from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Terri Schiavo article: two separate "calls to arms"
	within days.

body:
Richard Holton (richholton at gmail.com) [050414 10:50]:
> On 4/13/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:

> > >From a RFC at
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/NCdave
> > Pat Sweeney ([[User:Patsw]]) describes himself as an "extreme" Catholic.
> > He says: '"extreme" simply means that I'm faithful, serious, and willing
> > to take risks to share in the mission of the Catholic Church.'
> > He has put out "call to arms", dated April 9, asking his readers to come
> > and join "The battle to re-write the history of Terri Schiavo's history"
> > at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo
> > http://extremecatholic.blogspot.com/2005_04_03_extremecatholic_archive.html#111306581589743852
> > This blog entry references an earlier "call to arms" on another blog,
> > dated April 5th.
> > http://www.blogsforterri.com/archives/2005/04/wikipedia_has_n.php

> I suspect we will continue to see more of this sort of thing, from all
> quarters. The trick will be to protect the NPOV of the article(s)
> while benefiting from any real information that might come to light.
> Oh, and along the way, recruit additional productive editors from
> among those who visit as a result of the "call to arms."
> (People said a wiki-encyclopedia would never work, too...)

The ArbCom has noted that *holding* a strong POV is not prima facie
evidence of *POV-pushing* per se. I have some *very* strong opinions, and I
do write about the subjects. But NPOV is the rule here, and if you hold a
strong opinion you have to use your knowledge of your POV within that.

Even a call to arms is not prima facie evidence of POV pushing per se.
Though it will result in edits that may result from it being scrutinised
*very* closely.

On the blogsforterri blog entry mentioned above, I'd like particularly to
draw your attention to comments left by DimeStore. In particular this one,
which I think is material worth adapting for an NPOV tutorial:

  Here's some important information for updating Wikipedia:

  1) You cannot just edit the page on Terri Schiavo, as it has been
  classified as a controversial topic. This means you have to justify the
  changes on the discussion board first, or they'll just be replaced. It's
  been split into a few topics so they're easy to find and dispute.

  2) There's a standing policy against putting speculation in the articles
  because it causes big messes. So when you make an edit you need to include
  a source or references.

  3) There's also a strong disapproval of flaming on the board, so be careful
  with your language. Accusing others of being "pro-death" or inflammatory
  statements about the people involved, which I've seen a few times here,
  will only damage our position.

  4) Again, please don't just edit the page or flame. This particular article
  has already had massive disputes with one user (NCDave) who was banned
  after doing all of the above. He would edit the article again and again
  after insulting everyone and was later found to be fabricating evidence. He
  represented us badly, and we need to show them that we're rational and we
  know what we're talking about.

*Pushing* a POV is unacceptable. Accurately *representing* a POV is another
thing.

Lots of points also to jdavidb on that thread, who said much the same
things:

  NPOV is the only treaty that makes this kind of discussion workable. It is
  the only way vastly different sides can agree on what should be in the
  article. If you will not commit to NPOV, you will not help.

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Encarta goes wiki - sort of...

body:
Faraaz Damji (frazzydee at spymac.com) [050414 08:08]:

> I don't think that there will be dedicated editors like there are on
> Wikipedia, and like there were on Nupedia, since encarta is completely
> for profit- they're in it for the money and NOT for providing free
> access to "the sum of all human knowledge." There might be some casual
> editors who, upon finding something that wasn't previously there, will
> submit it (eg. if somebody died).  There is little reason I see for
> anybody going on the site for the purpose of improving it.

It might keep the POV-pushers occupied. Then maybe they'll bother us less.
(I can only hope.)

- d.


from_name: mbecker ™

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Alexa.com blogs about Wikipedia

body:
Here's some other interesting Alexa rank milestones:
http://tinyurl.com/4dgff (washingtonpost.com)
http://tinyurl.com/4swwv (xinhuanet.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5kke4 (usatoday.com)


list: foundation-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [Wikinews-l] TheWorldForum.org adds Wikinews
	logo

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

> A project which prides itself on being free content gains nothing from
> treating logos as precious intellectual property that needs to be
> protected from evil.
>
I agree with this very much of course -- this is not the issue.

--Jimbo


list: wikimedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Suggestions for a work-safe encyclopedia

body:
Karl A. Krueger wrote:

> [...]
>
>  My point is that we
>should *NOT* be basing our actions on speculations of risks that have
>simply not been demonstrated.
>
So you're saying Sean actually has to lose his job before you'll
believe he's taking a risk by using WP at work?

Stan


body:
>
> Wikipedia is an increasingly hostile environment. Don't dismiss
> alternate venues because the wave is cresting on wikipedia.
>

For me, the important question is: how do we prevent Wikipedia from
becoming an "increasingly hostile environment".

My own view is that we should trust the ArbCom to rid us more quickly of
poisonous personalities.  Of course this is
non-trivial, etc.  But we really do put up with an astounding amount of
absurd behavior in the name of openness.

--Jimbo


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
--- Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
> >But there's still the difference of "expectation".
> You can't go to an
> >article about private parts and expect to see no
> pictures.
> >
> >The Titanic article is a whole different story,
> though I think some
> >people are really overreacting about this. What
> about the famous "King
> >of the World"-scene. Shouldn't that make for a nice
> image to add to
> >the article?
> >
> >
> Yes. That or a scene of the ship breaking up on end
> (not that I've seen
> the movie).

But wouldn't that offend people who don't want to see
violence?  ~~~~

__________________________________
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Make Yahoo! your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: Andrew Lih

body:
The lead blog story on Alexa's front page today is about Wikipedia
surpassing NY Times in terms of traffic rank. Traffic has spiked
upwards in the last month, and sits at #66 for today.

BTW, the blogger discovered this through my del.icio.us and flickr
tags, so keep tagging things out there as "wikipedia"

See:
http://www.alexa.com
http://tinyurl.com/6gsa3 (Wikipedia vs. NY Times)

-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)


subject: [Foundation-l] Chinese Wikinews: board action required

body:
Given the struggles that some Wikinews projects have had already, I feel
that we should be very conservative about
creating new versions.  As Erik says, this is a board decision, and by
convention on such matters, I vote with Angela
and Anthere anyway if they disagree with me.

So, unless Angela and Anthere tell me to vote otherwise, I would vote to
not create Chinese Wikinews at this time, and
not until we have greater consensus in that community to do it.

--Jimbo

Erik Moeller wrote:

> There has now been a vote, organized by Formulax, among Chinese
> language Wikimedians on whether there should be a Chinese Wikinews.
>
> The results are at:
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%E6%8A%95%E7%A5%A8/%E7%BB%B4%E5%9F%BA%E6%96%B0%E9%97%BB
>
>
> In an amusing demonstration of the problems of voting, there were 13
> votes opposed to the project, 13 votes in support, and 1 vote with
> support only if compromises could be made about NPOV.
>
> There was a larger vote earlier on whether this should be up to the
> global community to decide, or to the Chinese community. That vote was
> inconclusive, too, with opinions evenly split (50% want it to be a
> global decision, 50% want it to be a local decision) and very strong
> expressions of emotions on both sides.
>
> We can continue voting until we get a nice result, but I think it
> would be best now for the board to make a decision about this.
>
> My recommendation is a compromise: the project should go ahead under
> somewhat more rigid conditions (at least 10 support votes with at
> least 6 of them from Wikimedia regulars PLUS the process at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_language_pre-launch ). We can deal
> with problems of censorship as they arise.
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 04:44:32AM -0400, Sj wrote:
> Sj said:
> > Perhaps we can identify some reasonable notion of "work-safeness"
>
> Let me be clear that this is not limited to images, or to nudity
> (hemi-semi or otherwise).

Whose workplace?  I know a couple who who work in a sex-toy shop.  Their
work involves using words like "clitoris" and "fellatio" (though they'd
almost certainly use earthier terms) all day.

Attempting to reduce Wikipedia to some kind of lowest common denominator
of inoffensiveness is just as absurd on the grounds of "being work-safe"
as it is on the grounds of "being child-safe".  It is an impossible
goal; but attempting to pursue it can cause untold harm to the project
in the form of chilling effects, irreconcilable disputes, and biased
coverage.

Wikipedia doesn't need censorious categorization.  We are getting on
_just fine_ without it.  Speculations of the sort, "If we don't put up
some kind of censorship, we could get sued!" are the "Niger yellowcake"
of this discussion -- a nonexistent threat that is being pounded on to
justify a preexisting agenda.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Lucene search

body:
Dori wrote:
> How hard would it be to come up with these word-stem normalizers for other
> languages (i.e. did you base Esperanto off of another similar language or
> did you come up with it yourself relatively easily)? Is there a good
> description somewhere on how to come up with them?

I took a quick look at the PorterStemFilter class (for English) that
comes in the Lucene distribution to see which classes I had to inherit
from and what interface to implement, then just whipped up some regular
expressions as a quick hack. It seems relatively straightforward, as
long as the language isn't too tricky. :)

There are other existing filters out there, as mentioned.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
--- Tom Haws <hawstom at sprintmail.com> wrote:
> Karl A. Krueger wrote:
>
> >Whose workplace?  I know a couple who who work in a
> sex-toy shop.
> >
> >
> Enough said.

And what does that mean?

RickK

__________________________________________________
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from_name: Tom Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
Compromise alert.

Rick wrote:

>But wouldn't that offend people who don't want to see
>violence?  ~~~~
>
Rick's suggestion reminds me that there is lots of content that can't be
prohibited, but could be labelled.  If Wikipedia only had a way of
labelling the image in question as something factual like "female;
photographed; breast exposed; glamorous", then I or anybody else could
browse Wikipedia with our filter on, and the rest of you could enjoy
unfiltered.

Wikipedia as a whole, in a practical sense, belongs to each of us.  But
its multitude of facets are apportioned among us according to our
interests and specialties.  There is no reason why content labels cannot
exist as a facet of Wikipedia that is largely ignored by those who are
disinterested in the associated needs.  And there is no reason why
sexology areas can't exist.

The unreasonable positions are the ones that insist 1) strange niche
areas (sexology) can't exist or be illustrated or 2) any content at all
(Kate Winslet) cannot be subject to labelling for special needs.

Does that sound wrong to anybody?

Tom Haws


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
Thanks, Bjorn.  You are very kind.

Tom Haws
"And [the angel] said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God?
And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I
do not know the meaning of all things."

BJ?rn Lindqvist wrote:

>What Tony was referring to was your use of a rhethorical
>trick.
>


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Conflict between two Wikipedias

body:
"Wikipedia Romania" wrote:
> Hi, I have just joined this mailing list so excuse me
> if I'm posting in the wrong place by not "continuing"
> the thread about the disputes regarding the Romanian
> and Moldovan Wikipedias.

Hi,
just curious: Who are you?

Mathias


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> It's not so much whether people know how to operate the web
> browser, it's that it makes referring to WP an unduly risky
> activity. For instance, suppose I'm in the office of a
> less-clueful boss, and am trying to get the boss to
> understand a detail, and I know WP has a good explanation;
> it's not going to help my case if I have to ask the boss to
> turn off image display before I have him/her bring up a WP page.
>
> This is another variant on the child-safe debate, and maybe
> the filtering needs to be done by a downstream organization
> (who could make a nice bit of money from a subscription
> service I bet), but if WP gets a reputation as risky to look
> at, and companies feel compelled to forbid its use at work,
> that's going to cut us off from a large population of
> professionals that we would really like to have
> participating, and during the day, not just nights and weekends.

Rampant inclusionism, in the name of "categories are one step down the
slippery slope of pandering to the lowest common denominator", is
pushing Wikipedia to a fork.

One, for creating articles.

Two, for "work-safe" *viewing* of the articles.

Once again, it's the clamor of the "in your face, get used to it"
minority trying to hijack the project. They're insisting that viewers
NOT BE ALLOWED to choose what they get: it's all or nothing. Filtering,
categorization, version-marking, "sifter" - it's all the same to them:
restriction on their "right" to be as offensive as they dare.

Note that no one is saying to include child porn. Somehow the "editorial
decision" to leave out the worst type of exploitative images never gets
slapped down as censorship. But, oh, try to hide a pecker or a teat, and
all hell breaks loose.

Well, I for one am not going to debate this forever. My friend's
proposal was approved, and I'm going to spend the next 2.5 years or so
helping him package Wikipedia articles for a print/DVD edition. And as
editor in chief, he won't be handicapped by endless debates on how sexy
to make the article base. Because his sponsor's boss believes that women
shouldn't even expose their belly buttons! (Don't worry, the anatomy
articles will have a very medical-looking image of a human navel tucked
away somewhere :-)

"Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!"

Uncle Ed


subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
Chris Jenkinson wrote:

>Actually, we were discussing this very issue on IRC earlier. The main
>problem we found with this was that it would be a new target for
>vandals - to recategorise various images into unrelated categories.
>
>
Please forgive me, but this sounds weak.  Was this merely a problem to
be advised of or a deal-breaker?

>Also, when going through the filter to select categories that they do
>not wish to see, people might find it objectionable to have content
>like beheadings or sexual activity available for people to view. I'm
>assuming of course that all 'categories' of images like this would be
>on by default - also, this would only be practical if it were for
>registered users, of which the vast majority of visitors aren't
>
Can you explain this again?  This went right over my head.

Tom


body:
I really should make a wikipedia page for these :)

http://tinyurl.com/66ocf (reference.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5u96d (apple.com)
http://tinyurl.com/4tqaq (hp.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5yqr4 (cnet.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5jtuc (download.com)
http://tinyurl.com/3tjsg (macromedia.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5omtf (real.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5weln (msn.co.uk)
http://tinyurl.com/6v8wz (expedia.com)
http://tinyurl.com/4ja9l (travelocity.com)
http://tinyurl.com/63pja (monster.com)
http://tinyurl.com/6zvpf (foxsports.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5ml69 (nba.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5lsqf (usps.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5j4hz (ups.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5vtq4 (overstock.com)
http://tinyurl.com/6h7dk (amazon.co.uk)
http://tinyurl.com/57r7h (bankofamerica.com)
http://tinyurl.com/5sb8b (sourceforge.net)
http://tinyurl.com/5jjjy (no-ip.com)
http://tinyurl.com/4ub6c (symantec.com)
http://tinyurl.com/62des (match.com)
http://tinyurl.com/56zs6 (friendster.com)
http://tinyurl.com/3ut5s (google.it)
http://tinyurl.com/593ht (google.co.in)
http://tinyurl.com/4jd3o (google.com.hk)
http://tinyurl.com/3zlps (google.nl)
http://tinyurl.com/5wtn6 (google.com.tr)
http://tinyurl.com/3vt2u (google.com.au)
http://tinyurl.com/4hy27 (lycos.com)
http://tinyurl.com/3kfvq (altavista.com)
http://tinyurl.com/56mka (ask.com)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
--- Kevin Rector <krector at Compco.com> wrote:
> The Kate Winslet debacle has been resolved. Please
> see the talk page at
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Titanic_%281997_movie%29.
>
> Compromise happened, my wikistress is down, all the
> names I've been
> called in the last 48 hours are forgotten and life
> is good again.

This saddens me.

RickK

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we.
http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail


from_name: Kevin Rector

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
So, I just now, like a bolt of lightning caught the irony that this
image and the fuss over it is on the "titatic" article. Get it....
<i>tit</i>anic.

HA HA.

-Kevin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org [mailto:wikien-l-
> bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge
> Sent: Thursday, April 14, 2005 12:40 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure
>
> Alphax wrote:
>
> > Andy Roberts wrote:
> >
> >> I haven't seen it yet and now you've spoiled the ending!
> >
> > It's about the Titanic. It sinks.
> >
> > AFAIK, the movie is not about the Titanic sinking, it's about the
> > aforementioned (hemi-demi-semi)nude Kate Winslet.
>
> Ahhh!  I think I'm beginning to understand.  It's about the tragedy of
> sinking breasts that comes with aging. :-)
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
On 4/14/05, Tom Haws <hawstom at sprintmail.com> wrote:
>
> >>>>>>Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen.
> >>>>>>
> OK, so I am both clueless and Germanless.  May I have a fully nuanced
> interpretation from the original speaker or an insider, please?
>
> Tom
>

I found this page (from another wiki) to be useful in understanding the quote.

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?LittleWittgensteinQuote

--Rich Holton

[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
The Kate Winslet debacle has been resolved. Please see the talk page at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Titanic_%281997_movie%29.

Compromise happened, my wikistress is down, all the names I've been
called in the last 48 hours are forgotten and life is good again.

-Kevin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
--- BJ?rn Lindqvist <bjourne at gmail.com> wrote:
> This is a bad paralipsis that Tony rightly objected
> to. Kevin IS
> definitely asserting a fact here. He could have
> gotten away with it by
> instead of saying "I've come to the realization
> that..." say "I have a
> feeling that..." or "Someone told me that..." or
> "I've heard that..."
> or "It might be that..." If he would have phrased
> his paralipsis like
> that, Tony would probably appear as a petty
> troublemaker that
> questions something unessential. Still, since noone
> except Tony has
> opposed Kevin's statement, and people have
> questioned Tony's motives
> for "nitpicking," it shows how effective this
> rhethorical trick is.
> Tony has lost, but atleast he got people to question
> the validity of
> Kevin's statement.

Well, no, I've opposed Kevin's statements too, and
have been accused of making personal attacks.

RickK

__________________________________
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from_name: Seth Ilys

body:
On 4/14/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
> Well, I for one am not going to debate this forever. My friend's
> proposal was approved, and I'm going to spend the next 2.5 years or so
> helping him package Wikipedia articles for a print/DVD edition.

Very cool! Is there information about this project available
somewhere? Although I have no interest in being involved with it, I'd
love to follow its progress...

--
Seth Ilys
   email: seth.ilys at gmail.com
   IM (aol, msn, yahoo): JehanneDaix
   blog: http://somewhereindurham.blogspot.com/


from_name: Andy Roberts

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
On 4/14/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
>
> >But there's still the difference of "expectation". You can't go to an
> >article about private parts and expect to see no pictures.
> >
> >The Titanic article is a whole different story, though I think some
> >people are really overreacting about this. What about the famous "King
> >of the World"-scene. Shouldn't that make for a nice image to add to
> >the article?
> >
> >
> Yes. That or a scene of the ship breaking up on end (not that I've seen
> the movie).

I haven't seen it yet and now you've spoiled the ending!

--
Andy Roberts
http://blog.ultralab.net/~blogger/andy/
http://www.ukcider.co.uk


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Andrew Lih wrote:

>The lead blog story on Alexa's front page today is about Wikipedia
>surpassing NY Times in terms of traffic rank. Traffic has spiked
>upwards in the last month, and sits at #66 for today.
>
>BTW, the blogger discovered this through my del.icio.us and flickr
>tags, so keep tagging things out there as "wikipedia"
>
>See:
>http://www.alexa.com
>http://tinyurl.com/6gsa3 (Wikipedia vs. NY Times)
>
>-Andrew (User:Fuzheado)
>
>
And let's not forget Ask Jeeves, which has also been recently passed by
Wikipedia.
Considering that Ask Jeeves recently changed hands for almost $2BN, one
might consider what "value" might be attached to Wikipedia's
contributions to free knowledge. Now, that's philanthropy!

-- Neil


body:
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 05:18:07PM +0100, geni wrote:
> > Attempting to reduce Wikipedia to some kind of lowest common denominator
> > of inoffensiveness is just as absurd on the grounds of "being work-safe"
> > as it is on the grounds of "being child-safe".  It is an impossible
> > goal; but attempting to pursue it can cause untold harm to the project
> > in the form of chilling effects, irreconcilable disputes, and biased
> > coverage.
>
> Evidence?

It's been rehashed here time and again.  The evidence of the massive
conflicts over [[Clitoris]] and other articles should make it clear that
giving people more stuff to fight over is NOT a recipe for a peaceful
Wikipedia.

Hell, Wikipedia contributors manage to have flamewars over whether an
article should have an {{NPOV}} dispute tag on it.  If we can have a
dispute over *whether a dispute exists* then I don't think we can be
trusted to label articles _obscene_ or not -- that's just an invitation
for worse conflicts.

What's more, these conflicts are basically POV in nature.  People have
fundamentally different opinions about what is appropriate for children,
or for office workers for that matter.  Inviting people to fuss over
whether a given article should be tagged "child-safe" or "work-safe" is
just not a very good idea for the civility and advancement of the
project.

Chilling effects are a known problem with any restriction on expression.
Because people do not want to run afoul of the restriction, they self-
censor expression that comes close to the boundary.  On Wikipedia, this
would mean that people would tend to avoid contributing particular
material to articles because they didn't want the article to be
recategorized as "not child-safe" -- even though the added material
might be highly informative and useful.  Our purpose here is to produce
an informative encyclopedia -- and since a "child-safe" attitude
endangers that goal by dint of chilling effects, "child-safety" is not a
compatible goal to seek.

> > Wikipedia doesn't need censorious categorization.  We are getting on
> > _just fine_ without it.  Speculations of the sort, "If we don't put up
> > some kind of censorship, we could get sued!" are the "Niger yellowcake"
> > of this discussion -- a nonexistent threat that is being pounded on to
> > justify a preexisting agenda.
>
> Evidence? Are you a lawer? Are you giving your formal legal opion?

Of course not.  But we shouldn't be taking actions "because Wikipedia
could get sued" without advice from the Foundation's lawyers for that
very reason -- it isn't our job; we're likely to have it wrong; and we
may even expose the project to *more* risk thereby.

Uninformed speculation about legal matters leads to all kinds of moronic
conclusions.  Just take a look at some of the nonsensical speculation
about open-source software licensing out there.  My point is that we
should *NOT* be basing our actions on speculations of risks that have
simply not been demonstrated.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


subject: [Wikitech-l] How to read database using only mysql?

body:
mm wrote:

> I have a question. Can I read a local wikpedia database using only mtsql?
> Can somebody help me?
> How can I do this?
> Thanks,
> Mircea
>
Yes, indeed you can. It's easiest to access the cur_table (the current
version of articles, not the history).

Get a Wikipedia cur_table dump, install mysql, tweak its config
parameters a bit so it can read the very large chunks the DB dump is
written in, and execute the dump as a set of mysql commands. This will
build and populate a copy of the database, which you can then directly
read using SQL commands to mysql.

A lot of the structure of the database is self-evident, but you will
need a bit of advice to get the finer details of all the information in
the dump. Backup dumps contain compressed data, and are harder, but not
at all impossible, to access.

The same goes for accessing live data from your own local Wikipedia
installation's database, if you have one.

-- Neil


subject: [Wikitech-l] Help for a new wiki web site

body:
P. Steemans wrote:

> Hello dear all,
> I don't know if it is the right place to send this EMail, I will see
> soon...
> Sorry in adavance for my poor english :-[ I'm trying to build a wiki
> web site for a professional use. I'm
> paleontologist and I want to create a databank on fossil species with the
> help of my colleague dispersed all around the world. It will be a
> non-public
> website, the subject is too much specialized for non professionals.

Phillipe,

Have you communicated with the people behind Wikispecies at
http://species.wikipedia.org/.

Because taxonomy is a specialist subject, Wikispecies is a specialized
subproject within Wikipedia, and its participants generally have a
specialist or academic interest in taxonomy. I'm sure they would be
interested in fossil species.

-- Neil


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: dumps

body:
Kate Turner wrote:
> Timwi wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:
>
>>What is the problem
>>with storing article texts in the DB? It would seem that LiveJournal is
>>storing *way* more text in their DB than Wikipedia, so what is different
>>about Wikipedia that makes it infeasible to follow their example?
>
> one thing to consider is that LJ is able to cluster text storage over
> several databases, separated by journal.  we cannot split en: between more
> than one database, at least until if/when MySQL Cluster becomes useful.
> (well, some homegrown solution can be used, but then that's just external
> text storage that happens to use MySQL).

Of course we can split en: (by namespace, by first letter, by whatever
you want).

> in any case, just because LJ does it one way doesn't mean that's the best
> way to do it...

What was the purpose of this dismissive remark? It is clearly better
than Wikipedia's current state, judging from the server speed and the
frequency of database error messages.

Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Alexa.com blogs about Wikipedia

body:
Oh, one last thing:

Looking at the recent Alexa traffic graphs reminded me of the recent
E-mail to Wikitech-l, telling the developers that the Wikipedia
infrastructure was (and I quote)

   "U N S C A L A B L E"

I think that should now read "unscalable, apart from the ever-improving
performance and continued exponential growth in load", or something?

By the way, what _has_ caused the recent traffic spike? Added hardware?
Software improvements? Better load-balancing? Something else?

In any case, the results have been like letting the handbrake off on a
sports-car.

Kudos again to the developers.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia

references:
<d3hebo$dru$1@sea.gmane.org>	<fb7fdd9c050413001570d21187@mail.gmail.com>	<d3jdut$cao$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fb7fdd9c0504131023cb9d774@mail.gmail.com>

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> Is being broke enough of an excuse?

No, as I already said. There is no way you can be broke enough to not be
able to afford a headset, but still have the money to live and eat, much
less access the Internet.

Timwi


from_name: Domas Mituzas

subject: [Wikitech-l] Lucene search

body:
Hey,

> How hard would it be to come up with these word-stem normalizers for other
> languages (i.e. did you base Esperanto off of another similar language or
> did you come up with it yourself relatively easily)? Is there a good
> description somewhere on how to come up with them?

That may require some linguistic abilities and some coding abilities :)
There are several stemmers floating around, with one being used by
various opensource software - snowball (http://snowball.tartarus.org/).
It has English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Dutch,
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Russian, Finnish supports. Maybe there's
possibility to adapt rules from there.

Cheers,
Domas


from_name: geni

body:
> That's enough, both of you. Sollog is winning. I'm not calling either of
> you Sollog; but this is *exactly* the kind of thing that the detractors
> of the Wikipedia want - for the project to fall apart through petty
> flame wars. We'll already lost enough valuable contributors - we don't
> need you to go as well. Now take a deep breath, and forget about this
> whole thing. It's not worth it. The topic of content suitability has
> been raised before, will be raised again, and I suggest that we all
> ignore it until a suitable proposal from the Wikimedia foundation is put
> forth.

Forget about it? Are you seriously suggesting that the [[NSFW]]
article is accepterable? It is barely even a stub.

--
geni


body:
On Thu, Apr 14, 2005 at 11:41:07AM -0700, Stan Shebs wrote:
> Karl A. Krueger wrote:
> >My point is that we should *NOT* be basing our actions on
> >speculations of risks that have simply not been demonstrated.
> >
> So you're saying Sean actually has to lose his job before you'll
> believe he's taking a risk by using WP at work?

No.

The statement under doubt was not whether people might lose their jobs
for reading Wikipedia.  It was whether Wikimedia could be found liable
in court for people's losing their jobs for reading Wikipedia; and also
whether posting "not safe for work" notices would ameliorate this
situation.

There's no doubt that people might lose their job for reading Wikipedia
when they should be working.  Nudity doesn't even enter into it.

However, I do not think we should believe that Wikimedia would be found
liable for anyone losing their job over Wikipedia content -- or even
that anyone would be likely to sue Wikimedia over such an issue --
unless we hear so from the Board or the Foundation's lawyers.

I have another related concern.  People seem to occasionally bring up
these purported legal risks as an attempt to get their way on an issue
of Wikipedia governance or policy.  While this is clearly not a
violation of the _letter_ of the [[Wikipedia:No legal threats]] policy,
it seems to me to border on infringement of the _spirit_ of that policy.

In these cases, the contributor is not *themselves* threatening to sue
if they don't get their way.  Rather, they are claiming that if they do
not get their way, that *someone else* is likely to sue.  This seems to
me to be a "legal threat by proxy" or some such, and it does not seem
like a very honorable way to go about a policy discussion.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


from_name: Faraaz Damji

subject: [WikiEN-l] Suggestions for a work-safe encyclopedia

body:
It seems that there are some who want to keep Wikipedia work-safe, and
others who want to avoid censorship.  I think that it be a good
compromise if we tagged the images individually by putting them in a
category, and somehow allowing users to filter out certain images in
their preferences.  This would require a patch in MediaWiki, but I think
it would be a good compromise, since:
a) It keeps Wikipedia work-safe/child-safe, for those who want it to be
b) It's not censoring Wikipedia since people are opting IN to it
c) People won't have to browse with images off to avoid being suprised
by offensive images
d) It doesn't affect people who don't mind these images, so we're still
providing information the same way it would be otherwise, we're just
giving people more options
e) It's easier, more precise, and more effective than turning off all images

The old argument is true: if you don't want to see a clitoris, then
don't go to [[clitoris]].  However, I think that especially if there are
semi-nude and other potentially offensive pictures in seemingly random
places, it's important to give people the liberty to view any images
they want.  Also, if I want to learn more about what something like
[[autofellatio]] is, I should be able to choose to display images as a
link if I want.  Even if I want to learn about [[autofellatio]], I might
not want to have a picture of a guy masturbating appear right next to
the information, and I should be given the liberty to choose to omit the
image without turning all images off (which many people don't know how
to do).

This would also solve the problem of not being able to censor images out
of the fear of being forced to censor images that offend very small
groups.  I'm referring a bit to the [[Owl]]/Navajo argument here.  While
most see it as ridiculous to hide images of owls on [[Owl]] just because
it offends a small minority, I think that it would be beneficial if we
allow people to individually decide whether they want these types of
images or not.  If you think that's censorship, I disagree, because it's
not banning any content, it's just giving users more power over the
display of the images than they previously had.  Since it doesn't
disrupt 'normal' users, I think it would be a great compromise to this
never-ending problem.

--Faraaz Damji (Frazzydee)

Blog: http://frazzydee.ca

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Sj wrote:
> Perhaps we can identify some reasonable notion of "work-safeness" and
> work to make the user experience work-safe for all of our readers.
> Our primary goal should be to make the encyclopedia a useful and
> reliable resource, for as many people as possible, in as many
> environments as possible.  This includes making it reliably safe to
> let one's children use the encyclopedia, to refer to articles for
> illustration in the middle of a discussion or presentation, regardless
> of audience, to browse the encyclopedia at work.
>
> I am not sure how to address the first case above - providing a site
> that parents would feel comfortable letting their 6-year-old browse.
> But I think we can deal with the last two scenarios pretty well
> without a great deal of work.
>
> At each step along the way, we can assume that the reader is '''doing
> his or her best''' to avoid looking up undesired pages or content.
> Editors should avoid surprising users by showing them content they did
> not expect, and do not want, to see on a particular subject.  For
> instance, we have {{spoiler}} messages.  We should have the same kinds
> of messages for potentially offensive content [somehow I thought we
> did by now, but it seems this is not so.]
>
> I've added a few templates ('obscenity', 'graphicviolence', and
> 'nonworksafe') to the end of  the General templates page; please see
> whether the text is appropriate, and add them to articles where
> needed.     http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_messages/General
>
> I think it is fair to assume that readers are doing all they can /not/
> to come across content that they or their employers find
> inappropriate.  It is also polite to warn readers when they are about
> to be shocked.
>
> 1.  If the title of the article does *not* make it clear that it is
> not worksafe, or about violent or obscene or nude subjects; or
> 2.  If the content of one section, despite its relevance to the
> article as a whole, is unusually graphic, or potentially
> offensive/startling;
>
> then a spoiler-type warning is probably appropriate.
>
> On 4/13/05, Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
>>Sean Barrett said:
>>
>>>For me, the largest part of the problem with the Kate Winslet nude is
>>>that it renders all of Wikipedia non-work-safe.
>>
>>What does "work-safe" mean in this context?  If it's only the pictures,
>>why do you browse wikipedia with image downloads turned on?
>
>
> Images are a significant portion of the encyclopedia.  No-one should
> have to turn images off  simple because of a few poorly-announced and
> surprisingly-placed "non-work-safe" images.
>


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Language conversion

body:
> is that difference only with the letter "e"?
> If yes, why can't it be decided that some people pronounce it
> as "je" (like they do in Russian, they just write "?" and not "??")
> and some other people pronounce it as "e", and keep a single way of writting?

There are some more differences...

In 12th century so called "new dialects of Serbian/Croatian language"
are devided over different reflexes of old vocal "jat" (capital letter
"?", small letter "?" in Cyrillic, or ? / ? in Latin) into: ekavian,
iyekavian and ikavian variant. Ekavian reflex is almost always "e"
(sometimes it is "i"), ikavian reflex is always "i", and iyekavian
reflexes are in general "ye" or "iye", but often "e" and rare "i".

After 12th century there some consonant changes was happened. When
iyekavian reflex "ye" stayed after consonants 'l' or 'n', string "lje"
(lye) or "nje" (nye) became two, not three volwes and "lj" and "nj"
was not anymore "l+j" or "n+j", but "lj" and "nj" as soft "l" and "n".

So, differences became bigger, but not so big. Ekavians and iyekavians
are closer between themselfs then with any other language speakers.
For example, when iyekavian Croat from Zagreb or iyekavian Serb from
Banja Luka talks with ekavian Serb from Belgrade, they will not have
any problem in communication.

However, in writting systems there are some differences. Not only
"mleko-mlijeko", but, for example, word for "notepad" in ekavian
variant is "bele?nica", but in iyekavian it is "bilje?nica". Old form
was "b?l??nica" (before "jat" transformation, after other changes in
language). Ekavians changed "?" into e, but iyekavians changed first
"?" into 'i' and second into "ye". As /j/ made 'l' soft, "lj"
combination dosn't represent two volwes, but one. Around 20.000
lexemes (and around 200.000 forms/words) are affected with "jat"
transformation.

Vuk Karadzic and Ljudevit Gaj sancionied only ekavian and iyekavian,
but not ikavian. So, today Croatian and Bosnian have only iyekavian
varian (a lot of Croats and some of Bosniaks are ikavian) and Serbian
has iyekavian and ekavian.

> or the other way around, always write the "j", but some people not
> pronounce it.
>
> having two different writting systems just for that (which means four
> different writting systemns in total) seems unjustified;

There are a lot of possibilities for solving that problem. However,
you and me are not the persons who are making those decisions. Also, I
think that a lot of Serbian linguists don't think a lot about
complicated situation with standards. A lot of them would use Cyrillic
or Latin (or both if they don't care about alphabet) and one dialect.
Ortography of Serbian Language is written only in Cyrillic in two
variants (ekavian and iyekavian)...

The other question is that Serbian (Croatian and Bosnian) language
have (with Finish and, I think, Estonian) the most phonetic alphabets.
This is two centuries tradition of Serbian language and I am the first
who would be against morphological writing system (as well as other
linguists). Morphological solution is introduction of "jat" into
ortography (?? in Latin, ?? in Cyrillic), but a lot of Ekavians would
not know where to put it (not all 'e' came from 'jat'); actualy, only
Ekavians with high linguistic education know where to put 'jat' and
where not to put.

About other way, I said that Karadzic's nazi regime tried to do that.

I can say that cultures are complicated. They are not based on bits
and formal logic. Hindi and Urdu are the same linguistic language, as
well and Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian. However, those are different
cultures; and all of that cultures has set of their own rules. 10
million Serbs has four writting systems. But, 500.000 of Lusatian
Serbs has two writting systems :) Or, almost 5 million inhabitans of
Papua New Guinea has around 800 different (!) languages!


subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
1. When has vandalism ever been a reason not to include a new feature?
There's already tons of vandalism, this will merely be another blip on
the radar.
2. Then don't go through the filter, choose them from a drop-down box.
If you need images to help you see what nudity is, then that's your
prerogative.

I didn't know there was discussion on IRC about this...I made a post to
WikiEN-l: Nude Kate Winslet Picture about the same thing :P

Blog: http://frazzydee.ca

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Chris Jenkinson wrote:
> Actually, we were discussing this very issue on IRC earlier. The main
> problem we found with this was that it would be a new target for
> vandals - to recategorise various images into unrelated categories.
> Also, when going through the filter to select categories that they do
> not wish to see, people might find it objectionable to have content
> like beheadings or sexual activity available for people to view. I'm
> assuming of course that all 'categories' of images like this would be
> on by default - also, this would only be practical if it were for
> registered users, of which the vast majority of visitors aren't.
>
> Chris (Talrias on en.wikipedia.org)
>
> On 4/14/05, Tom Haws <hawstom at sprintmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Compromise alert.
>>
>>Rick wrote:
>>
>>
>>>But wouldn't that offend people who don't want to see
>>>violence?  ~~~~
>>>
>>
>>Rick's suggestion reminds me that there is lots of content that can't be
>>prohibited, but could be labelled.  If Wikipedia only had a way of
>>labelling the image in question as something factual like "female;
>>photographed; breast exposed; glamorous", then I or anybody else could
>>browse Wikipedia with our filter on, and the rest of you could enjoy
>>unfiltered.
>>
>>Wikipedia as a whole, in a practical sense, belongs to each of us.  But
>>its multitude of facets are apportioned among us according to our
>>interests and specialties.  There is no reason why content labels cannot
>>exist as a facet of Wikipedia that is largely ignored by those who are
>>disinterested in the associated needs.  And there is no reason why
>>sexology areas can't exist.
>>
>>The unreasonable positions are the ones that insist 1) strange niche
>>areas (sexology) can't exist or be illustrated or 2) any content at all
>>(Kate Winslet) cannot be subject to labelling for special needs.
>>
>>Does that sound wrong to anybody?
>>
>>Tom Haws
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>WikiEN-l mailing list
>>WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>
>
>


from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Foundation-l] Quarto article: Review, comments and input

body:
Hi,

The English translation of my article for Quarto is available on Meta, thanks
to Angela:

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

It needs review.?I would like also to be commented and completed by non French
contributors.

Thanks,
Yann

PS: French original:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Du_bon_ou_du_mauvais_usage_de_la_propri?t?_intellectuelle

--
http://www.non-violence.org/ | Site collaboratif sur la non-violence
http://www.forget-me.net/ | Alternatives sur le Net
http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: FOLDOC, acknowledgments and GFDL

body:
"Alphax" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:425E7973.1050805 at gmail.com...
> Timwi wrote:
[snip]
>> /me idly envisions a [[Category:Articles based on FOLDOC]], but then
>> keeps quiet for fear of the anti-Categories league.
> [[Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:FOLDOC]]

...which will be great when someone gets round to writing that "Give me the
next 500..." code.

In the meantime, why not just add the above category to the template?

HTH HAND
--
Phil


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wiki-to-XML pseudo-parser in PHP

body:
Timwi schrieb:
> Magnus Manske wrote:
>
>>
>> Here it is! The millionth pseudo-parser I wrote for wiki(p|m)edia! :-)
>>
>> Try it out at
>>
>> http://www.magnusmanske.de/wikipedia/wiki2xml.php
>
>
> So whatever became of the flex/bison parser, then? Has it been abandoned
> because nobody can make sense of my code? :-)

AFAIK, I was the only one who tried, and I'm scared :-)

Every time I changed something in the bison code, it didn't do as I
expected, even when I was sure I got it right. Somehow Flex/Bison and I
are incompatible...

> Anyway, I've found a bug in your yanrap (Yet Another Not-Really-A-Parser):

I'll get to that...

Thanks,
Magnus


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Accuracy, please, in regard to Miss Winslet

body:
dpbsmith at verizon.net wrote:

> Indeed, given the strategic placement of Jack's sketchpad, one could
> make out a case for her condition as being hemi-seminude.
>
hemi-demi-semiquaver^H^H^H^H^H^Hnude?

Oh wait, her face is showing. How offensive.

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
It would be especially neat if we could get at least a little bit of
server space somewhere in Africa, Australia, and South America.

Having said that, it would also be easy/nice to get server space in
California or somewhere else in the Western US (Google would be
California, would it not?)

I think that it's always best to have everything distributed over
multiple locations in case of a disaster, natural or otherwise (this
way, we won't have to worry about Wikipedia in hurricanes, and if one
location gets broken into/burns down/explodes/disappears mysteriously
in a puff of steam, Wikipedia will not have problems because of it).

Mark

On 4/14/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Andrew Lih wrote:
>
> >The lead blog story on Alexa's front page today is about Wikipedia
> >surpassing NY Times in terms of traffic rank. Traffic has spiked
> >upwards in the last month, and sits at #66 for today.
> >
> >
>
> I've just ordered another 20 servers for our Florida cluster, and with
> the recently announced Yahoo deal, as well
> as deals we are working on with some European educational/governmental
> organizations and another major search
> engine, we will within the next few months more than double our total
> capacity, and expand from 2 data centers
> (Florida, Paris) to 5 or 6 (Florida, somewhere in Asia, Amsterdam,
> Brussels, Paris, and another).
>
> Pretty neat.
>
> :-)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>This is simply a matter of employees falsely claiming that Wikipedia must
>change in order to solve their own personal communication and web
>navigation problems.
>
I'm pretty sure nobody has said that exactly. It is, however, the
case that many employees will choose not to put their jobs at risk,
even if WP would be helpful in their day-to-day work activities.
Maybe that's OK; maybe we don't care if those people participate
or not.

However, I think it would be really helpful to the goal of
encyclopedia creation if it were possible for, say, the USGS to
assign one of their technical writers to the task of improving WP's
info on mountain ranges, or seafloor vents, or volcano prediction,
plus adding pictures that are not currently available on the net.
That kind of win can't happen if we don't come up with some way
to better accommodate organizational policies on sexual harassment.

Stan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: FOLDOC, acknowledgments and GFDL

body:
Alphax wrote:
> Timwi wrote:
>
>> Denis Howe wrote:
>>
>>> I am very happy to have any kind of acknowledgement or back link on
>>> FOLDOC based
>>> articles in Wikipedia.  I would be almost as happy just to have a single
>>> acknowledgement on some suitable global page.  I would not be at all
>>> happy to
>>> have no acknowledgement at all but I'd just cry quietly to myself at
>>> night about
>>> it. :-)
>>
>> /me idly envisions a [[Category:Articles based on FOLDOC]], but then
>> keeps quiet for fear of the anti-Categories league.
>>
> [[Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:FOLDOC]]

Well, duh. That requires the presence of {{FOLDOC}} in the article. And
it's not very useful because it also lists talk pages that just happen
to link to it (as opposed to transcluding it).

Yeah, I know, my Category proposal also requires the presence of
[[Category:Articles based on FOLDOC]], but at least it wouldn't generate
such a big box that would need to be carried around with the article
forever.

Timwi


body:
Faraaz Damji wrote:
> If you think that there are serious
> problems with Wikipedia, there's nothing stopping you from starting
> another wiki encyclopedia with Wikipedia's content since everything is
> GFDL'd.

I keep seeing this argument, and I keep wondering how many of the people
who say this actually believe what they are saying. OF COURSE there is
something stopping you from starting another Wiki encyclopedia. Firstly,
running such a project requires resources far in excess of what any
average person can provide. Secondly, Wikipedia has the community
lock-in factor (people feel "at home" and don't like to switch).
Thirdly, there's the social risk of being ridiculed for attempting
something that, in the eyes of many, Wikipedia has already achieved.

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
I think that the English Wikipedia is already a very hostile
environment, due in no small part to certain gung-ho admins who do not
assume good faith on the part of newbies.

When I first came here, I could've vandalised 40 pages in a row and
somebody would've sent me a nice warning message, welcoming me to
Wikipedia in the process and encouraging me to log in. Not that I did
that, but the environment at that time was such that such a thing
doesn't seem unbelievable.

People were always at least somewhat nice to each other.

But now, if anybody asks any question about an edit, you (meaning
everybody, or at least many people if not most) just tell them "I am
right. Shut up and bugger off." (not exactly; you give them a somewhat
more polite response but give them the impression that you are not
willing to have an academic discussion about it).

It's especially harmful when people say "I'm reverting this." or "Your
changes are unacceptable." or "Leave this page alone.", or other
things that make them sound like a parent scolding their child (and in
many cases, it gets more abusive).

There is too much voting and too little simple attempts to reach a
consensus, nobody is willing to compromise, and in addition to such
helpful-but-harmful utilities as mediators, we now have the ArbCom (in
my view, while they have help weed some bad people out, they have also
caused a lot of trouble, not intentionally though), bureaucrats (a
mean, pompous, or abusive bureaucrat is 10 times worse than a bad
sysop), and worst of all the AMA (in my view, that organisation should
be forcefully disbanded and anybody who tries to start it up again
should be shot - note that I personally have not made use of them, nor
have I had a dispute with anybody that did, but so far as I can tell
they just make things worse for everybody). I think quickpolls were
better. Sure, they were tantamount to mob rule, but that was that and
it was less toxic to the community, at least in my view.

People do not really think about proposals or ideas that they don't
like a whole lot - they just say "no" without thinking about it or
reading further. There are few moderates anymore. Everybody believes
that their POV is NPOV, or else their "NPOV" is at least somewhat POV.

Every case the ArbCom handles, every person to seek an advocate, every
post to a talkpage that isn't nice and polite, all of this contributes
to sending the en.wikipedia community from the purgatory it's in now
to the residence of one Ms Helen A. Hampbaskytt.

Is there anything that can be done to keep the community out of the
paws of vile Ms Hampbaskytt?

I honestly don't know. Maybe we should create a new Wikipedia for a
language called "enGlish" but that's really the same as English, and
ban anybody who is anything but nice and courteous.

Mark

On 4/14/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> > Wikipedia is an increasingly hostile environment. Don't dismiss
> > alternate venues because the wave is cresting on wikipedia.
> >
>
> For me, the important question is: how do we prevent Wikipedia from
> becoming an "increasingly hostile environment".
>
> My own view is that we should trust the ArbCom to rid us more quickly of
> poisonous personalities.  Of course this is
> non-trivial, etc.  But we really do put up with an astounding amount of
> absurd behavior in the name of openness.
>
> --Jimbo
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Conflict between two Wikipedias

body:
On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect
> of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians
> complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is
> bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which
> is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially
> recognised as a separate language).

Serbs are using both scripts (in Belgrade, Podgorica and Banja Luka)
and it seems that situation with Moldavians are similar (not the same)
with Serbian problem.

So, I suggest Chinese solution for Moldavians. They would have Latin
and Cyrillic interface such Chinese have Simplified and Traditional
script. Please, look Zhengzhu's page at Meta:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_traditional_Chinese


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Foundation-l] Dot Org Boom

body:
Four CC-SA-licensed photos from the Dot Org Boom seminar in
Stockholm, where Anthere spoke, are now available on
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:LA2

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


subject: [Foundation-l] Dot Org Boom


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Encarta goes wiki - sort of...

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
>
> You can mow add to Encarta articles online. After a review by the M$
> staff, your edit may be added to the Encarta.

I've thought about this some more, and I have come to a number of
conclusions.

I don't believe that any noticeable fraction of submissions is even
looked at by a human. I cannot believe that a commercial organisation
could or would spend the resources necessary to do that.

I don't believe that the purpose of adding this feature was to allow
users to improve Encarta. Though of course that's what everyone thinks.

I do believe that they added this feature due to a growing public
awareness of Wikipedia, and in an effort to retain a certain amount of
market share. I believe that they are explicitly trying to reduce faith
in Wikipedia or wiki projects in general, thereby implicitly increasing
faith in proprietary encyclopedias (or strengthening the superior faith
that already exists).

At the same time, they are probably trying to show that they are "ahead"
of other proprietary encyclopedias by being the first to introduce a
significant feature, and that they are more customer-oriented by making
it look like they allow feedback to reach them.

That's what I think,
Timwi


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Stan Shebs said:
>>
> It's not so much whether people know how to operate the web
> browser, it's that it makes referring to WP an unduly risky
> activity. For instance, suppose I'm in the office of a less-clueful
> boss, and am trying to get the boss to understand a detail, and I
> know WP has a good explanation; it's not going to help my case if
> I have to ask the boss to turn off image display before I have
> him/her bring up a WP page.

Precisely. You're blaming Wikipedia for your boss's cluelessness.

>
> This is another variant on the child-safe debate

Indeed. We could make Wikipedia "child safe" (another utterly pointless
term when applied to anything a three-year-old couldn't choke on), we
could make it "granny safe", but it would be silly because all the people
demanding that we make Wikipedia "such-and-such safe" are blaming their
communication problems on Wikipedia and saying Wikipedia must be changed.
Why do they do that?  Presumably because it would involve less effort on
their part if Wikipedia were to change to suit *their* personal
requirements, and forget all that stuff  about making a great
encyclopedia.  They wouldn't have to go about their difficult personal
responsibilities, those of educating their clueless boss, or their
children, or their granny, or failing that, ensuring that their
non-Wikipedia-safe boss, child or granny is not operated in a manner that
could cause damage to Wikipedia.

> , and maybe
> the filtering needs to be done by a downstream organization

Or a downstream brain cell?


body:
> Whose workplace?  I know a couple who who work in a sex-toy shop.  Their
> work involves using words like "clitoris" and "fellatio" (though they'd
> almost certainly use earthier terms) all day.

I think we all know what is being refured to

> Attempting to reduce Wikipedia to some kind of lowest common denominator
> of inoffensiveness is just as absurd on the grounds of "being work-safe"
> as it is on the grounds of "being child-safe".  It is an impossible
> goal; but attempting to pursue it can cause untold harm to the project
> in the form of chilling effects, irreconcilable disputes, and biased
> coverage.

Evidence?

> Wikipedia doesn't need censorious categorization.  We are getting on
> _just fine_ without it.  Speculations of the sort, "If we don't put up
> some kind of censorship, we could get sued!" are the "Niger yellowcake"
> of this discussion -- a nonexistent threat that is being pounded on to
> justify a preexisting agenda.

Evidence? Are you a lawer? Are you giving your formal legal opion?

--
geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: privacy policy

body:
Anthere wrote:
> The privacy policy (lonnnnng awaited) was approved by the board at the
> last meeting. It was just copied on foundation wiki.
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy
>
> It would be great that the policy be translated in all languages (see
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy). Once most languages are
> translated, we would like to link it from the footer of pages.

Where do I put the translation?

And what do I do about errors in the English original?


body:
> Precisely. You're blaming Wikipedia for your boss's cluelessness.

IT departments exist for a reason. I supose that you are going to try
and use your learn to use your browser argument again. Unfortuently
you don't appear to have thought about what we would have to do in
order to allow people to do this. Supose I turn off images. Now supose
I view an article and want to see the pictures. How do I know if the
picture I am about to allow through is work safe? Well I can hope it
is mention in the caption but if we take say this version of the
article it clearly isn't:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Titanic_%281997_movie%29&oldid=10580793

So YOU are denying me the ability to make an informed descission.

> Indeed. We could make Wikipedia "child safe" (another utterly pointless
> term when applied to anything a three-year-old couldn't choke on), we
> could make it "granny safe", but it would be silly because all the people
> demanding that we make Wikipedia "such-and-such safe" are blaming their
> communication problems on Wikipedia and saying Wikipedia must be changed.
> Why do they do that?  Presumably because it would involve less effort on
> their part if Wikipedia were to change to suit *their* personal
> requirements, and forget all that stuff  about making a great
> encyclopedia.  They wouldn't have to go about their difficult personal
> responsibilities, those of educating their clueless boss, or their
> children, or their granny, or failing that, ensuring that their
> non-Wikipedia-safe boss, child or granny is not operated in a manner that
> could cause damage to Wikipedia.

Do you have any evidence of the above?

BTW  since when did I have a responsibility to educate people?

> Or a downstream brain cell?

downstream braincells can only react passivly . We can act activly.

--
geni


body:
> Note that no one is saying to include child porn. Somehow the "editorial
> decision" to leave out the worst type of exploitative images never gets
> slapped down as censorship. But, oh, try to hide a pecker or a teat, and
> all hell breaks loose.

That isn't an editorial descision. The laws in the state of florida
don't allow child porn

--
geni


from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

body:
Mark, you said:
"But I think that the majority of users of
mo.wikipedia will, no matter
what, always be primarily users of Cyrillic, and I
think that it
should be dominant there until such time as there are
more Moldovan
users there who use Latin, if that is ever the case."

I think that is not at all right. I mean, Cyrillic is
a minority script in _all_ circumstances. Only 10% of
speakers of Moldo-Romanian in Moldova use it, and only
around 33% of people who say they speak Moldovan use
it. So those who say they speak Moldovan, will be
looking actually mostly for Latin content, especially
since many of the Cyrillic speakers are also used to
Latin content because that's the script they use in
public institutions, at work, etc.

Also, "since we already have two separate
Wikipedias, we can use ro.wiki for /all/ Latin-script
content, and
mo.wiki for /all/ Cyrillic-script content"

I've kept on saying that this is a practical solution,
but it isn't really a correct solution - While the
interesting context of the Moldo-Romanian language
would state that a mo.wiki in Cyrillic only would be
the most practical solution, it would basically be
very biased, despite the prominent link. The prominent
link is just a redirect, the interface would still be
in Cyrillic, the interwiki links would still go to
Cyrillic articles. We can't nominate a Wikipedia for
Cyrillic content, even though the case of
Moldo-Romanian would say that perhaps logically it is
a way to go, simply because we can't nominate a
language subdomain for a certain script when that
script is a minority script.

That's what needs to be understood here - Cyrillic is
a minority script in all cases - for Moldo-Romanian
speakers worldwide, for Moldo-Romanian speakers in
Moldova and for Moldovan speakers in Moldova. So we
need content to first cater for the majority, which
could be either at mo.wiki or ro.wiki, but I think
ro.wiki would be the more practical solution, unless
some Moldovans would actually have a problem with
being redirected to a Romanian Wikipedia, which they
might have. We need to hear their side of the story
too, but there are as of yet barely any Moldovan Latin
users. There should be a very prominent link on the
mo.wiki page redirecting Cyrillic users to their
subdomain. Interwiki links would then go to mo-cyr:
and be put in the form of "Moldoveanească
(Chirilic)" in the Cyrillic alphabet.

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] WP in today's Guardian - twice

body:
The Online supplement in today's London Guardian features not only a brisk
Jimbo interview, but a use of WP as benchmarl for Uncyclopedia (which
apparenty is funnier, if having less useful factual content).

Charles


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Alexa.com blogs about Wikipedia

body:
On 4/14/05, mbecker ? <wikimb at gmail.com> wrote:
> I really should make a wikipedia page for these :)

There is one: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia.org_is_more_popular_than...

Angela.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: privacy policy

body:
On 4/14/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

> Where do I put the translation?

At http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy/{language code}

For example, http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Privacy_policy/It

> And what do I do about errors in the English original?

Please fix them on meta. Changes made there will be copied to the
Foundation wiki once the page has stabilised a little.

Thanks.

Angela.


body:
We had the similar situation with Serbo-Croatian standard language
(divided into Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian standard). We solved that
with separation of Wikipedias.

However, I think that Wikipedias are (standard) language-based, not
national-based (in general, I am sure that we can find some
national-based Wikipedia). So, solution is (as I see) very simple:

1. Moldavians who think that their language is Romanian should write
into Romanian Wikipedia (only in Latin alphabet).

2. Moldavians who think that their language is Moldavian should write
into Moldavian Wikipedia. Also, those Moldavians can implement Chinese
(and future Serbian) solution for them: they will have tabs (where
"edit", "dicsussion" and "history" tabs are) where they can choose
script. Also, they would have possibility to choose their interface
(Cyrillic or Latin).

Also, note that content on Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian Wikipedia can
be treated as "duplicated content".

On 4/14/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Milos,
>
> Thanks for your message.
>
> The problem is indeed similar but there is an added problem.
>
> Imagine for a moment that Serbian was only written in Cyrillic, but
> that there was another language, let's call it "Naibres", which was
> basically identical to Serbian except for political purposes. Now,
> Naibres is officially written in the Cyrillic alphabet, but 10% of
> Naibres users use the Latin alphabet.
>
> Now, with a Serbian Wikipedia already existing and being relatively
> large, would users wanting to add Latin-script content (in this
> hypothetical case, not in the real world) be allowed to add it to the
> Serbian Wikipedia since no "Serbian" speakers would use the alphabet,
> or should a separate Wikipedia be created for Naibres?
>
> And if a separate Wikipedia were created for Naibres, should it only
> be written in Latin because any Cyrillic content would be a
> duplication of the Serbian content?
>
> I know the hypothetical is confusing, but if you can work your mind
> around it that is basically the situation on the ground with Romanian
> and Moldovan.
>
> ro.wiki has over 11000 articles, but there is no willingness to accept
> content in the Cyrillic alphabet, which is fine. So people started
> having content in both scripts at mo:, but the very small community at
> mo: (two or three people) has decided to redirect all Latin-script
> pages to ro.wikipedia because the text is basically identical and we
> don't want to create a content fork.
>
> Ronline believes we should move Cyrillic pages to a separate subdomain
> since Cyrillic is not the official or majority script of "Moldovan
> language", but I believe that, since we already have two separate
> Wikipedias, we can use ro.wiki for /all/ Latin-script content, and
> mo.wiki for /all/ Cyrillic-script content, as long as there is a
> prominently-placed link on the mo.wiki mainpage (see
> http://mo.wikipedia.org , where it says "click aici" is the link)
>
> Mark
>
> On 4/14/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 4/13/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Many Serbians (though certainly not all) believe Bosnian is a dialect
> > > of Serbian or is identical, but there is no interference with Serbians
> > > complaining about the Bosnian Wikipedia or vice-versa, and Serbian is
> > > bi-scriptal even though Latin is mostly used for "Montenegrin" which
> > > is in a similar situation to Moldovan (except it isn't officially
> > > recognised as a separate language).
> >
> > Serbs are using both scripts (in Belgrade, Podgorica and Banja Luka)
> > and it seems that situation with Moldavians are similar (not the same)
> > with Serbian problem.
> >
> > So, I suggest Chinese solution for Moldavians. They would have Latin
> > and Cyrillic interface such Chinese have Simplified and Traditional
> > script. Please, look Zhengzhu's page at Meta:
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Automatic_conversion_between_simplified_and_traditional_Chinese
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


references:
<d3hebo$dru$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fb7fdd9c050413001570d21187@mail.gmail.com>
	<d3jdut$cao$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fb7fdd9c0504131023cb9d774@mail.gmail.com>

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>Is being broke enough of an excuse?
>
>
That's what parents / siblings / significant others / banks / pawn shops
are for ;)

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
I think it is at [[meta:Wikipedia is more popular than...]]

or, just search for "Wikipedia is more popular than" at your modern
search engine of choice. :-)

mbecker ? wrote:
> I really should make a wikipedia page for these :)
>
> http://tinyurl.com/66ocf (reference.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/5u96d (apple.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/4tqaq (hp.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/5yqr4 (cnet.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/5jtuc (download.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/3tjsg (macromedia.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/5omtf (real.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/5weln (msn.co.uk)
> http://tinyurl.com/6v8wz (expedia.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/4ja9l (travelocity.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/63pja (monster.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/6zvpf (foxsports.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/5ml69 (nba.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/5lsqf (usps.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/5j4hz (ups.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/5vtq4 (overstock.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/6h7dk (amazon.co.uk)
> http://tinyurl.com/57r7h (bankofamerica.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/5sb8b (sourceforge.net)
> http://tinyurl.com/5jjjy (no-ip.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/4ub6c (symantec.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/62des (match.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/56zs6 (friendster.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/3ut5s (google.it)
> http://tinyurl.com/593ht (google.co.in)
> http://tinyurl.com/4jd3o (google.com.hk)
> http://tinyurl.com/3zlps (google.nl)
> http://tinyurl.com/5wtn6 (google.com.tr)
> http://tinyurl.com/3vt2u (google.com.au)
> http://tinyurl.com/4hy27 (lycos.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/3kfvq (altavista.com)
> http://tinyurl.com/56mka (ask.com)
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Suggestions for a work-safe encyclopedia

body:
> It's been rehashed here time and again.  The evidence of the massive
> conflicts over [[Clitoris]] and other articles should make it clear that
> giving people more stuff to fight over is NOT a recipe for a peaceful
> Wikipedia.
>
> Hell, Wikipedia contributors manage to have flamewars over whether an
> article should have an {{NPOV}} dispute tag on it.  If we can have a
> dispute over *whether a dispute exists* then I don't think we can be
> trusted to label articles _obscene_ or not -- that's just an invitation
> for worse conflicts.

No you have shown that the images already cause conflicts you have
failed to show that any method of labeling would increase them.

> What's more, these conflicts are basically POV in nature.  People have
> fundamentally different opinions about what is appropriate for children,
> or for office workers for that matter.  Inviting people to fuss over
> whether a given article should be tagged "child-safe" or "work-safe" is
> just not a very good idea for the civility and advancement of the
> project.
>

So what? {{cleanup}} {{wikify}}{{stub}}{{substub}} they are all POV
> Chilling effects are a known problem with any restriction on expression.
> Because people do not want to run afoul of the restriction, they self-
> censor expression that comes close to the boundary.  On Wikipedia, this
> would mean that people would tend to avoid contributing particular
> material to articles because they didn't want the article to be
> recategorized as "not child-safe" -- even though the added material
> might be highly informative and useful.  Our purpose here is to produce
> an informative encyclopedia -- and since a "child-safe" attitude
> endangers that goal by dint of chilling effects, "child-safety" is not a
> compatible goal to seek.
>
In my expearence people on wikipedia play right up to any boundary. If
you don't belive me see [[WP:AN/3RR]]

>

> Of course not.  But we shouldn't be taking actions "because Wikipedia
> could get sued" without advice from the Foundation's lawyers for that
> very reason -- it isn't our job; we're likely to have it wrong; and we
> may even expose the project to *more* risk thereby.

But you went beyond that. You went so far as the say the person was wrong.

> Uninformed speculation about legal matters leads to all kinds of moronic
> conclusions.  Just take a look at some of the nonsensical speculation
> about open-source software licensing out there.  My point is that we
> should *NOT* be basing our actions on speculations of risks that have
> simply not been demonstrated.

No we should find out if those risks exist or not. You made an
absolute stament that they did not.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
Rick said:
>
> --- Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> Yes. That or a scene of the ship breaking up on end
>> (not that I've seen
>> the movie).
>
> But wouldn't that offend people who don't want to see
> violence?  ~~~~
>

Indeed.  Anyway someone has come up with a head-and-shoulders shot of Rose
posing for her portrait, which I support because it's a far clearer
picture (apparently taken from a production still) and shows all the
essential elements.  It looks more professional on the page, whereas the
other was obviously a low quality video capture.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Fred Bauder wrote:

>I contributed the word "Wiki" to the collins dictionary site and supposedly
>am to be given credit for discovering the word.
>
You say that with such modesty.  ;-)

Ec


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

body:
By accident I sent an e-mail to Node only which was intended for the mail
list. Its content was that the Balkan wars ended to recently to make a
common Serbocroatian tenable.

Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Spreek vrienden en familie met MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Chris Jenkinson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
Actually, we were discussing this very issue on IRC earlier. The main
problem we found with this was that it would be a new target for
vandals - to recategorise various images into unrelated categories.
Also, when going through the filter to select categories that they do
not wish to see, people might find it objectionable to have content
like beheadings or sexual activity available for people to view. I'm
assuming of course that all 'categories' of images like this would be
on by default - also, this would only be practical if it were for
registered users, of which the vast majority of visitors aren't.

Chris (Talrias on en.wikipedia.org)

On 4/14/05, Tom Haws <hawstom at sprintmail.com> wrote:
> Compromise alert.
>
> Rick wrote:
>
> >But wouldn't that offend people who don't want to see
> >violence?  ~~~~
> >
> Rick's suggestion reminds me that there is lots of content that can't be
> prohibited, but could be labelled.  If Wikipedia only had a way of
> labelling the image in question as something factual like "female;
> photographed; breast exposed; glamorous", then I or anybody else could
> browse Wikipedia with our filter on, and the rest of you could enjoy
> unfiltered.
>
> Wikipedia as a whole, in a practical sense, belongs to each of us.  But
> its multitude of facets are apportioned among us according to our
> interests and specialties.  There is no reason why content labels cannot
> exist as a facet of Wikipedia that is largely ignored by those who are
> disinterested in the associated needs.  And there is no reason why
> sexology areas can't exist.
>
> The unreasonable positions are the ones that insist 1) strange niche
> areas (sexology) can't exist or be illustrated or 2) any content at all
> (Kate Winslet) cannot be subject to labelling for special needs.
>
> Does that sound wrong to anybody?
>
> Tom Haws
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Chris Jenkinson
http://talrias.net/


body:
mbecker ? wrote:

> I really should make a wikipedia page for these :)
> http://tinyurl.com/66ocf (reference.com)

You probably know that you can extend comparisons back to
September 2001 by altering the Alexa.com url to say range=4y.
Doing this, you will see that wikipedia.org didn't exist before
December 2002.  This is because Wikipedia used the .com domain in
its first two years.  And I wouldn't trust Alexa's numbers for
wikipedia.org for the first 3 months, but only after February
2003, when it is at rank 4,000.

Trying to compare wikipedia.org to wikipedia.com, I instead get a
comparison with blogdex.net.  Its graph starts in the fall 2003.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: BJörn Lindqvist

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
> > Finialy the User uploads [[Image:Msspyware.png]] a faked image with no
> > mention that it is faked (It is a low grade bit of antimicrsoft
> > propergander) and inserts it into an article again with no mention that
> > it is faked.
>
> It's probable that he thought it was real.  This has entered
> anti-Microsoft folklore.

A few weeks ago that image along with a story like "MS thinks Firefox
is spyware" showed up on Slashdot. That doesn't mean anything
ofcourse, since there story poster may very well have been trolling.
Either way, judging by the comments quite a few people believed it to
be true.

--
mvh Bj?rn


subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

>But there's still the difference of "expectation". You can't go to an
>article about private parts and expect to see no pictures.
>
>The Titanic article is a whole different story, though I think some
>people are really overreacting about this. What about the famous "King
>of the World"-scene. Shouldn't that make for a nice image to add to
>the article?
>
>
Yes. That or a scene of the ship breaking up on end (not that I've seen
the movie).

--
Alphax
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, 'All right, then, have it your way.' - C. S. Lewis


from_name: Faraaz Damji

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Not really.  There are those who promote the concept of "work safe" and
> those who use their browsers in a manner that does not conflict with their
> employers' standards.

But wouldn't it be better if we let people choose which types of images
they wanted to display? Turning off all images removes all the images in
the article, while a content-filtering system would be specific to
images deemed offensive by the reader.  Also, they won't have to browse
with all images off, but can instead choose to see some images as links.

If this is more widely used, it might even allow us *more* flexibility
in displaying images, like in [[autofellatio]] (just an example!), since
we can now use the argument that if you don't want to see it just turn
the blocking feature on.

And let's get real here: Not everybody knows how to turn images off.
Sure, you can say they 'should' know, and we shouldn't cater to their
needs, but isn't it a step ahead if we can make the site more accessible
to people?

--
Blog: http://frazzydee.ca

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O? M-- V? PS++ PE Y PGP++ t 5-- X+ R tv b++ DI++ D+
G++ e- h! !r !z
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Kate Winslet Exposure

body:
On 4/14/05, Chris Jenkinson <talrias at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, we were discussing this very issue on IRC earlier. The main
> problem we found with this was that it would be a new target for
> vandals - to recategorise various images into unrelated categories.
> Also, when going through the filter to select categories that they do
> not wish to see, people might find it objectionable to have content
> like beheadings or sexual activity available for people to view. I'm
> assuming of course that all 'categories' of images like this would be
> on by default - also, this would only be practical if it were for
> registered users, of which the vast majority of visitors aren't.
>
> Chris (Talrias on en.wikipedia.org)

Vanderlism is aparently not a reason not to have an image on
wikipedia. I fail to see how it can be used as a reason here. I should
be posible to set these thing by IP which should solve the schools
problem to a degree.

--
geni


from_name: Jack Lutz

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
The people or organizations likely to want content tagging would require
complete tagging, or else it would be useless to them, right? Yet being a
wiki and volunteer, Wikipedia could never be "safeguarded" to their
satisfaction. Is this not a useless discussion?


from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
> Absolutely not.  He specifically said that he "recognized" that people
> were doing something with the deliberate intention of breaching policy.  I
> see no room for misinterpretation.   Having no evidence to show, it seems
> to me that the assumption of bad faith , and a massive, obvious one at
> that, is on his part.  I'm revolted by this.  I see no apology.  I see no
> withdrawal, only weaseling and wriggling.  A disgusting accusstion,
> disgusting behavior in continuing with it.  He has now confirmed his
> accusation of bad faith against a specific, named editor.

Kevin inadvertetly made a paralipsis,
http://www.wordsmith.org/words/paralipsis.html. A paralipsis is
basically a way of trying to state something without having to back it
up. It is another rhethorical trick that is very hard to counter
because the speaker makes sure it is not he who is stating it.

"I've come to the realization that
people are searching out nude pictures to put in the 'pedia. They are
looking
to stir up trouble, mostly to make a point."

This is a bad paralipsis that Tony rightly objected to. Kevin IS
definitely asserting a fact here. He could have gotten away with it by
instead of saying "I've come to the realization that..." say "I have a
feeling that..." or "Someone told me that..." or "I've heard that..."
or "It might be that..." If he would have phrased his paralipsis like
that, Tony would probably appear as a petty troublemaker that
questions something unessential. Still, since noone except Tony has
opposed Kevin's statement, and people have questioned Tony's motives
for "nitpicking," it shows how effective this rhethorical trick is.
Tony has lost, but atleast he got people to question the validity of
Kevin's statement.

--
mvh Bj?rn
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Are you bringing anything to this discussion other than literary analysis?


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I contributed the word "Wiki" to the collins dictionary site and supposedly
am to be given credit for discovering the word.

Fred

> From: Timwi <timwi at gmx.net>
> Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 01:44:17 +0100
> To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Encarta goes wiki - sort of...
>
> Neil Harris wrote:
>> Alphax wrote:
>>
>>> Make a contribution. Suitably minor, of course, so that you can write
>>> it off as a public domain minor edit.
>>
>> A couple of attempts at contributing (perfectly reasonable) test edits
>> to Encarta have resulted in nothing at all happening to the articles in
>> question. I'm not impressed.
>
> How long ago have you made those edits? Even if their claims of having
> an editorial board check every submitted edit are true, it would
> probably take on the order of weeks or months for your edit to appear.
>
>> The whole experience is extraordinarily lacking in incentive for Encarta
>> contributors, who will effectively see a brick wall, if my experience is
>> anything to go by.
>
> I'm afraid this sounds a lot like bias from your experience with
> Wikipedia. You are used to your edits appearing immediately, so in
> comparison to that, Encarta naturally feels like a "brick wall". It is
> doubtful that the same kind of feeling will be experienced by casual
> users who are unfamiliar with "open-content encyclopedias that post
> their users' edits immediately". Even if they have vaguely heard of it,
> they will probably still readily accept a considerable delay in the
> processing of their contributions in return for what they perceive as
> superior factual accuracy.
>
>> Combined with the fact that it will dawn on them that
>> all they are doing is enriching Microsoft, with nothing back in return,
>> this is unlikely to gain a loyal user community.
>
> This, in turn, exhibits your anti-Microsoft sentiment. Most casual users
> are not like that and view Microsoft as neutral or even friendly, and
> even if it occurs to them that they will be enriching Microsoft, they
> are unlikely to see anything wrong with it. As for "getting something
> back in return", they do, and it's the same thing you get on Wikipedia:
> some sort of satisfaction that you have helped improve something. I can
> even imagine that most will feel it to be more "worth it" to help
> Encarta because it feels somehow more important or more substantial or,
> dare I say it, more accurate.
>
>> Has anyone observed _any_ Encarta user edits actually becoming visible?
>
> They have a "What's New" section where articles are listed that have
> recently changed (or so they claim). However, there is no way to see
> what exactly has changed in each article, much less does it say who
> suggested the change. Indeed for 99% of them you can't even view the
> article unless you pay.
>
> Greetings,
> Timwi
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: Fwd: [Wikipedia-l] Conflict between two Wikipedias

body:
On 4/14/05, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess that this is OK.
>
> But I think that the majority of users of mo.wikipedia will, no matter
> what, always be primarily users of Cyrillic, and I think that it
> should be dominant there until such time as there are more Moldovan
> users there who use Latin, if that is ever the case.
> ...
> And as I noted earlier, conversion between Latin Moldovan and Cyrillic
> Moldovan by computer is not possible or at least not practical (it
> would require neural networking or AI or something)

If the situation is that Moldovans which call their language Romanian
use Latin and Moldovans which call their language Molodvan use
Cyrillic -- then I don't see any problem :) mo: should be Cyrillic and
Moldavian, ro: should be Latin and Romanian.

What are the differences between Latin and Cyrillic Moldovan? I am not
sure that it is not possible to make some kind of not so complicated
program for transliteration.

> By the way, why exactly is it that there are separate Wikipedias for
> Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian? If everybody worked together, you
> could have a much larger Wikipedia by now - Serbian has over 10k, but
> Croatian is quite large too and Bosnian has over 1000 - imagine if you
> worked together to make one Wikipedia.

Hmmm... Imagine that: When Hungarian say on Hungarian Wikipedia that
Romanian occupied Transilvania and Romaians say on Romanian Wikipedia
that Romanians liberated Transilvania -- there are no a lot of people
who would care about it.

Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks have a lot of such (explicite or potential)
conflicts. A lot of such conflits exist on English Wikipedia. I think
that we would have a lot of troubles if there is one Wikipedia, such
Serbo-Croatian Wikipedia was.

When I finish some work for Serbian Wikipedia, I'll implement it on
Croatian (they agree with that) and Bosnian (I'll ask when I finish
work for sr:). Also, it is possible to make some kind of inteligent
program for "translating" articles in the way
Serbian<->Croatian<->Bosnian. And I'll do that in the future.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nude Kate Winslet Picture

body:
> >>>>>>Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man schweigen.
> >>>>>>
> OK, so I am both clueless and Germanless.  May I have a fully nuanced
> interpretation from the original speaker or an insider, please?

My pleasure! What Tony was referring to was your use of a rhethorical
trick. But since you seem to be unaware of it, it's not quite right to
label it a trick and instead let us call it a mistake. Basically you
were employing a variant of "The affecteds perspective" and
"underreporting" (excuse my terminology, English is not my naitive
language).

Your argumentation was that you yourself belongs to a large group of
people who is negatively affected by the words "nude" and "picture" in
the subject-line of mailing-list discussions. It is a great way to
argue for something, because it diverts attention from the subject and
makes the discussion personal. It makes it very hard for me to try and
argue that you are wrong because you have taken the role as one that
is "affected." The same thing happens if you are arguing sexual
assault issues against a rape victim - she will have a huge advantage
because she is "affected." Same thing with arguing housing issues with
homeless people etc.

For the rest of the audience: Think of how you would have read Tom
Haws message if he had not said he himself was affected, and just
referred to those affected by "nude" and "picture" subject lines as
"they."

As I said, it is a great way to imply that you are speaking for a
large group of people when in reality, you are only speaking for
yourself. The only effective way to really counter that argument is to
be a member of the group of people you try to present. And it will be
hard since you stated that "many others like me ... also have various
reasons to be discouraged from participating in debates about the same
images." Well, I'm a son, a brother, a boyfriend, a Christian, an
engineer and many other roles in which I am loathe to be associated
with the subjects of these debates, but that hasn't stopped me from
participating so obviously I cannot pretend to speak of being a member
of the group you are representing.

The other trick I was speaking of was your use of "underreporting."
Not many have reported an inability to participate in wiki-en debates
because of bad subject lines, why? Underreporting! Since noone has
objected they must be afraid...

Sorry to sound harsh, it is not my intention. I'm sure what I have
called rhethorical tricks are just honest mistakes that we all do when
arguing sometimes. It is just good to be aware of them.

--
mvh Bj?rn


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

references:
<d3hebo$dru$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fb7fdd9c050413001570d21187@mail.gmail.com>
	<d3jdut$cao$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fb7fdd9c0504131023cb9d774@mail.gmail.com>
	<d3lsok$g43$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 4/14/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> > Is being broke enough of an excuse?
>
> No, as I already said. There is no way you can be broke enough to not be
> able to afford a headset, but still have the money to live and eat, much
> less access the Internet.
>
> Timwi

That's all paid by others....