (me, for example). In
>the end, I think anyway that we *will* have to pay someone to answer
>those emails. As I speak, there are 280 unanswered emails in the
>info-en queue. Probably most of these are spam, but even sorting spam
>takes an awful lot of time.
>
>What happens is this: you get an email with a complaint, you go see
>the page, realize there's about 2 hours of work on the page, and get
>discouraged. Because on one hand, you can't really go "public" with
>the complaint (it's, after all, an email, gives personal information
>etc.) and on the other, you *know* that something needs to be done.
>Here you have two options:
>-either you take the two hours to fix the article, but then, there are
>still 279 emails to be answered in OTRS.
>-or you go to a person you know, who you think could be good at fixing
>the article.
>Here two options again:
>-the person you chose to tell does have two hours and can fix the article
>-they don't and it gets forgotten
>and maybe a third one:
>-They don't have the time, go to other people, the "issue"  is somehow
>broadcasted, makes the front page of USA Today... and you know the
>rest.
>
>So what's the solution?
>
>I don't think that the solution is en-admin-only anything. I think the
>solution is something that would be more like:
>- The wikipedia community at large realizes that there *are* problems
>with some articles
>- The wikipedia community at large *knows* who is: "good at NPOV",
>good at "speedy deleting", good at "cleaning histories", good in
>"Famous people stuff", good at "sourcing an article".
>-The wikipedia community at large *does* agree that something needs to
>be done to clean up Wikipedia in a (sorry, but it's true) hidden kind
>of fashion.
>-The wikipedia community at large decides to "appoint", "elect",
>"designate" (whatever suits the wikipedia community at large) a few
>trusted users who are reknown for the things listed above and agrees
>that they should all get together on one list where the people working
>behind the scenes (in OTRS) can just forward the email and are *sure*
>that it is going to be taken care of in a timely and discreet fashion.
>
>NB. This list should not be of 800, it should not either be of 20, I
>am thinking something along the lines of 50-70 people from all across
>the wikipedias (because there are problems that may be repercuted from
>one language to the other- see tron for example), admins and
>non-admins (I can cite at least 5 people on fr who are not admins whom
>I would trust to do that kind of stuff better than many admins).
>
>I am not sure how we can do that without ever falling in the "clique"
>type thing. But how different is it from all the "associations" of
>every kind that I have come across on en? Not sure.
>
>What I am sure of is this: either the wikipedia community at large
>acknowledges the problem and tries to find a solution *together*, or
>we'll end up (not tomorrow, but soon enough) by having to "pay" some
>"NPOVers", or "history-cleaners", or choose them in a cabal-fashion,
>to do the work. Because the work to be done is there and most of it
>has to stay a little private.
>
>The idea is to have people who know how to do this stuff (NPOV,
>sourcing), who are recognized for doing it well, who can get together
>on an article and work together on it when the complaint comes in, who
>are ok with doing it as part of their "normal" participation on
>wikipedia. The only thing is that their "work" will be a little
>directed. ie. "Please look at these 20 articles, that are a copyvio of
>this site". They can be tasked with asking people outside the list to
>help them etc.
>
>This is what it's all about.
>
>Hope this long email helped a little, and that it will spark ideas...
>I am for my part, short on ideas about how to deal with this stuff,
>and afraid that some day it will backfire in a much nastier way than
>just the front page of USA Today.
>
>
>Delphine
>--
>~notafish
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

body:
Anthere wrote:
> ...
> Is that legal to retrospectively apply a copyright on communications ?
>
> ...
> I must say I am abashed by this news...I seem to remember that the key
> point of a religion was to carry on a deity words so as to ensure a good
> number of believers...

The Holy See is a sovereign nation and therefore can make whatever it
likes legal. :)

Chris

--
Chris Jenkinson
chris at starglade.org

"Mistrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful."
  -- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra


from_name: Jon

body:
One thing that would be relatively straightforward (given the size of our RC patrol)
  and that would take away a lot of the crap would be to delete all new articles that
  do not cite any references (within one hour of their creation, say, to allow a good
  user who makes a mistake on their first "save" of a new article time to correct
  their mistake).

  Whether there are references or not is an easy decision to make (as opposed to
  whether any references cited are good or not). Also this would be entirely in line
  with our Verifiability policy. This route would not be a panacea, but it would help.

  The other thing worth cracking down on is new edits - Our policies already allow
  us to revert a new edit that adds new information without a reference. We should
  be doing this automatically.

  Kind regards

  Jon
  (jguk)

David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
  ==Jimbo on the warpath re *FD==

*FD, AFD/DRV in particular, is causing noticeable problems for the
Foundation, as Jimbo has noted of late on wikien-l. (See archive -
there's a lot of posts on the subject this month.) The idiocy over
Category:Living people's nomination was the last straw.

I realise AFD/DRV regulars don't like this sort of discussion
happening outside WT:AFD and similar places, but it does happen and it
will affect *FD -- call this a notice to participate in the
discussions that are happening.

So the question is how to better ensure (a) intelligence-insultingly
crap nominations don't get in or can be killed quickly (b) better
behaviour from AFD contributors (assuming better faith of non-regulars
editing, and so forth) (c) cutting down the crippling weight of
deletion/undeletion process which leads some admins (e.g. me) to go
"fuck it".

Ideas? Assume for this discussion that nothing changing is not an
option, because it isn't.

(Note: my personal opinion is that almost everything nominated on AFD
does in fact deserve as quick, messy and painful a death as can be
managed. But the edge cases are causing real and serious problems
across Wikipedia and for Wikipedia.) - David Gerard 13:11, 25 January
2006 (UTC)

- d.
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

---------------------------------
  Yahoo! Cars NEW - sell your car and browse thousands of new and used cars online search now
---------------------------------


from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Modification du menu navigation

body:
Assuming my French is still up to the limited par it was...purge the
page cache by appending &action=purge to your URL.

Rob Church

On 25/01/06, Lolo Buell <lolobuell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Bonjour,
>
> J'essaie en vain de modifier le menu navigation de mon mediawiki mais
> sans succ?s.
> Pourtant je vais bien ? mon/wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sidebar je
> deprotege, je modifie mais quelquesoit la modif, rien ne se passe ! (je
> vide la cache pourtant ...)
> Que faut-il faire d'autre ?
>
> Merci d'avance :)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Rémi Kaupp

body:
Salut Lolo,

MediaWiki:Sidebar ne contient que des liens vers MediaWiki:Portal-url et
MediaWiki:Portal (par exemple) : ce duo d?finit la page de destination et
le texte affich?. Il faut que tu modifies ou cr?es ces pages.

D'autre part, il vaut mieux ?crire en anglais si tu veux de bonnes r?ponses
sur cette liste :)

Cordialement,
R?mi Kaupp

Le Mercredi 25 Janvier 2006 18:04, Lolo Buell a ?crit :
> Bonjour,
>
> J'essaie en vain de modifier le menu navigation de mon mediawiki mais
> sans succ?s.
> Pourtant je vais bien ? mon/wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sidebar je
> deprotege, je modifie mais quelquesoit la modif, rien ne se passe ! (je
> vide la cache pourtant ...)
> Que faut-il faire d'autre ?
>
> Merci d'avance :)


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: #wikipedia-en-admins

body:
> generalization of any kind. It's a pragmatic decision. People who have
> jumped through the hoops to become admins are by and large more experienced
> and thoughtful people, so when you want to get something done, you're more
> likely to get it done if you ask an admin.

It comes down to the same thing though. Maybe if I dress up as an
admin, I will look more "experienced and thoughtful". I thought there
was a conscious effort to avoid ascribing any kind of prestige to
adminship.

Anyway.

Steve


body:
Just some blue sky thinking:

  Our neutral point of view policy has aroused a fair bit of discussion at [[WP:NPOV]]
  recently, and this has got me thinking:

  We've all seen arguments where people keep arguing that this is "POV" or someone
  is being "POV" where in normal English we'd just call something an "opinion" and
  note that someone has an opinion on something. Indeed, the made-up term POV
  is bandied around usually to mean something along the lines of - you are wrong,
  I am right, and because it is a NPOV issue, the point is non-negotiable, which isn't
  a very good place to start from if the issue is to be resolved. Plus far too many
  people read NPOV as equating to "no point of view" as opposed to the real requirement, which is to write from a neutral viewpoint.

  My blue sky thinking (which I don't claim to be a panacea, just an interesting thought) is why don't we rename the policy page [[Wikipedia:Neutral viewpoint]] and make
  the shortcut link to it [[WP:NEUVIEW]] (or [[WP:NEUTVIEW]]). It goes without
  saying that the underlying concept behind the policy would remain completely
  unchanged - just the name of the page would change - plus it would enhance
  people's perceptions that it is about requiring a neutral viewpoint, rather than no
  viewpoint, or neutrality more generally: it would help define the policy in positive terms
  and (and perhaps I'm going too far here:) ) may help stop content disputes escalating
  in scale and viciousness.

  Kind regards

  Jon
  (jguk)

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Messenger  NEW - crystal clear PC to PC calling worldwide with voicemail


body:
Katefan0 wrote:
> All,
>
> CNN this morning was reporting that the Vatican has decided to assert
> copyright on basically all papal communications (speeches, encyclicals,
> etc.) made by every pope during the last 50 years, with the exception of
> "the news media."  I don't know how much material we might have that could
> fall afoul of this new declaration, or whether the Vatican would consider
> Wikipedia and Wikisource under that umbrella, but someone more familiar with
> Catholic information in Wikimedia areas should probably get involved.
>
> I don't know if there's any reason to think the Vatican would be willing to
> grant a PD or GFDL licensing exception for Wikipedia. The spokesman said
> that "newspapers have the right to publish texts as news" (such as
> encyclicals), presumably because there's no profit made specifically from
> their use.  But I'm not sure how this would apply to WP or WS.
>
> -k
>
> http://www.forbes.com/technology/feeds/ap/2006/01/25/ap2475804.html
> _______________________________________________

...
Is that legal to retrospectively apply a copyright on communications ?

...
I must say I am abashed by this news...I seem to remember that the key
point of a religion was to carry on a deity words so as to ensure a good
number of believers...

Weird

ant


from_name: Thomas R. Koll

body:
Am 25.01.2006 um 14:09 schrieb Tomasz Ganicz:

> What should we do with this? Send a formal letter to the Vatican,
> asking for GFDL or PD licence agreement - or we should simply delete
> all these documents?

Honestly? Ignore it. The Vatican can't make laws outside it's few
quadratmeters and outside there are other copyright laws that we
obey anyways.
Of those on wikisource only Pacem in Terris is younger than 50 years.

ciao, tom
--
http://www.tomk32.de - just a geek trying to change the world
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:TomK32
http://verlag.tomk32.de/c/wrdigest


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Copyright of Vatican stuff

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> Tomasz Ganicz wrote:
>
>> 2006/1/25, Chris Jenkinson
>> <chris at starglade.org>:
>>
>>
>>> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> I would recommend that you get some Roman Catholics,
>>>> preferably some Catholic clergy who are also active Wikimedians (there
>>>> must be a few somewhere) to help draft the letter.  The purpose here is
>>>> to try to use language styles that fits within the heirarchical culture
>>>> of the Church rather than catch phrases common to Wikimedians.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Essjay (on English-language Wikipedia) isn't clergy, but he is a
>>> professor of theology with a speciality in Catholicism. He's probably a
>>> great person to get in touch with:
>>>  --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
>>>
>>
>>
>> OK. I will contact him - but I guess if it make sence to send a letter
>> to the Vatican it should be done officialy by Foundation?
>>
>> --
>> Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
>> http://www.ceti.pl/kganicz/poli/kontakt.html
>>
>>
> This doesn't have to be an "official" contact.  Simply write the letter
> as a group of interested Wikimedia users who are interested in adding
> original content that comes from official Vatican sources.  That just
> keeps the legal hassles of writing a formal letter representing the
> foundation and lets the Vatican know that this is a volunteer project as
> well.

If I remember well, Sabine, from itwiki, has been in contact with the
Vatican some time ago. Might be interesting to involve her. I put her in
copy of this mail.

Ant


body:
On 25/01/06, Lolo Buell <lolobuell at gmail.com> wrote:
> Here the link to the sidebar i try to modify :
> http://spa.rennesredon.online.fr/wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sidebar

According to http://spa.rennesredon.online.fr/wiki/index.php?title=Special:Allmessages
"wgUseDatabaseMessages est d?sactiv?" - that means you have added
"$wgUseDatabaseMessages=false;" to your LocalSettings.php file,
*switching off the function of the special "MediaWiki:" pages*.

1) Why did you set this? (If you saw instructions suggesting this
setting, where were they?) It may be that you would be better off
leaving it switched to true, to take advantage of the "MediaWiki
namespace" features. See
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Aide:Espace_de_nom_MediaWiki

2) If you're sure you want that switched off, you will have to edit
languages/LanguageFr.php instead (look for the line like "sidebar
=>"). Beware, though, that *this file will be replaced when you next
upgrade*, so you'll have to make the change over again.

Apologies for not trying to reply in French, but I think that would
just lead to more misunderstandings! ;)

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Aside from all other comments you made (in which I do not wish to
>> enter, at least not now), I must absolutely ask where does the
>> statement "the Foundation agrees it is a great solution to the big
>> problem we face".
>
>
> Jimbo and I have discussed this on several occasions.
>
> Chris

Jimbo is Jimbo.
Jimbo is the foundator.
Jimbo is the benevolent dictator.
Jimbo is the chair of the Foundation.

But Jimbo is NOT the Foundation.

Assimilating ONE person to a full group of people is RUDE.

It denies our existence. It denies our efforts. It denies the work we
are putting in the Foundation itself. It denies the very existence of
our personal opinions. It makes us appear as if we were puppets.

And this is NOT acceptable.

When you talk to a person, you receive the opinion of this person. ONLY.

Ant, a PERSON.


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 25/01/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:

> The British Crown claims to own the King James Bible.

The British Crown holds letters patent to control the printing and
import of the Authorised Version, and the Book of Common Prayer, yes,
in such jurisdictions as this is held to be legal - which is only the
UK and possibly related territories.

"Claims to own" is a slight misrepresentation, given that this is, you
know, actual law in a real country.

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


from_name: Paweł Dembowski

body:
> Honestly? Ignore it. The Vatican can't make laws outside it's few
> quadratmeters and outside there are other copyright laws that we
> obey anyways.
> Of those on wikisource only Pacem in Terris is younger than 50 years.
> ciao, tom

Polish Wikisource has more.

--
Ausir
Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
http://pl.wikipedia.org


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Friendship and trust

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Walter van Kalken wrote:
>
>> Also the soap opera in which users were in a revert war over jimbo's
>> vote as it is a vote against the rules. And people including some
>> very langtime mods were arguing that Jimbo doesn't have any say in
>> nl.wikipedia affairs at all and that he was trying to influence the
>> vote. Which is an interesting debating point.
>>
>> I myself was also told by longterm mods after I gave my apologies
>> that I shouldn't do that as I was influencing the vote.
>
>
> Since when is it wrong to influence votes when you do so in a
> completely transparent fashion? If you ban all influence from votes,
> nobody will have any information or arguments on which to base a vote.
> Next thing you know, using rational argument and persuasion to
> convince someone that articles should be written from a neutral point
> of view will become a violation of the "no-influence" policy.
>
> --Michael Snow

Unfortunately it isn't over yet, the soapseries continues. I am now
being attacked by fellow Steward and Mod Walter in the Dutch village
pump that I am responsible solely for the whole mess and that I should
have resigned before the procedure was over.

His frustration is because my desysopping and the mess around it was
published today on a Dutch media website,
http://www.webwereld.nl/articles/39461 and a national newspaper just
called me as they saw an article in it. I was accused that I shouldn't
have answered there questions, which means they would have written a
meaner article as I nuanced it and said explicitely that I did make
mistakes.

So my right to defend myself or to answer questions is being denied by a
small group of people on nl:

Waerth/Walter


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/25/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Claims to own" is a slight misrepresentation, given that this is, you
> know, actual law in a real country.

That law is also covered by copyright though.

--
geni


body:
On 1/25/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> But Jimbo is NOT the Foundation.
>
> Assimilating ONE person to a full group of people is RUDE.
>
> It denies our existence. It denies our efforts. It denies the work we
> are putting in the Foundation itself. It denies the very existence of
> our personal opinions. It makes us appear as if we were puppets.
>
> And this is NOT acceptable.
>
> When you talk to a person, you receive the opinion of this person. ONLY.
>
> Ant, a PERSON.

Ant, I really don't think Chris was attempting to be rude.  Yes, he
carelessly took one person's opinion to represent that of several
people, but I am sure that this was an honest mistake, not a malicious
(or even thought-out) attempt to bypass the work you do.

Indeed, I don't think anyone would underestimate the work you do.  I
am sure that this was really only the result of a misunderstanding.

--
Sam


from_name: Lolo Buell

body:
Bonjour,

J'essaie en vain de modifier le menu navigation de mon mediawiki mais
sans succ?s.
Pourtant je vais bien ? mon/wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sidebar je
deprotege, je modifie mais quelquesoit la modif, rien ne se passe ! (je
vide la cache pourtant ...)
Que faut-il faire d'autre ?

Merci d'avance :)


body:
Rob Church a ?crit :
> Assuming my French is still up to the limited par it was...purge the
> page cache by appending &action=purge to your URL.
>
>
>
Here the link to the sidebar i try to modify :
http://spa.rennesredon.online.fr/wiki/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Sidebar

I purged the cache but nothing change ...


from_name: valdelli at bluemail.ch

body:
Sorry, the copyright will be applied only to NEW Vatican's documents.

Please, read this:

http://www.ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/topnews/news/2006-01-22_2439593.html

it's in italian but it's the more importante italian information bureau.

If someone need to bring out Vatican's documents he must contact the Libreria
Editrice Vaticana.

Ilario

>-- Messaggio originale --
>Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:49:45 +0100
>From: Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org>
>To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff
>Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
>
>> Honestly? Ignore it. The Vatican can't make laws outside it's few
>> quadratmeters and outside there are other copyright laws that we
>> obey anyways.
>> Of those on wikisource only Pacem in Terris is younger than 50 years.
>> ciao, tom
>
>Polish Wikisource has more.
>
>--
>Ausir
>Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
>http://pl.wikipedia.org
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


body:
Sorry I made a mistake:

If someone needs to bring out Vatican's documents he must contact the Libreria
Editrice Vaticana "in the future".

Ilario

>-- Messaggio originale --
>Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 20:02:11 +0100
>From: valdelli at bluemail.ch
>Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff
>To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
>
>Sorry, the copyright will be applied only to NEW Vatican's documents.
>
>Please, read this:
>
>http://www.ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/topnews/news/2006-01-22_2439593.html
>
>it's in italian but it's the more importante italian information bureau.
>
>If someone need to bring out Vatican's documents he must contact the Libreria
>Editrice Vaticana.
>
>Ilario
>
>>-- Messaggio originale --
>>Date: Wed, 25 Jan 2006 18:49:45 +0100
>>From: Pawe? Dembowski <fallout at lexx.eu.org>
>>To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>>Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Copyright of Vatican stuff
>>Reply-To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>>
>>
>>> Honestly? Ignore it. The Vatican can't make laws outside it's few
>>> quadratmeters and outside there are other copyright laws that we
>>> obey anyways.
>>> Of those on wikisource only Pacem in Terris is younger than 50 years.
>>> ciao, tom
>>
>>Polish Wikisource has more.
>>
>>--
>>Ausir
>>Wikipedia, wolna encyklopedia
>>http://pl.wikipedia.org
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>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


from_name: Michael Snow

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: An outsider's view on en-admin-only whatever and
	the rest

body:
Maru Dubshinki wrote:

>On 1/25/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>On 1/25/06, Maru Dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>If the problem is really apparent, why can't you tag the page appropriately?
>>>I don't think adding a new layer of procedure will help anything;
>>>people who already have the time and such will already be working on
>>>the cleanup category.
>>>
>>>
>>Sure.
>>Let me just take a look...
>>[[Category:NPOV disputes]] 1800 articles tagged.
>>[[Category:Articles which may be biased]] 196 articles tagged
>>[[Category:Accuracy disputes]]  1000 articles tagged
>>[[Category:Pages needing attention]]  198 articles tagged
>>[[Category:Possible copyright violations]] 199 articles tagged
>>
>>Of course, my "urgent request" will be taken care of within the hour.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Delphine
>>--
>>~notafish
>>
>>
>Why is your urgent request more urgent than all those others?
>
>
Because, for example, it might deal with a matter that creates potential
legal liability for the Wikimedia Foundation. Which would make it just a
little more pressing than the question of what is really known about
[[Celtic Christianity]].

These are not problems for which "Just tag it and we'll fix it later" is
an appropriate response. Hence the sarcastic reaction when that response
is given.

--Michael Snow