from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/29/07, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I wanted to simply state that I have been reading this thread with
> interest.  When it comes to content, it is the editors and users and not
> the
> Foundation who decide what is on.  I don't presently serve as, and don't
> intend to become, the central authority for what is and isn't acceptable
> for
> fair use questions. It is not a subject that is prone to sweeping policy
> decisions, as counterexamples etc. abound.  Again, since the license is
> the
> key to the forward looking nature of the project (here en:wp) why someone
> feels compelled to take the easy way out and {{fairuse}} image the heck
> out
> of articles out of a sense of obligation to "improve" it is beside the
> point.
>
> The images are fair - not free - and that isn't the same thing.  You can
> argue til the cows come home about any particular example.  People
> do.  ;-)
> But I would once again encourage anyone interested in the issue to ask
> themselves first why the fair image *must* be there instead of a free one
> (rare examples) and why it is not instead an easy way out in lieu of the
> harder task of obtaining free images as equivalents.
>
> What happens in legal terms depends, of course, on the situation.  WMF has
> no interest in fighting really hard for "fair use" in principle, since we
> are all about free images where there is a choice.  Be honest - wouldn't
> the
> best Wikipedia be one with no strings attached, with content of equivalent
> quality?

My attitude is that Wikipedia should be pushing the copyright envelope
(within reason, of course) on all fronts.

All non-governmental content from the past century is covered by copyright
(essentially).

We should be expanding (and we are) the amount of content covered by free
licenses (GFDL,CC-SA).

We should also be demonstrating the importance of challenging the absurd
life and strength of copyright laws by taking advantage of fair use when we
can.

Google is a great example of a company that by dint of its popularity gets
to run roughshod over copyright restrictions that companies would squash if
they weren't so reliant on Google.

Similarly Wikipedia is now in the position of being one of the 800-pound
gorillas.

Wikipedia has the power to shape law because of its size and influence.


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


list: wikien-l

from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Publishing group hires 'Pit Bull of PR' to fight
 openaccess

body:
On Mon, 29 Jan 2007, David Gerard wrote:
> They ignored us, they laughed at us, now they're fighting us?

It isn't hard to think of a bunch of real-world situations where someone
was ignored, laughed at, fought with...  and then lost.

Beware of argument by slogan, even if the slogan comes from Gandhi.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Publishing group hires 'Pit Bull of PR' to fight
 open access

body:
David Gerard wrote:

>(courtesy Mathias Schindler)
>
>http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,462845,00.html
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501705.html
>http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070122/full/445347a.html
>
>Now, is there anything WMF can do to advocate free content? Is that
>political or entirely in accordance with our goals? Or what can
>individuals do?
>
The article at
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa004&articleID=60AADF2C-E7F2-99DF-383C632C90DD1AA5&ref=nature
goes int a bit more detail.  They even note that "Nature" and
"Scientific American" are owned by the same people.

I think that it would be unwise to overeact to what appears to be an act
of desparation.  Even the "Washington Post" uses that word in talking
about the matter.  If the best slogan they can come up with is "Public
access equals government censorship," which sounds like something out of
"1984," they really are in trouble.

Now that we have Peter Suber on our Advisory Board it will be
interesting to read his comments.  It might also be worthwhile to have
an article about Dezenhall if we have someone familiar with the topic.

It strikes me as characteristic of the old way of doing business or
government that to avoid reconsidering one's actions and admitting error
one just hires a PR person to make things right.

Ec


from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Publishing group hires 'Pit Bull of PR' to fight
	open access

body:
Quoting David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:

>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501705.html

"...Dezenhall told the association's professional and scholarly publishing
division, he could help -- in part by simplifying the industry's message to a
few key phrases that even a busy senator could grasp.  Phrases like: "Public
access equals government censorship..."

  They've hired Cplot?!?

          Jkelly


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jim Hu

subject:
[Wikitech-l] ProtectSection.php modification - where to
	post/discuss?

body:
On Jan 29, 2007, at 1:33 PM, Steve Sanbeg wrote:

> On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 12:05:51 -0500, Jim Hu wrote:
>
>> There was some discussion on one of the mailing lists about
>> protecting specific sections in a wiki page, where Rob Church noted
>> an extension called ProtectSection.php.  I have modified the code to
>> run one of the functions at a different hook, which allows me to also
>> kill any subsection Edit links on headings inside a protected
>> section.  I have it working on 1.8.3 and 1.7.1 locally.
>>
>> I noticed that ProtectSection in svn has been modified by tstarling
>> and hashar (tstarling says  "It's still completely broken with
>> section editing, though." ... but it seems to work for me, unless I'm
>> misunderstanding the issue.  Also, if the section edit links are
>> gone, the issue may be moot.).  How should I submit the code
>> modification for others to look at?  I wasn't sure if this should go
>> to bugzilla bug 4375 or here.  I hope that my code modification may
>> be worth looking at, but I worry that it's too hacky to warrant
>> consideration yet for the topic of the bug.
>
> It's better to post patches via bugzilla, but things can also be
> discussed
> on the list or on IRC.
>
> The edit links point to URLs to edit the individual sections.  without
> those links, you'd have to type in the URL yourself in the browser,
> which
> would make it slightly more difficult to edit the sections.
>
> The thing to be careful of is that Mediawiki isn't really intended
> to have
> that level of protection, but people who aren't as familiar with it
> could
> mistake a casual deterent for real security.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

I modified my mod to only take the links out if the users are
unauthorized, and uploaded it as an attachment to bugzilla.

http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4375

Thanks for catching that, Steve.  I'm don't know if it's appropriate
for wikipedia or other foundation projects, but it seems that other
mediawiki users would find it useful, based on the votes and the
earlier thread.  For my own use, I'll be running cron jobs to
maintain boxes that are quoted content from other sources.  We want
people commenting on that content, but not changing is, since the
changes would not be reflected in the original source material.

Jim

=====================================
Jim Hu


list: commons-l

from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject:
[Commons-l] "Did you know?" ... The family tree of
	[[Category:Copyright statuses]] and our broken category system.

body:
Did you know that "Bundt pans" is a copyright status?

[[:category:Copyright_statuses]]->[[:category:Free_licenses]]->[[:category:GNU_licenses]]->[[:category:GFDL]]->[[:category:Periodic_table]]->[[:category:Chemical_elements_by_periodic_table_group]]->[[:category:Periodic_table_group_16]]->[[:category:Oxygen]]->[[:category:Oxygen_compounds]]->[[:category:Organo-oxygen_compounds]]->[[:category:Carbohydrates]]->[[:category:Sugars]]->[[:category:Sweet_food]]->[[:category:Cakes_and_cookies]]->[[:category:Cakes]]->[[:category:Bundt_cake]]->[[:category:Bundt_pans]]

It was news to me.

I guess I always knew that being a Harry Potter character would impact
something's copyright status, but without commons I never would have
known that this connection involved the humble hydrogen atom:

[[:category:Copyright_statuses]]->[[:category:Free_licenses]]->[[:category:GNU_licenses]]->[[:category:GFDL]]->[[:category:Periodic_table]]->[[:category:Chemical_elements_by_periodic_table_row]]->[[:category:Periodic_table_row_1]]->[[:category:Hydrogen]]->[[:category:Hydrogen_compounds]]->[[:category:Water]]->[[:category:Bodies_of_water]]->[[:category:Islands]]->[[:category:Islands_of_Europe]]->[[:category:Ireland_(island)]]->[[:category:Ireland]]->[[:category:Culture_of_Ireland]]->[[:category:Languages_of_Ireland]]->[[:category:English_language]]->[[:category:Literature_of_England]]->[[:category:Writers_from_England]]->[[:category:J._K._Rowling]]->[[:category:Harry_Potter]]->[[:category:Harry_Potter_Characters]]

(nevermind the fact that anything in the child cat is almost certainly
an unlicensed derivative work...)

I don't think most people realize it... But our category system is
terribly broken today.  I have provided just a few example which are
fairly easy to fix, but everywhere you look in the category system you
can find problems like this.

Sometime in the not too distant future we will gain a search system
which allows us to perform category intersections. People will be able
to search for images which are in combinations of categories. It could
be very powerful...

But it will not be very powerful, because categories have been broken
into zillions of tiny sub-categories.

Instead of Category:Men or Category:Human_males we use
Category:Human_male_who_lived_in_the_1960s_and_liked_to_wear_funny_hats.

You might think that there would be a Category:Men which would be a
parent of this category, and you would be right.. But it is not useful
because even if we ignore the large computational burden of finding
all the children of a category, we're still left with the sad fact
that due to semantic drift, the supercategory would contain many
things we do not want, just like my examples at the top. Many higher
level categories often a substantial subset of all the categories on
commons. (Copyright statuses is a 'parent' of about 13% of all the
commons cats).

Direct navigation is nice, but it doesn't scale to millions of images.
For people to be able to find images on commons they will increasingly
depend on search.

We need to radically change how we use categories if we are going to
make them 'machine readable' in a manner which enables search.

To facilitate this change, we need to stop breaking categories into
tiny subcategories. Instead, we should use broad conceptual categories
which will work well when intersected with other categories. We should
also include all categories that apply. For example, a antique car
might be placed in [[Category:Transportation devices]],
[[Category:Cars]], [[Category:Ford motor products]],
[[Category:Manmade]], and [[Category:Antiques]] rather than in
[[Category:Antique ford motor products]].

This shift will make categories less useful as a direct navigational
tool. However, many categories are already poor devices for direct
navigation due to an inability to place their content in order which
is sane to humans, and an inability to include explanatory text
inline.

For human navigation we have gallery pages, which are more powerful
for that application.

Categories would still keep their parent child relationship, but we
would acknowledge that fact that such categorization is useful for
humans to navigate to find categories... and that it's not a useful
too to have the computers traverse.

Unless I find huge opposition here, I'm going to begin changing the
commons instruction pages to reflect this use of categories rather
than our historic use.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject: [Foundation-l] [Announcement] Welcome to the advisory group

body:
On 1/29/07, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually I am somehow missing a bit more input
> from the communities. Most of the users seem to me (except angela) relative
> outsiders, please correct me if i'm wrong. Might it be worth evaluating the
> idea that in some way we should have a user of several parts of the
> wikimedia communities?

I think there is room for a separate body of user representatives made
only of people from the community. Something like the WikiCouncil idea
which has been proposed in the past.

The advisory is meant to provide the Board of Trustees with some
"outside" perspective which  is why most of its members are not a core
part of the community  - though many of them have had some involvement
with Wikimedia before, so it's not like they're complete Wikimedia
newbies. :)

Angela


body:
Angela wrote:

>On 1/29/07, effe iets anders <effeietsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Actually I am somehow missing a bit more input
>>from the communities. Most of the users seem to me (except angela) relative
>>outsiders, please correct me if i'm wrong. Might it be worth evaluating the
>>idea that in some way we should have a user of several parts of the
>>wikimedia communities?
>>
>>
>I think there is room for a separate body of user representatives made
>only of people from the community. Something like the WikiCouncil idea
>which has been proposed in the past.
>
>The advisory is meant to provide the Board of Trustees with some
>"outside" perspective which  is why most of its members are not a core
>part of the community  - though many of them have had some involvement
>with Wikimedia before, so it's not like they're complete Wikimedia
>newbies. :)
>
>
While it might be a good idea to ad one or two thoughtful Wikipedians to
the Advisory Board, particularly if it chooses to operate a series of
committees where direct representation would be an asset.  Beyond that I
don't see any urgency to having more community members on that Board.

I have always been positive toward the WikiCouncil idea, but I'm afraid
that if we make sorting out the issue of democratic representation a
precondition for establishing a WikiCouncil it will never happen.  If a
WikiCouncil is set up finding a solution to that problem should be a
high priority item on its agenda.  It may be necessary for the first
members of the WikiCouncil to be appointed, but a more representative
system could be used when it is time to replace these people.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/29/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/29/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My attitude is that Wikipedia should be pushing the copyright envelope
> > (within reason, of course) on all fronts.
> >
>
> And how much money do you plan to provide to make this possible?

One meeeellion dollars.

> All non-governmental content from the past century is covered by copyright
> > (essentially).
> >
>
> That simply isn't the case.

Please elaborate.

> > We should also be demonstrating the importance of challenging the absurd
> > life and strength of copyright laws by taking advantage of fair use when
> we
> > can.
>
> Your reasons do not support your actions here.

Huh? What actions, where?

> Google is a great example of a company that by dint of its popularity gets
> > to run roughshod over copyright restrictions that companies would squash
> if
> > they weren't so reliant on Google.
>
> Evidences?

http://images.google.com/

> In any case the "no one will sue us" is not a valid argument for
> wikipedia if only because sooner or latter someone will and it doesn't
> help reusers.

Who made that argument?

> Similarly Wikipedia is now in the position of being one of the 800-pound
> > gorillas.
>
> Annual turnover less than that of my nearest collage. I think not.

Collage?

> Wikipedia has the power to shape law because of its size and influence.
>
> How? Political campaigning is pretty much out. We have neither the
> money nor the impact. People go to wikipedia looking for information.
> They are not looking for an ideology

You severely underestimate Wikipedia's impact. Any website that is in the
top 20 of the world has a political impact.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
I would say groupthink is a form of consensus (an undesirable one),
but not all consensus is groupthink.

Consensus is (very roughly) general agreement. Everyone agreeing
because they're being manipulated to in some underhand way is still
everyone agreeing, however there are other ways of reaching such an
agreement.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/29/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> >We can be strident in supporting fair use, legal and proper in
> > supporting fair use, and still prefer and work to create free content.
> >  They are not mutually exclusive.
>
> Then why was I deleting trivially replaceable non free images for
> rather a lot of last week? Are you seriously going to tell that since
> February 2006 no one has been in a position to make a pic of Pickled
> cucumber?
>
> > But those who say "oh, if we remove
> > it, free content of equal value will just sprint forth to replace it"
> > frustrate me to no end.  It won't, in a lot of cases, because it
> > can't.
>
> Experience suggests otherwise and at present time there is no
> significant movement toward deleting all fair use material.

Seems like you're working to delete a lot of fair use material.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


body:
> Now, is there anything WMF can do to advocate free content? Is that
> political or entirely in accordance with our goals?

I would say everything WMF does is advocating free content. You can
advocate something through actions, rather than words - often works
better, too.

> Or what can individuals do?

Again, through their actions - use free content.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/29/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/29/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Wikipedia has the power to shape law because of its size and influence.
>
> How? Political campaigning is pretty much out. We have neither the
> money nor the impact. People go to wikipedia looking for information.
> They are not looking for an ideology

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/technology/29wikipedia.html


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] MessageCache v. Language

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

Theoretically speaking, these two classes have very distinct roles.
MessageCache is a cache of messages, where userland code should run off
to get messages from. Language, while containing messages, defers this
responsibility to MessageCache, and instead lets users call
language-specific behavior like formatting dates. So, in theory, while
MessageCache is dependent on Language, Language should not be dependent
on MessageCache.

In reality, however, this is not the case. Certain functions in the
Language objects will occasionally need to call getMessageFromDB (which
calls the wfMsg* functions which call the MessageCache) to grab a
possibly customized message. The whole thing is terribly convoluted and
I'm not sure I understand.

I'm wondering, however, how this would be restructured if you had to
chance to refactor this triumvirate of files without any regard to
backwards-compatibility. Some questions:

* A global function is currently being used to do parameter
substitution: if you were to stuff this in a class, which class would go
into?
* The message cache is currently used by extension authors to add their
own customizable messages to the mix. Is adding the messages straight to
the cache the right thing to do, even if it is labeled
mExtensionMessages? Would the cache be responsible for message
retrieval? Should the class be renamed for sake of truthfulness?
* The cache is language aware in that it can accept messages for
specific languages but then figure out which one to use once based on
$wgContLang or $wgLang (whichever is currently taking precedence).

It appears that MessageCache is not so much a cache but a loose
confederation of tools for *getting* messages, performing some magic
along with the global functions to figure out where to look, its own
cache being only one of many places to look. Which is why I'm having
trouble figuring this stuff out.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFvmmAqTO+fYacSNoRAjS8AJ9urmXuWJT4qX7WwSM+jJ48KlSzRQCfS5W+
ALxG/UmkbyrMTAMv5ClJAQc=
=/qL7
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: geni

body:
On 1/29/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Now, is there anything WMF can do to advocate free content? Is that
> > political or entirely in accordance with our goals?
>
> I would say everything WMF does is advocating free content. You can
> advocate something through actions, rather than words - often works
> better, too.
>

the area in question however is based aorund original research which
we don't deal with much.

This more falls under the open acess movement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access

And are dealings with them are sadly limited.

> Again, through their actions - use free content.
>

Can't use free content if it doesn't exist and in this case it does
not. Mind you in the short term I feel that that article is as
effetive as anything we could create.
--
geni


body:
> the area in question however is based aorund original research which
> we don't deal with much.

Open content is open content. It doesn't really matter what area of
open content we're talking about.

> Can't use free content if it doesn't exist and in this case it does
> not. Mind you in the short term I feel that that article is as
> effetive as anything we could create.

The best way to get free content created is to show that it would get
used, and the best way to do that is to use other free content.


from_name: Steve Sanbeg

subject: [Wikitech-l] Live mirroring from Portuguese Wikipedia

body:
On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 21:30:01 +0000, Tim Starling wrote:

> Platonides wrote:
>> Tim Starling wrote:
>>> Some remote loaders use a rotating open proxy list, for example
>>> tramadol.tfres.net (warning, site contains some nasty javascript).
>> 2002 popups blocked :O
>>
>>> This makes them slow, but apparently fast enough for the search engines to
>>> index them. What can we do about that, besides DoS the website?
>>
>> Make an script doing a special request to autoblock it. Run it
>> daily/hourly. They *can't* update their proxy list as fast as a bot
>> requesting pages. You can even use their proxy list to avoid them
>> filtering the server ip.
>
> That's all very well, until they use a proxy that we don't want to block.
> It's been our policy so far to block anonymous editing from open proxies
> and p2p anonymity networks, but to allow page views. If they were blocked
> at the squid level, neither would be possible.
>
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> At some point a layer-8 approach becomes the most reasonable, although
>> technical folks tend to shy away from interactions outside of their
>> domain of expertise. ;)
>
> Their money apparently comes from an affiliate scheme with DriveCleaner,
> which apparently is a scam where the "free version" of a purported
> spyware/virus checker reports a threat, and recommends that the user buy
> the "full version" of the software in order to remove it. It's been known
> to Symantec since June 2006, and what have the authorities done in that
> time to stop it? You can still go to drivecleaner.com and pick up a copy.
> There's a lack of international coordination, a lack of political will and
> a lack of funding.
>
> And if they can't stop a blatant scam, defrauding people of money every
> day, so what makes you think they could be bothered to stop a borderline
> abuse of service?
>
> As for vigilante action, we know from anti-spam activities that a
> technical attack could well be met by with revenge in kind, and we know
> that we could easily find ourselves outgunned. I don't really want to
> spend my time dealing with multi-gigabit DDoS attacks against Wikipedia
> once every week or two.
>
> Civil action may be the only remaining option, but of course it is
> expensive. The hosting providers, ISPs and banks will defend their
> clients' right to privacy every step of the way.
>
> Welcome to the Internet.
>
> -- Tim Starling

There is still the case of the disposable websites that just want an easy
source of content, so they can quickly create a new content-rich site
whenever the old one gets blocked.

Search engines may be more responsive than the government.  Interestingly,
it seems like only Google indexes this site; I couldn't find anything on
Ask or Yahoo.


body:
On 1/29/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Hee hee, I'm thinking I should take a couple weeks of wikicommonsbreak
> right about now! But seriously, what you're talking about will stir up a
> large percentage of the commons people who obsess over categories. I'm
> not even sure having category intersections in the software will satisfy
> some of these folks - they go on about server loads and the like as
> well. I'd suggest just bringing up the issue and watching the fur fly,
> before deciding to invest time in rewriting anything...

:) But the fun is just beginning! :)

As far as load goes, it's only a question of implementation.
A few months back I posted some example performance data for
intersections using inverted indexing using the actual enwiki category
data: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/htdig/wikitech-l/2006-September/026715.html

Even the most evil cases (intersecting two huge categories) ran very
quickly. (For example the intersection of GFDL images and
living_persons each which has over 100,000 members took 25ms).

The technical obstacle of getting the software implemented is far
smaller than the data quality issues we have.


from_name: Peter Ansell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
On 29/01/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> For me "groupthink" has a particular nasty negative conotation.
> A dictionary or "wiktionary" might be useful in determining the difference.
>
> Mgm
>

I actually have pretty much the same negative connotation with
"consensus" after observing some of the ways people use that term on
wikipedia. Current use dictates meaning.

Peter Ansell


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Commons-l] Killing the main namespace?

body:
Bryan Tong Minh wrote:
> What are you meaning with "reserving the main namespace for main
> pages"? Do you mean pages that currently reside in the Commons
> namespace?

I think he means http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page and
translations ;)

> Perhaps somebody can run a script through the main namespace that
> filters out all pages that do not contain images?
>
> Bryan
Would be easier if imagelinks.sql.gz and page.sql.gz were working...


from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] An obscene example of remote loading

body:
Thanks all for the helpful answers.

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> William Pietri wrote:
>
>> Say, are there examples of people who do this well, contributing back to
>> Wikipedia or to the general public? [...]
>>
>
> Answers.com is an excellent example.  They license Wikipedia content and
> also license content from many other more traditional sources, and offer
> it up to people who search on their site.  They have always been a
> strong supporter of Wikimedia and have been traditionally the #1 sponsor
> of the annual Wikimania conference.
>
> So they benefit from our work, and they give back to the community as well.
>

Interesting. Are there examples of organizations who give back in other
ways?

I ask with some ulterior motive. I and some pals are looking at doing a
commercial startup that would involve a substantial amount of open
content. That content would be narrower but deeper than Wikipedia, by
which I mean it would cover a much smaller set of topics, but would
include a fair bit of material that Wikipedia currently deletes for lack
of notability.

As a startup, major cash donations are unlikely, at least for a few
years. But where our material overlaps with Wikipedia, we wanted to find
ways to collaborate. I think the only item currently in our product plan
is a tool to compare related articles, so that editors of either site
can easily diff and merge parts they like from the other. Ideally, we'd
open-source that code so that it could be used to compare and sync
between other open-content sites as well.

Do folks here have other ideas that would be mutually beneficial?

Thanks,

William


subject: [Wikitech-l] MessageCache v. Language

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

Tim Starling wrote:
> MessageCache is a cache of the MediaWiki namespace, a cache which is
> conceptually merged with various other message sources. Sometimes Language
> needs to access the MediaWiki namespace, and it does so via MessageCache.
> Language::getMessageFromDB is a helper function to facilitate such access.
> This is required to support important features such as per-wiki
> customisation of month names.

Ah, when put in that context, that makes sense. Not such an ugly hack,
then. (referring to the docblock on line 335 of Language.php)

> The way MessageCache supports multiple language objects is hackish,
> because the ability to support multiple language objects was added after
> MessageCache was designed, and it was never properly refactored.

After refactoring, what would MessageCache look like? Would you have all
the language objects cached in their own registry? This has a
relationship to the key/lang syntax?

> The object is named after the data it contains. The member functions are
> tools for operating on that data. We could call it MessageUtilities, but
> then it would sound like a mere collection of functions, and it would not
> be clear what happens when you instantiate, clone or serialize one of them.

In that context, the name makes sense. However, there are still quite a
bit of methods that aren't really tied to that. What if you seperated
the less related methods (get() stands out as one) into
MessageUtilities, so that only methods directly manipulating the
MediaWiki cache are in the MessageCache object. An extra file, yes, but
possibly the difference between caching MediaWiki messages, and
retrieving a message from multiple sources is sufficiently great enough
to merit another include.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFFvnK5qTO+fYacSNoRAlZSAKCGcJL/ktye30PCcjaJrTikm7S7tgCfdXPW
ndBJCSvibmBk6D25BU7RyoA=
=JNC4
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


body:
On 1/29/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Open content is open content. It doesn't really matter what area of
> open content we're talking about.
>

That isn't the case when dealing with the activities of the foundation

> The best way to get free content created is to show that it would get
> used, and the best way to do that is to use other free content.

Showing how linux is used is of only limited relivance when you want
to show how scientific papers would be used. I would suggest showing
how many links there are to pubmed in wikipedia might be a better
aproach.
--
geni


from_name: Matt R

subject: [Foundation-l] Sigh, problems with non-Latin usernames again

body:
> On 1/29/07, Rory Stolzenberg < rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Enwiki users are now trying to change policy so users with non-Latin
> > usernames that don't provide transliterations in their signatures when
> > they're told to can be blocked. Currently, the policy requests that users
> > consider providing a transliteration, but does not require it.

--- GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> According to the definition on the English Wikipedia, this is discrimination
> pure and simple. It is an horrible idea. I am disgusted by it.

This needs to be handled with some common sense.

Wikipedia editing is collaborative and done in the context of a community.
Accordingly, anyone who contributes to the English Wikipedia in such a way that
non-trivial interaction with other editors is required should be configured so
that there's:

1) Some way to track that user using a Latin name (or even number) through page
histories and such.
2) a Latin component to their signature.

It doesn't matter how this is implemented, but this should be a stipulation in
en policy. Otherwise it's infeasible for your average en Wikipedian to
recognise and distinguish amongst non-Latin users.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
Elly Waterman wrote:
> I admit being a very new reader of this list, so I do not know its
> conventions. But could you please refrain from unneccessary talking? My
> mailbox is so full already...  Thanks, Elly

If you're subscribed to high-volume mailing lists like this one you may
want to try using an email program that can do filtering to
automatically sort through incoming mail and put it into appropriate
folders. I've used both Eudora and Thunderbird for this. I'm subscribed
to three high-volume mailing lists and dozens of less active ones but
between the filters I use to separate out that stuff and the spam
filters built into Thunderbird I only have one or two "unclassifiable"
emails left in my inbox each day (these are almost always personal
emails sent directly to me by other individuals).


from_name: Earle Martin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
On 29/01/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> It's one of those irregular verbs: we are consensus, you are a baying
> mob, they are groupthink.

Coincidentally enough, I learnt this lovely word from Wikipedia today:
[[ochlocracy]].

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Articles that do not cite reliable published
	sources will be deleted."

body:
Cheney Shill schreef:
> Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> I don't have any problem with the concept of an
> ariticle-in-progress being left and tagged for important
> missing elements, such as citations of reliable published
> sources.  The problem is how does one determine what is
> in-progress.

An article is in-progress until it is finished.

> Edits to the page or talk page within the
> last week?  Month?  Half year?  Year?

Yes, regular edits to the page or talk page are generally a good
indication that the article is "finished".

Of course, no article is ever completely finished. [[WP:TIND]].

Eugene


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
> Groupthink is when everyone involved assumes that someone else has done XYZ
> crucial piece of error-checking.
>

That's very close to my understanding of the term. As I mentioned
elsewhere, I'm involved in a startup. One of the most frequently
mentioned fears is "groupthink", by which we mean mistaking being in
accord for being right. As Guy says, though, I usually hear it as a
pejorative.

William


from_name: George Chriss

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Publishing group hires 'Pit Bull of PR' to
	fight	open access

body:
Hi,

For a clearer idea of AAP's argument, please see:

https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3572.html

Thanks, George
en|irc : [[GChriss]]

On Mon, 29 Jan 2007 22:03:49 +0000  English Wikipedia  wrote:

On 1/29/07, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Quoting David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>
> >
>
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501705.html
>
> "...Dezenhall told the association's professional and scholarly publishing
> division, he could help -- in part by simplifying the industry's message to a
> few key phrases that even a busy senator could grasp.  Phrases like: "Public
> access equals government censorship..."
>
>   They've hired Cplot?!?
>
>           Jkelly

It would explain a lot. I tend to feel that one would be rather open
to a counter attack along the lines of:

montage of NASA images

"the Association of American Publishers would have you believe that
this is censorship"

--
geni

_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: David Gerard [mailto:dgerard at gmail.com]
>Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 08:26 AM
>To: 'English Wikipedia', 'Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List',
>'Wikimedia Commons Discussion List'
>Subject: [WikiEN-l] Publishing group hires 'Pit Bull of PR' to fight open	access
>
>(courtesy Mathias Schindler)
>
>http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/mensch/0,1518,462845,00.html
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501705.html
>http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070122/full/445347a.html
>
>Now, is there anything WMF can do to advocate free content? Is that
>political or entirely in accordance with our goals? Or what can
>individuals do?
>
>
>- d.


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Commons-l] Killing the main namespace?

body:
Hi,

Gregory Maxwell a ?crit :
> I see a lot of misplaced pages, spam, and utter insanity appear in the
> main namespace on commons.  There is also a lot of confusion about how
> the main namespace should be used.
>
> What do you think of the idea of moving all the galleries to a
> gallery: namespace, then reserving the main namespace for main pages
> and pretty much nothing else. After that point we could prevent main
> namespace page creation and make the edit page give a nice "You are
> confused, here is how you find help" message.

I am obviously against deleting the main namespace on Commons.
It has many useful uses. Please see for example for a chronological
classification of data, which is not possible with a category:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi
Also other namespaces have also a bad referencement.

> The work it would take to accomplish this could be completely
> automated, although some inter project cooperation would be required
> to fix gallery linking templates and the like.
>
> I see a lot of potential to reduce confusion, and not a lot of real
> downsides. So I must be missing something. Thoughts?

Regards,

Yann


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "Articles that do not cite reliable
	published	sources will be deleted."

body:
on 1/29/07 5:12 PM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge at telus.net wrote:

>> on 1/29/07 10:13 AM, Cheney Shill at halliburton_shill at yahoo.com wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Is this not sufficiently explanatory or reliable?
>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_effect
>>>
>>>
>> It could use some work. But my question is: What do you make of it?
>>
> The real irony here is that a person who has put himself forth as a
> strong advocate for reliable sourcing is relying on an article that is
> completely lacking in such sources to make his point. :'(
>
> Ec

Yes. And, when I asked him to expand on what he meant by a statement, he
sent me a link to an encyclopedia Article (and not a very good one at that).

I still haven't received a direct response. Oh well?

Marc

--
The culture's gonna get us before the climate ever does.


body:
Cheney Shill schreef:
> Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
>
> > Cheney Shill schreef:
> > > sources.  The problem is how does one determine what is
> > > in-progress.
> >
> > An article is in-progress until it is finished.
>
> So your POV is don't delete an article regardless of how
> long it violates policy.

Yes. An article that violates policy should be corrected, not deleted,
unless it violates any of our policies on inclusion (notability,
verifiability, etc.).

But that is irrelevant here, because we were talking about articles
without cited sources; these do not violate policy, as has been said
before.

Eugene


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
On 26/01/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/25/07, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> > The Cunctator a ?crit :
> > > Is this really a Foundation-level issue?
> > The problem is that complaints about school articles generate a steady
> > flow to OTRS, which is picked up by Foundation volunteers. Then, the
> > decisions of these volunteers are challenged.
>
> There needs to be more visibility into these problems by the community
> at large.

What can we really do to contact the nebulous "community", though?
David and I and others have been bitching and moaning about this at
the slightest provocation for six months, but the project is big and
you can only chat to so many people. Short of putting out quarterly
Signpost announcements saying "The following seven areas of coverage
are the ones that piss our readers off the most. Please make them less
crap, we'd all live happier lives", I'm not sure we can easily do much
about it.

> First I'd heard that OTRS was seeing lots of school-related complaints.

Between that and non-notable people with flytrap articles, it's a big
timewaster. Article-deletion complaints, too, many of which deserve
more attention than we can give (but that's another rant, and one I've
made this month already)

> Can you describe in more detail what types of complaints?

Surprisingly often, these are explicit allegations of illegal activity
- "The headmaster is a convicted paedo" and the like - or lots and
lots of junk personally-identifiable vandalism - "Mickey Smith is
---".

A common but less worrying issue is a simple lack of context and scale
- many of these articles are seized by one enterprising student or
another to write about the school as they see it; these usually aren't
*so* bad, but they tend to have a very blurred line as to what is and
isn't appropriate material, which then leads into articles that the
school is understandably annoyed by the existence of simply because,
well, they're linked with this amateurish, hit-and-miss, erratically
accurate and conceptually blinkered article. (These are often the
hardest to deal with, in many ways)

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


body:
Cheney Shill schreef:
> Eugene van der Pijll <eugene at vanderpijll.nl> wrote:
> > But that is irrelevant here, because we were talking
> > about articles
> > without cited sources; these do not violate policy, as
> > has been said before.
>
> As has been "said" before, yes, without any support,
> including no policy citation to support it.  The reality
> is, as has been cited before in WP:NPOV

WP:NPOV does not require a cited source. It says that any relevant
published POV should be mentioned. Unsourced articles that do this are
not violating WP:NPOV.

> and WP:V,

WP:V only requires that sources are provided for challenged (or likely
to be challenged) statements. Not all statements in Wikipedia are
challenged or likely to be challenged. Unsourced articles containing
only unchallenged statements are not violating WP:V.

> that articles without cited reliable sources do violate policy.
> Articles "must" contain them.

No.

Eugene


subject: [Commons-l] Killing the main namespace?

body:
Hello,

Gregory Maxwell a ?crit :
> On 1/29/07, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>
>>I am obviously against deleting the main namespace on Commons.
>>It has many useful uses. Please see for example for a chronological
>>classification of data, which is not possible with a category:
>>http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_K._Gandhi
>
> You have seriously misunderstood my request. I am sorry that I was not
> more clear.
>
> I think galleries are useful.  I do not think they should be deleted.
> Instead, I think we should make a new namespace called "gallery" and
> move all the galleries there.

Well I understand, but I am not sure what is the benefit expected here
with the deletion of many pages from main namespace, and I don't see how
it will be achieved.

> I think that doing this will prevent confusion.
>
> After we have done that there should be nothing left in the main ns
> except tests and garbage which we can delete.
>
>>Also other namespaces have also a bad referencement.
>
> Can you explain this for me? I do not understand.

Commons is generally very badly referenced.
I think this is mainly because of the category system (maybe developers
could give more hints here). For "Mohandas Gandhi" in Google Images, you
 won't find any images directly from Commons. That's very surprising
seeing that Commons is now the biggest source of free (as in beer)
images of Gandhi.

Regards,

Yann


body:
--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> If "common sense" means that discrimination is permitted than I do
> agree. When discrimination is permitted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a
> black veil darkens what used to be a more bright promise of a world.

Sheesh, let's cut back on the melodrama a notch, eh? I'm not suggesting banning
white people. I'm not demanding that female users must identify themselves by
writing in a pink font. What I am saying is that editors who enter into
non-trivial interactions on the English Wikipedia should be obliged to have a
handle that can be grokked by speakers of the English language.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
Copy addresses and emails from any email account to Yahoo! Mail - quick, easy and free. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/trueswitch2.html


from_name: Rob Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
The article lists the Challenger explosion and Bay of Pigs as
examples. The Enron scandal, where "unconsolidated equity affiliates"
destroyed 21,000 jobs and how many billions in losses should also qualify.
Perhaps the Iraqi war or the House Managers in the Clinton Impeachment are
other examples.

nobs01


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 1/26/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/27/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well, we could say "Articles that do not cite reliable published
> > sources might be deleted." But that's no incentive to actually cite
> sources.
> > It's sad to see it makes no difference whatsoever.
>
> Is this what we've come to? Being honest with our contributors doesn't
> work, so we attempt to scare them with hollow threats? FFS.

Don't worry, there are plenty of people who want to make good on the
threats.


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Steve Sanbeg wrote:
> On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:24:13 -0500, Simetrical wrote:
>
>> On 1/27/07, Luiz Augusto <lugusto at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Tiny question: isn't possible to block any non-Wikimedia site from live
>>> mirroring instead of blocking one-by-one?
>> I suppose we could try to record massive request rates from the same
>> IP, but then you'd probably catch some large-scale proxies too.  So
>> not really.  They just request a page like anyone else, and the
>> request is superficially impossible to distinguish reliably from a
>> request made by an ordinary user.
>
> There is one difference, in that proxy traffic would be generated by
> humans who use the proxies, while mirror traffic would presumably come
> from the web crawlers that are indexing the mirrors, and should thus be
> much more predictable.

Some remote loaders use a rotating open proxy list, for example
tramadol.tfres.net (warning, site contains some nasty javascript). This
makes them slow, but apparently fast enough for the search engines to
index them. What can we do about that, besides DoS the website?

-- Tim Starling


body:
On 1/29/07, Cormac Lawler <cormaggio at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 1/29/07, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Ray Saintonge schreef:
> > > Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >> There are many people who could make a valuable contribution to this
> > >> advisory board. You apparently have yours and I do not even know
> Sunir
> > >> Shah.
> > >>
> > >>
> > > He was at Wikimania in Frankfort.
> > >
> > > Ec
> > Hoi,
> > So were you and I, so was Richard Stallman if that is what makes you
> > notable ...
> > Thanks,
> >     GerardM
> >
>
>
> Sunir Shah is the (co)founder of Meatball Wiki:
> <http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?MeatballWiki> ;
> <http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SunirShah>. You can find his
> Wikimania 2005 presentation details at:
> <
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2005_Presentations#Other_Talks
> >.
> I agree with Jussi-Ville that he could be of great service to the
> advisory group.

And one of the earliest Wikipedia contributors.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Hoi,
If "common sense" means that discrimination is permitted than I do
agree. When discrimination is permitted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a
black veil darkens what used to be a more bright promise of a world.
There are always ways to rationalise away what is not convenient to
consider.

I do not need to tell you how I abhor your POV.
Thanks,
   GerardM

Matt R schreef:
>> On 1/29/07, Rory Stolzenberg < rory096 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Enwiki users are now trying to change policy so users with non-Latin
>>> usernames that don't provide transliterations in their signatures when
>>> they're told to can be blocked. Currently, the policy requests that users
>>> consider providing a transliteration, but does not require it.
>>>
>
> --- GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> According to the definition on the English Wikipedia, this is discrimination
>> pure and simple. It is an horrible idea. I am disgusted by it.
>>
>
> This needs to be handled with some common sense.
>
> Wikipedia editing is collaborative and done in the context of a community.
> Accordingly, anyone who contributes to the English Wikipedia in such a way that
> non-trivial interaction with other editors is required should be configured so
> that there's:
>
> 1) Some way to track that user using a Latin name (or even number) through page
> histories and such.
> 2) a Latin component to their signature.
>
> It doesn't matter how this is implemented, but this should be a stipulation in
> en policy. Otherwise it's infeasible for your average en Wikipedian to
> recognise and distinguish amongst non-Latin users.
>
> -- Matt


body:
--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> And I disagree utterly with your pov.

Yes, you've told me that already. Has it really not occurred to you that the
English language Wikipedia should treat the English language differently to
other languages? And that when it does so, it's not wrongful discrimination?

> Do try and suggest to ban white people.

Why would I want to do that? Why are you encouraging the banning of people
based on their skin colour?

> The organisation of Wikimania 2005 and 2006 would have been so
> much easier; every body could have been meetings in a pub on a Friday
> night. I would even suggest that there would not have been much of a
> Wikipedia without white people.

What are you going on about? Please attempt to be coherent.

> You have correctly indicated three areas
> where we could do better; language, race and gender.

Again, you are indulging yourself in melodrama. Please stop, not least because
you are trivialising genuine issues of wrongful discrimination. "A black veil
darkens what used to be a more bright promise of a world"? I believe the phrase
starts with "get" and ends with "a grip".

-- Matt

> Matt R schreef:
> > --- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> If "common sense" means that discrimination is permitted than I do
> >> agree. When discrimination is permitted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a
> >> black veil darkens what used to be a more bright promise of a world.
> >>
> >
> > Sheesh, let's cut back on the melodrama a notch, eh? I'm not suggesting
> banning
> > white people. I'm not demanding that female users must identify themselves
> by
> > writing in a pink font. What I am saying is that editors who enter into
> > non-trivial interactions on the English Wikipedia should be obliged to have
> a
> > handle that can be grokked by speakers of the English language.
> >
> > -- Matt
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
Copy addresses and emails from any email account to Yahoo! Mail - quick, easy and free. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/trueswitch2.html


subject:
[Commons-l] Commons search engine ranking,
 Was: Killing the main namespace?

body:
Gregory Maxwell a ?crit :
> On 1/29/07, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>
>>>I think galleries are useful.  I do not think they should be deleted.
>>>Instead, I think we should make a new namespace called "gallery" and
>>>move all the galleries there.
>>
>>Well I understand, but I am not sure what is the benefit expected here
>>with the deletion of many pages from main namespace, and I don't see how
>>it will be achieved.
>
> We would automatically mass move all the pages with galleries to the
> gallery namespace. Deletion could also be done automatically.

I understand what you want to do, but what benefit you expect from such
a change.

>>Commons is generally very badly referenced.
>>I think this is mainly because of the category system (maybe developers
>>could give more hints here). For "Mohandas Gandhi" in Google Images, you
>> won't find any images directly from Commons. That's very surprising
>>seeing that Commons is now the biggest source of free (as in beer)
>>images of Gandhi.
>
> The biggest factor for this is that most search engines will not index
> pages with names which look like image names, for example
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Foo.jpg. They would index
> Image:Foo but our image pages are not named like that.
>
> Since most of the time when other sites (including Wikimedia's own)
> link to commons they link to image pages, we do not gain 'googlejuice'
> from those links.
>
> There are a lot of things we could do to enhance the popularity of
> commons, but the page name issue really should be solved first.
>
> It's in the long term plans for mediawiki to support filenames which
> are unrelated to the file type.... but even using that will require
> massive renames on commons.  Does anyone have any suggestions?   There
> are a lot of possibilities.
>
> Another question is.. are we ready to handle an increase in public visibility?

Good question. Yes, this should be addressed fist obviously.

Regards,

Yann


from_name: Ron Ritzman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
On 1/29/07, sonofyoungwood at aol.com <sonofyoungwood at aol.com> sig said:

> ________________________________________________________________________
> Check out the new AOL.  Most comprehensive set of free safety and security tools, free access to millions of high-quality videos from across the web, free AOL Mail and more.

Could this (I assume "compulsory") sig be an example of AOL corporate
groupthink?


from_name: Nick Wilkins

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP:LAME candidate

body:
On 1/27/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ok, now he says he's reported one of the people reverting him for
> vandalism, yet I can't see any report in his contribs... I'm
> confused...

It's ok, anonymous IP contributor to the rescue!   Apparently, vandalism
reports aren't visible to users.  Also, saying that an article isn't in
perfect shape is a personal attack.  And this anonymous user has decided
that it was N-true rather than me who has been reported, despite vandalism
reports being invisible to users.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Pentagrid_converter&diff=104198456&oldid=103869942

-- Jonel


from_name: Thomas Dalton

body:
> Showing how linux is used is of only limited relivance when you want
> to show how scientific papers would be used. I would suggest showing
> how many links there are to pubmed in wikipedia might be a better
> aproach.

And linking to pubmed doesn't count as using open content?

Of course, some uses of open content are more effective than others,
but it's still using open content.


body:
Hoi,
And I disagree utterly with your pov. Do try and suggest to ban white
people. The organisation of Wikimania 2005 and 2006 would have been so
much easier; every body could have been meetings in a pub on a Friday
night. I would even suggest that there would not have been much of a
Wikipedia without white people. As to women, there is a present need for
a safer environment for women this was shouted down by males who felt
insulted by the suggestion. You have correctly indicated three areas
where we could do better; language, race and gender.
Thanks,
   GerardM

Matt R schreef:
> --- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If "common sense" means that discrimination is permitted than I do
>> agree. When discrimination is permitted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a
>> black veil darkens what used to be a more bright promise of a world.
>>
>
> Sheesh, let's cut back on the melodrama a notch, eh? I'm not suggesting banning
> white people. I'm not demanding that female users must identify themselves by
> writing in a pink font. What I am saying is that editors who enter into
> non-trivial interactions on the English Wikipedia should be obliged to have a
> handle that can be grokked by speakers of the English language.
>
> -- Matt


from_name: Kasimir Gabert

subject: [Wikitech-l] LuceneSearch::doTitlePrefixSearch()

body:
Hello,

I have implemented Lucene search in my MW 1.9.1 installation, and
everything is working fine.  However, I want to have title
suggestions, and as it appears it exists and was enabled by default,
but when I try to enable it (after disabling it) I get the error:

Fatal error: Call to undefined method
LuceneSearch::doTitlePrefixSearch() in {MY LOCAL
FOLDER}/w/extensions/lucene/LuceneSearch body.php on line
299

in a  tag right beneath my search text box.

I do have sleepycat installed.

I am wondering whether this has been implemented yet, or whether it is
on somebody's TODO list.

Thanks,
Kasimir

--
Kasimir Gabert


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Steve Sanbeg wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 19:24:13 -0500, Simetrical wrote:
>>
>>
>>> On 1/27/07, Luiz Augusto <lugusto at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Tiny question: isn't possible to block any non-Wikimedia site from live
>>>> mirroring instead of blocking one-by-one?
>>>>
>>> I suppose we could try to record massive request rates from the same
>>> IP, but then you'd probably catch some large-scale proxies too.  So
>>> not really.  They just request a page like anyone else, and the
>>> request is superficially impossible to distinguish reliably from a
>>> request made by an ordinary user.
>>>
>> There is one difference, in that proxy traffic would be generated by
>> humans who use the proxies, while mirror traffic would presumably come
>> from the web crawlers that are indexing the mirrors, and should thus be
>> much more predictable.
>>
>
> Some remote loaders use a rotating open proxy list, for example
> tramadol.tfres.net (warning, site contains some nasty javascript). This
> makes them slow, but apparently fast enough for the search engines to
> index them. What can we do about that, besides DoS the website?
>
> -- Tim Starling
>

That would actually be quite a good way of finding those actively
exploited open proxies, by serving up fictitious (and steganographically
identified) hook pages that don't get served by any legitimate
distribution channel such as backups or live feeds, and then matching up
fetching IPs to their appearance in live-loaders.

Details on request...

-- Neil


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Commons-l] Killing the main namespace?

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Sure. I list these all the time...
>
> You can find a copy of a recent run here:
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Gmaxwell/scratch
>
> There are also a lot of junk pages which do somehow manage to have an
> image in them. I often find them by looking for external links in the
> main namespace.

So i have been coding an implemented feature??
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Platonides/without_images

Some inhabitants of the main namespace:
*Lists of galleries: Train, List of the German Autobahn...
*Species lists, lots of them, probably to make the pages
*Galleries with their images removed (favoring categories?)
*Article which became categories.
*Pages not to be recreated.
*Info pages transcluded on categories: Info:Adolf Hitler, Info:Argonaute


from_name: David Goodman

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
Many corporations (and other new editors) enter articles from which it
is impossible to to realize what might make them notable. These pages
are of course deleted. To what extent is it a possible function of WP
to help them write a meaningful article that would a/ conform to our
practices and prejudices
and, b/ say something useful?
Perhaps  templates would be the way--for bios as well, and for
schools, etc. Perhaps we need a "write a new article" interface more
meaningful than the one that presently appears? DGG

On 1/29/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Elly Waterman wrote:
> > I admit being a very new reader of this list, so I do not know its
> > conventions. But could you please refrain from unneccessary talking? My
> > mailbox is so full already...  Thanks, Elly
>
> If you're subscribed to high-volume mailing lists like this one you may
> want to try using an email program that can do filtering to
> automatically sort through incoming mail and put it into appropriate
> folders. I've used both Eudora and Thunderbird for this. I'm subscribed
> to three high-volume mailing lists and dozens of less active ones but
> between the filters I use to separate out that stuff and the spam
> filters built into Thunderbird I only have one or two "unclassifiable"
> emails left in my inbox each day (these are almost always personal
> emails sent directly to me by other individuals).
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
David Goodman, Ph.D, M.L.S.


from_name: Matt R

body:
--- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> When people are treated differently based on their language, it is most
> definitely wrongful discrimination.

No, it's not. If I started replying to you in Swahili, you'd answer, if you
answered at all, quite differently to if I had used English. (Making the
assumption that you don't speak Swahili, of course). So you'd treat me
differently based on my language. Would that be wrongful discrimination? No --
it's that you don't understand what I'm saying. This is the issue with
non-Latin usernames: they can't be "understood" by all English speakers in the
ways that usernames need to be "understood" for Wikipedia to function.

> And it does not occur to me that the
> English language Wikipedia has a right to discriminate people because of
> their name not being English

We can rightfully require that they choose a Latin transliteration of their
name and use that (or something else) if they are going to be doing stuff that
requires interacting with an English-speaking community working on an
English-language project.

> But seriously, Wikipedia is pre-dominantly white, women have a problem with
> the attitude of some.

These are serious issues, but I don't think a policy about what character sets
can be used in handles is really comparable.

-- Matt

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com

___________________________________________________________
Now you can scan emails quickly with a reading pane. Get the new Yahoo! Mail. http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/nowyoucan.html


from_name: Delirium

body:
Anders Wegge Jakobsen wrote:
> Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> writes:
>
>
>> Non-Latin usernames make distinguishing and recognising users *much*
>> harder.
>>
>
>  Tough for you then. Grow up and learn coping with the globalized
> world.
>

But this is directly contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia, which is to
give everyone knowledge in *their own language*.  A user of [language x]
should only have to be familiar with [language x] in order to contribute
to their local Wikipedia, not also familiar with all other languages.
Usually English is the worst offender in this regard (people should
*not* have to know English, or even necessarily be familiar with Latin
script, in order to contribute to a non-English Wikipedia), but it's no
better when it goes the other way either.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
On 1/28/07, Rich Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:

> For instance, calling someone a "troll" for (even very persistently)
> disagreeing is a step in the direction of groupthink.

I would agree if it were a regular poster but if someone pops up out
of nowhere and starts opposing the group on one or more issues, then
there is a good chance that person is a "troll". A real honest
detractor will agree with the group on some issues and disagree on
others.

That's the way I saw it on usenet. An honest detractor would have a
non-troll posting history in the group in question or at least in
other groups. A troll drops out of the sky and starts flaming people.


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Should we not link to videos with musical
	soundtracks?

body:
On 1/26/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:
> Is using music on a video "a violation of the creator's copyright", or even "a work" in
> which the quoted wording was intended to refer to?

Yes.

If you need to ask that, you perhaps need to read up on copyright a bit more.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] Criteria of notability for web

body:
On 1/25/07, Steve Block <steve.block at myrealbox.com> wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> > The "notability" criteria are fundamentally subjective and arbitrary
> > rubbish written to appease definition obsessives from AFD.
>
> No they aren't, but this post from David meets some of that description.

Unfortunately you fail to actually rebut David's assertion with either
fact or solid argument.

Speaking personally and subjectively, the notability criteria I've
seen (granted, not all of them) tend to be overly specific, tend to
ignore that valid exceptions might exist, and tend to reinforce
systemic bias.  They seem to be written out of the desire to make a
sausage machine for AFD - put in an article, turn the crank, and out
pops a yes-or-no answer on the deletion question.

-Matt


body:
Hoi,
When people are treated differently based on their language, it is most
definitely wrongful discrimination. And it does not occur to me that the
English language Wikipedia has a right to discriminate people because of
their name not being English, what does occur to me is that this is a
fine example of discrimination.

When it is fine for you to try your hand at humour, you apparently can
not handle it when your witty repartees are used as if in earnest. But
seriously, Wikipedia is pre-dominantly white, women have a problem with
the attitude of some.
Thanks,
    GerardM

Matt R schreef:
> --- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> And I disagree utterly with your pov.
>>
>
> Yes, you've told me that already. Has it really not occurred to you that the
> English language Wikipedia should treat the English language differently to
> other languages? And that when it does so, it's not wrongful discrimination?
>
>
>> Do try and suggest to ban white people.
>>
>
> Why would I want to do that? Why are you encouraging the banning of people
> based on their skin colour?
>
>
>> The organisation of Wikimania 2005 and 2006 would have been so
>> much easier; every body could have been meetings in a pub on a Friday
>> night. I would even suggest that there would not have been much of a
>> Wikipedia without white people.
>>
>
> What are you going on about? Please attempt to be coherent.
>
>
>> You have correctly indicated three areas
>> where we could do better; language, race and gender.
>>
>
> Again, you are indulging yourself in melodrama. Please stop, not least because
> you are trivialising genuine issues of wrongful discrimination. "A black veil
> darkens what used to be a more bright promise of a world"? I believe the phrase
> starts with "get" and ends with "a grip".
>
> -- Matt
>
>
>> Matt R schreef:
>>
>>> --- Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> If "common sense" means that discrimination is permitted than I do
>>>> agree. When discrimination is permitted by the Wikimedia Foundation, a
>>>> black veil darkens what used to be a more bright promise of a world.
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Sheesh, let's cut back on the melodrama a notch, eh? I'm not suggesting
>>>
>> banning
>>
>>> white people. I'm not demanding that female users must identify themselves
>>>
>> by
>>
>>> writing in a pink font. What I am saying is that editors who enter into
>>> non-trivial interactions on the English Wikipedia should be obliged to have
>>>
>> a
>>
>>> handle that can be grokked by speakers of the English language.
>>>
>>> -- Matt


from_name: Łukasz Garczewski

subject: [Foundation-l] Glossary

body:
During my work in ChapCom, I've noticed we have developed a number of
terms with well-established meanings that are very similar to one
another. I believe this can be quite confusing, so I've started:

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

Hope you find it useful and add new items to the list.

Please note that it is currently somewhat loaded with chapter-related
terms. This is just because, well... That's what I do. :) It should
become less chapter-centric with time.

Comments welcome, of course.

If you know your way around meta (I don't :P) and like the glossary
idea, please add links to it so that others can find it.

--
?ukasz 'TOR' Garczewski


subject: [Foundation-l] Glossary


subject: [WikiEN-l] Consensus vs "groupthink"

body:
On 1/29/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:

> That's very close to my understanding of the term. As I mentioned
> elsewhere, I'm involved in a startup. One of the most frequently
> mentioned fears is "groupthink", by which we mean mistaking being in
> accord for being right. As Guy says, though, I usually hear it as a
> pejorative.

Actually, that's a specific kind of groupthink called the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox.


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Publishing group hires 'Pit Bull of PR' to fight
	openaccess

body:
On 29/01/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:

> From the Washington Post article:
> "But there is a potential downside to hiring the likes of Dezenhall: If word gets out, you stand to be seen as on the ropes and willing to do anything to win."

They ignored us, they laughed at us, now they're fighting us?

*ahem*

When I describe Commons to journalists, I say "we're not Getty Images
yet, but we hope to be, once we get a search function that doesn't
suck ..."

(Regular people don't know how significant a statement that is.
Journalists understand that's the picture equivalent of Wikipedia
replacing Britannica.)

- d.


from_name: geni

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/29/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> My attitude is that Wikipedia should be pushing the copyright envelope
> (within reason, of course) on all fronts.
>

And how much money do you plan to provide to make this possible?

> All non-governmental content from the past century is covered by copyright
> (essentially).
>

That simply isn't the case.

> We should also be demonstrating the importance of challenging the absurd
> life and strength of copyright laws by taking advantage of fair use when we
> can.

Your reasons do not support your actions here.

> Google is a great example of a company that by dint of its popularity gets
> to run roughshod over copyright restrictions that companies would squash if
> they weren't so reliant on Google.

Evidences?

In any case the "no one will sue us" is not a valid argument for
wikipedia if only because sooner or latter someone will and it doesn't
help reusers.

> Similarly Wikipedia is now in the position of being one of the 800-pound
> gorillas.

Annual turnover less than that of my nearest collage. I think not.

> Wikipedia has the power to shape law because of its size and influence.

How? Political campaigning is pretty much out. We have neither the
money nor the impact. People go to wikipedia looking for information.
They are not looking for an ideology

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/29/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> We're not an 800 pound gorilla; but we're much more than a dancing macacque.

We're neither. For most the net we are wallpaper.

>
> I would like to second Cunctator's comments in general.  Specifically,
> while I encourage the development of free content wherever possible, I
> want to be realistic that there's a tradeoff between covering
> something well and covering something badly but with entirely free
> content.  I will always come down on the side of  a better
> encyclopedia if an appropriate, legal fair use content add will better
> Wikipedia noticably.
>

> I had someone just last week suggest that we could find free
> replacement images for a spacecraft which had been assembled and flown
> in space already, both for the spacecraft under construction and for
> the landing.  The only people who took and released photos of the
> assembly who are known are the official space agency photographers
> (not NASA, India's ISRO), and the landing took place several hundred
> kilometers out to sea, with one Indian Coast Guard ship and some
> helicopters in attendance.  How exactly are we supposed to go back in
> time and convince a free-license photographer to go take pictures of
> those events that already happened?  How do we convince ISRO and the
> Indian Coast Guard to let them do it?
>

Experience suggests it or scale models will turn up in a museum

For example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Vostok_1_after_landing.jpg

> If we don't fight for the meaning and use of Fair Use, we both lose
> content for ourselves, and lose content for the whole community at
> large by not helping to uphold fair use vigorously.
>

I know of two legal systems that have fair use. People living under
other systems get by.

> If Wikipedia won't stand up for Fair Use, then it's a pretty sad
> world.

It is get used to it.

>We can be strident in supporting fair use, legal and proper in
> supporting fair use, and still prefer and work to create free content.
>  They are not mutually exclusive.

Then why was I deleting trivially replaceable non free images for
rather a lot of last week? Are you seriously going to tell that since
February 2006 no one has been in a position to make a pic of Pickled
cucumber?

> But those who say "oh, if we remove
> it, free content of equal value will just sprint forth to replace it"
> frustrate me to no end.  It won't, in a lot of cases, because it
> can't.

Experience suggests otherwise and at present time there is no
significant movement toward deleting all fair use material.

>
> Promotional photos of all types are generally accepted to be put out
> there by people and companies to be reused.

Please provide details of the licence they are under

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


subject: [Commons-l] Killing the main namespace?

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> Not an issue if we stop creation of any page in that namespace. :)

The main namespace is also the default one. Should we make into proper
namespace thos pseudo-namespaces? COM:, Info: ...

>
>> *Info pages transcluded on categories: Info:Adolf Hitler, Info:Argonaute
>
> Can someone explain these to me? Why not write on the category page?
Don't know. Seems a system by Makthorpe


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] RSS feeds: Wikies and OmegaWiki

body:
On 1/29/07, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:

> Is there any special page giving a list
> of "most modified" pages?

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

You can find a list of similar special pages at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Specialpages but they don't have
RSS feeds yet.

> A question about wikidata, too (BTW, is this the right plave to make a
> question about it?). How can I extract a "per language" feed from OmegaWiki?

This isn't the right place. I don't know if OmegaWiki has a new
mailing list. They used to use
http://groups.google.com/group/uw-creations when OmegaWiki was called
Ultimate Wiktionary. You could try leaving a message on the wiki at
http://www.omegawiki.org/Meta:International_Beer_Parlour

Angela


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] Killing the main namespace?

body:
On 29/01/07, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I see a lot of misplaced pages, spam, and utter insanity appear in the
> main namespace on commons.  There is also a lot of confusion about how
> the main namespace should be used.
>
> What do you think of the idea of moving all the galleries to a
> gallery: namespace, then reserving the main namespace for main pages
> and pretty much nothing else. After that point we could prevent main
> namespace page creation and make the edit page give a nice "You are
> confused, here is how you find help" message.
>
> The work it would take to accomplish this could be completely
> automated, although some inter project cooperation would be required
> to fix gallery linking templates and the like.
>
> I see a lot of potential to reduce confusion, and not a lot of real
> downsides. So I must be missing something. Thoughts?

It seems unnecessary to me. My feeling is that our mainspace spam is
only overly visible due to the facts that (a) we allow anon editors to
start articles (and I hope we continue to), and (b) we have very few
Special:Newpages patrollers (I have a look from time to time, I know
Herbythyme has been doing quite a lot lately).

I think changing the main namespace tab name to 'gallery' has been a
great change. What makes you say that "There is also a lot of
confusion about how
> the main namespace should be used"?

Perhaps all we need is more admins deleting namespace crud. I delete
on sight 99%  of anything that is only text. Even if it's in another
language. A lot of them look like misplaced articles or promo bios.

regards,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


from_name: Tim Starling

body:
Platonides wrote:
> Tim Starling wrote:
>> Some remote loaders use a rotating open proxy list, for example
>> tramadol.tfres.net (warning, site contains some nasty javascript).
> 2002 popups blocked :O
>
>> This makes them slow, but apparently fast enough for the search engines to
>> index them. What can we do about that, besides DoS the website?
>
> Make an script doing a special request to autoblock it. Run it
> daily/hourly. They *can't* update their proxy list as fast as a bot
> requesting pages. You can even use their proxy list to avoid them
> filtering the server ip.

That's all very well, until they use a proxy that we don't want to block.
It's been our policy so far to block anonymous editing from open proxies
and p2p anonymity networks, but to allow page views. If they were blocked
at the squid level, neither would be possible.

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> At some point a layer-8 approach becomes the most reasonable, although
> technical folks tend to shy away from interactions outside of their
> domain of expertise. ;)

Their money apparently comes from an affiliate scheme with DriveCleaner,
which apparently is a scam where the "free version" of a purported
spyware/virus checker reports a threat, and recommends that the user buy
the "full version" of the software in order to remove it. It's been known
to Symantec since June 2006, and what have the authorities done in that
time to stop it? You can still go to drivecleaner.com and pick up a copy.
There's a lack of international coordination, a lack of political will and
a lack of funding.

And if they can't stop a blatant scam, defrauding people of money every
day, so what makes you think they could be bothered to stop a borderline
abuse of service?

As for vigilante action, we know from anti-spam activities that a
technical attack could well be met by with revenge in kind, and we know
that we could easily find ourselves outgunned. I don't really want to
spend my time dealing with multi-gigabit DDoS attacks against Wikipedia
once every week or two.

Civil action may be the only remaining option, but of course it is
expensive. The hosting providers, ISPs and banks will defend their
clients' right to privacy every step of the way.

Welcome to the Internet.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Gatto Nero

subject: [Foundation-l] KJ and Wikimania

body:
2007/1/26, Jimmy Wales <jwales a wikia.com>:
> Gil, Angela and I are excited to announce that KJ will be spending 50%
> of her work time at Wikia over the next 6 months as a dedicated
> volunteer for Wikimania 2007.  KJ will be one of the main organizers of
> Wikimania 2007 and is responsible for Wikimania sponsorship. KJ is
> responsible for preparing sponsor proposals and will be spending time
> visiting the sponsors to discuss their proposals.
>
> Part of my goal with Wikia is to build a commercial enterprise that
> could contribute back to the foundation and I'm excited to see that
> starting to happen.
>
> --Jimbo

I tried, but I couldn't resist.
We're all happy for Wikiamania. Yippie.

Gatto Nero


subject: [Foundation-l] KJ and Wikimania

body:
2007/1/26, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>:
> Gil, Angela and I are excited to announce that KJ will be spending 50%
> of her work time at Wikia over the next 6 months as a dedicated
> volunteer for Wikimania 2007.  KJ will be one of the main organizers of
> Wikimania 2007 and is responsible for Wikimania sponsorship. KJ is
> responsible for preparing sponsor proposals and will be spending time
> visiting the sponsors to discuss their proposals.
>
> Part of my goal with Wikia is to build a commercial enterprise that
> could contribute back to the foundation and I'm excited to see that
> starting to happen.
>
> --Jimbo

I tried, but I couldn't resist.
We're all happy for Wikiamania. Yippie.

Gatto Nero


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/29/07, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...and when it does, then someone can go take a picture of it and
> replace the existing ones, and we'll all be happy.
>
> UNTIL THEN, there exists no alternative.
>

You need to learn to wait. An image is not required today.

> It is arguably both true that there are reasonably replaceable images
> there now labeled Fair Use (which should be replaced sooner rather
> than later), and people trying to delete things which are not
> reasonably or possibly replaceable.  This is what happens when we
> don't have a clear theory of what we're trying to do with fair use,
> and muddled case "law" precedent and interpretations.
>

No one ever claimed that fair use was clarity personified

> I would not be here complaining if there weren't.  I am not
> grandstanding here to make political points because Fair Use in
> Society is a Big Thing for me.  There is serious anti-fair-use
> activity going on, mostly under the radar, but consistently and
> widespread.

There is anti abuse-of-fair-use activit going on but anti fair use
activity is limited.

>  The policy is vague and inconsistent enough to allow
> that.  It's wrong, and it has to be limited.

 It is limited. It is also the correct course of action.

A the present time the number of fair use images in en does not appear
to be falling.

> Fair Use.

That isn't a lisence.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
On 1/29/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/29/technology/29wikipedia.html

If the first case is the one I think it is she was reprimanded for
doing so (in any case the she didn't take the stuff directly from
wikipedia but one of our mirrors). Again they were looking for
information. If wikipedia tried to campaign to change fair use law it
is safe to assume it will not be cited in the area of copyright law.

Furthermore if you look at threads on partisan forums people basically
say while they will use wikipedia they are careful not to let it
impact their biases.

--
geni


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Alex Powell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Performance of loading custom style sheets

body:
Hi,

Mediawiki's performance has improved substantially over the versions. and
1.9 seems the snappiest yet. When I upgraded I found I had some slow stuff
being loaded in addition to MW. Using Firebug beta (v cool BTW) I noticed
something odd. The index.php for the page loads blindingly fast, but the
following:

/index.php?title=-&action=raw&smaxage=0&gen=js<http://www.exscien.com/internal/index.php?title=-&action=raw&smaxage=0&gen=js>
/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&usemsgcache=yes&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=18000<http://www.exscien.com/internal/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Common.css&usemsgcache=yes&action=raw&ctype=text/css&smaxage=18000>
/index.php?title=User:Alexp/monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css<http://www.exscien.com/internal/index.php?title=User:Alexp/monobook.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css>
/index.php?title=-&action=raw&gen=css&maxage=18000&smaxage=0&ts=20070129214411<http://www.exscien.com/internal/index.php?title=-&action=raw&gen=css&maxage=18000&smaxage=0&ts=20070129214411>

... seem to run very slowly (one was taking 2 seconds and each take over
.5secs, on a page that took 16ms to render). What can be done to speed them?
As far as I can see they are just simple js direct from the DB. Am I missing
something or is there a performance hole there?

Best regards,

Alex


body:
Tim Starling wrote:
> Some remote loaders use a rotating open proxy list, for example
> tramadol.tfres.net (warning, site contains some nasty javascript).
2002 popups blocked :O

> This makes them slow, but apparently fast enough for the search engines to
> index them. What can we do about that, besides DoS the website?

Make an script doing a special request to autoblock it. Run it
daily/hourly. They *can't* update their proxy list as fast as a bot
requesting pages. You can even use their proxy list to avoid them
filtering the server ip.


from_name: xaosflux

body:
How useful is section protection, I used to think hmm, sounds like a good
idea, but can't think of anywhere wikimedia would get much use of it,
afterall you could always jsut slap some <noinclude> tags around the sectoin
and replace it.....
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Hu" <jimhu at tamu.edu>
To: "Wikimedia developers" <wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 12:05 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] ProtectSection.php modification - where
topost/discuss?

> There was some discussion on one of the mailing lists about
> protecting specific sections in a wiki page, where Rob Church noted
> an extension called ProtectSection.php.  I have modified the code to
> run one of the functions at a different hook, which allows me to also
> kill any subsection Edit links on headings inside a protected
> section.  I have it working on 1.8.3 and 1.7.1 locally.
>
> I noticed that ProtectSection in svn has been modified by tstarling
> and hashar (tstarling says  "It's still completely broken with
> section editing, though." ... but it seems to work for me, unless I'm
> misunderstanding the issue.  Also, if the section edit links are
> gone, the issue may be moot.).  How should I submit the code
> modification for others to look at?  I wasn't sure if this should go
> to bugzilla bug 4375 or here.  I hope that my code modification may
> be worth looking at, but I worry that it's too hacky to warrant
> consideration yet for the topic of the bug.
>
> Please advise.
>
> =====================================
> Jim Hu
>
> p.s.  What I did was move the call to one of the functions,
> wfStripProtectTags, to ParserAfterTidy, and changed it to:
>
>> function wfStripProtectTags ( &$parser , &$text) {
>>
>> $tmp = explode("<protect>",$text);
>> $sections = array();
>> $sections[] = array_shift($tmp);
>> foreach($tmp as $block){
>> $tmp = explode("</protect>",$block);
>> $sections[] = "".preg_replace("/
> class=\"editsection(.*?)<\/div>/i", "", $tmp[0])."";
>> array_shift($tmp);
>> $sections[] = implode('',$tmp);
>> }
>> $text = implode("",$sections);
>> return true;
>> }
>
> someday I'll learn how to use diff :(
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l


body:
On 29/01/07, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:

> > Unless I find huge opposition here, I'm going to begin changing the
> > commons instruction pages to reflect this use of categories rather
> > than our historic use.

> some of these folks - they go on about server loads and the like as
> well. I'd suggest just bringing up the issue and watching the fur fly,
> before deciding to invest time in rewriting anything...

They're going to tell a MediaWiki dev what his ideas will do to server
load. Perhaps this could be the time to invoke the "Brion says STFU
about server load unless it's your job to care"
policy^Wprocess^Wguideline^Wlaw of physics.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] MessageCache v. Language

body:
Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> Theoretically speaking, these two classes have very distinct roles.
> MessageCache is a cache of messages, where userland code should run off
> to get messages from. Language, while containing messages, defers this
> responsibility to MessageCache, and instead lets users call
> language-specific behavior like formatting dates. So, in theory, while
> MessageCache is dependent on Language, Language should not be dependent
> on MessageCache.
>
> In reality, however, this is not the case. Certain functions in the
> Language objects will occasionally need to call getMessageFromDB (which
> calls the wfMsg* functions which call the MessageCache) to grab a
> possibly customized message. The whole thing is terribly convoluted and
> I'm not sure I understand.

MessageCache is a cache of the MediaWiki namespace, a cache which is
conceptually merged with various other message sources. Sometimes Language
needs to access the MediaWiki namespace, and it does so via MessageCache.
Language::getMessageFromDB is a helper function to facilitate such access.
This is required to support important features such as per-wiki
customisation of month names.

The way MessageCache supports multiple language objects is hackish,
because the ability to support multiple language objects was added after
MessageCache was designed, and it was never properly refactored.

> I'm wondering, however, how this would be restructured if you had to
> chance to refactor this triumvirate of files without any regard to
> backwards-compatibility. Some questions:
>
> * A global function is currently being used to do parameter
> substitution: if you were to stuff this in a class, which class would go
> into?

MessageCache. Almost all of the wfMsg*() functionality should be in
MessageCache.

> * The message cache is currently used by extension authors to add their
> own customizable messages to the mix. Is adding the messages straight to
> the cache the right thing to do, even if it is labeled
> mExtensionMessages? Would the cache be responsible for message
> retrieval? Should the class be renamed for sake of truthfulness?

Renamed to what?

> * The cache is language aware in that it can accept messages for
> specific languages but then figure out which one to use once based on
> $wgContLang or $wgLang (whichever is currently taking precedence).
>
> It appears that MessageCache is not so much a cache but a loose
> confederation of tools for *getting* messages, performing some magic
> along with the global functions to figure out where to look, its own
> cache being only one of many places to look. Which is why I'm having
> trouble figuring this stuff out.

The object is named after the data it contains. The member functions are
tools for operating on that data. We could call it MessageUtilities, but
then it would sound like a mere collection of functions, and it would not
be clear what happens when you instantiate, clone or serialize one of them.

-- Tim Starling


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Publishing group hires 'Pit Bull of PR' to fight
	open access

body:
On 1/29/07, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Quoting David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:
>
> >
> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/25/AR2007012501705.html
>
> "...Dezenhall told the association's professional and scholarly publishing
> division, he could help -- in part by simplifying the industry's message to a
> few key phrases that even a busy senator could grasp.  Phrases like: "Public
> access equals government censorship..."
>
>   They've hired Cplot?!?
>
>           Jkelly

It would explain a lot. I tend to feel that one would be rather open
to a counter attack along the lines of:

montage of NASA images

"the Association of American Publishers would have you believe that
this is censorship"

--
geni


from_name: Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)

body:
Brad Patrick wrote:

> The images are fair - not free - and that isn't the same thing.  You can
> argue til the cows come home about any particular example.  People do.  ;-)
> But I would once again encourage anyone interested in the issue to ask
> themselves first why the fair image *must* be there instead of a free one
> (rare examples) and why it is not instead an easy way out in lieu of the
> harder task of obtaining free images as equivalents.
>

Well, it is not so rare. In fact there are thousands of fair-use images
in Wikipedia-en, that you could not replace with a free ones. Book's and
CD's covers, movie posters, logos of companies etc, have no free
replacement.

See for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_It_Be_%28album%29

Polimerek.


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use (again)


from_name: Anders Wegge Jakobsen

body:
Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> writes:

> writing in a pink font. What I am saying is that editors who enter
> into non-trivial interactions on the English Wikipedia should be
> obliged to have a handle that can be grokked by speakers of the
> English language.

 The problem is that "speakers of the english language" seem to
gravitate towards the lowest common denominator. We are writing an
encyclopedia for Petes sake! Editors are supposedly in command of a
skillset that's beyond burger flipping 101. If not, they have no place
writing an encyclopedia anyway.

 Will the next demand be that interwiki targets must only be named
with latin-1 characters?

--
// Wegge
<http://geowiki.wegge.dk/wiki/Forside> - Alt om geocaching
Bruger du den gratis spamfighther ser jeg kun dine indl?g *EN* gang.


from_name: Berto 'd Sera

subject: [Wikipedia-l] school articles : enough

body:
Hi Ray!

> There's more to writing about companies than such
> POV expos?s..
LOL, this sounds funny, as I am myself a Radical Constructivist :) I do not
believe there is anything in man's mind apart from POVs... so there is also
nothing that can be written, apart from POVs. The very idea of the existence
of NPOV things is absolutely POV. :)

Anyway, we have is a procedure called "consensus". If I wanted to candidate
my POV for consensus I would not write it here. I'd click on a big number of
Edit tabs and make it happen, which is not what I'm doing. Not that I'm not
interested in being a winner, simply I do not give a damn about what gets
published about company X, since I sold all my stocks many years ago and
never got robbed again :))) I'd rather write about what can be of use for my
beloved self, as anybody else.

> Our coverage of corporations is seriously deficient.
So click on those "edit" tabs and make it better People write about what is
interesting to them. What you say basically means that wikimedians aren't
interested in corporate economy enough for them to write about it...

B?rto ?d S?ra
Personagi dl?ann 2006 p?r l?arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti voj?otri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html