subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for comment

body:
Clerking works well for ArbCom.  Should we have a group of neutral
clerks or moderators on user RfCs?  Most of them are either
unambiguous (one way or another) or a cesspit, not much in between,
but can it be improved by the introduction of neutral moderators? Or
should we simply redirect to the mediation committee?

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


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: senpai

body:
Do u think that this kind of modification make free the fair use images ?

Senpai

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge a telus.net>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l a lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 10:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Diversity and NC images - Board meet

> senpai wrote:
>
>>No, You can't modify a "fair use" image.
>>
> Disagree.  U. S. rulings have allowed for parody.  You may wish to crop
> an image to zoom into a detail that is important to your article.  You
> may want to do an overlay to show the similarities between two people.
> You may want to do colour separations.  I could probably find other
> legitimate modifications.
>
> Modifications have more to do with moral rights than copyrights in the
> strict sense.  That aspect of the law is not particularly developed in
> the U. S.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l a lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


list: wikimedia-l

body:
Do u think that this kind of modification make free the fair use images ?

Senpai

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2007 10:25 PM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Diversity and NC images - Board meet

> senpai wrote:
>
>>No, You can't modify a "fair use" image.
>>
> Disagree.  U. S. rulings have allowed for parody.  You may wish to crop
> an image to zoom into a detail that is important to your article.  You
> may want to do an overlay to show the similarities between two people.
> You may want to do colour separations.  I could probably find other
> legitimate modifications.
>
> Modifications have more to do with moral rights than copyrights in the
> strict sense.  That aspect of the law is not particularly developed in
> the U. S.
>
> Ec
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


subject: [Foundation-l] Diversity and NC images - Board meet


list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-01-16

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19329).
Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...

Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  19 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)
      * TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.
      * TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div
      * TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'
Passed 484 of 503 tests (96.22%)... FAILED!


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
On 16/01/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:

> My idea was to scan these materials, put them on the web, and then make it
> available to some wiki-like collaborative effort. Volunteers from all over
> the world could then make themselves useful by doing the transcription of
> the material (I am thinking in the first place of manuscript material here -
> printed material is probably easier to transcribe through machine character
> recognition) and by creating descriptions, indices etcetera.
>
> My idea would be to have something wiki-like, where the main pages would
> consists of a scan, its transcription (if available) and an area for
> comments.

And the original images would still be available next to the
transcription in case of dispute (or a bad transcription). I seem to
recall at least one major genealogical project is doing this - a
Canadian census? - and it might be worth looking into that for
information on how they work it

[checks]

http://automatedgenealogy.com/census/cache/index.html - using free(?)
images from a government body, I think.

They don't use a wiki, but they do have the split-screen thing and
what looks like a line-by-line database to feed material into. The
line-by-line nature of the source adapts itself easily to this, of
course, but it would still work with anything you can chop into
reasonably discrete segments. And a wiki does seem the obvious tool to
use, though I know we say that about almost everything!

It wouldn't be perfectly accurate, but it would be searchable, which
is basically what most people are doing with scans of printed material
now; giving it a quick OCR pass to get a mostly-searchable version of
the text and then handing an image of the page to the searcher. (And I
suppose there is always the possibility for using the results of
large-scale distributed transcription to help work on
historic-handwriting OCR - we can do modern hand much more easily than
we can even century-old copperplate, much less any of the older
"legal" styles of writing. But that's a long way away)

We certainly wouldn't solve the "digitisation problem", and having the
images out there with good metadata on them is arguably of more
academic use than doing the transcriptions, but it would be very
interesting to have one specific (largish) thing to work on, release
it to the world as a trial project, see if it takes off.

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


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


list: wikien-l

from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Requests for comment

body:
I don't think the MC should be burdened with cases the community can solve
itself.
Some clerks to do the housekeeping is fine, though.

Mgm

On 1/15/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> Clerking works well for ArbCom.  Should we have a group of neutral
> clerks or moderators on user RfCs?  Most of them are either
> unambiguous (one way or another) or a cesspit, not much in between,
> but can it be improved by the introduction of neutral moderators? Or
> should we simply redirect to the mediation committee?
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Exposure of magic on Wikipedia

body:
On 16/01/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

> > If it is appearing on Wikipedia, it seems to me that the third party
> > has manifestly discovered it; if they are complaining about it
> > appearing on Wikipedia, then they are crying over spilt milk/trying to
> > put the genie back into the bottle/cat into the bag, etc.

> Agreed.

Indeed. "As a Freemason, I am honour-bound to remove these secrets
from your pages!" "What a coincidence - as an admin, I am honour-bound
to block you, and your eternal sockpuppets returning to make the
precise same edit. Idiot." The hand is quicker than the eye - your
editing access vanished! Just like that (tm).

- d.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Anthony wrote:

>On 1/15/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Excessively long plot summaries of films and books can constitute a
>>copyright violation because while they're not an exact copy, they damage
>>intellectual rights of the copyrighted material.
>>
>>
>In the US, plot summaries of films and books can constitute a
>copyright violation because a plot is a copyrightable work.  Copyright
>covers copying, not just making exact copies.  Most plot summaries are
>fair use.  Some aren't.
>
Agreed. The distinction is a point of fact that is never very clear on
the face of it.  I suppose if you go too far it could be considered a
derivative work, but it would be very difficult to determine how far is
too far.

Ec


body:
On 16/01/07, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> David Gerard stated for the record:

> > Indeed. "As a Freemason, I am honour-bound to remove these secrets
> > from your pages!" "What a coincidence - as an admin, I am honour-bound
> > to block you, and your eternal sockpuppets returning to make the
> > precise same edit. Idiot." The hand is quicker than the eye - your
> > editing access vanished! Just like that (tm).

> Ah ... Lightbringer, wasn't it?  Wasn't he the one who thought my
> username meant I hated the Pope?

No, no. He was an *anti*-Mason. There are plenty of nutters attacking
[[Freemasonry]] from both sides. Here's to the core of reasonably sane
editors trying to keep it useful and readable.

- d.


body:
On 16/01/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:

> >> Indeed. "As a Freemason, I am honour-bound to remove these secrets
> >> from your pages!"

> > Ah ... Lightbringer, wasn't it?  Wasn't he the one who thought my
> > username meant I hated the Pope?

> I gather there have also been edit wars at [[Phi Gamma Delta]]
> over the use of that fraternity's greek letters.

And here I was thinking "encyclopedia as enlightenment project" was
something I could assume and that NPOV was going to be the hard one to
get across ...

- d.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
I would like to use this opportunity to once more bring forward an idea I
have been toying with at least since the Frankfurt Wikimania: Using
Wikimedia's methods in making archives available.

Archives are starting to put their material on the web, but still it's only
used sparingly. Which is a pity, because it means there is much archival
material that historians (both professional and amateur) are interested in
that is not available to them because it is in an archive far away, and
perhaps even unknown to them.

My idea was to scan these materials, put them on the web, and then make it
available to some wiki-like collaborative effort. Volunteers from all over
the world could then make themselves useful by doing the transcription of
the material (I am thinking in the first place of manuscript material here -
printed material is probably easier to transcribe through machine character
recognition) and by creating descriptions, indices etcetera.

My idea would be to have something wiki-like, where the main pages would
consists of a scan, its transcription (if available) and an area for
comments.

Andre Engels

2007/1/9, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com>:
>
> In the past there was some effort put into grant writing, but I'm not
> sure if any grant applications ever got submitted.  In any case, it's
> been quite a while since anything was done on Meta about grants:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants
>
> There is a new NEH grant that looks like something appropriate for
> Wikimedia (or at least for English Wikipedia, through Wikimedia):
> http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/Digital_Partnership.html
>
> From the program description, they want:
> "...proposals for innovative, collaborative humanities projects using
> the latest digital technologies for the benefit of the American
> public, humanities scholarship, and the nation's cultural
> institutions. These grants will support collaborations among
> libraries, museums, archives, universities, and other cultural
> organizations that may serve as models for the field. We encourage
> projects that explore new ways to share, examine, and interpret
> humanities collections in a digital environment and to develop new
> uses and audiences for existing digital resources."
>
> It almost looks like it was written with Wikipedia in mind.  The grant
> range is $50,000 to $350,000 over two years; not enormous, but it
> seems worth the time of some Wikimedian grant writers.
>
> With some creativity, there are probably some other NEH and possibly
> NSF grants that Wikimedia might have a shot at as well.
>
> -User:Ragesoss
>

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


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


body:
Sean Barrett wrote:

>David Gerard stated for the record:
>
>
>>On 16/01/07, Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
>>
>>Indeed. "As a Freemason, I am honour-bound to remove these secrets
>>from your pages!" "What a coincidence - as an admin, I am honour-bound
>>to block you, and your eternal sockpuppets returning to make the
>>precise same edit. Idiot." The hand is quicker than the eye - your
>>editing access vanished! Just like that (tm).
>>
>>
>Ah ... Lightbringer, wasn't it?  Wasn't he the one who thought my
>username meant I hated the Pope?
>
> Sean Barrett
> sean at epoptic.com
>
There you go!  All the time I was deceiving myself into believing that
epoptic had something to do with ulcers. :-)

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Exposure of magic on Wikipedia (MacGyverMagic/Mgm)

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

>Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:
>
>
>>If they're not protected by patents or copyrights, how could it be
>>"piracy?" I'd have thought that if there were no patents or
>>copyrights, there'd be no "intellectual property" and hence nothing
>>to "steal."
>>
>>
>WP:RS is your friend.  If the method is described in a reliable and
>reasonably authoritative source, they will probably get sued before we
>do.  Of course, that might make it copyright....
>
I think that words like "piracy" and "steal" in this context are
buzzwords promoted by the entertainment industry to demonize any kind of
free access to information.

Reliable sources may be hard to come by when an atmosphere of secrecy
prevails.  These "secrets" are largely "how to" instructions.  Anyone
with a pet elephant around the hous can try the trick of levitating an
elephant at home just to prove that it can be done.

In the great recipe debate the argument that recipes were a set of such
instructions was the reason used for transferring them to Wikibooks.
This did not detract from their having a place in our wikiworld.

Ec


from_name: Christopher Thieme

subject: [WikiEN-l] incivility.

body:
Mark:

The biggest problem with Wikipedia is people take themselves far too
seriously, they can't lighten up, and when a minor slight causes them to run
to "WP:CIVIL" or "WP:NPA" like a wounded virgin yelling as if she were the
raped Lucretia.

...and *that* really pisses people off.

And taking the self-righteous posturing of "oh, this is just a friendly
reminder to abide by WP:CIVIL" is often unfriendly, condescending, and above
all, counter-productive.  Making mountains out of molehills, and raising
tempests in a teapot.  People, and sorry to say, you're one of them...really
need to lighten up and lower their defensive walls, because often, they're
the cause of their own problems.

After all, they say the path to hell is paved with good intentions.

> P.S. Your emails are breaking mailing list threads in Gmail.

I don't even begin to know what that means, and as a result I'm inclined to
not really care.

Regards,
Christopher D. Thieme


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is this valid on an userpage? is this
	other	on	articles?

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Bryan Derksen wrote:
>> To be valid fair use the article should be about that specific image in
>> some significant way. If there was a paragraph or section of the article
>> addressing it, perhaps - though in that case it would make more sense to
>> have the image presented individually in that paragraph or section. I'd
>> say it's best to assume not when the case is in doubt.
>>
> This, of course, reflects the English Wikipedia subset of fair use rules.

This thread is on WikiEN-l so that should be assumed by default.

>> Some editors are hypersensitive about this sort of thing. I still can't
>> figure out why the original image of the O RLY? owl isn't fair use in
>> the article [[O RLY?]], but endless battle isn't worth it.
>>
> This photo may be in the public domain by abandonment.  This would
> happen when an otherwise copyright item has been widely re-distributed
> for a long time, and the copyright owner does nothing about it.  This
> photo was taken by a professional wildlife photographer who should have
> a basic understanding of the rules.  He uploaded the photo himself.  Is
> there any record of his complaining about its general use?

I'm told he complained about it in some manner, though I never got to
see the the actual complaint. Some of the gory details can be found at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Orly.jpg> and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Deletion_review&oldid=50533958#Image:O_RLY.jpg>,
though unfortunately not the specific reasons why the image was
ultimately kept deleted.

Whether the copyright holder objects to fair usage or not shouldn't
actually make a difference, as far as I understand the law; the whole
point of fair use is that under those circumstances we don't _need_
permission. I wish this case had been handled more transparently.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Israeli Esperanto stamps, oh my

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> [copied to foundation-l and wikipedia-l; please note this when replying]
>
> I was sure I'd seen this on the mailing lists before, but I couldn't
> find it on a quick search (which is odd - I'm sure I heard a week ago)
>
> It appears the Esperanto Wikipedia is on a stamp. Well, Esperanto is
> on the stamp; a chunk of the text from [[eo:L. L. Zamenhof]] is used
> as a sort of background illustration.
>
> Colour image: http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/stamps/jrst0399.jpg
> Detailed description: http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/stamps/jrst0399e.jpg
> Brief discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29
>
Hmm, I didn't see a GFDL anywhere. On the back, in very small print
maybe? :-)

We should tell the Israelis we'll overlook this little mistake in return
for a free license for all of Israel's stamp images...

Stan


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

body:
> Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:25:35 +0000
> From: "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
> Indeed. "As a Freemason, I am honour-bound to remove these secrets
> from your pages!" "What a coincidence - as an admin, I am honour-bound
> to block you, and your eternal sockpuppets returning to make the
> precise same edit. Idiot."

The mention of Freemasonry brought to mind three of my favorite
books, William Poundstone's "Big Secrets," "Bigger Secrets," and
"Biggest Secrets," which attempt to expose things like the
ingredients of Coca-Cola, the truth about subliminal messages, and,
incidentally, a number of stage illusions by prominent magicians.

What makes these books so wonderful is that he, himself, keeps no
secrets. He explains precisely how he got his information, and is
quite honest and judicious in explaining their limits and reliability.

In "Big Secrets," he has a chapter about the Freemasons, including
the secret handshake, secret password, secret word, secret cipher,
and initiation rites. However did he learn them?

He "ran across a Chicago firm that works by mail order. The Geo.
Lauterer Corporation publishes an illustrated catalog of lodge
gear.... We obtained a sampling of titles."

It's reminiscent of the Sherlock Holmes story, "The Red-headed
League," in which Holmes astonishes a visitor by saying to Watson
that "Beyond the obvious facts that he has at some time done manual
labour, that he takes snuff, that he is a Freemason. that he has been
in China, and that he has done a considerable amount of writing
lately, I can deduce nothing else."

When Wilson asks how he knew about the freemasonry, Holmes says "I
won't insult your intelligence by telling you how I read that,
especially as, rather against the strict rules of your order, you use
an arc-and-compass breastpin."

As for the magicians, Poundstone learned a number of their "secrets"
by ordering plans from mail-order magic-supply houses.


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] incivility.

body:
> From: Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:27:44 +0000 (GMT)
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] incivility.
>
> --- Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Making mountains out of molehills, and raising tempests in a teapot.
>
> Such as escalating your annoyance about an off-list message back onto the
> list?
>
>> People... need to lighten up and lower their defensive walls, because often,
>> they're the cause of their own problems.
>
> This is sometimes true. It is also sometimes true that people need to be more
> careful with how they express themselves to avoid giving offence to others. In
> many cases, both are true. Wikipedians have such diverse backgrounds that we
> need to make allowances in both directions.

A simple test: After you have written something - before you hit 'send' -
look at what you have written and ask yourself, "Would I say the exact same
thing, in exactly the same way if I were talking with the person face to
face?"

Marc Riddell
>
>>> P.S. Your emails are breaking mailing list threads in Gmail.
>>
>> I don't even begin to know what that means, and as a result I'm inclined to
>> not really care.
>
> You should probably care: your emails break the sequence connecting a reply to
> the original message, and not just in Gmail by the looks of things. Each of
> your emails appears to be the start of a new thread, rather than being a reply
> to an old one.
>
> -- Matt
>
> Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Matt_Crypto
> Blog: http://cipher-text.blogspot.com
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> New Yahoo! Mail is the ultimate force in competitive emailing. Find out more
> at the Yahoo! Mail Championships. Plus: play games and win prizes.
> http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=44106/*http://mail.yahoo.net/uk
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


from_name: Travis Derouin

subject: [Wikitech-l] switching & resetting memcached servers

body:
Sounds great. Thanks.

On 1/13/07, Domas Mituzas <midom.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Travis,
>
> On 1/5/07, Travis Derouin <travis at wikihow.com> wrote:
> >
> > Great, thanks for the tip. I initially installed memcached-1.2.1 on the
> > new
> > server and that apparently doesn't work too well with MW 1.6.7.
> Switching
> > back to 1.1.3 seems to have fixed the problem.
>
>
> Memcached 1.2 seems to have lots of changes. As we use php-client,
> probably
> some of communication/compression/etc methods have changed there, but not
> in
> our codebase.
>
> I had a plan of rolling out 1.2 some day (and add UDP support at mediawiki
> for many types of memcached updates), so probably we'll be compatible
> soon.
>
> BR,
> Domas
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: teun spaans

subject: [Foundation-l] Board meeting in Rotterdam later this week

body:
On 1/15/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> teun spaans wrote:
>
> >>The biggest error I see here is that people are trying to limit language
> >>versions of Wikipedia so that they comply with the laws of the country
> >>where the language is primarily spoken. But that's fruitless. The
> >>Italian Wikipedia (hosted in Florida) isn't under Italian law just
> >>because it's in Italian. Nor are Italian citizens liable for something
> >>on the Italian Wikipedia just because the page is in Italian.
> >>
> >>
> >I politely disagree. When the person doing something has the Italian
> >nationality, and the person commits the act from italian territory,
> >and the claiment is italian, an italian judge might well decide to
> >consider the claim, despite the servers being in the us.
> >
> "Commits the act from italian territory" is the important one.  Italian
> nationality should not matter; if a foreigner travelling in Italy with
> his laptop uploads a copyvio image while he is there would he not be
> liable?
It is absolutely correct that he still would be liable. In theory as
well as in practice. In practice the chance would also be greater that
the department of justice would decide to let the matter rest, as
fairly unimportant, and not worth the trouble. We shouldnt count on
it, but we can keep in mind that Italians in Italy, probably the bulk
of editors of the Italian wiki, should obey Italian law.

> An Italian claimant could even start a case against a foreigner
> in an Italian court even if that foreigner had never set foot in Italy.
> The judge might even convict him in absentia, but getting him to Italy
> to face the punishment is another matter.  Similar things have happened
> in English courts, and the United States has refused to honour
> international orders on such things.  Also the cost of getting him to
> Italy to collect a fine may be more than the fine itself.
>
> We still need to distinguish between Italian language and Italian
> nationality.  The language of the writing has nothing to do with this.
> An Italian resident writing in English is still liable, and a foreign
> resident writing in Italian (or a minor language of Italy) remains safe.
>
> Ec
>
I do not deny that there is a difference between the Italian territory
or the Italian language. But I do acknowledge that for the Italian
wiki the majority of the wikipedians operates from Italian territory.

So I can well imagine that an italian wikipedia will not allow fair
use, solely form the reason that the Italian volunteers operating from
Italy would be liable under Italian law.
In court they could try to hide behind a claim that the wiki operates
under Italian law, but chances that an Italian judge would buy that
argument diminishes with every Italian factor (contributor, territory
(most decisive), language, and so on).

On the Dutch wiki we disallowed fair use for several reasons. Being
not free is one of them, and the most important of them, but the risk
for wikipedia itself and for individual wikipedians also counted:
Dutch citaatrecht is much more limited than fair use, and we decided
to comply with both Dutch and Belgian law - the two main territories
from which volunteers operate. (And yes, at that time we had
volunteers in the USA, South Africa, Thailand and a number of other
countries). We don't want to risk a court order to close wikipedia in
the Netherlands or Belgium, and we dont want to tempt volunteers to
trespass Belgian or Dutch law.

teun

>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
It could only count for the grant if there is a follow up, in which
people (volunteers or professionals, or both) do something with the
new digitized material: that would bring in the collaboration part.

On 1/16/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16/01/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would like to use this opportunity to once more bring forward an idea I
> > have been toying with at least since the Frankfurt Wikimania: Using
> > Wikimedia's methods in making archives available.
>
> As I wrote on the meta page, they specifically won't fund "projects
> that focus primarily on digitizing existing collections". So we would
> need to strongly justify why the wiki method is more than mere
> digitisation. (From what you described I'm not totally convinced it
> would be...)
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources

body:
On Jan 16, 2007, at 8:52 AM, geni wrote:

>
> It would have been difficult to close it in any other direction.

I disagree. This was an AfD where no new arguments were made from the
previous AfD. Yes, consensus can change. But consensus is also not a
random phenomenon based on who shows up on a given day. In the
absence of any new claims about the article, it would have been
wholly reasonable to take into account the previous overwhelming
decision to keep the article, to note the egregiously poor reasoning
of some of the votes ("not every game by Nintendo is notable," as one
person argued - a position that is so far removed from our existing
practice as to be unusable.

-Phil


from_name: Jeff Raymond

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources

body:
geni wrote:

>> Aaron Brenneman closing the AFD after having been through
>> arbitration on the webcomics issue is also  deeply unsatisfactory.
>>
>
> It would have been difficult to close it in any other direction.
>

Hardly.  The argument by the delete voters was that it was non-notable.
  Our own "notability" criteria regarding web content says otherwise.
Either a guideline is widely accepted, or it is not, and the only
worthwhile close here would have been to keep it.

-Jeff

--
Name: Jeff Raymond
E-mail: jeff.raymond at internationalhouseofbacon.com
WWW: http://www.internationalhouseofbacon.com
IM: badlydrawnjeff
Quote: "As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the
	Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else."
	- Sen. Rick Santorum on the war in Iraq.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources

body:
On Jan 16, 2007, at 9:00 AM, Jeff Raymond wrote:

>
> Hardly.  The argument by the delete voters was that it was non-
> notable.
>   Our own "notability" criteria regarding web content says otherwise.
> Either a guideline is widely accepted, or it is not, and the only
> worthwhile close here would have been to keep it.
>
>

And it should be noted, the closing admin is a long-standing opponent
of that notability guideline who explicitly used his closure as an
occasion to declare it dead. This is NOT acceptable practice.

-Phil


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] How to reference Wikipedia? Add "possibly".

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>> Obviously I'm speculating a bit, but I noticed this sentence in a
>> recent article in The Age, about a death from the Eastern Brown Snake,
>> in Australia:
>>
>> "It is possibly the second-most venomous land snake in the world after
>> the inland taipan, which is also an Australian snake."
>>
>> Our article on the snake has this sentence:
>> "The Eastern Brown Snake is the second most venomous land snake in the
>> world after the Inland Taipan.[1] "
>>
>> I wonder if the principle here is that if you don't want to admit
>> you're sourcing from Wikipedia, you just add "possibly" :) Even when,
>> interestingly enough, we actually had a source for that sentence:
>> Steve Irwin's website :)
>>
> What I would be inclined to question is what is meant by "most
> venomous".  Even if the statement can be properly referenced we still
> need criteria for determining which of two snakes is the more venomous.
> I would at least be inclined to add the word "possibly" to the Wikipedia
> version.
>

"As of 2007, it is believed that...[1]"

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

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from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] 1 M dollars on Wikipedia Day (Fundraising... over)

body:
Hello all,

I was too tired yesterday to keep my eyes open and my hands typing, to
announce the end of our fundraising :-)
Sorry about that (lack of sleep from Rotterdam, baby sick etc...)

So, in a very official fashion, let me announce that the fundrive is over.

The last day of our Fundraising was planned to be on Wikipedia Day (1).
Which was yesterday. Wikipedia is now starting its 7 year of existence.

Wikipedia Day also was a special milestone, since 1 million dollars
donation was exactly reached on that specific day. I promise we did not
tweak the system to make that happen.

The current site notice with the various links can now be removed. We
suggest a new site notice with a big thank you note to all of our
donators as well as a link to an updated FAQ. I just saw some updated
graphics from Jeremy (number of donations per day, total donations per
day per currency...), which I expect will be very interesting to you.
The FundCom is working on that.

What else ?

Maybe just a few words from the Rotterdam meeting. We worked a lot
there, but had cool moments as well (including a wikimeet). Not everyone
is back home yet. So, announcements et al will wait a little bit more.
I just wanted to mention that we discussed the fundraising and more
generally finances on friday morning.
To optimize our time, we somehow divided areas of interest between board
members and the members with a focus on the fundraising area are Jimmy,
Kat and Erik (for the technical side in particular). These three are in
charge of reporting on the last fundraising, and to suggest any changes
necessary. It is up to them to organise themselves, but I expect this
discussion to be largely public, either here, or on meta, or perhaps
during an irc meeting.

There were huge improvements with last times (in particular the
technical part), but also serious gaps in communication. We must
consider all ways we can improve that in the next time.
We also need to improve our strategy, so that we can raise more and more
quickly the next time.

Note that the "next fundraising date" has not been decided yet.

Meanwhile, fundraising over and thank you all for your help.

Florence/Anthere

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Day


subject: [WikiEN-l] Rampant deletionism

body:
George Herbert wrote:
> On 1/14/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The issue is that there is very little actually known about the ship
>> yet.  It's not, as far as I can tell in the article, even in the
>> building phase yet.  Is there anything public about them other than
>> the order being placed?
>>
>> I think that many are concerned about articles created about things
>> that don't exist yet and for which not much in the way of plans have
>> been released, and feel that the right time to write this article
>> would be when more information is available.
>>
>> -Matt
>
> If "not much in the way of plans existed" then I'd say sure, it's
> still speculative.
>
> Carnival and the builder certainly have more detailed plans than that;
> having the passenger count and the tonnage indicate that they know
> what they're building very precisely (as an actual ship build "order"
> would imply... one doesn't order "about like this"...).
>
> If we take the flip side of this, we have large articles for the
> [[Airbus A380]] and [[Boeing 787]] jets, and the [[Airbus A350]].
> Exactly one of these designs (A380) has flown, and due to wiring
> design snafus it will enter service around the launch date of the
> unnamed Carnival ship.  Exactly one of them has any flightready
> hardware (A380), though the initial components for the first 787s are
> in production now.  The A350XWB hasn't even had its industrial launch
> yet, so in a sense it's not as far along as the unnamed Carnival ship.
>

If several hundred of these unnamed ships were going to be built and had
been touted as "the next big thing" for years leading up to the official
launch (as was the case for the A380), you might have a leg to stand on.

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

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subject:
[WikiEN-l] Is this valid on an userpage? is this other
	on	articles?

body:
geni wrote:
> On 1/15/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> This photo may be in the public domain by abandonment.  This would
>> happen when an otherwise copyright item has been widely re-distributed
>> for a long time, and the copyright owner does nothing about it.  This
>> photo was taken by a professional wildlife photographer who should have
>> a basic understanding of the rules.  He uploaded the photo himself.  Is
>> there any record of his complaining about its general use?
>>
>
> Yes. To us. Ask the foundation for details.
>

IIRC he didn't upload it himself; he sent us a polite takedown notice in
about May 2006, which we complied with.

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_January_16#Able_and_Baker
Yet another deletion discussion where reliable sources are debated.
I totally agree that creators of fictional material are not a reliable
source for their own notability in 99.9% of the cases,
but I also believe that for uncontroversial information like character
information creators are a source far more superior than fansites (who
speculate) and newspaper articles and interviews (who can misunderstand and
misinterpret).

The same applies to blogs. They're generally not reliable, but when it's the
blog of a director, it's an excellent source for information about the movie
he's shooting.

I think people should spend more time on judging sources depending on what
they are supposed to back up rather than blindly apply a single
non-discriminant rule.

Mgm


body:
gwern branwen wrote:
> On 1/15/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>> In a previous discussion it was determined that most magic tricks aren't
>> patented (for fear of revealing the method) or copyrighted (only the way
>> it's written down in a book or recorded on a DVD or video is copyrighted).
>> However, isn't exposure of commercially available effects considered
>> [[piracy]] then?
>>
>> Mgm
>
> Isn't the correct paradigm here not copyright law but rather [[Trade
> secret]]s <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_secret>?
>

The Church of Scientology claim knowledge of [[Xenu]] as a trade secret.

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

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body:
2007/1/16, teun spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com>:

> It is absolutely correct that he still would be liable. In theory as
> well as in practice. In practice the chance would also be greater that
> the department of justice would decide to let the matter rest, as
> fairly unimportant, and not worth the trouble. We shouldnt count on
> it, but we can keep in mind that Italians in Italy, probably the bulk
> of editors of the Italian wiki, should obey Italian law.

I don't think liability of authors should be the only reason to do these
things for. There's also the principle of copyleft. If we put material under
GFDL that would violate other people's copyrights when published under
certain non-exceptional circumstances (outside the US or for profit, to name
two that are important for this thread, we may be following the letter of
the GFDL in doing so, but definitely not the spirit of copyleft.

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


from_name: Matt R

subject: [WikiEN-l] incivility.

body:
--- Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
> Making mountains out of molehills, and raising tempests in a teapot.

Such as escalating your annoyance about an off-list message back onto the list?

> People... need to lighten up and lower their defensive walls, because often,
> they're the cause of their own problems.

This is sometimes true. It is also sometimes true that people need to be more
careful with how they express themselves to avoid giving offence to others. In
many cases, both are true. Wikipedians have such diverse backgrounds that we
need to make allowances in both directions.

> > P.S. Your emails are breaking mailing list threads in Gmail.
>
> I don't even begin to know what that means, and as a result I'm inclined to
> not really care.

You should probably care: your emails break the sequence connecting a reply to
the original message, and not just in Gmail by the looks of things. Each of
your emails appears to be the start of a new thread, rather than being a reply
to an old one.

-- Matt

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

___________________________________________________________
New Yahoo! Mail is the ultimate force in competitive emailing. Find out more at the Yahoo! Mail Championships. Plus: play games and win prizes.
http://uk.rd.yahoo.com/evt=44106/*http://mail.yahoo.net/uk


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject:
[Wikitech-l] Category Intersections: "Proof of Concept Page"
	feedback, please?

body:
Timwi  wrote:

> The performance (as in, speed) is very good.
>
> The implementation is not. It strips away all apostrophes. It is
> therefore impossible to use categories that contain an apostrophe in
> their name, e.g. [[Category:Children's literature]]. I am finding it
> hard to imagine this as an accident; you must have written code
> explicitly to remove apohstrophes instead of escaping them properly. Why
> didn't this ring an alarm bell in you? :-p
>
>
Thanks Timwi, for taking a look.  Sorry, I've got to admit that the
implementation was rather hacked together in a hurry.  I did indeed write my
input cleanup to strip out a lot of characters, cutting with a sword instead
of a scalpel.  But my main goal was to get the basic functionality out
there.

I've also just added a logging routine to collect statistics on it's
performance.  I'm getting the query, the time to run the query with a limit
of 30, and the total number of results available (to look for correlations
to large datasets).  Any other ideas?

(http://aerik.com/wikintersections.php for anyone that missed it earlier -
it runs off a copy of the relevant tables from November.)

Best Regards,
Aerik


subject: [WikiEN-l] Incivility, re: psychosis

body:
Christopher Thieme wrote:
> I just got admonished by "Mark" for being "uncivil" on this list with regard
> to a comment I made in my initial message on "Moving the Main Page."
>

Please don't be condescending or patronising when you address people.

> I don't think I was.  At least, from how I read the strict construction of
> the policy, I didn't say anything ruled to be incivility by the dictates
> of WP:CIVIL.
>

We go by the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law.

> And going back to my post on what psychosis might be hidden in some of
> users, I forgot one of the biggest problems underneath the surface of
> Wikipedia...
>
> We have too many humorless people.
>

We also have too many people who don't know how to act seriously.

> Humorless people who enforce WP:CIVIL thinking that something benign
> and rhetorical and not even mentioned in WP:CIVIL is "incivility."
>
> And those who don't realize that it's incivility to admonish others
> for acting with "incivility."
>

It was done privately, by a list moderator. Incivility is when I hit you
with the banhammer for being an annoying little @#$%.

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

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from_name: Mark Ryan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Incivility, re: psychosis

body:
I certainly did not expect this issue to be taken to the mailing list
itself. Because you took the issue to the mailing list, I shall
respond to you on the mailing list.

The best reaction would have been to reply with something to the
effect of 'okay, I won't call people's arguments "b.s." or suggest
that they be "taken out and shot"'. Not to turn around and claim that
I am equally uncivil (for violating the "etiquette" which somehow
demands that people who do the wrong thing not be told they are doing
so), humourless, suffering from some sort of psychosis, and a dick.

I instituted a rule of civility on this mailing list a couple of years
ago in response to some extremely abusive posts by someone who
demanded to know what rule they had broken to get themselves moderated
on the list. It does not follow [[WP:CIVIL]] to the letter (in fact I
don't think I've even read that wiki page completely). It follows
common sense (specifically, the common sense of the list
administrators).

If you cannot see that calling people's arguments 'specious' and
'b.s.', and suggesting that the founder of such arguments should be
'taken out and shot' can be interpreted to be personal attacks, then
I'm not sure anything I say to you is going to do any good.

~Mark Ryan
WikiEN-l mailing list admin

P.S. Your emails are breaking mailing list threads in Gmail.

On 16/01/07, Christopher Thieme <cdthieme at gmail.com> wrote:
> I just got admonished by "Mark" for being "uncivil" on this list with regard
> to a comment I made in my initial message on "Moving the Main Page."
>
> I don't think I was.  At least, from how I read the strict construction of
> the policy, I didn't say anything ruled to be incivility by the dictates
> of WP:CIVIL.
>
> And going back to my post on what psychosis might be hidden in some of
> users, I forgot one of the biggest problems underneath the surface of
> Wikipedia...
>
> We have too many humorless people.
>
> Humorless people who enforce WP:CIVIL thinking that something benign
> and rhetorical and not even mentioned in WP:CIVIL is "incivility."
>
> And those who don't realize that it's incivility to admonish others
> for acting with "incivility."
>
> Here's probably the only circumstance where I'll state that WP:DICK
> and WP:FUCK are not a cop-out.
>
> Regards,
> Christopher D. Thieme
>
>
> P.S. I know I'm not alone in saying that I have considered leaving Wikipedia
> on several occasions not because of incivility or personal attacks, but
> because there are people who can't and refuse to take an obvious joke.  The
> humorless people will ruin Wikipedia before those who aren't prim, proper
> and civil.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 15/01/07, Daniel P. B. Smith <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:

> Finally, if exposure of magic tricks constituted "piracy" then you'd
> think this would have long since been established in court, and that
> the cases involved would be well-known within magicians' circles. Are
> there any such cases?

According to the [[Business Model Entitlement Act]] of 2008, sponsored
by the RIAA and MPAA, all technology and communications that affects
existing business models must bow down before them. This is also why
Commons has been shut down so as not to take away the market for
professional photographers and for Getty Images.

- d.


from_name: Husky

body:
>
> Dutch citaatrecht is much more limited than fair use, and we decided
> to comply with both Dutch and Belgian law (...)

I think that could be one of the main reasons for also abolishing fair use
on the English Wikipedia. The main juridical difference between the two is
that 'Citaatrecht' (the Dutch term for 'citation rights') is no 'right'. The
term simply means that no copyright can be claimed on citations, while fair
use is more a 'right' than a law (at least, as far as i know, and IANAL).
Citaatrecht is a typical example of fair dealing, opposed to fair use. We do
use 'citation rights' on the Dutch Wikipedia (and other Wikimedia projects)
but only in terms of text (else the Dutch Wikiquote couldn't even exist!),
but not on media (such as images) because the legal aspects of it are far
more difficult than text.

The difference between the US legal system, where much more is allowed in
terms of using citations of copyrighted work, and other (European) law
systems seems to me to be the main reason for abolishing fair use for images
and other types of media, and just restricting it to text and some small
exceptions (because text citations are allowed in many more countries). If
'fair use' in the broad terms of American law would be available in many
more countries it would make sense to allow it on Wikimedia projects, but at
the moment it is an almost exclusively American law, and raises many
problems on non-English projects.

-- Hay Kranen / [[User:Husky]]


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Canada mailing list now exists

body:
Hello all,

While Wikimedia Canada has been around in one stage of planning or
another for a while, we've just created a mailing list for discussion.

Why now? I was listening to the archives of Wikipedia Weekly, and
heard Delphine mention us, even though we've been so inactive in
further planning. That, and a regional TV channel is planning a story
on the chapter, even though we don't actually exist yet.

* Where's the list hosted? :
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-ca

* How can I post? : Once you join, email wikimedia-ca at lists.wikimedia.org

* Is it bilingual? : To be discussed. The Swiss mailing list is
quatrolingual. but let's concentrate on discussing stuff in English
first, as only two members of over 100 are unilingual Francophones.

* What use would I be? : Trust me, anyway you're willing to help with
the chapter, we're willing to listen.

So please, even if you're not too sure what purpose chapters serve,
join the mailing list. There's many benefits that could be reaped if
we get this party started.

Nick Moreau/Zanimum


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
On 15/01/07, PeruvianLlama <peruvianllama at gmail.com> wrote:
(snip)
> What I mean to say is that if moving the
> Main Page right now will be a pain because of server strain and
> internal/external link updating, then does it not follow that this will
> be even more of a pain once we have another year's worth of edit
> histories, and another year's worth of internal/external links floating
> around? And by extension, it will be all the more worse with five years'
> worth, and ten years' worth, etc.
(snip)

I see your point; if we're going to have to change its name, it's
probably better to do it sooner rather than later.

I personally don't subscribe to the "OMG think of all the broken
links" line of thinking. We wouldn't be silly enough to shift the Main
Page and leave it a red link.

I think the best thing to do would be to make a non-wiki-page portal
for our front page, like we have for www.wikipedia.org. It would be
editable from a MediaWiki page somewhere, but would be full HTML
coding, so we could get rid of the Monobook skin for the front page,
and put all our effort into making the front page the sort of page
people would set as their home page.

~Mark Ryan


from_name: Steve

subject: [Wikipedia-l] No consensus

body:
Political strong-arming and lobbying of allies. =)

On 1/16/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's very nice in Wikipedia to work with consensus. But what if no
> consensus
> is found? How is it decided then?
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources

body:
On Tue, 16 Jan 2007 10:17:58 +0100, "MacGyverMagic/Mgm"
<macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

>I totally agree that creators of fictional material are not a reliable
>source for their own notability in 99.9% of the cases,
>but I also believe that for uncontroversial information like character
>information creators are a source far more superior than fansites (who
>speculate) and newspaper articles and interviews (who can misunderstand and
>misinterpret).

I agree completely with this.  As long as some credible independent
sources exist for the major premise of the article, sourcing details
from the originators is no different from sourcing minor details on a
company from the company's website. Why would anyone have a problem
with that, at least in general?

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources

body:
On 16/01/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_January_16#Able_and_Baker

The real problem here is that AFD adopted a deliberately anti-expert
stance. This is really really not good.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
>
> Is there any reason what so ever to move the main page, except "policy
> for policys sake"? Because that argument doesn't fly with us.

No, but it often should.  Really, what should be done is make an exception
to our namespace policy/guideline for things like this.

-Jeff


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant

body:
On 16/01/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> I would like to use this opportunity to once more bring forward an idea I
> have been toying with at least since the Frankfurt Wikimania: Using
> Wikimedia's methods in making archives available.

As I wrote on the meta page, they specifically won't fund "projects
that focus primarily on digitizing existing collections". So we would
need to strongly justify why the wiki method is more than mere
digitisation. (From what you described I'm not totally convinced it
would be...)

cheers,
Brianna


subject: [Foundation-l] NEH grant


body:
> If
> 'fair use' in the broad terms of American law would be available in many
> more countries it would make sense to allow it on Wikimedia projects, but at
> the moment it is an almost exclusively American law, and raises many
> problems on non-English projects.
Which again shows that "fair use" images are not free, applicable only
on american territory, and so is again an argument to do away with
fair use image on wikis in all languages, including the english
language.

In another related thread it was coprrectly pointed out that there is
a difference between the italian wiki and italy. I'd like to point out
that there is a similar difference between the english wiki and the
usa and gt britain. There is also Australia, New Zealand, Canada and
India to consider, where many people have english as their primary
language. Not to mention the rest of the world. :-)

teun


from_name: Luna

subject: [Wikipedia-l] No consensus

body:
On 1/16/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's very nice in Wikipedia to work with consensus. But what if no
> consensus
> is found? How is it decided then?
>

That would depend a bit on the nature of the dispute, I guess?

In an article or other content dispute, perhaps the involved editors should
do their best to make necessary concessions, possibly including a section on
the article to describe the nature of the controversy at hand (this assumes
all parties are acting more or less reasonably).

In terms of policy debate, en.wikipedia at least is pretty deeply fleshed
out and institutionalized, as opposed to a new project where there's little
existing practice or precedent -- people are usually trying to gain
consensus to *change* something, in this sort of environment. If no such
consensus is achieved, we usually fall back on the status quo of existing
practice.

Some situations can't always be resolved that way, in which case there's no
easy solution. Or if there is, I'm missing it.

-Luna


from_name: Samuel Klein

subject: [Foundation-l] Israeli Esperanto stamps, oh my

body:
Delightful!  Do we have a gallery of these examples somewhere?

--SJ

On Tue, 16 Jan 2007, Andrew Gray wrote:

> [copied to foundation-l and wikipedia-l; please note this when replying]
>
> I was sure I'd seen this on the mailing lists before, but I couldn't
> find it on a quick search (which is odd - I'm sure I heard a week ago)
>
> It appears the Esperanto Wikipedia is on a stamp. Well, Esperanto is
> on the stamp; a chunk of the text from [[eo:L. L. Zamenhof]] is used
> as a sort of background illustration.
>
> Colour image: http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/stamps/jrst0399.jpg
> Detailed description: http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/stamps/jrst0399e.jpg
> Brief discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29
>
> This is quite a delightful discovery; it isn't clear why our text is
> used, but it must be a good motive, and it's certainly a somewhat
> unusual bit of recognition :-)
>
> Congratulations to the eo.wp community - from a glance at their
> discussion forums last night I didn't see any obvious keywords to
> suggest they've noticed yet, so someone more competent than I may like
> to make sure they know...
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] slowness today

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

Platonides wrote:
>> Can we do temporary edits to the template to make it semi-functional
>> (only a couple of switchs), or it can't be touched until you finish
>> investigating?
>
> It's 5 days since this reminding, a week since the slowness. We're
> missing the
> funcionality it provided. So, is there any reason blocking from
> restoring it?
> (if so, why hasn't been resolved yet? :D)
>
> There was a 'policy' of users don't needing to worry about server issues
> ('if there aren't enough servers, we will add more'), but here there is
> a collision.

Jesus Christ!

I can't say words without having some God-given "policy" read into them.

I made a general recommendation not to go running around saying THE SKY
IS FALLING THE SKY IS FALLING about templates BASED ON SUPPOSITION AND
PARANOIA.

That doesn't mean that AN ACTUAL PROBLEM, WHEN DISCOVERED, SHOULD BE
IGNORED.

WHEN THERE IS AN ACTUAL, REAL, MEASURABLE PROBLEM, THEN IT MATTERS.

IN THIS CASE THERE IS AN ACTUAL, REAL, MEASURABLE PROBLEM.

UNTIL THAT GETS FIXED UP ON THE SOFTWARE END, THE PARTICULAR TEMPLATE
WHICH IS AN ACTUAL, REAL, MEASURABLE PROBLEM, TAKING 10-20 SECONDS TO
RENDER, MUST NOT BE WIDELY USED.

Try to use some common sense, people.

There's no "policy" here. Just *sense*.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources

body:
On 1/16/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 16/01/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_January_16#Able_and_Baker
>
>
> The real problem here is that AFD adopted a deliberately anti-expert
> stance. This is really really not good.
>
>

No it adopted an expert apathetic stance. It is lot less interested in
your status as an "expert" than it is interested in the evidence you
provide.

--
geni


from_name: phoebe ayers

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policies for students regarding use of Wikipedia?

body:
All,

I received a message (below) from a librarian at a US high school who is
considering writing a policy for their students regarding the use of
Wikipedia in research papers. She asked for my input and whether I knew of
any similar policies in schools -- either middle and high schools or
colleges and universities. This:
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v20/0080.html
is the kind of thing she's interested in  (this particular policy appears,
by the way, to be completely sensible -- the main flaws I found were they
missed the permanent link and citation features, and they called us "the
world's blog").

I pointed her towards
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schools_FAQ
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia, and
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academic_use

which seem to be en:'s documentation on the subject of academic use. But I'm
wondering if any of you:

* know of such policies at specific institutions (and if so if you can send
me a link)
* know of commentary on, or a list of, such policies (either from our lists
& sites or other places)
* have comments about such policies and what should go into them.
* if any of you are librarians or professors, if you have answers for the
last question about how WP is handled at reference desks and in classes.

Thanks!
phoebe (brassratgirl)

here's the message (with specific campus names taken out):

>I am the head librarian at a college prep high school in California. We are

>considering writing a school policy regarding the use of Wikipedia in
>academic research. I am gathering as much information as I can from
>universities because I would like our policy and instruction to reflect
what
>our students will be met with once they leave us.
>
>  Does the University of California have a policy about the use of
Wikipedia or do professors to
>set guidelines for its use?
>
>  In your opinion, based on your experience at various universities, are
students allowed to cite it in academic research papers?
>
>  Do professors address it at all and how is it handled at the reference
desk at university libraries.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Wikipedia-l] Policies for students regarding use of
	Wikipedia?

body:
All,

I received a message (below) from a librarian at a US high school who is
considering writing a policy for their students regarding the use of
Wikipedia in research papers. She asked for my input and whether I knew of
any similar policies in schools -- either middle and high schools or
colleges and universities. This:
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/lists_archive/Humanist/v20/0080.html
is the kind of thing she's interested in  (this particular policy appears,
by the way, to be completely sensible -- the main flaws I found were they
missed the permanent link and citation features, and they called us "the
world's blog").

I pointed her towards
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Schools_FAQ
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citing_Wikipedia
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia, and
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academic_use

which seem to be en:'s documentation on the subject of academic use. But I'm
wondering if any of you:

* know of such policies at specific institutions (and if so if you can send
me a link)
* know of commentary on, or a list of, such policies (either from our lists
& sites or other places)
* have comments about such policies and what should go into them.
* if any of you are librarians or professors, if you have answers for the
last question about how WP is handled at reference desks and in classes.

Thanks!
phoebe (brassratgirl)

here's the message (with specific campus names taken out):

>I am the head librarian at a college prep high school in California. We are

>considering writing a school policy regarding the use of Wikipedia in
>academic research. I am gathering as much information as I can from
>universities because I would like our policy and instruction to reflect
what
>our students will be met with once they leave us.
>
>  Does the University of California have a policy about the use of
Wikipedia or do professors to
>set guidelines for its use?
>
>  In your opinion, based on your experience at various universities, are
students allowed to cite it in academic research papers?
>
>  Do professors address it at all and how is it handled at the reference
desk at university libraries.
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Policies for students regarding use of Wikipedia?


body:
On 1/16/07, teun spaans <teun.spaans at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Which again shows that "fair use" images are not free, applicable only
> on american territory, and so is again an argument to do away with
> fair use image on wikis in all languages, including the english
> language.

That's exactly what i was trying to say. Thanks :)

-- Hay Kranen / [[User:Husky]]


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Talk before you type: Interesting paper on growth in
	Wikipedia talk pages

body:
On 16/01/07, Keith Old <keithold at gmail.com> wrote:
> G'day folks,
>
> Researchers at IBM's Visual Comnunication Lab have published an interesting
> paper called "Talk Before You Type: Coordination in Wikipedia" at the 40th
> Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences held recently.
>
> http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_40/decisionbp/03_04_07.pdf

Very interesting. The most delightful part? We're still apparently at
c. three minutes time to revert significant vandalism - this figure
was quoted in their earlier study, but there hasn't been one more
recent than 2003 to go from until now, and the project has changed a
lot since then. A 2005 figure is a lot more comparable to enwp as it
stands today, and is a lot more reassuring... I hope we get a third
study in a couple of years to see how the results evolve.

It would be interesting to see comparable studies for the other
language projects, though as this method relies on manually
identifying and characterising text it would need a decent number of
native speakers to work on such a thing.

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


body:
[copied to foundation-l and wikipedia-l; please note this when replying]

I was sure I'd seen this on the mailing lists before, but I couldn't
find it on a quick search (which is odd - I'm sure I heard a week ago)

It appears the Esperanto Wikipedia is on a stamp. Well, Esperanto is
on the stamp; a chunk of the text from [[eo:L. L. Zamenhof]] is used
as a sort of background illustration.

Colour image: http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/stamps/jrst0399.jpg
Detailed description: http://www.jr.co.il/pictures/stamps/jrst0399e.jpg
Brief discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28news%29

This is quite a delightful discovery; it isn't clear why our text is
used, but it must be a good motive, and it's certainly a somewhat
unusual bit of recognition :-)

Congratulations to the eo.wp community - from a glance at their
discussion forums last night I didn't see any obvious keywords to
suggest they've noticed yet, so someone more competent than I may like
to make sure they know...

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
On 16/01/07, Mark Ryan <ultrablue at gmail.com> wrote:

> I see your point; if we're going to have to change its name, it's
> probably better to do it sooner rather than later.
>
> I personally don't subscribe to the "OMG think of all the broken
> links" line of thinking. We wouldn't be silly enough to shift the Main
> Page and leave it a red link.

Sure, there'd be a redirect. Links won't break. The problem is that
many of the objections implicitly assume that, at some point after
this move, we'll replace the redirect, so that .../wiki/Main_Page will
no longer take you to .../wiki/Portal:Portal (or whatever), it will
now take you to .../wiki/Some_Movie

And at *that* point all our inbound links break.

I'm sympathetic to the hypothetical "and if we have a film by this
name?", and I don't see a workable solution for it*, but even if we
move the article to a different internal name I'm really uncomfortable
with the idea of that URL ever pointing anywhere but the front page.
And if I'm working from that point, I figure, why move the article at
all? The "free up namespace" argument is moot, and the naming
conventions one is just silly...

* Though for a book, I'd contend it really ought to be at [[Main
page]]. Which prompts me to wonder if we have any standard capping
convention for book titles, and if not why not... beyond the fact that
the standard formal convention "looks silly".

> I think the best thing to do would be to make a non-wiki-page portal
> for our front page, like we have for www.wikipedia.org. It would be
> editable from a MediaWiki page somewhere, but would be full HTML
> coding, so we could get rid of the Monobook skin for the front page,
> and put all our effort into making the front page the sort of page
> people would set as their home page.

A not entirely crazy proposal :-) But does the benefit of a unified
look and feel outweigh its advantages?

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


subject: [Wikitech-l] slowness today

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Platonides wrote:
> How is the efficiency of the templates measured? Apart of just trying it
> and waiting to see if servers go down :P

This is very easy:

1) Stick it on a page
2) Hit "preview"
3) react in shock and horror at how long it took to render
4) run it several times and compare against lack of template to confirm
that, yes, it is simply adding that template which causes 100-fold
increase in rendering time

> I know there's a problem. What is being done about it? What can we do to
> help with it? How do we do it?

Between other things, someone sooner or later will get a chance to poke
at the software to try to fix the performance problem.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] slowness today

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

Carlos wrote:
> ...what we want to know is very simple:
>
> a) are you going to change mediawiki so it works, or

Yes.

> b) should we forget it and make a new one (and in that case, do you know
> what construction exactly should be avoided, or should we guess and try
> at Special:Expandtemplate), or

Do that anyway; the template's horribly ugly!

And I'm sorry for my harsh words.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com / brion @ wikimedia.org)
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources

body:
On 16/01/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 1/16/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 16/01/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:

> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2007_January_16#Able_and_Baker

> > The real problem here is that AFD adopted a deliberately anti-expert
> > stance. This is really really not good.

> No it adopted an expert apathetic stance. It is lot less interested in
> your status as an "expert" than it is interested in the evidence you
> provide.

Not when they're voting that way because they don't like Phil
Sandifer. Aaron Brenneman closing the AFD after having been through
arbitration on the webcomics issue is also  deeply unsatisfactory.

- d.


from_name: Sage Ross

subject: [WikiEN-l] Troubling news on Citizendium

body:
Last week a Citizendium participant sent out this message on h-afro-am:

http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-afro-am&month=0701&week=b&msg=JIarw4S/UalprGLZ2cp5NA&user=&pw=

The whole thing is worth reading, but the gist of it is this paragraph:

"I am withdrawing from Citizendium because of the racist and sexist
policy put in place by Larry Sanger, who claims that the disciplines
of Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies do not belong in the list of top
level categories in Citizendium, or as individual categories at all.
Sanger has unilaterally decided that all race and gender topics
should be split up under traditional disciplinary headings, so that
there will be, for example, a sub-group of "African American
Literature," and "African American History," but no category -- at
any level -- in African American studies, and he embraces the same
tactic of fragmenting other Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies.  The
fact that his broad strokes of exclusion primarily effect women and
minority scholars does not seem to matter to him."

I'm interested to know the reactions of the Wikipedians on this list
who've been participating in Citizendium.  This persistence of this
kind of thing, especially entrenched at the policy level, would
probably spell the doom of Citizendium's long-term prospects (which
would be unfortunate in my view).

-Sage


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources

body:
On 1/16/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not when they're voting that way because they don't like Phil
> Sandifer.

Then he has made an impressive number of enemies but their requests do
not seem unreasonable

If I wrote an article about say cyanobiphenyls I would not view it as
an unreasonable request to be asked to produce sources showing that
they notable.

> Aaron Brenneman closing the AFD after having been through
> arbitration on the webcomics issue is also  deeply unsatisfactory.
>

It would have been difficult to close it in any other direction.

--
geni


from_name: · Firefoxman

body:
What is Citizendium?

On 1/16/07, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Last week a Citizendium participant sent out this message on h-afro-am:
>
>
> http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-afro-am&month=0701&week=b&msg=JIarw4S/UalprGLZ2cp5NA&user=&pw=
>
> The whole thing is worth reading, but the gist of it is this paragraph:
>
> "I am withdrawing from Citizendium because of the racist and sexist
> policy put in place by Larry Sanger, who claims that the disciplines
> of Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies do not belong in the list of top
> level categories in Citizendium, or as individual categories at all.
> Sanger has unilaterally decided that all race and gender topics
> should be split up under traditional disciplinary headings, so that
> there will be, for example, a sub-group of "African American
> Literature," and "African American History," but no category -- at
> any level -- in African American studies, and he embraces the same
> tactic of fragmenting other Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies.  The
> fact that his broad strokes of exclusion primarily effect women and
> minority scholars does not seem to matter to him."
>
> I'm interested to know the reactions of the Wikipedians on this list
> who've been participating in Citizendium.  This persistence of this
> kind of thing, especially entrenched at the policy level, would
> probably spell the doom of Citizendium's long-term prospects (which
> would be unfortunate in my view).
>
> -Sage
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Firefoxman


body:
Nevermind, I read their site.

On 1/16/07, ? Firefoxman <enwpmail at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What is Citizendium?
>
>
>  On 1/16/07, Sage Ross <ragesoss+wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Last week a Citizendium participant sent out this message on h-afro-am:
> >
> >
> > http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-afro-am&month=0701&week=b&msg=JIarw4S/UalprGLZ2cp5NA&user=&pw=
> >
> > The whole thing is worth reading, but the gist of it is this paragraph:
> >
> > "I am withdrawing from Citizendium because of the racist and sexist
> > policy put in place by Larry Sanger, who claims that the disciplines
> > of Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies do not belong in the list of top
> > level categories in Citizendium, or as individual categories at all.
> > Sanger has unilaterally decided that all race and gender topics
> > should be split up under traditional disciplinary headings, so that
> > there will be, for example, a sub-group of "African American
> > Literature," and "African American History," but no category -- at
> > any level -- in African American studies, and he embraces the same
> > tactic of fragmenting other Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies.  The
> > fact that his broad strokes of exclusion primarily effect women and
> > minority scholars does not seem to matter to him."
> >
> > I'm interested to know the reactions of the Wikipedians on this list
> > who've been participating in Citizendium.  This persistence of this
> > kind of thing, especially entrenched at the policy level, would
> > probably spell the doom of Citizendium's long-term prospects (which
> > would be unfortunate in my view).
> >
> > -Sage
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Firefoxman

--
Firefoxman


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reliable sources

body:
On 1/16/07, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
> I disagree. This was an AfD where no new arguments were made from the
> previous AfD. Yes, consensus can change. But consensus is also not a
> random phenomenon based on who shows up on a given day. In the
> absence of any new claims about the article, it would have been
> wholly reasonable to take into account the previous overwhelming
> decision to keep the article,

Seeing as that was in 2005 and we have somewhat tightened up on
sourceing requirements since them it is hardly unepected that things
will change.

>to note the egregiously poor reasoning
> of some of the votes ("not every game by Nintendo is notable," as one
> person argued - a position that is so far removed from our existing
> practice as to be unusable.
>
The comparison is flawed since Nintendo are a multi billion dollar
company (there probably are games without article in any case due to
the various times large numbers of low quality games were put on one
cartridge)

A better one might be "every painting by Picasso" "every compound
featured in "Journal of Organic Chemistry"

If Dayfree Press is of some signifcance surely any referenced info on
"Able and Baker" could be merged into it since the article is hardly
overloaded with information or citations.

--
geni


subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
On 15/01/07, Ken Arromdee <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:

> > > I am amazed people fall over themselves to comply with constraints
> > > that simply don't matter.

> Because if constraints don't apply to everyone, it's possible to make a
> constraint, pawn off the inconvenience from the constraint on someone else,
> and not care about the inconvenience yourself because you've exempted
> yourself from it.

The rules are NPOV, NOR and V. Everything else is commentary.

- d.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

body:
On Jan 16, 2007, at 2:39 PM, geni wrote:

>
> I doubt it. To me it loks like one person went looking for a fight and
> managed to find one. I still think "wait and see" is the best aproach
> to Citizendium.

The decision in question is without a doubt a bad one that
fundamentally de-emphasizes major academic disciplines in favor of an
underinformed view that has no place in a project supposedly devoted
to experts.

It points to a fundamental flaw in Citizendium, and one that wouldn't
surprise anyone who saw Larry's name attached to it - it's an
encyclopedia that favors experts that's run by someone with a view of
the academy that is wildly out of step with current senses of what
mainstream academic thought is.

Not that Citizendium is a bad idea. Just that Larry Sanger is the
wrong person to run it.

-Phil


from_name: dmehkeri at swi.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] editorial oversight, re: afd, fac, etc.

body:
> > There are just too many uninformed drive-by votes for me to continue in AfD,
> > though, it's too contentious, the guidelines are ignored, editors make up
> > reasons for deletion, and well-sourced articles on major topics are liable
> > to be deletely simply because a small group of editors have never heard of
> > some obscure world-leader Nobel laureate.
>
> Don't forget the human factor involved here. When a person finds they
> actually have a voice in a crowd, they may use it simply to be heard; and to
> call attention to the fact that they are there.

I remember voting[1] for someone to become an administrator. It failed, with
almost all opposers citing lack of project-space edits, some specifically
mentioning XfDs (various deletion debates). As in, they advised him to go
vote[1] on a bunch of XfDs and come back in three months.

This thread reminds me of this, because essentially he was being told to do the
very thing we are complaining about now.

I am pleased to see he has so far ignored this advice. But I wonder what happens
in other cases, and even whether other "aspiring administrators" see this and
take it to heart before putting themselves up for RfA.

Dan

[1] Yeah, yeah. Technically they're not votes.


body:
Dan, your client is breaking the threads in gmail.

On 1/16/07, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
>
>
> > > There are just too many uninformed drive-by votes for me to continue in
> AfD,
> > > though, it's too contentious, the guidelines are ignored, editors make
> up
> > > reasons for deletion, and well-sourced articles on major topics are
> liable
> > > to be deletely simply because a small group of editors have never heard
> of
> > > some obscure world-leader Nobel laureate.
> >
> > Don't forget the human factor involved here. When a person finds they
> > actually have a voice in a crowd, they may use it simply to be heard; and
> to
> > call attention to the fact that they are there.
>
>
> I remember voting[1] for someone to become an administrator. It failed, with
> almost all opposers citing lack of project-space edits, some specifically
> mentioning XfDs (various deletion debates). As in, they advised him to go
> vote[1] on a bunch of XfDs and come back in three months.
>
> This thread reminds me of this, because essentially he was being told to do
> the
> very thing we are complaining about now.
>
> I am pleased to see he has so far ignored this advice. But I wonder what
> happens
> in other cases, and even whether other "aspiring administrators" see this
> and
> take it to heart before putting themselves up for RfA.
>
> Dan
>
> [1] Yeah, yeah. Technically they're not votes.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
en:User:Firefoxman

This user is.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] slowness today

body:
On 1/16/07, Jens Frank <jf at mormo.org> wrote:
> That was before wiki markup became a real programming language. Now it's
> possible to write templates that require a substantial amount of time to
> render (20s for the interproject template you're asking about).
>
> As every programmer, a wiki template programmer has to take care of the
> efficiency of his code. Adding servers will not improve the rendering
> time of slow templates.

Since there is still no (real) looping constructs, all wikitext
execution should still be roughly linearly proportional to input size,
or am I missing something?


from_name: Jeff Raymond

body:
phoebe ayers wrote:

> * if any of you are librarians or professors, if you have answers for the
> last question about how WP is handled at reference desks and in classes.

As a librarian, the town I work for has no set policy regarding Wikipedia,
but I have had a few questions about it from parents and students, and my
typical directive (and one that is shared with a small group of librarian
friends) is that Wikipedia, like any other source, is not good enough for
the only basis of research for a project that requires such research.  As
a starting point/overview, it's a great tool, and often has great sources
to extend research further, but should not be used as the only source for
anything.

I say the same for Britannica, World Book, whatever else as well.

-Jeff


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Threads in gmail (was: editorial oversight, re: afd, fac,
	etc.)

body:
> Dan, your client is breaking the threads in gmail.

No, I'm pretty sure my client is smart enough. It's just that at this time I'm
using Mailman's daily digest. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

The solution is for you folks to stop posting so damn much.

-Dan


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Threads in gmail (was: editorial oversight, re: afd,
	fac, etc.)

body:
why not just filter the posts into a separate folder? I

On 1/16/07, dmehkeri at swi.com <dmehkeri at swi.com> wrote:
>
> > Dan, your client is breaking the threads in gmail.
>
> No, I'm pretty sure my client is smart enough. It's just that at this time
> I'm
> using Mailman's daily digest. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
>
> The solution is for you folks to stop posting so damn much.
>
> -Dan
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
en:User:Firefoxman

This user is.


from_name: PeruvianLlama

subject: [WikiEN-l] Moving the Main Page

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

<snip>

> Is there any reason what so ever to move the main page, except "policy
> for policys sake"? Because that argument doesn't fly with us.
>
Aha! So you admit it, there is an "us"! Anti-Main-Page-Moving Cabal!
Cabaaaaaal!!

*ducks*

 - PeruvianLlama


from_name: Timwi

body:
Aerik Sylvan wrote:
> Hi All,
> I was really hoping get some feedback on the performance of my proof of
> concept intersections page at http://aerik.com/wikintersections.php  -
> anybody?

The performance (as in, speed) is very good.

The implementation is not. It strips away all apostrophes. It is
therefore impossible to use categories that contain an apostrophe in
their name, e.g. [[Category:Children's literature]]. I am finding it
hard to imagine this as an accident; you must have written code
explicitly to remove apohstrophes instead of escaping them properly. Why
didn't this ring an alarm bell in you? :-p


from_name: David Strauss

subject: [Foundation-l] pro & con Wikiseek

body:
Thomas M?ller wrote:
> Hi,
> I like the idea of wikiseek, to index only wikipedia content and the urls edited in wikipedia as weblinks.
>
> This was as well the concept develped here on the net.
> So it is a "w+1" hop" concept.
>
> Contra: The problem is,
> - that the database is still not open (where to download?)

It's not a Wikimedia project. They don't have that obligation.

> - the search box of wikipedia already is doing the function

It's not a Wikimedia project, so the redundancy doesn't hurt us.

> - it is a advertising spin-off of wikipedia ?, which is introducing advertising through the backdoor into wikipedia.

It's a project independent from Wikimedia and Wikia.

> - Is this a Jimmy engine ? or just hosted at wikipedia?

I don't know about the former. It's not hosted at Wikipedia because it's
not a Wikimedia project.

> - quote:, "of course i am sad that it is a company rather than an open source project" - so the spin-of is taking a distance to the open source approace of the coding and the open source approach of the database,

It's not Wikimedia, so I don't think anyone here is specially qualified
to comment on their reasoning. And nothing obligates them to take an
open-source approach to development, even if they index Wikipedia's content.

> - searching wikiseek will found wikipedia? this is not the way to go, as we can found wikipedia directly, all other is oeconomic corruption of an encyclopaedie? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCPA

If you don't like it, don't use it.

> - Searchme was co-founded by Randy Adams, CEO, and John Holland, CMO. The Company received initial funding from Sequoia Capital, so nothing related to the goals of Jimmy?

No idea.

> - not a java engine

That's a *bad* thing?

> - this project is disturbing the community, as no one knows the network and relationships for the collaboration from whom to whom.

I would say it's having no effect on the community.

> - wiki goes oeconomic?

Hmm?

> - if it is not open source, why then not using google.

Use Google if you like. For me, Google still seems to give better
results, even for Wikipedia.

> - wikiseek is violating the GPL licence of wikipedia, as users give the urls reviewed by hand to wikipedia as  well in licence of GPL. Any Bibliographic index has a copyright, and this is GPL for the external lists of weburls to each article, as the url is not just an url, but a content reference of the article. As the database of wikiseek is using and summarizing them, and it is not a GPL database of wikisek, this is a licence conflict.

No, it's not. Search engine indexes do not need to obtain licensing for
the media they index.

> Well, the draft of this search engine proposal is good, but not workable on the market, as any wikipedia has a search box for the works and as well you get the external links in the acticle after you have read it.

I think either success or failure would have little impact on the people
here.

> any comments? ;-)
>
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 23:37:26 +0100
>
>> Englisch:
>> http://www.wikiseek.com/index.php
>> http://wikiseek.wikia.com/wiki/Wikiseek_Community_Wiki
>
>
> Wikiseek is a new way to search Wikipedia. Wikiseek searches only Wikipedia and external Wikipedia links. Because these links are selected by the Wikipedia community, Wikiseek search results are likely to return more relevant results for many searches.
>
> This Wikiseek Community Wiki is hosted by Wikia but Wikiseek is an independent project with no affiliation with Wikia or Wikipedia.
>

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subject: [Foundation-l] pro & con Wikiseek

body:
Thomas M?ller wrote:
> Hi,
> I like the idea of wikiseek, to index only wikipedia content and the urls edited in wikipedia as weblinks.
>
> This was as well the concept develped here on the net.
> So it is a "w+1" hop" concept.
>
> Contra: The problem is,
> - that the database is still not open (where to download?)

It's not a Wikimedia project. They don't have that obligation.

> - the search box of wikipedia already is doing the function

It's not a Wikimedia project, so the redundancy doesn't hurt us.

> - it is a advertising spin-off of wikipedia ?, which is introducing advertising through the backdoor into wikipedia.

It's a project independent from Wikimedia and Wikia.

> - Is this a Jimmy engine ? or just hosted at wikipedia?

I don't know about the former. It's not hosted at Wikipedia because it's
not a Wikimedia project.

> - quote:, "of course i am sad that it is a company rather than an open source project" - so the spin-of is taking a distance to the open source approace of the coding and the open source approach of the database,

It's not Wikimedia, so I don't think anyone here is specially qualified
to comment on their reasoning. And nothing obligates them to take an
open-source approach to development, even if they index Wikipedia's content.

> - searching wikiseek will found wikipedia? this is not the way to go, as we can found wikipedia directly, all other is oeconomic corruption of an encyclopaedie? - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCPA

If you don't like it, don't use it.

> - Searchme was co-founded by Randy Adams, CEO, and John Holland, CMO. The Company received initial funding from Sequoia Capital, so nothing related to the goals of Jimmy?

No idea.

> - not a java engine

That's a *bad* thing?

> - this project is disturbing the community, as no one knows the network and relationships for the collaboration from whom to whom.

I would say it's having no effect on the community.

> - wiki goes oeconomic?

Hmm?

> - if it is not open source, why then not using google.

Use Google if you like. For me, Google still seems to give better
results, even for Wikipedia.

> - wikiseek is violating the GPL licence of wikipedia, as users give the urls reviewed by hand to wikipedia as  well in licence of GPL. Any Bibliographic index has a copyright, and this is GPL for the external lists of weburls to each article, as the url is not just an url, but a content reference of the article. As the database of wikiseek is using and summarizing them, and it is not a GPL database of wikisek, this is a licence conflict.

No, it's not. Search engine indexes do not need to obtain licensing for
the media they index.

> Well, the draft of this search engine proposal is good, but not workable on the market, as any wikipedia has a search box for the works and as well you get the external links in the acticle after you have read it.

I think either success or failure would have little impact on the people
here.

> any comments? ;-)
>
> -------- Original-Nachricht --------
> Datum: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 23:37:26 +0100
>
>> Englisch:
>> http://www.wikiseek.com/index.php
>> http://wikiseek.wikia.com/wiki/Wikiseek_Community_Wiki
>
>
> Wikiseek is a new way to search Wikipedia. Wikiseek searches only Wikipedia and external Wikipedia links. Because these links are selected by the Wikipedia community, Wikiseek search results are likely to return more relevant results for many searches.
>
> This Wikiseek Community Wiki is hosted by Wikia but Wikiseek is an independent project with no affiliation with Wikia or Wikipedia.
>

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