from_name: Jean-Christophe Chazalette

body:
This is the problem with jurists, they always answer the exact question you
asked and never the question you meant :)
Don't bother for the bashing regarding your mail, this list is getting so
friendly and peaceful that it's even useless to take care.
Try working out your project a bit more and
Cheers :o

villy ~~JC

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dariusz Siedlecki" <datrio at gmail.com>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 7:43 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Only non-commercial re-use od Wiki content?

"Wikimedia lawyers" - it was a mental byway (I'm not sure how to
correctly call it). By this I ment Juriwiki, as the purpose of that
list is to answer legal questions regarding Wikimedia projects. The
truth is, I didn't correctly express the commercial way of
e-Polityka.pl in my email, which brought confusion.

--
Best regards,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki
_______________________________________________
foundation-l mailing list
foundation-l at wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Only non-commercial re-use od Wiki content?


list: foundation-l

body:
*You* don't *have* lawyers, that's for sure.  Some lawyers are gathered in a
specific mailing-L called Juriwiki in order to give a volunteer help to
Wikimedia Foundation.  It was announced on this list some time ago. Plus I
tried to launch some legal pages on meta.

villy ~~JC

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel Mayer" <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
To: "Tomasz Sienicki" <tsca at edb.dk>; "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List"
<foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 5:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Only non-commercial re-use od Wiki content?

| Wikimedia lawyers? Since when have we had lawyers? Who the hell is this
admin?
| Admins do not have any authority to enter into any agreement on behalf of
the
| foundation without board approval.

| Yahoo! Mail
| Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour:
| http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html
|
| _______________________________________________
| foundation-l mailing list
| foundation-l at wikimedia.org
| http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
|


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Lucene in C#

body:
On Thu, 2005-05-05 at 05:35 -0700, Brion Vibber wrote:
> While the Java-based Lucene search server is giving pretty good
> performance on search results compiled with GCJ, the index builder
> performs pretty slowly: 3-10x slower than the same code running under
> Sun's JDK.
>
> Since I've gotten relatively good performance out of the C# version
> running under Mono, I've gone ahead and imported that into CVS and
> started bringing it up to date, and plan to use it at least for the
> indexing.

If Sun's JDK gives the best performance, why not just run it under
that?  Nothing says we have to bow to the god RMS and avoid good free
software just because he's pronounced it "unclean".

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>  <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Make summaries mandatory

body:
Sj wrote:

>Sounds like a good idea.  Even if some people fill it with a single
>period, it will definitely increase the readability of RC.  I admit to
>being a culprit; I often hit Alt-S without remembering to add an
>edit-summary.  Perhaps we could make Alt-S move your focus to the
>summary field if it's empty, and only save if it's full?
>
>This regular appearance of this suggestion inspired the newly-created
>Village Pump section for "perennial proposals".
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28perennial_proposals%29
>
>
>SJ
>
>On 4/28/05, The Cunctator <cunctator at kband.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Looking at a scroll of Recent Changes, I noticed that usage of the summary
>>field has plummeted. I strongly recommend a simple change: making summaries
>>mandatory for edits not checked as "minor". This is non-obtrusive and
>>helpful. An example of a wiki that uses this feature is at
>>http://www.technomanifestos.net.
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>>
Hoi,
The more restrictions you put into place, the more you will find people
reluctant to do something for you. When it is ESSENTIAL that you get
specific information, you make it mandatory. But if this summary is a
good idea, it is a much better idea to have compulsory license info with
digital content. We do not even do that. Pictures without license info
are deleted and some wonderfull people do a lot of good work to get this
info. The extended descripton box is a lifesaver, it allows you to add
these fields during upload time :)

Yes, there are perenial proposals and there must a good reason why most
of these stay that way.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wikien-l

from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
I'm assuming:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt.usenet.kooks

Clearly mentions him.

"Subscribers to the group regularly hand out awards in various categories,
most notably the "Kook of the Month Award", by regularized voting processes.
Notable past winners include Archimedes Plutonium, Sollog and Edmond Heinz
Wollmann (who was "honored" as the "Kook of the Millennium")."

Is currently protected from vandalism.
----- Original Message -----
From: <slimvirgin at gmail.com>
To: "Astrological Consulting" <arcturianone at earthlink.net>; "English
Wikipedia" <wikien-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 8:51 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

Edmond, which article is this in?

Sarah

On 5/5/05, Astrological Consulting <arcturianone at earthlink.net> wrote:
> I would like to respectfully ask that you remove my name from all
references to "kooks" and other abusive and defamatory maligning propaganda
posted to your website specifically to damage my business and profession of
30 years+.
>
> I wrote an explanation of why the usenet abusers harass me and ask that
you read it and my academically published works and decide for yourselves if
I am what these abusers say I am.
> The people who supply you "kopok" information do so on anonymous basis,
while I openly discuss my points of view on usenet and have done so for 9
years.
>
> I am a published author and have my own consulting business and publishing
company here in San Diego, and will take all legal action necessary to stop
you and your company from using your service as a way to defame others.
>
> Post about being stalked for 9 years:
>
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.astrology/msg/3c1c63f3e35ee818?hl=en
>
> Links to my academic articles:
>
> http://astroconsulting.com/FAQ??s/fate_vs_free_will.htm
> http://astroconsulting.com/FAQ??s/did_the_greeks_invent_astrol??ogy.htm
> http://astroconsulting.com/FAQ??s/arguments_against_the_astrol??ogers.htm
> http://astroconsulting.com/FAQ??s/art_evolution_in_greece_and_??rome.htm
> http://astroconsulting.com/FAQ??s/arabic.htm
>
> Thank you for your attention.
>
> Edmond H. Wollmann P.M.A.F.A.
> (C) 2005 Altair Publications, SAN 299-5603
> Astrological Consulting http://www.astroconsulting.com/
> Artworks http://www.e-wollmann.com/
> http://home.earthlink.net/~arcturianone/
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
_______________________________________________
WikiEN-l mailing list
WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
David DJ Hedley said:
> I'm assuming:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt.usenet.kooks
>
> Clearly mentions him.
>

There used to be an [[Edmond Wollmann]] article, created back in early
January.  I cleaned it up to get the worst POV crap out, then supported a
VfD which was successful.  I'm sympathetic to the idea of removing the
reference from the [[Alt.usenet.kooks]] article because it is not
essential to the article and, frankly, any kookiness Edmond may ever have
possessed is more than matched by others.  I speak as the person who first
nominated him for KOTM in 1998.
However anything of this kind removed from the article would likely be
restored within minutes.


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] Article validation feature in 1.5?

body:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason schrieb:
> > It won't be in 1.5.
>
> Pardon me, but it already *is* in 1.5.

I was under the impression that getValidationTypes() would be used,
and currently that only exists in two language files and isn't used in
the code, I didn't notice $wgUseValidation or SpecialValidation.php so
you're right, it is in the code.

I'd like to apologize for spreading misinformation on this list.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Hi Dariusz,

thanks for going out and trying to establish content partnerships. I
think a license like CC-BY or CC-BY-SA would be fine if the content is
clearly labeled as such. The problem with CC-BY-NC or similar
"noncommercial use only" licenses is not necessarily incompatibility,
but that they don't fit our established definition of free content, i.e.
far too many uses we want to allow become impossible.

All best,

Erik


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
I'd like to open a discussion, very practical, about our medium-term
hosting strategy.  If you happen to be privy to any "inside information"
(there isn't that much) then please be sure to anonymize the names of
organizations that might be involved, since this is a public list. :-)

What I need to do is prepare an internal document to important
interested parties within the community (for example the leaders of the
German verein, who have money to spend on their charitable goals,
servers is fine for this), and I want to make sure that my overall plans
are sensible from a tech point of view.

Additionally, I am in talks with a great many organizations who are
offering free hosting at various levels, and I need to know what makes
sense for us in terms of how small or large each datacenter should be to
meet our needs sensibly.

While I of course welcome "big picture visionary" statements from people
who don't know a lot about our actual network and challenges (we can
learn from that), I'm mostly interested in extremely practical *here and
now* feedback.  The people who are actually involved in the day to day
running of the site have a better feel for what makes sense than anyone
else -- it is their advice which will carry the day.

Here is the current situation --

Florida - 44-ish servers now, 20 more apache/squid machines to be
installed within the next two weeks (10 already arrived and Chad will
install very soon).  2 more database servers have been order, as well as
a JBOD-thingy.

Paris - 3 squids, soon to be 6

Yahoo -- datacenter in South Korea, I was just contacted by the tech
person and he seeks guidance from us on the exact parameters.  We're
looking at 20U of apache/squid and 6U of db servers there -- this can
probably be online in one or two months, maybe faster if we move fast
and they move fast. :-)

Belnet/Belgium -- 1 rack of space, unlimited bandwidth, they are ready
to go Monday, they can do full hands-on, etc., including replacing
borken hard drives and so on like that.  They are excited to move
forward quickly.  In this case, we must supply the hardware.  We can
either buy hardware (with the German money?) or I can ask someone to buy
it for us (see Big Company X, below).

Amsterdam - a large NGO wants to do a big press announcement when I'm
there in Holland at the end of this month.  They are providing a set of
servers which have already been ordered.  I do not know the exact
specifications, perhaps someone else can tell me?

Big Company X - this company is prepared to make a very major commitment
to hosting for us.  Originally there were discussions of us being hosted
in their facility, but now we are seeking bids on outsourcing this.  The
exact parameters are at this time very open ended, and I have told them
that basically we need time to figure out what we need.  They assure me
there is no time pressure and they don't care about PR or anything else
-- it's a pure charitable donation, no strings attached.  But still I
prefer to try to move quickly to take advantage of us just in case the
corporate mood changes (you never know with big companies!).  The
parameters being discussed would be in the range of 2 full racks of
servers, essentially a full replication of our Florida data center as of
a couple of months ago.

They are flexible on the amounts -- it is essentially whatever we need
and can honestly justify.  They are tech savvy and fully agree with my
view that just throwing random money and servers at us is not the best
use of our resources -- rather, they prefer that we ask for what we can
really use in a way that optimizes the use of their money -- best
strategy for everyone, obviously.

SOOOOOOOOO......

Feedback?

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Is this group itself even notable? 5,100 Google hits, and minusing the
Usenet indexes, thats not much.

As for mentioning names, I think it is fine, if presented in the right way.
Saying "Given the 'honour' of being named 'Kook of the Year'" isn't really
the way to put it, as stating 'honour' in quotation marks is NPOV in itself.
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Gerard" <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
To: <slimvirgin at gmail.com>; "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2005 9:31 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

> slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050506 06:15]:
> > On 5/5/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> > > Actually famous Usenet crank. More coherent than Sollog. Lots of
material
> > > on skeptictank.com .
>
> > I think the point here is that WP policy states that we must used only
> > reputable or credible published sources as secondary sources, and
> > Usenet doesn't count as that. It can be used as primary-source
> > material for information about itself, but it can't be used as a
> > secondary source of information about someone else, especially not
> > when we're using a person's real name (unlike the case of Sollog).
>
>
> Uh, [[alt.usenet.kooks]] is an article about a Usenet group.
>
>
> - d.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Test wiki

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> Latest strangeness: everything in my watchlist
> (http://test.leuksman.com/index.php/Special:Watchlist) is now marked as
> "New".
>
> What **is** going on over there?

Good point, that feature will run this query:

$dbw->update( 'watchlist',
                array( /* SET */
                    'wl_notificationtimestamp' => 0
                ), array( /* WHERE */
                    'wl_title' => $title->getDBkey(),
                    'wl_namespace' => $title->getNamespace(),
                    'wl_user' => $this->getId()
                ), 'User::clearLastVisited'
        );

...on every logged in page view. This should be made optional, because
we'll have to switch it off on Wikipedia for performance. Knowing how
MySQL locks have a tendency of infecting unrelated indexes, I dare say
this will be a concurrency nightmare.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Slate: "Wikipedia is a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide:
	huge, nerdy, and imprecise."

body:
>Wikipedia is a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide: huge, nerdy, and imprecise.

My advice: don't panic.

Charles


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected (was: Abuse of your services)

body:
>> B. Wikipedia *MAY* report that those jerks on Usenet have branded >> you
a
>> kook. (Read the part about Wikipedia NOT endorsing that label.)

I think that, looking at the previous way that the report was presented, it
was written in a way that possibly seemed more like the anonymous user was
calling him a kook than reporting it. Thus, Wikipedia was calling him a
kook. If it had been written as something along the lines of "Persons that
the newsgroup have labelled a 'kook' include [name], who was given the title
of 'Kook of the Millenium'" then there would be no reasonable argument
against its inclusion.


subject: [Foundation-l] Checkuser request

body:
Hoi.

I would like to have checked if the nl:gebruiker:Xiwik is a sock puppet.
Today a vote ended to block nl:gebruiker:Wikix for half a year. There
are two possibilities, it is either a prankster or it can not be told.

We would like to know.

Thanks.
   GerardM
      Gerard Meijssen


subject: [Foundation-l] Checkuser request


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Astrological Consulting said:
> I have been really disappointed in not only his behavior, but the
> ruination of such a potentially valuable tool such as usenet for
> sharing ideas across the world.

Yes, it was me.  I am the guy who killed Usenet.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
> On 5/5/05, Delirium <delirium at hackish.org> wrote:
> Our policy states that our secondary
> sources must be credible, reputable, and in some way authoritative:
> see, for example, WP:NOR. It's admittedly hard to define these terms,
> but Usenet doesn't count as any of those by any standard, not least
> because the posts are largely anonymous.

This is very true.  There are Sherilyn posts on Google Groups that even I
have to look at closely before I can tell if it was I or one of many
impostors who wrote them.


from_name: Viajero

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Slate: "Wikipedia is a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide:
 huge, nerdy, and imprecise."

body:
Wikipedia is a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide: huge, nerdy, and imprecise.

By Paul Boutin
Posted Tuesday, May 3, 2005, at 2:37 PM PT

It's too bad Douglas Adams wasn't able to see his vision brought to
life. I don't mean the so-so movie version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy. I'm talking about Wikipedia, the Web's own don't-panic guide
to everything.

The parallels between The Hitchhiker's Guide (as found in Adams'
original BBC radio series and novels) and Wikipedia are so striking,
it's a wonder that the author's rabid fans don't think he invented time
travel. Since its editor was perennially out to lunch, the Guide was
amended "by any passing stranger who happened to wander into the empty
offices on an afternoon and saw something worth doing." This anonymous
group effort ends up outselling Encyclopedia Galactica even though "it
has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least
wildly inaccurate."

Adams actually launched his own onlin guide before he died in 2001, but
it was, he wrote, "still a little like the fossil record in that it
consists almost entirely of gaps." Wikipedia is a colossal
improvement?it's just like the fictional Hitchhiker's Guide, only
nerdier. Wikipedia is the Web fetishist's ideal data structure: It's
free, it's open-source, and it features a 4,000-word exegesis of Dune.

For decades, software-makers competed to build complex collaboration
systems. These high-end tools, like Lotus Notes, let companies specify
who can edit which documents and establish complex approval procedures
for changes. In 1995, software researcher Ward Cunningham destroyed the
hierarchies by designing a site, the WikiWikiWeb, that anyone could dit.
(Wiki-wiki means "quick quick" in Hawaiian. Cunningham saw it on a
Honolulu Airport bus.)

Wikipedia, with more than 1 million entries in at least 10 languages, is
the mother of all wikis, but there are also wikis devoted to quotations,
the city of Seattle, and Irish politics. (Check out this wiki of wikis,
which lists more than 1,000 sites.) Instead of enforcing rules, wikis
trust that groups can behave. Anyone can edit or reorganize their
contents. If you realize something's missing, incomplete, or incorrect,
you can fix it yourself without asking permission. "People told me that
the experience changed their lives," Cunningham said via e-mail.

Don't expect Wikipedia to change your life, though, unless you've
secretly longed to be an encyclopedia editor. Just because you give
everyone read and write permissions doesn't mean everyone will use them.
Wiki lovers argue that they are collaborative, self-correcting, living
documents that evolve to hold the sum of all the knowledge of their
users. But, like blogging, editing the Net's encyclopedia appeals to a
small, enthusiastic demographic.

Like the Guide's lengthy entries on drinking, Wikipedia mirrors the
interests of its writers rather than its readers. You'll find more on
Slashdot than The New Yorker. The entry for Cory Doctorow is three times
as long as the one for E.L. Doctorow. Film buffs have yet to post a page
on Through a Glass Darkly; they're too busy tweaking the seven-part
entry onTron.

But excessive nerdiness isn't what's keeping Wikipedia from becoming the
Net's killer resource. Accuracy is. In a Wired feature story, Daniel
Pink (kind of) praised the hulking encyclopedia by saying you can
"[l]ook up any topic you know something about and you'll probably find
that the Wikipedia entry is, if not perfect, not bad." But don't people
use encyclopedias to look up stuff they don't know anything about? Even
if a reference tool is 98 percent right, it's not useful if you don't
know which 2 percent is wrong. The entry for Slate, for instance, claims
that several freelance writers are "columnists on staff" and still lists
Cyrus Krohn as publisher months after the Washington Post Co.'s Cliff
Sloan took over.

Just because the Wikipedia elves will probably fix those errors by the
time you read this article doesn't mean that the system is inherently
self-healing. Not everyone who uses a wiki wants to hit from both sides
of the plate. The subset of enthusiastic writers and editors is orders
of magnitude smaller than the group of passive readers who'll never get
around to contributing anything.

Bashing Wikipedia is nearly as risky as bashing Scientology. I know that
I'm going to get barraged by the Wikivangelists?"If an entry's wrong,"
they'll say, "stop complaining about it and fix it." But if I were truly
conscientious, I'd have to stop and edit something almost every time I
use Wikipedia. Most people are like Douglas Adams' characters?we
resolvefirmly to stay and fix it after work then forget the whole
episode by lunchtime. Wikipedia is a good first stop to get the basics
in a hurry, especially for tech and pop culture topics that probably
won't ever make it into Britannica. I'm just careful not to use it to
settle bar bets or as source material for an article. I made that
mistake exactly once.

Wikis are a great way to collect group knowledge, but not every
reference book in the galaxy will turn into one. A couple of weeks ago,
online reports claimed that Microsoft's Encarta decided to wikify its
paltry 42,000 entries. Encarta's Editorial Director Gary Alt told me
that the truth is prosaic. Readers will be able to submit suggested
corrections or improvements to existing entries, but Encarta is not
looking for new entries, and the editors will still decide what's worth
including.

An elitist encyclopedia like Encarta will never be able to match the
breadth or speed of a user-edited reference library, but it's smart to
coax readers into helping stretch its inherent advantage?reliability.
Alt told me he's hiring all of six people to review and research reader
submissions. Unlike the editor of The Hitchhiker's Guide, they'll
probably be eating lunch at their desks.

Related in SlateLast year, Clive Thompson asked if an online crowd could
write a novel. In January, Jack Shafer said that blogs need a little
time to catch up to the hype.

Paul Boutin is a Silicon Valley writer who spent 15 years as a software
engineer and manager.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2117942/


from_name: Dariusz Siedlecki

body:
Okay, that's settled.

http://pl.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Wsp%C3%B3%C5%82praca_z_innymi_serwisami

CC-BY was chosen, and that's final. If anyone has any objections, ask
them now, or it'll be too late.

...

No, just kidding, it won't be too late, but it's better to ask now ;).

On 5/5/05, Richard Holton <richholton at gmail.com> wrote:
> Isn't it the case that, when someone posts content to Wikipedia, they
> are releasing it under GFDL, regardless of any other license they may
> also choose to release it under? So, even if the content in question
> were clearly labeled as CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, or even CC-BY-NC, it is also
> released under GFDL. With the exception of putting something into PD
> (or some other less restrictive license than GFDL), it just doesn't
> matter what other restrictions may be claimed, it is still released
> under GFDL. Excepting, of course, content posted without the knowledge
> or permission of the copyright holder.

Just don't forget we're discussing Wikinews right now, and that's far
away from GFDL.

--
Best regards,
Dariusz "Datrio" Siedlecki


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Matt Brown said:
> On 5/5/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>> Yes, it was me.  I am the guy who killed Usenet.
>
> You killed Usenet?  You bastard ...

And now I'm a Wikipedian...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Patrick Carroll said:
>> > On 5/5/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>> >> Yes, it was me.  I am the guy who killed Usenet.
>
> I am highly impressed by your accomplishments and wish to employ you in
> order to aid further destruction of the Internets.

I've occasionally been told I bear an uncanny resemblance to Bill Gates...


from_name: Thomas Gries

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Test wiki

references:
<42682239.6000504@pobox.com>	<d5cvjk$7in$1@sea.gmane.org>	<d5d0g1$ahi$1@sea.gmane.org>	<427A1CBD.80807@tgries.de>
	<d5d9o2$bdm$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:
 > ... but since you don't listen to any advice we give you,
 > there's really no other option. -- Tim Starling

option: pls remove the enotif code immediately and be free.
T.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Word 2 Wikipedia Macros

body:
Thanks Heli, it looks nice and very useful !
Tom

Heli Retzek schrieb:

>I have created some simple Winword Macro that can convert a win-word file
>into wikipedia format.
>
>http://www.homeopathy.at/wiki/index.php/Word2Wiki
>
>
>Works rather well and serves most of my needs.
>
>
>
>
>Following format-conversions are supportet:
>
>Bold, italic, underline (any combination)
>Dotted lists
>Numbered lists
>Paragraph 2 <br>
>Headers
>Colored text
>Simple tables
>
>
>
>
>Unsupported yet
>Font-size
>Super/subscript
>Background-color
>Footnotes
>Pictures
>Sofisticated Table-formats
>?????
>
>
>
>liebe Gr?sse
>    Heli Retzek
>
>=====================
>Dr.med. Helmut B Retzek
>Oberbleichfleck 2
>A-4840 V?cklabruck / AUT
>+43-7672-23700 (priv -11, Fax -12)
>http://www.homeopathy.at
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Lucene in C#

body:
Lee Daniel Crocker wrote:
> If Sun's JDK gives the best performance, why not just run it under
> that?  Nothing says we have to bow to the god RMS and avoid good free
> software just because he's pronounced it "unclean".

Never again having to listen to people spout off about whether
implementation X of Java is better/purer/freer/faster/cleaner/less
Satanic/more Satanic puts a lot of plusses in the Mono column. Nobody
here is going to suggest we run a C# app on Windows Server instead. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
Josh Gordon said:
> Don't British and US law differ in this regard?

Not much consolation if you're an American sued in a British court for
something you put on an American website.  Yes, they do have jurisdiction.
 Yes, litigants have successfully collected.


body:
Richard-

> Ah, well yes, you're right. On Wikinews (at least en.wikinews) by
> posting you are placing the contents into the public domain...again,
> regardless of any other restrictions you may claim. Right?

When launching Wikinews, we didn't want to settle on an undeniably
flawed license like the GFDL, nor necessarily commit to the "copyleft"
principle, before evaluating the ways in which Wikinews content is
developed and used. The public domain was therefore chosen as the
initial "license" for Wikinews, as it allows us to migrate to any other
license relatively painlessly.

We will likely switch to a variant of CC-BY soon (one which requires
attribution to the wiki, rather than any individual author), which is
more legally sane than the PD.

Because someone posting someone else's material cannot put it in the
public domain without the other person's permission, the click-through
agreement does not apply to such content. The question then becomes, do
we want to remove CC-BY or CC-BY-SA content posted by others? Given the
above, I'd say that it's reasonable to label content under CC-BY as such
and keep it. As for CC-BY-SA, GFDL, etc., the situation is not quite as
clear, but for the sake of interoperability, I'd be inclined to be in
favor of allowing such content when labeled. Wikinews stories are
relatively independent from one another.

If this becomes established practice, it may make sense to amend the
copyright notice to say ".. is in the public domain where not otherwise
noted."

Erik


from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia, Emergence, and The Wisdom of Crowds

body:
On 5/4/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Sj wrote:
> > The swarm does the bulk of the writing, especially finding and
> > providing current facts, starting new articles, and adding neglected
> > POVs.  The roving groups are sensitive to dozens of policy pages, and
> > implement them as they rove... they also take on large projects, one
> > at a time, and try to implement certain changes across thousands of
> > pages at once.
>
> "The swarm does the bukl of the writing..." hints at a testable hypothesis.

Definitely.    Note that the above is still under the earlier clause
"Currently, I imagine Wikipedia as..." and may or may not reflect
reality.  My guess is that depending on how you classify the 'swarm'
and the 'roving groups', you can find the swarm producing more or less
than 50% of the encyclopedia content.   My personal conceptual
swarm/coordination division doesn't break along user lines; most users
do some swarm work, and most active users do some coordinated roving.

> My research (conducted in December) showed that half the edits by logged
> in users belong to just 2.5% of logged in users.  It would be extremely

What are "logged in users" here?  Users who made some kind of edit
over the same time period?
I would be interested in what percentage of edits in the article
namespace are made by anonymous or very-new users, after excluding bot
edits.  I'm guessing more than a third.  (new users: a proper newbie
check would work; red usernames is a quick substitute; it misses some
newbies, and overcounts some users with a red fetish)  Of the
remaining edits, I would again guess that over a third will be
uncoordinated and 'swarm-like' for some sane definition of swarming.

> interesting to run tests to compare "edit dispersion" for new articles,
> old articles, heavily edited articles, highly watched articles, heavily
> trafficked articles, etc.
>
> A deeper understanding of all these issues can have some interesting
> implications for us in terms of understanding certain policy issues.

Good point.

Chad Perrin wrote"
> even when the "regulars" aren't involved, what's going on is
> actually carefully composed edits by individuals who, though a
> chaotic sort of collaboration, are building something as a team.
> These are not insects contributing intelligence to a central thinking
> process that produces good works...
< It's easy to lose sight of the individual contributions

Hmm.  I regularly see "regulars" making careless edits, or tossing up
new pages in swarming fashion.  I do it myself sometimes... other
editors in a different mindset inevitably come by, and start to fit
the contribution into an appropriate category, style template, etc.

The canonical "swarm" edit is a very individual contribution.  Someone
who uploads an entire unwikified essay, or a set of references, or  a
two-paragraph stub about a minor historical figure.

--
+sj+


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Geoff Burling wrote:

>Usenet is often little more than idle gossip traded by computer users
>waiting for their programs to compile -- & I challenge anyone to offer a
>simple rule to determine which posts are unsuitable for citation, & which
>are. (I suspect that any such argument will simply be a reprise of the
>recent discussion over which pictures are suitable for children, except
>that Wikipedia has no way to turn off Usenet citations.)
>
>
That sounds like a notability argument, which is another matter
entirely.  There are plenty of non-notable things not worth a mention in
Wikipedia.  However, I'm not sure the alt.usenet.kooks "KOTM award" is
one of them---I had heard of it before coming to Wikipedia, and it's
somewhat well-known in the net-culture world.  Not quite the [[IgNobel
Awards]] --- another set of "anti-awards" --- but not entirely
unheard-of either.

-Mark


from_name: Chad Perrin

body:
On Thu, May 05, 2005 at 11:20:58PM -0400, Sj wrote:
>
> Good point.
>
> Chad Perrin wrote"
> > even when the "regulars" aren't involved, what's going on is
> > actually carefully composed edits by individuals who, though a
> > chaotic sort of collaboration, are building something as a team.
> > These are not insects contributing intelligence to a central thinking
> > process that produces good works...
> < It's easy to lose sight of the individual contributions
>
> Hmm.  I regularly see "regulars" making careless edits, or tossing up
> new pages in swarming fashion.  I do it myself sometimes... other
> editors in a different mindset inevitably come by, and start to fit
> the contribution into an appropriate category, style template, etc.
>
> The canonical "swarm" edit is a very individual contribution.  Someone
> who uploads an entire unwikified essay, or a set of references, or  a
> two-paragraph stub about a minor historical figure.
>

So now individualistic behavior is evidence of communal "swarm"
behavior?  When defined thusly, it's no wonder you see "swarm" behavior
everywhere: apparently, anything that involves the action of large
numbers of individuals constitutes a "swarm" if it isn't specifically
inwardly contentious.  I don't think such a broad definition of "swarm"
behavior is particularly valuable, however, so I don't use it.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Jack Lutz

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Jack Lutz wrote:
>
>
>>If Jimbo's proposed requirement of having the contributor grant their
>>copyright to Wikimedia is instituted,
>>
>>
>
>I have never proposed any requirement like this.
>
>
>
>
I may be using the wrong term; it's from this:

"The idea is this: contributors agree to release everything under CC-BY
(Wiki version) but they *also* give the Wikimedia Foundation the right
to do anything we like with it." [Wikinews-l] CC Licensing


body:
On 5/5/05, Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:
> Wikipedia is a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide: huge, nerdy, and imprecise.
>
> By Paul Boutin

Nice article overall.  Kudos to Boutin.  A few comments, just because
this article was a lot of fun:

> It's too bad Douglas Adams wasn't able to see his vision brought to life.

It is, isn't it?  It's probably time to write an Adamsian description
of the actual Wikipedia.  I had forgotten how closely the description
matched ;-)

> Wikipedia is a colossal improvement?it's just like the fictional Hitchhiker's Guide,
> only nerdier. Wikipedia is the Web fetishist's ideal data structure: It's
> free, it's open-source, and it features a 4,000-word exegesis of Dune.

We have great coverage of beer, too.

> Wikipedia, with more than 1 million entries in at least 10 languages, is

Did he get his zeroes right in the original?

> Don't expect Wikipedia to change your life, though, unless you've
> secretly longed to be an encyclopedia editor. Just because you give

We need a good "Encyclopedia Tycoon" game for the tens of thousands of
people who would love to be just that.

> But, like blogging, editing the Net's encyclopedia appeals to a
> small, enthusiastic demographic.

Showing a little POV here.  And a year or so behind the times... I
expect this will be proven untrue for [encyclopedia]-editing, and it
is already untrue for blogging.

> Like the Guide's lengthy entries on drinking, Wikipedia mirrors the
> interests of its writers rather than its readers. You'll find more on
> Slashdot than The New Yorker. The entry for Cory Doctorow is three times
> as long as the one for E.L. Doctorow. Film buffs have yet to post a page
> on Through a Glass Darkly; they're too busy tweaking the seven-part
> entry onTron.

I always ask critics to pick their disparaging comparisons carefully.
(We have lots of gaps; better to pick a really good one.   for
instance, we know almost nothing about the districts of most Russian
oblasts.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblasts_of_Russia ).   It's a
little disingenuous to call the seven-section [[Tron]] article a
'seven-part entry'.  And, while there was no "Glass Darkly" entry
until this article was published,  there /were/ entries on 28 of
Bergman's other 42 films.

and I actually think our readers [a dfiferent demographic from Slate
readers :) ] prefer slashdot to the New Yorker, and Cory to E.L...

> But excessive nerdiness isn't what's keeping Wikipedia from becoming the
> Net's killer resource. Accuracy is.

Heh heh heh.

> Just because the Wikipedia elves will probably fix those errors by the

To cross this thread with a discussion of swams and coordination, the
kinds of "elves" that fix these kinds of errors are
a) rarely long-time users
b) rarely users with accounts
c) much, much faster than a core group of editors could be.

> Not everyone who uses a wiki wants to hit from both sides
> of the plate. The subset of enthusiastic writers and editors is orders
> of magnitude smaller than the group of passive readers who'll never get
> around to contributing anything.

Well, at least 100,000 people have edited so far.  So I guess two
orders of magnitude suggests 10 million readers... could be true.  But
everyone has something they feel passionate about correcting.  Even my
luddite mother was impelled to edit the article on her favorite
composer.

> I'm just careful not to use it to settle bar bets or as source material
>for an article. I made that mistake exactly once.

Exciting!  Tell  us more...

> Wikis are a great way to collect group knowledge, but not every
> reference book in the galaxy will turn into one.

True dat.  In fact, Wikimedia produces a number of non-wiki reference
works... ;-)

--
+sj+


body:
On 5/5/05, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> On Thu, May 05, 2005 at 11:20:58PM -0400, Sj wrote:
> >
> > Good point.
> >
> > Chad Perrin wrote"
> > > even when the "regulars" aren't involved, what's going on is
> > > actually carefully composed edits by individuals who, though a
> > > chaotic sort of collaboration, are building something as a team.
> > > These are not insects contributing intelligence to a central thinking
> > > process that produces good works...
> > < It's easy to lose sight of the individual contributions
> >
> > Hmm.  I regularly see "regulars" making careless edits, or tossing up
> > new pages in swarming fashion.  I do it myself sometimes... other
> > editors in a different mindset inevitably come by, and start to fit
> > the contribution into an appropriate category, style template, etc.
> >
> > The canonical "swarm" edit is a very individual contribution.  Someone
> > who uploads an entire unwikified essay, or a set of references, or  a
> > two-paragraph stub about a minor historical figure.
> >
>
> So now individualistic behavior is evidence of communal "swarm"
> behavior?  When defined thusly, it's no wonder you see "swarm" behavior
> everywhere: apparently, anything that involves the action of large
> numbers of individuals constitutes a "swarm" if it isn't specifically
> inwardly contentious.  I don't think such a broad definition of "swarm"
> behavior is particularly valuable, however, so I don't use it.

I just love semantics.  There's nothing "communal" about the swarms
I'm thinking of.
They are defined precisely by being unconnected to other edits by
coordination or other signaling (such as policy discussion, elaborate
style guides, project definition, use of talk pages...)

And I don't see it everywhere; in a structured office environment,
there is almost no such behavior.  You rarely do things on a whim or
at random, you find work that needs doing on some list of priorities,
and either get assigned to do it or volunteer for it.

Finally, this concept doesn't rely on there being a large number of
individuals.  Would you be happier if I simply said "uncoordinated"
and "coordinated" editing?

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Test wiki

references:
<42682239.6000504@pobox.com>
	<d5cvjk$7in$1@sea.gmane.org>	<d5d0g1$ahi$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<427A1CBD.80807@tgries.de>

body:
Thomas Gries wrote:
> And Brion or Tim are kindly asked to add at least the patch of
> http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2014 which solves problems
> resulting from developers having butchered e-notif since it was entered
> into CVS on 18.12.2004.
>
> It also cleans up the Enotif code, so that it is now clearly "hooked"
> into RecentChange.php module (and not longer hooked into Article.php).
> The 2014 also re-establishes table user_newtalk which allows for
> bit-efficient memcaching of the newtalk status (as strongly advised by
> Tim last year) without losing the (optional) email-notification for
> user-talk-changes.
>
> Tom

Did you even read the post you're replying to? I'm sorry you consider
our changes "butchering", but since you don't listen to any advice we
give you, there's really no other option.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
This may be only tangentially related to hosting, but I would like to
request that keeping a fast read-only copy of the projects up 100% of
the time (say at most an hour of downtime a year, at most a few days
out of date, and with a median page-load time of under two seconds) be
made a priority.

--
+sj+


body:
Jack Lutz wrote:
> If Jimbo's proposed requirement of having the contributor grant their
> copyright to Wikimedia is instituted,

I have never proposed any requirement like this.

> then wouldn't this prevent
> importing *any* CC-WIKI/other content without having the original
> authors agree to these unique terms?

No, if the license is a CC-BY and not CC-BY-SA style license, then it
would not.  It is true that copyleft doesn't play nicely in most cases
with other licenses.  But for Wikinews, there seems to be pretty strong
sentiment against using a copyleft license for various reasons that
strike me as valid.

--Jimbo


body:
Delirium wrote:
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> My research (conducted in December) showed that half the edits by logged
>> in users belong to just 2.5% of logged in users.  It would be extremely
>> interesting to run tests to compare "edit dispersion" for new articles,
>> old articles, heavily edited articles, highly watched articles, heavily
>> trafficked articles, etc.
>>
>>
> Those sound like plausible numbers, but I think your methodology is
> somewhat overstating the cohesiveness: The "drive-by editors" who are
> the least associated with an identifiable Wikipedia community are the
> users who haven't even bothered to go so far as to create a user
> account, which you explicitly exclude from your count.

Users who aren't logged in make only around 18% of all edits.  It
doesn't change the results materially.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Two cute press clippings

body:
A nice LA Times editorial, focusing on the "demonstration in practical
anarchy" of the "brilliant conception" of "one Jimmy Wales."
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-0e-sartwell4may04,0,4691427.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions

And a lovely thesis from NYU's Limor Garcia, as if she were responding
to recent discussions of Wikipedia requests and contributions via cell
phones
  http://www.cellphedia.com/
  http://www.cellphedia.com/about.php
  ( recent discussion on Wikipedia and the Digital Divide:
   http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikipedia_founder_speaks_at_US_law_school )

Garcia's project is being demonstrated tomorrow,  Saturday May 7, at
1pm EST.  You can watch the demonstration as it is streamed live from
NYU's servers (warning: this page may not work well over slow
connections)

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Make summaries mandatory

body:
Conceptually, this isn't much different from a summary.  say we decide
that 8-50 chars is a reasonable default summary length, and add text
to shorter summaries. Some simple possible cases:

1) minor edit.  one word changed, no summary.  summary changed to read
"'// word1 --> word2"
2) minor edit.  a few words changed, summary 'typos'.  summary changed
to read "typos // word1 --> word2, word3 --> word4, ..."
3) major edit.  a few sentences moved around.  summary "rewrite".
summary changed to read "rewrite // 'Start of first old changed
para...' --> 'New paragraph...' "

> Or rather than changing summaries, which might actually be metadata
> useful for something in the future, we should make the places where we
> see lists of changes (history, RC, etc) show some of the change text
> itself.

We could also add ways to see a larger chunk of changed text; this is
just a simple suggestion for enhancing the current interface (and the
metadata in the database)

--
+sj+


subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 12:29:54AM -0400, Sj wrote:
> This may be only tangentially related to hosting, but I would like to
> request that keeping a fast read-only copy of the projects up 100% of
> the time (say at most an hour of downtime a year, at most a few days
> out of date, and with a median page-load time of under two seconds) be
> made a priority.

That sounds great, but it raises some issues that are, for the most
part, specific to Wikipedia and not many other projects/companies/et
cetera.  At least, it potentially raises such issues, depending on what
exactly you mean to do with that read-only copy.  Do you mean to have it
in operation as a way to serve pages concurrently with the primary
setup, or do you mean it to be sort of a failover backup?  If the
latter, I'm all for it, if the Powers That Be decide it's in the stars
for us.  If the former, however, I might bring up those potential issues
to which I already alluded.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
On Thu, May 05, 2005 at 09:27:51PM -0400, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> Florida - 44-ish servers now, 20 more apache/squid machines to be
> installed within the next two weeks (10 already arrived and Chad will
> install very soon).  2 more database servers have been order, as well as
> a JBOD-thingy.

We definitely need to look into a little more redundancy and, of more
immediate interest to me, we need for this fabled relocation of servers
to occur sooner rather than later.  That's just sort of a general
statement of my impression of things currently, and probably not
particularly helpful, unfortunately.  Heh.i

If those already-arrived servers are where I think they are, I should be
able to start getting them installed this Friday (06 May).  I hope to
have high dev turnout online for setting up stuff on the Cisco, et alii.

>
> Big Company X - this company is prepared to make a very major commitment
> to hosting for us.  Originally there were discussions of us being hosted
> in their facility, but now we are seeking bids on outsourcing this.  The
> exact parameters are at this time very open ended, and I have told them
> that basically we need time to figure out what we need.  They assure me
> there is no time pressure and they don't care about PR or anything else
> -- it's a pure charitable donation, no strings attached.  But still I
> prefer to try to move quickly to take advantage of us just in case the
> corporate mood changes (you never know with big companies!).  The
> parameters being discussed would be in the range of 2 full racks of
> servers, essentially a full replication of our Florida data center as of
> a couple of months ago.

My druthers: Squids and backups.  Off-site backups would be really nice.
Not additional databases that are in production simultaneously, but just
backups with possible failover read-only site redundancy so that, even
if the twelfth floor of the ACME building vanishes in a hurricane
(hopefully not with me in it) there will be something to fill the gap.
Unless I miss my mark, though, realtime replication and seamless
integration isn't a good idea under current site back-end architecture,
since the inter-location bandwidth consumed would be -- well, a bit
beyond the pale.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
Exactly the reason why I keep Internet and real life seperate.

On 5/6/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
>
> >On 5/5/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> >
> >>This legal talk is entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand ...
> >>There is an encyclopedic interest issue at stake. Will relevant
> >>
> >information be removed from an article because an exposed fraud's ego
> >is bruised?
> >
> >David, regarding the issue of encyclopedic interest: public figures
> >are treated very differently by journalists, particularly in the U.S.
> >where libel law is quite different when it comes to public figures,
> >but also in other countries where there's no distinction in law.
> >Public figures are seen to some extent as fair game, whereas the right
> >of private individuals to retain their privacy and dignity is
> >respected by good journalists, so even if some demonstrably true
> >titbit comes their way, they'll hesitate to use it if it would damage
> >a private person, provided there's no public-interest issue at stake.
> >
> I would say anybody who posts to Usenet automatically becomes
> a "public figure"; you can hardly spew your thoughts and opinions
> into a million computers around the world, then try to claim
> "privacy". If you want to be private, start by keeping your
> mouth shut, eh?
>
> I had that brought home to me many years ago when one of my
> heated arguments on Usenet was brought up in a job interview.
> (Fortunately, the interviewer agreed with my points.)
>
> Stan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On Fri, May 06, 2005 at 12:02:25AM -0400, Sj wrote:
> On 5/5/05, Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:
>
> > But, like blogging, editing the Net's encyclopedia appeals to a
> > small, enthusiastic demographic.
>
> Showing a little POV here.  And a year or so behind the times... I
> expect this will be proven untrue for [encyclopedia]-editing, and it
> is already untrue for blogging.

No kidding.  I can't get up in the morning without getting random blogs
in my eyes and having to go wash them off my face.  They've become a
veritable plague on the Internet, with great masses of anti-nerds
posting the minutiae of their pedestrian lives religiously to the Web.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.

>
> > Like the Guide's lengthy entries on drinking, Wikipedia mirrors the
> > interests of its writers rather than its readers. You'll find more on
> > Slashdot than The New Yorker. The entry for Cory Doctorow is three times
> > as long as the one for E.L. Doctorow. Film buffs have yet to post a page
> > on Through a Glass Darkly; they're too busy tweaking the seven-part
> > entry onTron.
>
> I always ask critics to pick their disparaging comparisons carefully.
> (We have lots of gaps; better to pick a really good one.   for
> instance, we know almost nothing about the districts of most Russian
> oblasts.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblasts_of_Russia ).   It's a
> little disingenuous to call the seven-section [[Tron]] article a
> 'seven-part entry'.  And, while there was no "Glass Darkly" entry
> until this article was published,  there /were/ entries on 28 of
> Bergman's other 42 films.

That's a perfect example of how a cursory search for something to
support a foregone conclusion about the "problems" with Wikipedia can
turn up nothing but chaff, even when there's wheat to be found.

> > But excessive nerdiness isn't what's keeping Wikipedia from becoming the
> > Net's killer resource. Accuracy is.
>
> Heh heh heh.

Is that a knowing laugh at an oft-heard argument based on false
assumptions?  I know that's what it would be if it were me laughing.

I really don't see Wikipedia as being any less accurate, on the whole,
than Encarta or Britannica.  What Wikipedia lacks in rigorous academic
review it makes up for in a more effective policy of controlling bias
(by way of the NPOV policy).  It has taken me a couple decades of
learning to do it, but I've gotten to be pretty good at recognizing
systemic bias, and when I read a hardcopy encyclopedia like Britannica
what I see is a work whose strict editing policies have imbued with such
a glossy polish that the systemic bias in its articles are quite
obscured from the casual reader.  Meanwhile, the less biased but more
clumsy errors of Wikipedia are far more recognizable, and provide better
hints for when to check your assumptions at the door.

I prefer being more clearly warned about inaccuracies like that.  I
don't want to be hornswaggled by the sheen of professional academia into
buying biases wholesale without fact-checking.  The practice of
source-checking in producing professional and academic papers was
instituted for a reason, and the fact that no reference work is perfect
is that reason.  If you just accept what's handed to you blindly, you
deserve to be wrong, regardless of whether your source is Britannica,
Encarta, Wikipedia, fbi.gov, or the Flat Earth Society.

http://www.alaska.net/~clund/e_djublonskopf/Flatearthsociety.htm
(in case you wanted to see the current state of the Flat Earthers)

>
> > I'm just careful not to use it to settle bar bets or as source material
> >for an article. I made that mistake exactly once.
>
> Exciting!  Tell  us more...

Quite so.  I'd like to know what his corroborating sources were or
(more likely) whether he simply skipped that part of researching.

--
Chad Perrin
[ CCD CopyWrite | http://ccd.apotheon.org ]


from_name: Alex Regh

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Hi!

On Thu, 5 May 2005 15:11:30 -0600, <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:

>Josh, the problem is that we could use Usenet to ridicule any number
>of people simply by creatring an article about a Usenet group, and
>then saying we're only reporting what it does.

Well, I have to disagree there - this particular newsgroup was not only made
for the explicit discussion of kooks, and a while ago, too. It also takes
something to get elected "kook of the year", not to mention "kook of the
millenium". So that is decidedly not the same as quoting random posts, which
indeed *could* under specific circumstances be unfair and/or lead to legal
trouble.

Alex
--
If you don't go over the top,
you can't see what's on the other side.
        --- Jim Steinman ---

Alex' Assorted Homepages: www.alexsite.de


from_name: Dori

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
On 5/6/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
> SOOOOOOOOO......
>
> Feedback?
>
> --Jimbo

I got nothing, just wanted to say woohoo!!! Looks like we'll be set for
hosting, but that's going to require quite a bit more admin time.


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Article validation feature in 1.5?

body:
Phil Boswell (phil.boswell at gmail.com) [050505 22:27]:
> "Brion Vibber" <brion at pobox.com> wrote in message
> news:427A0AD7.7070804 at pobox.com...
> > Phil Boswell wrote:

> > > So what was the problem, is it going to be sorted out soon, and when can
> > > we
> > > start testing?

> > Missing database prefix in a query causes a fatal SQL error on every
> > page view, making the wiki completely unusable.

> OK, so the problem has apparently been diagnosed. Is it difficut to fix?

I have no idea how much work it is to get it working on test ... but it
would be wonderful if we could get it into the live version of 1.5, because
a lot of the Wikipedia 1.0/stable version/article quality drive suggestions
(e.g. my plan, which is the closest we have to one right now) rely on it or
something like it.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Conference report from South Africa

body:
Alphax (alphasigmax at gmail.com) [050505 20:16]:
> David Gerard wrote:

> My guess is that people from countries in the first paragraph (EN-N)
> could understand each other (EN-N) and English speakers from the other
> countries (EN-3); people from the countries in the second paragraph
> (EN-3) could understand the "native" speakers (EN-N), and EN-3 speakers.

> > (Mind you, just trying to buy lunch required my American friend to interpret
> > the waitress's Glaswegian to English for me.

Well, no, that's an example where this native speaker couldn't understand
that native speaker ;-) More recently, a friend from Dublin, Ireland
visited. The Dublin accent isn't outrageous, but we had a lot of trouble
understanding each other and both had to consciously speak very clearly.

> > Of course, they all understood
> > Australian, because every single person in Britain is required by law to
> > watch 'Neighbours'.)

> I feel sorry for them :p

There's an election today, perhaps the winning party will declare it cruel
and unusual culture.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Astrological Consulting (arcturianone at earthlink.net) [050506 05:46]:

> I would like to respectfully ask that you remove my name from all references to "kooks" and other abusive and defamatory maligning propaganda posted to your website specifically to damage my business and profession of 30 years+.
> Edmond H. Wollmann P.M.A.F.A.
> (C) 2005 Altair Publications, SAN 299-5603
> Astrological Consulting http://www.astroconsulting.com/
> Artworks http://www.e-wollmann.com/
> http://home.earthlink.net/~arcturianone/

Actually famous Usenet crank. More coherent than Sollog. Lots of material
on skeptictank.com .

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050506 06:15]:
> On 5/5/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> > Actually famous Usenet crank. More coherent than Sollog. Lots of material
> > on skeptictank.com .

> I think the point here is that WP policy states that we must used only
> reputable or credible published sources as secondary sources, and
> Usenet doesn't count as that. It can be used as primary-source
> material for information about itself, but it can't be used as a
> secondary source of information about someone else, especially not
> when we're using a person's real name (unlike the case of Sollog).

Uh, [[alt.usenet.kooks]] is an article about a Usenet group.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Astrological Consulting (arcturianone at earthlink.net) [050506 06:41]:

> If it is not removed I will file a lawsuit for damages and MAKE you remove it.

You've threatened everyone in sight with spurious lawsuits for years. This
is well documented. You threatened me at least once. Do you remember that
one? My postal address is even on my website.

- d.


body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050506 07:18]:

> This is perhaps an inappopriate discussion to have in public because a
> legal action has been threatened, but in brief, the fact that you
> report, but do not endorse, a claim is not a defense in a libel
> action. If you spread it, you spread it.

Removing relevant information from an article because someone makes the
latest in a decade-long history of spurious legal threats on a mailing list
is ridiculous.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: Corrected

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050506 08:18]:
> On 5/5/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> > Josh Gordon said:

> > Not much consolation if you're an American sued in a British court for
> > something you put on an American website.  Yes, they do have jurisdiction.
> >  Yes, litigants have successfully collected.

> The difficult thing in the UK is that the burden of proof lies with
> the defendant i.e. the publisher, who has to show why the material is
> not libellous; whereas in the U.S., the burden of proof lies with the
> person who brings the case.

This legal talk is entirely irrelevant to the issue at hand. Edmond Wollman
has made spurious legal threats for decades. None have even come to court,
let alone been won.

There is an encyclopedic interest issue at stake. Will relevant information
be removed from an article because an exposed fraud's ego is bruised?

(Do check this page on Wollmann, by the way. It's not the least bit neutral
- the POV is hardly penetrable once you're used to the Wikipedia way of
writing things -  but it does include large chunks of the sci.skeptic FAQ
section Tony Sidaway was keeper of for a while (hence Mr Wollmann's hate-on
for him) and has marvellous documentation of Mr Wollmann's online and
offline activities. BTW, he has a fondness for sock puppetry:

    http://www.xs4all.nl/~oracle/ed-w-con.htm

It's on [[Zenon Panoussis]]' site and there it's staying. Mr. Wollmann
hasn't managed to sue him either.)

- d.


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Wikitech-l] Longterm hosting strategy

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>Amsterdam - a large NGO wants to do a big press announcement when I'm
>there in Holland at the end of this month.  They are providing a set of
>servers which have already been ordered.  I do not know the exact
>specifications, perhaps someone else can tell me?
>
>
Hoi,
The best person to get the exact specifications from is Mark- he has
trashed this out together with Kate on our side and "this organisation"
on the other side. The whole specification does include routers and what
not the servers are for squid/apache one general purpose server and a
database server. Hardware will be installed in a rack for us, it does
include "hands and eyes" service during European/Dutch business hours.
Two specified people will have access for emergencies to the premises..
They will be Mark- and myself, given the "hands and eyes" there should
not be much reason to go there a lot.

We will have a whole rack where stuff can be added to. This stuff has to
conform to the quality of the equipment that will be installed by "this
organisation". As to bandwith, there is no limit on the amount of
bandwith. The datacentre is extremely well connected.

Thanks,
    GerardM


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
--- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> On 5/5/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
> wrote:
> >
> > Actually famous Usenet crank. More coherent than
> Sollog. Lots of material
> > on skeptictank.com .
> >
> I think the point here is that WP policy states that
> we must used only
> reputable or credible published sources as secondary
> sources, and
> Usenet doesn't count as that. It can be used as
> primary-source
> material for information about itself, but it can't
> be used as a
> secondary source of information about someone else,
> especially not
> when we're using a person's real name (unlike the
> case of Sollog).
>
> Sarah

WE are not reporting that he is Kook of the Millenium.
 We are reporting that the Usenet group so labeled
him.  This reporting is accurate and factual, and we
shouldn't be removing the information.

RickK

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail Mobile
Take Yahoo! Mail with you! Check email on your mobile phone.
http://mobile.yahoo.com/learn/mail


body:
--- Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:

> Wikipedia is a real-life Hitchhiker's Guide: huge,
> nerdy, and imprecise.
>
> By Paul Boutin
> Posted Tuesday, May 3, 2005, at 2:37 PM PT
> Don't expect Wikipedia to change your life, though,
> unless you've
> secretly longed to be an encyclopedia editor.

NOW he tells us!

RickK

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
--- Astrological Consulting
<arcturianone at earthlink.net> wrote:
> If it is not removed I will file a lawsuit for
> damages and MAKE you remove it.

Time to block him now.

RickK

Discover Yahoo!
Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/stayintouch.html


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
--- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> On 5/5/05, Astrological Consulting
> <arcturianone at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > If it is not removed I will file a lawsuit for
> damages and MAKE you remove it.
>
> It has been removed, Edmond.
>
> Sarah

Please restore it.

RickK

Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour:
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html


from_name: Roberto A. Santiago

subject: [Wikitech-l] texvc problems

body:
Hi,

I am not sure if this is the right mailing list to post this to so my
apologies ahead of time if it is not.  I have been working hard to get
texvc working correctly on my installation of mediawiki.   It has
compiled correctly and when used from a command line works entirely
correctly.  But, when it is called from math.php it does not work
properly.  It produces a tex file but nothing else.  The best that I can
tell, it does not seem able to properly use latex, dvips and convert.  I
am working on a shared server (freebsd and apache).  So this might
provide some limitations on shell commands executed from PHP.  Any help
would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Rick stated for the record:

> --- slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
>
>>On 5/5/05, Astrological Consulting
>><arcturianone at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>>If it is not removed I will file a lawsuit for
> >>damages and MAKE you remove it.
>>
>>It has been removed, Edmond.
>>
>>Sarah
>
>
> Please restore it.
>
> RickK

It has been.  The article now includes

:Notable past winners include [[Archimedes Plutonium]], [[Sollog]] and
Edmond Heinz Wollmann (who was "honored" as the "Kook of the Millennium").

Leave it to the Kook of the Millennium to get me to agree with RickK.... ;->

--
  Sean Barrett     | Disclaimer: We have no wish to
  sean at epoptic.com | offend you unless you're a twit.


from_name: Astrological Consulting

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
I unsubscribed from your list, any further emails I receive will be reported as unsolicited.
Thanks

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com>
Sent: May 6, 2005 9:00 AM
To: Astrological Consulting <arcturianone at earthlink.net>,
	English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

--- Astrological Consulting
<arcturianone at earthlink.net> wrote:
> If it is not removed I will file a lawsuit for
> damages and MAKE you remove it.

Time to block him now.

RickK

Discover Yahoo!
Stay in touch with email, IM, photo sharing and more. Check it out!
http://discover.yahoo.com/stayintouch.html

Edmond H. Wollmann P.M.A.F.A.
(C) 2005 Altair Publications, SAN 299-5603
Astrological Consulting http://www.astroconsulting.com/
Artworks http://www.e-wollmann.com/
http://home.earthlink.net/~arcturianone/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
--- Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> Leave it to the Kook of the Millennium to get me to
> agree with RickK.... ;->

Scary, isn't it? :)

RickK

Yahoo! Mail
Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour:
http://tour.mail.yahoo.com/mailtour.html


from_name: Josh Gordon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
I don't think it's us who the bullies are here. The alleged kook has been
bullying people on usenet for many years; his legal threats are an example
of that. If we had an article [[Abusive usenet contributors]], he'd be
pretty close to the top of the list.

All we're reporting is that a usenet group known for naming people as kooks
thinks he's one of the top ones. Readers can be trusted to do further
research, if necessary, to make their own decisions regarding the judgement
of that newsgroup, and of the kookiness or lack thereof of anyone mentioned.
There's plenty of original source material to mine.

jpgordon

On 5/6/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/6/05, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > WE are not reporting that he is Kook of the Millenium.
> > We are reporting that the Usenet group so labeled
> > him. This reporting is accurate and factual, and we
> > shouldn't be removing the information.
> >
> All I'm arguing here is that we shouldn't try to exercise publishing
> power without responsibility; in other words, we shouldn't be bullies.
> If this were some newsworthy public figure trying to delete accurate,
> relevant, well-referenced, notable material about himself and
> threatening us with legal action, I might agree that we should revert
> him, argue with him, and ignore the threats. But this person we're
> ganging up on here is a non-notable, private individual who has done
> no harm other than to make a fool and a nuisance of himself on Usenet.
> Weve inserted his real name into an article; we've attached it to a
> slur; we've reverted him trying to delete it; we've protected the page
> so he can't delete it; we've ridiculed him when he contacted this
> mailing list for help; we've reverted the deletion that an admin tried
> to make; and now we're going to ban him for making legal threats.
> Which part of this exactly isn't bullying?
>
> To make matters worse, the only reason you don't take his legal
> threats seriously is that he's made them before and nothing came of
> them. In other words, you're not taking him seriously because he's
> ineffectual and powerless. That's exactly when we should back off, not
> put the boot in further.
>
> There's nothing worse than a powerful journalist who uses his or her
> position in the manner described above, and we've all become people
> who have, in many ways, just as much power (but without any of the
> infrastructural restraints journalists have), which means we have to
> exercise self-restraint and be decent. What's wrong with being decent
> all of a sudden?
>
> Sarah
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Michael P. Hopcroft

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Astrological Consulting wrote:

>I unsubscribed from your list, any further emails I receive will be reported as unsolicited.
>
And there was much rejoicing.

I have not been amused by this whole thread. First of all, the man is an
ASTROLOGER. That doesn't bode well for his logical capacities in the
first place unless he's an outright fraud. "Serious discusssion of
astrology" is no more possible than serious discussion of the belief
that every object in the Universe is a uniform shade of purple.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Well, I might consider reporting the accusation of sluttery if (a) there was
a vast amount of evidence that the person was behaving in a way that could
generally be construed as sluttish; and (b) if the person came onto our
mailing list, proved themselves a slut, and insisted we not call them that.

Not likely.

However, alleged sluts have, apparently, more discretion and common sense
then alleged kooks.

On 5/6/05, slimvirgin at gmail.com <slimvirgin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 5/6/05, Josh Gordon <joshua.p.gordon at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't think it's us who the bullies are here. The alleged kook has
> been
> > bullying people on usenet for many years; his legal threats are an
> example
> > of that. If we had an article [[Abusive usenet contributors]], he'd be
> > pretty close to the top of the list.
>
> Josh, we're not supposed to use Usenet as a source except for material
> about itself. This is like using Stormfront as a source for an article
> about itself (which we can do), then mentioning that they give out an
> award for Jewish Supremacist of the Year, and adding the real name of
> this year's winner - a private individual, who's been given the award
> because he's been harassing Stormfront. And when that person writes to
> us and asks that we remove his name from the Stormfront article, and
> explains that he was only given the award because he's been making a
> nuisance of himself with Stormfront, we ridicule him, we protect the
> article so he can't remove his name, and then we threaten to ban him!
>
> The bottom line is that Usenet can only be used as a source of
> information *about itself* because it does not count as a reputable,
> credible, or authoritative source, and while the Kook of the Year
> reference is about Usenet, the name of the complainant is not. He is a
> private, non-notable individual, except in Usenet terms, where he has
> achieved notability, but we are *not allowed to use Usenet as a source
> for the claim of notability*, because in so doing, we're using Usenet
> as a secondary source, which is not allowed under [[Wikipedia:No
> original research]]. So we have admins violating core policy here in
> order to keep this non-notable man's name in a silly article about a
> silly subject, even though he's asked us to remove it and has said it
> could harm his business.
>
> Mperel made a good point about this elsewhere: "So does this mean you
> would support listing the name of high school girls awarded the name
> "slut" by their male peers under the respective high school articles,
> since it would simply be reporting the verifiable fact that boys at
> high school xyz have called girl abc a "slut"?" --MPerel
>
> Sarah
>


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/6/05, Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> WE are not reporting that he is Kook of the Millenium.
>  We are reporting that the Usenet group so labeled
> him.  This reporting is accurate and factual, and we
> shouldn't be removing the information.
>
All I'm arguing here is that we shouldn't try to exercise publishing
power without responsibility; in other words, we shouldn't be bullies.
If this were some newsworthy public figure trying to delete accurate,
relevant, well-referenced, notable material about himself and
threatening us with legal action, I might agree that we should revert
him, argue with him, and ignore the threats. But this person we're
ganging up on here is a non-notable, private individual who has done
no harm other than to make a fool and a nuisance of himself on Usenet.
Weve inserted his real name into an article; we've attached it to a
slur; we've reverted him trying to delete it; we've protected the page
so he can't delete it; we've ridiculed him when he contacted this
mailing list for help; we've reverted the deletion that an admin tried
to make; and now we're going to ban him for making legal threats.
Which part of this exactly isn't bullying?

To make matters worse, the only reason you don't take his legal
threats seriously is that he's made them before and nothing came of
them. In other words, you're not taking him seriously because he's
ineffectual and powerless. That's exactly when we should back off, not
put the boot in further.

There's nothing worse than a powerful journalist who uses his or her
position in the manner described above, and we've all become people
who have, in many ways, just as much power (but without any of the
infrastructural restraints journalists have), which means we have to
exercise self-restraint and be decent. What's wrong with being decent
all of a sudden?

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com stated for the record:

> On 5/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> David, I take your point about him, but I've tried to make it clear
> that I'm not arguing about the individual, but about policy. Our
> secondary sources have to be authoritative, reliable, credible, and in
> some sense reputable. We can use Usenet as a source about itself,
> including as a source about its awards, but we can't use it to name
> individuals, because that's using Usenet as a source for claims about
> that person's notability. He isn't notable except in Usenet terms.
> Please see Mperel's argument about naming schoolgirls who've been
> labeled sluts at such-and-such a school, on that school's page. It's a
> very good analogy, yet we wouldn't dream of doing it.

We do, however, use the Web as a secondary source to judge notability,
and this kook is all over the Web.  Even if nothing else about him were
notable, the number of ISPs who have canceled his accounts for abuse is
remarkable.

If the administrations of numerous high schools across the country all
went on record stating that a particular schoolgirl had to be kicked out
of all their schools because of her slutty behavior, I would more than
"dream of" publishing that information, I'd be getting into
edit-conflicts trying to be the first to add that information to Wikipedia.

--
  Sean Barrett     | Disclaimer: We have no wish to
  sean at epoptic.com | offend you unless you're a twit.


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

body:
Once again, dual-licensing can be a solution.

Jean-Baptiste Soufron
CERSA - CNRS, Paris 2
http://soufron.free.fr

Le 5 mai 05, ? 21:19, Erik Moeller a ?crit :

> Hi Dariusz,
>
> thanks for going out and trying to establish content partnerships. I
> think a license like CC-BY or CC-BY-SA would be fine if the content is
> clearly labeled as such. The problem with CC-BY-NC or similar
> "noncommercial use only" licenses is not necessarily incompatibility,
> but that they don't fit our established definition of free content,
> i.e. far too many uses we want to allow become impossible.
>
> All best,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
>
> Isn't it the case that, when someone posts content to Wikipedia, they
> are releasing it under GFDL, regardless of any other license they may
> also choose to release it under? So, even if the content in question
> were clearly labeled as CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, or even CC-BY-NC, it is also
> released under GFDL. With the exception of putting something into PD
> (or some other less restrictive license than GFDL), it just doesn't
> matter what other restrictions may be claimed, it is still released
> under GFDL. Excepting, of course, content posted without the knowledge
> or permission of the copyright holder.

Given the way you say it, I would say yes...


body:
>>
> Ah, well yes, you're right. On Wikinews (at least en.wikinews) by
> posting you are placing the contents into the public domain...again,
> regardless of any other restrictions you may claim. Right?

No

For example, given french law, french people can't place anything in PD.
And they're not the only one !


body:
>
> Because someone posting someone else's material cannot put it in the
> public domain without the other person's permission, the click-through
> agreement does not apply to such content. The question then becomes,
> do we want to remove CC-BY or CC-BY-SA content posted by others? Given
> the above, I'd say that it's reasonable to label content under CC-BY
> as such and keep it. As for CC-BY-SA, GFDL, etc., the situation is not
> quite as clear, but for the sake of interoperability, I'd be inclined
> to be in favor of allowing such content when labeled. Wikinews stories
> are relatively independent from one another.
>
> If this becomes established practice, it may make sense to amend the
> copyright notice to say ".. is in the public domain where not
> otherwise noted."

Once again, many legislations forbid that authors put their work in PD.

Why ? Because publishers would be very happy to force them to do so !
It's a protection for authors.

So, chosing PD as a basis is a major legal flaw that will give wikinews
team a lot of headaches... and that will make me very busy on irc :)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/6/05, Josh Gordon <joshua.p.gordon at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't think it's us who the bullies are here. The alleged kook has been
> bullying people on usenet for many years; his legal threats are an example
> of that. If we had an article [[Abusive usenet contributors]], he'd be
> pretty close to the top of the list.

Josh, we're not supposed to use Usenet as a source except for material
about itself. This is like using Stormfront as a source for an article
about itself (which we can do), then mentioning that they give out an
award for Jewish Supremacist of the Year, and adding the real name of
this year's winner - a private individual, who's been given the award
because he's been harassing Stormfront. And when that person writes to
us and asks that we remove his name from the Stormfront article, and
explains that he was only given the award because he's been making a
nuisance of himself with Stormfront, we ridicule him, we protect the
article so he can't remove his name, and then we threaten to ban him!

The bottom line is that Usenet can only be used as a source of
information *about itself* because it does not count as a reputable,
credible, or authoritative source, and while the Kook of the Year
reference is about Usenet, the name of the complainant is not. He is a
private, non-notable individual, except in Usenet terms, where he has
achieved notability, but we are *not allowed to use Usenet as a source
for the claim of notability*, because in so doing, we're using Usenet
as a secondary source, which is not allowed under [[Wikipedia:No
original research]].  So we have admins violating core policy here in
order to keep this non-notable man's name in a silly article about a
silly subject, even though he's asked us to remove it and has said it
could harm his business.

Mperel made a good point about this elsewhere: "So does this mean you
would support listing the name of high school girls awarded the name
"slut" by their male peers under the respective high school articles,
since it would simply be reporting the verifiable fact that boys at
high school xyz have called girl abc a "slut"?" --MPerel

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
Tony Sidaway stated for the record:

> Sean Barrett said:
>
>>If the administrations of numerous high schools across the country all
>>went on record stating that a particular schoolgirl had to be kicked
>>out  of all their schools because of her slutty behavior, I would more
>>than  "dream of" publishing that information, I'd be getting into
>>edit-conflicts trying to be the first to add that information to
>>Wikipedia.
>>
>
>
> I think I'd have to protect the page. Wikipedia isn't a place for
> recording petty gossip.

And I wouldn't consider a large number of administrations all finding
the same problem with an individual and all taking the same action
"petty gossip."  I'd find it remarkable and noteworthy.

--
  Sean Barrett     | We will chant in Old Nahuatl
  sean at epoptic.com | As we pray to Quetzlcoatl
                   | Who gave us chocolatl
                   | And that's good enough for me!


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
On 5/6/05, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:

> Once again, many legislations forbid that authors put their work in PD.
>
> Why ? Because publishers would be very happy to force them to do so !
> It's a protection for authors.

Certainly not. A publisher would not want an author to put their work
in the PD, because it means that any other publisher can republish the
work without charge. A publisher would prefer to make publication by
others either illegal (by taking over the copyright) or otherwise as
restricted as possible. Public Domain would be the full antithesis of
that.

> So, chosing PD as a basis is a major legal flaw that will give wikinews
> team a lot of headaches... and that will make me very busy on irc :)

In my opinion, PD in that case should simply be taken to mean "the
author grants everyone unlimited rights to do as they please."

Which, by the way, is indeed impossible in the law of certain
countries. I as a Dutchman for example cannot sign away my right to
object to the material being published under another name than mine,
or to mutilation of the work in such a way that it is damaging to my
honour or good name as the author.

Andre Engels


body:
>
> That's an awful lot to proclaim without a supporting argument.  I'm
> interested in details of why you think so.
>
>
Well, my PhD is on the emergence of Law and I am using wikimedia and
wikipedia as demonstrations for my arguments :)

But you're right, I should write something on it !


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Let's be decent (was: Abuse of your services)

body:
Sarah wrote:

> All I'm arguing here is that we shouldn't try to exercise
> publishing power without responsibility; in other words, we
> shouldn't be bullies. If this were some newsworthy public
> figure trying to delete accurate, relevant, well-referenced,
> notable material about himself and threatening us with legal
> action, I might agree that we should revert him, argue with
> him, and ignore the threats. But this person we're ganging up
> on here is a non-notable, private individual who has done no
> harm other than to make a fool and a nuisance of himself on
> Usenet. Weve inserted his real name into an article; we've
> attached it to a slur; we've reverted him trying to delete
> it; we've protected the page so he can't delete it; we've
> ridiculed him when he contacted this mailing list for help;
> we've reverted the deletion that an admin tried to make; and
> now we're going to ban him for making legal threats. Which
> part of this exactly isn't bullying?

I'm against anything that smacks of bullying. We can afford to be
gracious.

But it's difficult to write an article which is ABOUT people who label
others with a slur - WITHOUT ourselves repeating or endorsing that slur
(or seeming to).

I'm giving this matter so much attention, because it strikes at the root
of Wikipedia's credibility. To really be taken seriously, we've get to
start getting serious about making corrections that stick. There's no
other way to unsure that articles have a "stable, accurate version".

The "kooks" newsgroup is only a notch or two above the holocaust deniers
and anti-Semites. (They get one notch merely for not taking themselves
seriously :-) We take great pains to distance Wikipedia from ENDORSING
the claims of holocause deniers and anti-Semites; while, also, due to
our neutrality policy, we also managed to avoid condemning them.

A really neutral article, which is also a well-written one, would NOT
generate any doubt in the reader's mind about whether the contributor(s)
to that article were for or against any particular point. This is the
touchstone of neutrality. (Can you tell my position on the Holocaust
from reading the above paragraph? If so, then my bias has leaked out -
which is okay HERE, but would not be okay in an article.)

The situation is also parallel to some of the "damaging quotations"
lists that pop up in political articles. Like Bushisms. It's really hard
to write about Bushisms without adopting the POV that the type and
number of malaprops PROVE that "Bush is an imbecile". (Which is exactly
why anti-Bush folks like to publicize them.) The trick is to quote the
Bushisms, describe / analyze them, but NOT endorse the anti-Bush POV.
This is especially hard because the chief reason for listing them is to
INSINUATE the idea that these verbal mis-steps are typical and
representative - and thus sufficient in themselves to condemn the
persone. (The Ann Coulter article consists MOSTLY of damaging
quotations.)

We need to re-think Wikipedia policy. We're getting big; let's not get
grumpy. People will look up to us, because we tower over all the rest:
we have more articles than anyone else, and we're still growing fast.
But to earn their respect, we must be accurate AND fair.

In many places we must take a step back, discover the bias inherent in
an article, and DESCRIBE it as a point of view INSTEAD of leaving it in
a condition which makes it look like Wikipedia was endorsing it. (Same
problem with global warming, the truth of one side is taken as a given.)

Sorry to ramble. I'm short on time this month. Please don't just pick
this apart, but try to find the essence of what I'm saying. Help me to
help you.

In haste,

Uncle Ed

> To make matters worse, the only reason you don't take his
> legal threats seriously is that he's made them before and
> nothing came of them. In other words, you're not taking him
> seriously because he's ineffectual and powerless. That's
> exactly when we should back off, not put the boot in further.
>
> There's nothing worse than a powerful journalist who uses his
> or her position in the manner described above, and we've all
> become people who have, in many ways, just as much power (but
> without any of the infrastructural restraints journalists
> have), which means we have to exercise self-restraint and be
> decent. What's wrong with being decent all of a sudden?
>
> Sarah
>
>


body:
> On 5/6/05, Jean-Baptiste Soufron <jbsoufron at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Once again, many legislations forbid that authors put their work in
>> PD.
>>
>> Why ? Because publishers would be very happy to force them to do so !
>> It's a protection for authors.
>
> Certainly not. A publisher would not want an author to put their work
> in the PD, because it means that any other publisher can republish the
> work without charge. A publisher would prefer to make publication by
> others either illegal (by taking over the copyright) or otherwise as
> restricted as possible. Public Domain would be the full antithesis of
> that.

I agree with you, but that is the justification for the French law
stating that French authors cannot let trash their author's rights in
order to avoid economical pressure from publishers.

>
>> So, chosing PD as a basis is a major legal flaw that will give
>> wikinews
>> team a lot of headaches... and that will make me very busy on irc :)
>
> In my opinion, PD in that case should simply be taken to mean "the
> author grants everyone unlimited rights to do as they please."
> Which, by the way, is indeed impossible in the law of certain
> countries. I as a Dutchman for example cannot sign away my right to
> object to the material being published under another name than mine,
> or to mutilation of the work in such a way that it is damaging to my
> honour or good name as the author.

Same thing in France. In that case any French author writing on
wikinews could try to sue anybody using wikinews content.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

David, I take your point about him, but I've tried to make it clear
that I'm not arguing about the individual, but about policy. Our
secondary sources have to be authoritative, reliable, credible, and in
some sense reputable. We can use Usenet as a source about itself,
including as a source about its awards, but we can't use it to name
individuals, because that's using Usenet as a source for claims about
that person's notability. He isn't notable except in Usenet terms.
Please see Mperel's argument about naming schoolgirls who've been
labeled sluts at such-and-such a school, on that school's page. It's a
very good analogy, yet we wouldn't dream of doing it.

Sarah


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:

> [...]
>
> What's wrong with being decent all of a sudden?
>
>
Isn't that against policy?

:-)

More seriously, I think this guy's case is difficult because
it's right at the edge of what we consider valid WP content.
He doesn't have any notability outside the Usenet connection,
and yet it would be somewhat contorted to explain "Kook of
the Millennium" without naming names.

To take an example from other encyclopedias, Britannica,
Oxford Classical Dictionary, etc, have a number of short
articles on various obscure disreputable figures of ancient
Rome. They are included not because they have accomplishments
of their own, but because notable authors will make casual
references to them ("as smelly as Acilius"), and the puzzled
reader needs a reference work to explain that, say, this
Acilius was an annoying beggar in the Forum, and not
evidence that the consul of the same name had a BO problem.

So I guess that means that we can include the astrologer's
name if he's alluded to in a Philip Roth novel...

Stan


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Let's be decent (was: Abuse of your services)

body:
On 5/6/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> I'm giving this matter so much attention, because it strikes at the root
> of Wikipedia's credibility ...
> The "kooks" newsgroup is only a notch or two above the holocaust deniers
> and anti-Semites.
> We need to re-think Wikipedia policy. We're getting big; let's not get
> grumpy. People will look up to us, because we tower over all the rest:
> we have more articles than anyone else, and we're still growing fast.
> But to earn their respect, we must be accurate AND fair.

Exactly, Ed. Very good points.  I'd like to add something that I just
noticed. The admin who protected the page to stop Edmond deleting his
own name had been involved in a revert war over that information going
back to March 10, and reverted to his preferred version before
protecting. He's a good admin and I'm sure acted in good faith, but it
was nevertheless inappropriate, and it adds to the sense that
something's gone wrong here in terms of WP policy.

Ed's point about fairness is very important. If we want our readers'
respect, we have to be seen to be fair.

Sarah


from_name: Chris McIntosh

subject: [WikiEN-l] REMOTE_USER instead of REMOTE_ADDR

body:
I am working on an Intranet where we are spinning off many wiki's per
project. In the forseeable future we might have 5-10 separate
instances of the Wiki's.

Because of this I would like to make it easy for people to move
between the Wiki's without having to login each time.

A simple mod I just wrote will grab the REMOTE_USER which is their
NTACCOUNT on our intranet and use that instead of IP.

I set a flag in LocalSettings to allow me to turn this on|off.

My questions are: is this a good way to do this? Are there better
ways? Will this break anything?

Thanks,
Chris McIntosh


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/6/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> More seriously, I think this guy's case is difficult because
> it's right at the edge of what we consider valid WP content.
> He doesn't have any notability outside the Usenet connection,
> and yet it would be somewhat contorted to explain "Kook of
> the Millennium" without naming names.
>
> To take an example from other encyclopedias, Britannica,
> Oxford Classical Dictionary, etc, have a number of short
> articles on various obscure disreputable figures of ancient
> Rome. They are included not because they have accomplishments
> of their own, but because notable authors will make casual
> references to them ("as smelly as Acilius") ...
>
> So I guess that means that we can include the astrologer's
> name if he's alluded to in a Philip Roth novel...
>
Right. If he's named as a kook (or anything) somewhere vaguely
reputable, we can use it. But we can't allow Usenet to determine who
is or isn't notable.

Also bear in mind that your disreputable ancient Roman figures are
long dead. Their livelihoods aren't going to be harmed because someone
calls them smelly.  ;-)

Sarah


subject: [WikiEN-l] Abuse of your services

body:
On 5/6/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> slimvirgin at gmail.com (slimvirgin at gmail.com) [050507 05:25]:
>
> > Right. If he's named as a kook (or anything) somewhere vaguely
> > reputable, we can use it. But we can't allow Usenet to determine who
> > is or isn't notable.
>
> On that basis, we wouldn't have articles about Usenet at all. We do,
> therefore your assertion that Usenet notability is not notability at all
> ever is evidently not the case.

I'm struggling to understand why people can't see the difference here
between using something as a primary and a secondary source. We can
use Usenet as a source of information about itself, and about its
awards. What we can't do is use it as a secondary source of
information about someone or something else. Even if it's true that
John Smith won the KOM award, we shouldn't include Smith's name,
because to do so is to use Usenet as a *source of information
regarding a subject other than itself*. The sentence: "John Smith was
honored as KOM," is about that Usenet group, but it is also about
someone else.

As argued by Mperel, we wouldn't include the names of schoolgirls
voted Slut of the Year by a particular school. We wouldn't include in
the Stormfront article that Jane Doe was given Stormfront's Ugliest
Jew of the Year award. We wouldn't include in an article about
Wikipedia that such-and-such an editor (using his real name) is
thought of as a real prat. And so on. It's unencyclopedic gossip using
anonymous sources that are (at best) silly and sometimes downright
nasty, and the whole point of all our policies about using good
references is precisely to avoid sources like these being used, except
in very limited cicumstances where we are writing about them (which
makes them primary sources) - and even there we have to be extremely
careful to balance their views about themselves with other's people's
views about them.

Sarah