from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 11 Fund Drive Report

body:
Copied from:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4/Day_11
--------------------------------------------------------------

=Monday 26 December=
A total of 257 donations were made through PayPal on Day 11, yielding the equivalent of $5,813.09
USD. The average donation that day was $22.62.

A total of about 38.10 was donated through MoneyBookers since the last update, bringing that total
to $772.68. Today was a postal holiday and thus there are no mail or Dexia donations to report.

:Grand total at end of day: '''$114,025.58'''

Breakdown of Day 11 PayPal donations:
 AUD     38.09     (28.59 USD)
 CAD 	297.88 	  (245.13 USD)
 EUR 	1,823.94  (2,215.52 USD)
 GBP 	213.49 	  (382.85 USD)
 JPY 	40,160.00 (362.85 USD)
 USD 	2,578.16
 Total 	5,813.09 USD

Copied from: http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/2005q4/index.php/2005-12-26/report/

==Special thanks to those who gave large donations==
Christian Hoffmann gave the largest donation this day; € 200. There were also many donors who
gave the equivalent of about $100 or more (listed in no particular order); Jeff Lima, Craig
Hirsch, and 9 anonymous donors.

:<small>Note: While large donations are great, it should be noted that about 70% of all the money
donated to the Wikimedia Foundation comes from donations that are the equivalent of $50 or less
and the average donation is about $25.</small>

==Selected donor comments==

Let's all thank everybody who donated on this day by reading their comments.

:Full listing at: http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/2005q4/index.php/2005-12-26/detail/

*"The best of what the Internet promised" by Beth Gibson
*"Danke f?r das gro?e Lexikon" by anonymous
*"What a wonderful site, I use it every day. It is a natural for my Opera start-up page. I only
wish I had more to give. Thank you, thank you so much Wikipedia!" by Shari Wilson
*"Keep up the good work!" by Chris Bunch
*"Free Information for Everyone." by Christoph Dankert
*"Faites le pour nous, et pas pour votre portefeuille." by Yoann GUETTA
*"Keep it up! You help me do my degree! I love you people!" by Robert Griffin
*"Using the site quite often, so why not "paying" a little bit for it ... Just keep going!" by
Igor Brusic
*"Many thanks to all involved with Wikimedia!" by anonymous
*"El conocimiento debe ser como el agua, gratis y de libre acceso a toda la poblaci?n. Ser culto
para ser libre." by Juan Herraiz
*"How could I not donate to the Encyclopedia Galactica (well, in a hundred years or so... give it
time)?" by Craig Hirsch
*"I loved the holiday card and enjoy the ever expanding Romanian encyclopedia." by Gordon
Davidescu
*"Wiki rocks" by Jeff Lima

Some of my personal favorites:

*"Paying it forward with knowledge" by anonymous
*"Plain, clear, accessible knowledge in the grand encylopedic tradition. May Wikipedia flourish!"
by William Bruneau
*"Knowledge is Power, let it run free" by anonymous
*"Blessed is the day I discovered this resource!" by anonymous

-- Daniel Mayer

__________________________________
Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year.
http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 11 Fund Drive Report


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 11 Fund Drive Report


list: foundation-l

from_name: xkernigh at netscape.net

subject:
[Foundation-l] Invariant Sections (was "Fair Use does not apply
	to DSM material or any other APA/APPI content." um, wtf?)

body:
Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> It would probably be impractical for us to take anything but the
definitions from thes works, but I do note that the quoted comments say
"we do not allow anyone to alter our material". The GFDL does allow
alterations, but also allows invariable sections. We allow the
downstream user to do what he will with the material, with no
declaration of invariant sections. Wouldn't it make more sense to have
all quotations declared invariant.

No. The idea of "Invariant Section" is to have a section that can never
be altered or _removed_ from a GFDL book.

For example, if I modify the manual for GNU Emacs, I cannot modify "GNU
General Public License", "The GNU Manifesto", nor "Distribution" (which
explains how to obtain Emacs from GNU), but further, I must include all
three of those sections with my modified manual.

Suppose that all quotes in Wikibooks are Invariant Sections. Then even
if I want to copy and redistribute one chapter of a Wikibook, then I
must also include all of the quotes found in all other chapters of that
Wikibook. If I want to merge one chapter of that Wikibook into a
Wikipedia article, then Wikipedia must contain all of the
Invariant-Section quotes from the Wikibook, even quotes that are now
irrelevant. Further, these quotes must all be in separate sections, not
directly in the Wikipedia article.
-- [[Wikibooks:User:Kernigh]]
___________________________________________________
Try the New Netscape Mail Today!
Virtually Spam-Free | More Storage | Import Your Contact List
http://mail.netscape.com


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] off on holiday next Wed

body:
geni wrote:
> On 12/25/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

>>See [[Whitby Gothic Weekend]] - this is a special event being put
>>together by someone who runs one of the side events of that.

> Needs pics.

http://reddragdiva.fotopic.net/

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Merry Christmas from Daniel Brandt

body:
Rob wrote:

> Brandt dug up an old webpage of mine, one which I
> assumed had been deleted by my alma mater.  I
> remembered the password and removed the pictures of
> myself and any personal information, and added a link
> to Google-Watch-Watch.  I guess that pissed him off,
> so now instead of linking to the page, Brandt has
> posted a copy of my page (prior to alterations) and
> the pictures on his own website. Advice on how to
> handle this would be much appreciated. Obviously this
> is a blantant copyright violation but I'm not sure
> what to do about this.

DMCA notice. Anyone from any country can send one of these. To him and
two levels of upstream. Possibly as a press release as well.

  http://www.holysmoke.org/ga/ga45.htm

- shows how [[Tilman Hausherr]] has successfully used DMCA notices sent
from Germany when Scientology-related organisations played fast and
loose with his photos.

The takedown provisions of the DMCA are a matter of great concern, but a
DMCA notice when someone is pretty damned clearly *ripping off your
stuff* is IMO quite morally sound.

- d.


from_name: Adrenalin

subject: [Wikipedia-l] mo. cyrillic -> mo-cyr., when ?

body:
A recent pretty large discussion about this issue was made, and about
everyone agreed what current mo. all in cyrillic must be moved to
mo-cyr. and on mo. should remain only two links to ro. and to mo-cyr.
On the main page wikipedia.org our language name are still in cyrillic
"????????????".

Or maybe there is another list, a higher instance where i can call ?
Where is present some administrators of wikipedia who can take some
real actions ?

After some days is a New 2006 Year, and we still have such a problems ?

Merry Christmas, and let's hope what the New Year will bring to us
some really correct changes.

--
Best Wishes,
Adrenalin.


from_name: Ilya N.

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Brandt wishes to release personal details of all
	Wikipedia admins

body:
My name's quite unique so it wouldn't work that way but I'm a minor so
it would be some twisted internet phone book.

On 12/26/05, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/26/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > Matt Brown wrote:
> >
> > >On 12/26/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>What I'm concerned about is if he starts putting out addresses, etc.
> > >>
> > >>
> > >For which he could argue no justification, since Wikipedia does not
> > >publish such information about anyone.
> > >
> > True enough, but it's also easy to look things like that up in an online
> > phone-book.
> >
> > Ec
> >
> Really? I've tried to look someone up in a phone book before, but even
> if you know their name, you might still get 3 pages of names to go
> through.
>
> Mgm
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleted revisions no longer visible?

body:
SPUI wrote:

> The feature for non-admins to see the time and edit summary of deleted
> revisions is no longer present. Is there a reason for this?

Yeah, there were people putting libelous content into the actual edit
summaries.

- d.


from_name: Servien Ilaino

body:
Hi,

Don't expect too much of a reaction from the developers, they're not
really responding to the real issues like this for example, there also
haven't been any recent new wikis but there are 8 wikis in queue. I
think these developers are on holiday or something *happy holidays!*

Serv

2005/12/26, Adrenalin <adrenalinup at gmail.com>:
> A recent pretty large discussion about this issue was made, and about
> everyone agreed what current mo. all in cyrillic must be moved to
> mo-cyr. and on mo. should remain only two links to ro. and to mo-cyr.
> On the main page wikipedia.org our language name are still in cyrillic
> "????????????".
>
> Or maybe there is another list, a higher instance where i can call ?
> Where is present some administrators of wikipedia who can take some
> real actions ?
>
> After some days is a New 2006 Year, and we still have such a problems ?
>
>
> Merry Christmas, and let's hope what the New Year will bring to us
> some really correct changes.
>
> --
> Best Wishes,
> Adrenalin.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] News from Serbian chapter

body:
Thanks Walter :) We are getting a lot of help from Dragan Ambrozic,
who is working on popular culture events (and who is our vice
president now). Without his help, nothing would be so easy.

On 12/26/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> Milos Rancic wrote:
>
> >- In Wednesday probably Filip Maljkovic and Djordje Stakic would have
> >presentation of Wikipedia for 160 students of University of Novi
> >Pazar. (Presentation is based on one German Power Point presentation.)
> >
> >- In Thursday Djordje Stakic would have presentation of Wikipedia on
> >the Faculty for Mathematics of Belgrade University.
> >
> >- We started with cooperation with Free Software Network of Serbia,
> >which is associate organization of Free Software Foundation Europe and
> >the next steps we would work together.
> >
> >- In the second half of January we would have two
> >presentations/speeches in the Youth Cultural Center of Belgrade (the
> >most important alternative cultural center in Belgrade;
> >http://www.domomladine.org/): The first one would be presentation of
> >Wikipedia, the second one would be the talk about free software and
> >projection of the movie Revolution OS.
> >
> >- In February we would have two presentations/speeches, but we didn't
> >make materials yet.
> >
> >- In the first half of March Richard Stallman would come in Belgrade.
> >(Not 100% sure, but we would know that in the next couple of days.)
> >
> >- In the second half of April Jimbo would be in Belgrade (I hope in
> >Zagreb and Ljubljana, too).
> >
> >- In May we would organize free knowledge/free software
> >(Wikipedia/GNU) festival in Belgrade.
> >
> Go Milos go :) I am happy wikimedia Serbia goes full steam!
>
> Walter/Waerth
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 12/26/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
>
> >On 12/26/05, Ilya N. <ilyanep at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>What I'm concerned about is if he starts putting out addresses, etc.
> >>
> >>
> >For which he could argue no justification, since Wikipedia does not
> >publish such information about anyone.
> >
> True enough, but it's also easy to look things like that up in an online
> phone-book.
>
> Ec
>
Really? I've tried to look someone up in a phone book before, but even
if you know their name, you might still get 3 pages of names to go
through.

Mgm


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] The George W. Bush article: is this still a wiki?

body:
On 12/26/05, Blackcap <snoutwood at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/15/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Except they can't.  Someone has *deliberately* inserted a
> > "noeditsection" directive into this article, and all suggestions that
> > this hinders editing are resisted, on the grounds that, as well as
> > hindering legitimate edits, it hinders vandalism.
> >
>
> This appears to be a bug due to semi-protection (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Semi-protection_policy for more
> information on semi-protection). A Bugzilla report on the matter (Bug 4385:
> Cannot edit specific sections on semi protected articles;
> http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4385) was submitted about
> eight hours ago. If you could provide some information on the Bugzilla page
> that would help it become cleared up.

This is a misunderstanding.  The words you quote were written by me
before the inception of semi-protection,and currently there is no
NOEDITSECTION directive in the article and, although it is
semi-protected, I still successfully edited a section of the article
from one of my alternative accounts, User:Tasty monster.

So the problem of section editing has gone away.

Also the rise of vandalism on that article seems to have halted
somewhat, though this may be due to local factors. In any  case who
care about vandalism on this article, it doesn't affect the final
product as long as normal editing is not hindered.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] News from Serbian chapter

body:
Milos Rancic wrote:

>- In Wednesday probably Filip Maljkovic and Djordje Stakic would have
>presentation of Wikipedia for 160 students of University of Novi
>Pazar. (Presentation is based on one German Power Point presentation.)
>
>- In Thursday Djordje Stakic would have presentation of Wikipedia on
>the Faculty for Mathematics of Belgrade University.
>
>- We started with cooperation with Free Software Network of Serbia,
>which is associate organization of Free Software Foundation Europe and
>the next steps we would work together.
>
>- In the second half of January we would have two
>presentations/speeches in the Youth Cultural Center of Belgrade (the
>most important alternative cultural center in Belgrade;
>http://www.domomladine.org/): The first one would be presentation of
>Wikipedia, the second one would be the talk about free software and
>projection of the movie Revolution OS.
>
>- In February we would have two presentations/speeches, but we didn't
>make materials yet.
>
>- In the first half of March Richard Stallman would come in Belgrade.
>(Not 100% sure, but we would know that in the next couple of days.)
>
>- In the second half of April Jimbo would be in Belgrade (I hope in
>Zagreb and Ljubljana, too).
>
>- In May we would organize free knowledge/free software
>(Wikipedia/GNU) festival in Belgrade.
>
Go Milos go :) I am happy wikimedia Serbia goes full steam!

Walter/Waerth


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: News from Serbian chapter

body:
Milos Rancic wrote:
> Thanks Walter :) We are getting a lot of help from Dragan Ambrozic,
> who is working on popular culture events (and who is our vice
> president now). Without his help, nothing would be so easy.
>
> On 12/26/05, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>>Milos Rancic wrote:
>>
>>
>>>- In Wednesday probably Filip Maljkovic and Djordje Stakic would have
>>>presentation of Wikipedia for 160 students of University of Novi
>>>Pazar. (Presentation is based on one German Power Point presentation.)
>>>
>>>- In Thursday Djordje Stakic would have presentation of Wikipedia on
>>>the Faculty for Mathematics of Belgrade University.
>>>
>>>- We started with cooperation with Free Software Network of Serbia,
>>>which is associate organization of Free Software Foundation Europe and
>>>the next steps we would work together.
>>>
>>>- In the second half of January we would have two
>>>presentations/speeches in the Youth Cultural Center of Belgrade (the
>>>most important alternative cultural center in Belgrade;
>>>http://www.domomladine.org/): The first one would be presentation of
>>>Wikipedia, the second one would be the talk about free software and
>>>projection of the movie Revolution OS.
>>>
>>>- In February we would have two presentations/speeches, but we didn't
>>>make materials yet.
>>>
>>>- In the first half of March Richard Stallman would come in Belgrade.
>>>(Not 100% sure, but we would know that in the next couple of days.)
>>>
>>>- In the second half of April Jimbo would be in Belgrade (I hope in
>>>Zagreb and Ljubljana, too).
>>>
>>>- In May we would organize free knowledge/free software
>>>(Wikipedia/GNU) festival in Belgrade.
>>>
>>
>>Go Milos go :) I am happy wikimedia Serbia goes full steam!
>>
>>Walter/Waerth

All good Milos !

Do not forget to remind visitors that a gift is welcome if they love the
project :-)

Ant


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 12/27/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> Someone experienced in litigation probably knows how to send a DMCA
> put-back notice (claiming fair use) as well.

Can one claim fair use in such a notice?  In any case, it's a more
legally risky move.

-Matt


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 12/26/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> geni wrote:
>
> >On 12/26/05, Rob <gamaliel8 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Brandt dug up an old webpage of mine, one which I
> >>assumed had been deleted by my alma mater.  I
> >>remembered the password and removed the pictures of
> >>myself and any personal information, and added a link
> >>to Google-Watch-Watch.  I guess that pissed him off,
> >>so now instead of linking to the page, Brandt has
> >>posted a copy of my page (prior to alterations) and
> >>the pictures on his own website. Advice on how to
> >>handle this would be much appreciated. Obviously this
> >>is a blantant copyright violation but I'm not sure
> >>what to do about this.
> >>
> >>
> >In theory see a lawyer who will chrage you to send warning letters.
> >
> A formal DMCA notice would be better idea.  A lawyer should not be
> needed for doing this.  A person like him, who is already experienced in
> litigation is more likely to treat lawyer letters as a joke.
>
> Ec

Someone experienced in litigation probably knows how to send a DMCA
put-back notice (claiming fair use) as well.

Anthony


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Brandt wishes to release personal details of
	allWikipedia admins

body:
"Tony Sidaway" <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:605709b90512241955n7b57615di75cc7abfd1aae215 at mail.gmail.com...
On 12/25/05, Violet/Riga
<violetriga at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think this is starting to go too far now.
> If you're taking this bozo seriously, it's definitely going too far.
> Ignore the fucker.

Easy for some to say.

I have an adopted daughter.

It is very easy to find the Usenet posts in which John Grubor and Steven
Boursy "labelled" me a "pedophile", actually a badge of honour, even if
somewhat dubiously gained (the most minor tweaking you could imagine, but
they didn't have a smaller weapon :-)

Can you imagine trying to explain to some robot Social Worker why I am named
as a "pedophile" and why they should simply ignore it?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
Matt Brown wrote:

>On 12/27/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>>Someone experienced in litigation probably knows how to send a DMCA
>>put-back notice (claiming fair use) as well.
>>
>>
>Can one claim fair use in such a notice?  In any case, it's a more
>legally risky move.
>
I don't see why they couldn't claim fair use, and certainly has the
right to issue a put-back notice. But we can't presume that he will do
that, because that would mean admitting defeat before we start.  In the
legal cat-and-mouse game you always want the other guy to do as much of
the work as possible.

Ec


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: CNN today

body:
Their website (http://money.cnn.com/ontv/inthemoney/) says that you can
order tapes (literally tapes, ie VHS/Beta/PAL) on this website... however it
doesn't list that program!

https://orion.fdch.com/forms/orcnn.html

Sounds like a slow news week, if they also covered "Bunnies do It's a
Wonderful Life".

Nick/Zanimum


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: CNN today


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Stable versions policy

body:
On 12/27/05, Amaurea <sigurdkn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Recently the concept of having stable versions of Wikipedia's pages
> has been gaining foothold rapidly. Most supporters of this idea
> portray this as a rather small change, which would help make Wikipedia
> more reliable and help it be taken more seriously in academic circles.
> It is understandable that this idea is tempting, since vandalism and
> decay of article has gotten a lot of focus recently, but I do not
> think that this is the easy, safe change many seem to think it is.

The rest of Amaurea's post is dead on.

But this is pretty exciting; the successful fork of wikipedia is only
a few years away...
wikinfo obviously isn't it, but their import utility is the right
start. need to build that functionality for any cc-licensed work; need
gfdl and cc to merge, etc.

wikipedia is still by and large a healthy community; there needs to be
more ossification, paranoia, hypocrisy and institutionalization before
the fork will become necessary.


from_name: Jonathan Leybovich

subject: [Foundation-l] fund drive, and e-gold revisited

body:
Here is a list of major credit card payment systems
the foundation could directly integrate with from a
discussion on the tech list last month:

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-December/032824.html

I suspect many of them would have much lower
transaction amount % fees than PayPal; however, these
will likely never be lower than 2% due to the fact
that the payee receives the funds immediately while
the card holder has a 20-30 day no-interest grace
period in which to pay back the amount.

>
> Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 07:56:24 -0800 (PST)
> From: Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] fund drive, and e-gold
> revisited
> To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List
> <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
>
[snip]
>
> There are dozens, if not hundreds, of other systems
> we could use. While I?m not completely
> satisfied with PayPal (they need to give us a price
> break; fees in the 4 to 5% range are closer in
> value to point-of-sale taxes than normal transaction
> fees) or MoneyBookers (not the easiest
> service to use), I do think that the two together
> fit our current needs. Thus, IMO, there is no
> pressing need to add another payment option at this
> time.
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year.
http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>Amaurea wrote:
><snip Nupedia comparison>
>
>
>
>>By marking a version of an article as stable, and presenting that
>>version to normal visitors, we are breaking down the coupling between
>>the number of readers and the number of editors.
>>
>No. This *might* happen only if the stable version becomes the default
>for anons.
>
Yes, this is part of the hypothetical conditions quoted above.

>>The whole point of a
>>wiki, and the key behind Wikipedia's incredible growth, is that every
>>reader is an editor, and in light of that it isn't a good idea to
>>create seperate views of an article for readers and editors. Any
>>reader reading the stable version instead of the current version will
>>be one less potential editor to improve the current version.
>>
>>
>>
>I don't know if you've seen my test page, but just below the title,
>there's a line "This is the stable version. The current working version
>is [[here]]".
>
>
That doesn't really change much if the stable version is the default.
Who's going to bother checking out the current working version that
isn't already a routine Wikipedia contributor? It's hard enough getting
a lot of visitors to click on the "edit" link when they _do_ see a
problem in need of fixing, if they have to also click on a link in order
to see the problem in the first place then I don't see how the situation
is likely to improve.

>No. Throw a switch in your user settings, and the haunting will go away ;-)
>(Note that this is not implemented yet in my version; neither is showing
>the stable version by default.)
>
>
That's how we should start the experiment, IMO. Change as little as
possible with each new step.

>We already *have* created an encyclopedia. Now our focus has to shift
>towards /being/ an encyclopedia. Our ways have to change accordingly.
>
>
I still disagree with this. We've created an encyclopedia once I can go
out and buy a copy for my shelves (either on DVD or paper-bound,
whichever). Wikipedia as it exists today is still very much a work in
progress despite having a number of quite nice articles. And I think it
should always _be_ a work in progress. There are plenty of other sites
that display Wikipedia's content, but only one site that _creates_
Wikipedia's content. Don't do anything that hinders that function.


from_name: Steven Ericsson Zenith

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Transparency

body:
A brief contrarian point of view.  If Wikipedia is to succeed in any
measure to move beyond its tabloid status then transparency is essential.

That is, every admin must necessarily have their identity exposed and it
surprises me somewhat to see the resistance here - and I find it hard to
justify.

Authority (in the sense of an encyclopedia) comes because the
individuals involved are transparent and respected in some conventional
sense.  Hidden identity provides no basis for authority since the
landscape of individuals is unknown and the changes to that landscape
impossible to track. Such that, even if a group of anonymous admins is
able to command respect for a period, there is no guarantee, no way to
judge, that a group of admins have the same capacity in the future.
Indeed, if the current group of admins do manage to establish public
confidence then the public is immediately at risk since that group can
be opaquely usurped.

The short end is that for the long term welfare of Wikipedia admins -
all contributors - need to be transparent - otherwise Wikipedia is
simply a propaganda engine.

That the journal Nature should give any support to the scientific
articles in Wikipedia is a cause of great concern - since Wikipedia is
not a specialist encyclopedia they have by inference given unfounded
credence to the whole.

With respect,
Steven
--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stevenzenith


subject: [WikiEN-l] On Transparency

body:
What makes admins so special? A lot of them are mostly
janitors. Non-admins do the majority of content edits,
which is what Wikipedia's credibility is based on. Why
not require a real name, address, email, and phone
number to register? That would do more for
accountability for contributions.

I don't find it hard to believe at all that admins are
showing "resistance" to having their identity
revealed. There are a lot of wack jobs on the Internet
that could use that information for nefarious
purposes. Frankly, when revealing one's real name
becomes a requirement for adminship, I'll ask to be
desysopped.

-Hermione1980

--- Steven Ericsson Zenith <steven at semeiosis.com>
wrote:

> A brief contrarian point of view.  If Wikipedia is
> to succeed in any
> measure to move beyond its tabloid status then
> transparency is essential.
>
> That is, every admin must necessarily have their
> identity exposed and it
> surprises me somewhat to see the resistance here -
> and I find it hard to
> justify.
>
> Authority (in the sense of an encyclopedia) comes
> because the
> individuals involved are transparent and respected
> in some conventional
> sense.  Hidden identity provides no basis for
> authority since the
> landscape of individuals is unknown and the changes
> to that landscape
> impossible to track. Such that, even if a group of
> anonymous admins is
> able to command respect for a period, there is no
> guarantee, no way to
> judge, that a group of admins have the same capacity
> in the future.
> Indeed, if the current group of admins do manage to
> establish public
> confidence then the public is immediately at risk
> since that group can
> be opaquely usurped.
>
> The short end is that for the long term welfare of
> Wikipedia admins -
> all contributors - need to be transparent -
> otherwise Wikipedia is
> simply a propaganda engine.
>
> That the journal Nature should give any support to
> the scientific
> articles in Wikipedia is a cause of great concern -
> since Wikipedia is
> not a specialist encyclopedia they have by inference
> given unfounded
> credence to the whole.
>
> With respect,
> Steven
> --
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Stevenzenith
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about.
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: which html constructs are evil

references:
<87ek49j5y6.fsf@mat.ucm.es> <43A9AE1D.4090903@thingy.apana.org.au>
	<43AA9D5A.3060706@telus.net>

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Thursday 22 December 2005 13:34, Ray Saintonge wrote:
> David Gerard wrote:
> >The advantage of wikitext for mere humans is that it starts working as
> >plain text, then you can add wikitext soup to it and you still get a
> >result that nontechnical people can read and write.
> >
> >Wikitext is formally horrible, but seems to work with human editors.
> >Wikipedia is one of those wonderful pieces of technology that works
> > for technophobes *and* advanced geeks (e.g. Mac OS X, LiveJournal,
> > Firefox) - which I think should be a goal of all programs where
> > possible, btw.
> >
> >People learn wikitext like learning a language. They try stuff and it
> >gets meaning across. They learn more and it gets more of the meaning
> >across. They gain proficiency as they go.
>
> This is perhaps one of the factors in Wikipedia's success.
>
> For people who want to write text only the only essential wiki
> knowledge may be to add an extra carriage return to separate
> paragraphs.

And this is also the reason I "invented"  a new "language" for my graph
extension - the graphviz code is a language that is written by
programmers for programmers, e.g. "normal" people struggle a lot with it.

I really like the easyness of the wiki syntax and the table code in wiki
is IMHO much better than the dreaded "<table>" tag soup you usually end
up.

My  ? 0.02,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Dec 27 12:59:39 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "Eat, eat, eat, eat the delicious sandwich!" -- Elan the Bard (Order of
 the Stick)

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from_name: Amaurea

body:
Recently the concept of having stable versions of Wikipedia's pages
has been gaining foothold rapidly. Most supporters of this idea
portray this as a rather small change, which would help make Wikipedia
more reliable and help it be taken more seriously in academic circles.
It is understandable that this idea is tempting, since vandalism and
decay of article has gotten a lot of focus recently, but I do not
think that this is the easy, safe change many seem to think it is.

Wikipedia was started as an alternative to the stagnating Nupedia,
which had the same goal as Wikipedia - to make a free encyclopedia -
but tried to do this through the traditional means of experts and peer
review. Nupedia failed because there were few editors, no fresh supply
of new editors, and difficult to make changes. Wikipedia's wiki model
changed that by making every reader an editor and making it easy for
them to edit, and after that followed an exponential increase in the
number of articles, which has lasted to this day. One explanation for
this could be as follows: For any encyclopedia it is reasonable to
assume that the number or readers is proportional to the number and
quality of articles. By making every reader an editor, Wikipedia added
a proportionality between the number of readers and the article
creation rate, that is: The rate of article creation became
proportional to the number of articles, a recipie for exponential
runaway growth.

By marking a version of an article as stable, and presenting that
version to normal visitors, we are breaking down the coupling between
the number of readers and the number of editors. The whole point of a
wiki, and the key behind Wikipedia's incredible growth, is that every
reader is an editor, and in light of that it isn't a good idea to
create seperate views of an article for readers and editors. Any
reader reading the stable version instead of the current version will
be one less potential editor to improve the current version. One could
hope that people who find faults in the stable version would go to the
draft version to implement improvements there, but simply saying that
a version is stable will discourage edits, and people who still want
to make edits will be further discouraged by those edits not being
seen by the main public, but hidden away in some draft version of the
article. Thus, this will discourage positive edits for the same reason
it will discourage vandalism: It becomes slightly harder to edit, and
more importantly, the results aren't immediatly visible on the main
version of the article (the one most people read).

Regarding vandalism and bad pages, the wiki answer to these is that we
have lots of people to fix those problems for the same reason the
poblems are there. There will be more vandalism the bigger Wikipedia
grows, but so will the number of people who can spot and fix that
vandalism, for the same reason. This is inherently scalable, so there
should be no need for any change the way we deal with this just
because the wiki has reached a given size. Wikipedia is by no means
finished. There are still millions of articles waiting to be created,
fleshed out and polished, and many already existing articles that need
to be improved. We should therefore continue to make our readers edit
our articles. Not because the wiki process is sacred in itself, but
because it has proven to be the fastest way to create an encyclopedia.

PS: The quality isn't a big problem according to some sources, such as
http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html

PPS: I apologize for breaking the thread, but I wasn't on the list when
it started, so I couldn't find a way to tie this message to the
thread.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] A (late) Wikidata/Wiktionary Christmas present

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> we now have our first read-only prototype of Ultimate Wiktionary /
>> Wikidata, using a subset of the final UW design.
>
> Sweet!

I went through doing some preliminary merging of wikidata code with CVS HEAD on
the plane, will go over it in more detail this week to see how soon we can go
ahead and take the namespace manager live.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Adrenalin wrote:
> A recent pretty large discussion about this issue was made, and about
> everyone agreed what current mo. all in cyrillic must be moved to
> mo-cyr. and on mo. should remain only two links to ro. and to mo-cyr.
> On the main page wikipedia.org our language name are still in cyrillic
> "????????????".
>
> Or maybe there is another list, a higher instance where i can call ?
> Where is present some administrators of wikipedia who can take some
> real actions ?

Give me a list of pages that have to be moved, and items that have to be
changed, and I'll run it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [Wikitech-l] New committer

body:
I've added Rob Church to the MediaWiki project on SourceForge so he can make
direct commits to CVS; he's been doing a lot of handy clean-up patches lately
and might or might not volunteer to rewrite the installer someday...

While Rob learns the ropes, don't forget to check recent checkins before
updating the live site. Actually, don't forget to do that anyway, sometimes I
break things too. ;)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Michelle Kinney

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Transparency

body:
Steven Ericsson Zenith wrote:

> A brief contrarian point of view.  If Wikipedia is to succeed in any
> measure to move beyond its tabloid status then transparency is essential.
> That is, every admin must necessarily have their identity exposed and
> it surprises me somewhat to see the resistance here - and I find it
> hard to justify.
>

Ah, but admins don't control the content, do they?  In just a quick
glance at several of the encyclopedias I have lying around, none of them
mention who wrote each article, most don't source their facts and many
don't have editors listed by name anywhere in the set.  What makes
Wikipedia so special?

Jareth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jareth)


from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Transparency

body:
--- charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
> Caveat emptor still applies.  People shouldn't
believe everything in the
> newspapers, nor on Wikipedia.  That doesn't make
newspapers or Wikipedia
> useless.

True, but until the recent Nature comparison study,
Wikipedia had been plagued both by an external
anecdotal criticism fad and by an equally baseless
internal inferiority complex disguised as
'establishing stability.' (Wherefore art thou,
Wikifaith?)

For those who still think Wikipedia's overall quality
is lacking, setting sights on Britannica was (in 20/20
hindsight) setting the sights too low.

stevertigo

__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about.
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com


from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki developer map, add yourself to it

body:
I always though it was kind of nice that the OpenBSD project had a
world map of its developers on their website
(http://www.openbsd.org/goals.html) and I always meant to make one
like it for MediaWiki, maybe based on the NASA blue marble data where
people could enter the coordinates where they resided and they would
be added automatically.

Luckily, I don't have to do that, I stumbled across a website that
allows you to create maps like this for your group, you can access it
at http://www.frappr.com and our group is at
http://www.frappr.com/mediawikidevelopers , there's an RSS feed of it
too for those that are interested:
http://www.frappr.com/?a=rss&gname=mediawikidevelopers

So if you're listed as a MediaWiki developer at
http://sourceforge.net/project/memberlist.php?group_id=34373 or feel
that you've added significantly to the development of MediaWiki please
add yourself to the map, it's free & takes under a minute, it would be
interesting to see our distribution across the globe.

I'm sending this to wikitech-l and to everyone listed as a member of
the project at sourceforge (except Zwinger, since he's been .. uh..
dead for ~400 years), please don't kill me;)


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Very odd goings-on concerning Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent
	material

body:
A Snoop Dogg bootleg or unofficial compilation came up for undeletion
recently, having obviously been deleted in error at AfD.  I undeleted
it and so did David Gerard.  Now someone has listed every single
article on unofficial Snoop Dogg albums for deletion--an active that I
can only describe as extremely stupid.

An attempt to merge the material--nearly all of which can be verified
on official websites of reputable companies is now subject to a
deletion listing.  A similar, though, smaller, campaign centers around
the unofficial released of Snoop Dogg, and involves listing for
deletion among other items an article about the work "50 Cent is the
future", which was one of two independent works produced by 50 Cent
when he lost his record deal and is credited by 50 Cent himself with
bringing his work to Eminem, who signed him to Shady Records.

I fear that this constitutes a deliberate campaign to remove from
Wikipedia a significant material about major rap artists.  I find the
actions in trying to remove this important material vindictive and
impossible to explain.

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Welcome to tha chuuch mixtape vol.1

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Snoop_Dogg_minor_albums%2C_bootlegs_and_mixtapes


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Very odd goings-on concerning Snoop Dogg and 50 Cent
	material

body:
On 12/27/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Welcome to tha chuuch mixtape vol.1

Here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Welcome_to_tha_chuuch_mixtape_vol.1
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Snoop_Dogg_minor_albums%2C_bootlegs_and_mixtapes
>

And the Snoop Dogg listing is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Guess_Who%27s_Back%3F

Utterly beyond belief.


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Transparency

body:
On 12/27/05, Steven Ericsson Zenith <steven at semeiosis.com> wrote:
> That is, every admin must necessarily have their identity exposed and it
> surprises me somewhat to see the resistance here - and I find it hard to
> justify.

If that were the case, I would not be an admin. I value my online
privacy and as someone who is not yet secure in an academic career I
would loathe if people could Google my real name and come up with
results of me bickering with cranks online about any of the various
subjects I end up bickering with cranks over. Adminship is supposed to
be "no big deal" -- a broom and mop -- and there's no reason for good
editors to give up their anonymous status, if they should desire to
keep it, in order to take on a few more janitorial abilities.

> Authority (in the sense of an encyclopedia) comes because the
> individuals involved are transparent and respected in some conventional
> sense.

That isn't how Wikipedia has ever established its authority. That is
in part why it is such a unique and wonderfully problematic entity. We
don't rely on the reputations of our experts, we don't even require a
full name. The authority stems from the belief that with enough eyes,
any factual error is shallow. In practice it doesn't work out
perfectly, as we all well know, but that's all part of the game. I
don't think throwing around normalizing statements about how
encyclopedias in general establish authority is going to be very
applicable to a project whose entire modus operandi is subvert the
traditional information model of an encyclopedia.

> Hidden identity provides no basis for authority since the
> landscape of individuals is unknown and the changes to that landscape
> impossible to track.

Again, Wikipedia's authority has never and should never be laid in
individuals. The entire point was to make it so that anyone, no matter
how uncredentialed or autodidactic or even generally ignorant, can
take a stab at increasing the world's knowledge. And be reverted by
people of greater or even lesser knowledge. With the hope that it will
all work out well in the end.

Our authority, in an ideal system, comes from our ability to cite our
sources, to fact check, and to trust one another on the basis of long
and continued contributions.

> Such that, even if a group of anonymous admins is
> able to command respect for a period, there is no guarantee, no way to
> judge, that a group of admins have the same capacity in the future.

That's a problem? Perhaps it would be a more ideal world if people who
formerly had trust and respect were occasionally audited.

> Indeed, if the current group of admins do manage to establish public
> confidence then the public is immediately at risk since that group can
> be opaquely usurped.

"Public confidence"? What public? What confidence?

> The short end is that for the long term welfare of Wikipedia admins -
> all contributors - need to be transparent - otherwise Wikipedia is
> simply a propaganda engine.

Joseph Goebbels happily gave his full name whenever he delivered
nonsense. What you are talking about is identification, not
transparency. Wikipedia is one of the most transparent enterprises on
the entire internet -- it is easy to see in an instant everything a
contributor has done, everything they have ever squabbled about, every
time they change their mind and any place they might have been
discussing a change before it was actually made. It is an easy task to
show ever omission, every purposefully false addition, every bit of
slander, as it went down, who did it, at what time, at what place.

Encyclopedia Brittanica, by contrast, is a system with no transparency
whatsoever. Oh, you can match names to articles. But that doesn't get
you very much, in the end. And when EB's errors were pointed out by
Nature, did they blame those individual authors? No. They blamed the
encyclopedia as a whole. The same as they did with us. In the end,
knowing the authors didn't change a thing.

> That the journal Nature should give any support to the scientific
> articles in Wikipedia is a cause of great concern - since Wikipedia is
> not a specialist encyclopedia they have by inference given unfounded
> credence to the whole.

I don't think anybody made the mistake to think that Nature's review
gave a completely clean bill of health to the entire encyclopedia, and
the articles they covered were not strictly scientific, but included
historical and biographical entries as well reviewed by academic
historians, not scientists. (The difference between a historian's and
a scientist's approach is quite apparent if you look at the error
checklist for the Mendeleev article, done by a well-respected
biographer of Mendeleev who currently teaches history at Princeton.)

FF


from_name: Magnus Manske

body:
Amaurea wrote:
<snip Nupedia comparison>

>
>By marking a version of an article as stable, and presenting that
>version to normal visitors, we are breaking down the coupling between
>the number of readers and the number of editors.
>
No. This *might* happen only if the stable version becomes the default
for anons. Then again, it might not.

When Nupedia didn't live up to its expectations, Wikipedia was started.
It was an experiment, and it worked, so we kept it.

/That/ is the spirit of the project. If something is not right, try
something to fix it. If it works, greak, keep it; if it does not work,
so what? Anyone remember the "Nupedia Chalkboard"? It was a wiki to
initiate articles for Nupedia. It is not around anymore.

Something is wrong in wikipedia country, not with creating articles, but
with being an encyclopedia. With provding *reasonably reliable*
information to people. People who don't know wikipedia, and probably
don't really care about how the article they are reading came into
being. They want it to be correct and complete, period.

>The whole point of a
>wiki, and the key behind Wikipedia's incredible growth, is that every
>reader is an editor, and in light of that it isn't a good idea to
>create seperate views of an article for readers and editors. Any
>reader reading the stable version instead of the current version will
>be one less potential editor to improve the current version.
>
I don't know if you've seen my test page, but just below the title,
there's a line "This is the stable version. The current working version
is [[here]]".

>One could
>hope that people who find faults in the stable version would go to the
>draft version to implement improvements there, but simply saying that
>a version is stable will discourage edits, and people who still want
>to make edits will be further discouraged by those edits not being
>seen by the main public, but hidden away in some draft version of the
>article. Thus, this will discourage positive edits for the same reason
>it will discourage vandalism: It becomes slightly harder to edit,
>
No. Throw a switch in your user settings, and the haunting will go away ;-)
(Note that this is not implemented yet in my version; neither is showing
the stable version by default.)

> and
>more importantly, the results aren't immediatly visible on the main
>version of the article (the one most people read).
>
>
So?

>Regarding vandalism and bad pages, the wiki answer to these is that we
>have lots of people to fix those problems for the same reason the
>poblems are there. There will be more vandalism the bigger Wikipedia
>grows, but so will the number of people who can spot and fix that
>vandalism, for the same reason.
>
The real problem isn't outright vandalism. The problem is the
Steigentaler incident type. Wrong information, inserted by accident or
by purpose. A stable version can prevent this. The current system has
shown it can't, not in all cases.

>This is inherently scalable, so there
>should be no need for any change the way we deal with this just
>because the wiki has reached a given size. Wikipedia is by no means
>finished. There are still millions of articles waiting to be created,
>fleshed out and polished, and many already existing articles that need
>to be improved. We should therefore continue to make our readers edit
>our articles. Not because the wiki process is sacred in itself, but
>because it has proven to be the fastest way to create an encyclopedia.
>
>
We already *have* created an encyclopedia. Now our focus has to shift
towards /being/ an encyclopedia. Our ways have to change accordingly.

Magnus


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 12/27/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> A Snoop Dogg bootleg or unofficial compilation came up for undeletion
> recently, having obviously been deleted in error at AfD.  I undeleted
> it and so did David Gerard.  Now someone has listed every single
> article on unofficial Snoop Dogg albums for deletion--an active that I
> can only describe as extremely stupid.

This is one of the rare cases where [[WP:POINT]] can be quoted usefully.

--
Sam


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] Day 12 Fund Drive Report

body:
Copied from:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fund_drives/2005/Q4/Day_12
--------------------------------------------------------------

=Tuesday 27 December=

A total of 293 donations were made through PayPal on '''Day 12''', yielding the equivalent of
$8,333.09 USD; an increase of $2520 over Day 11. The average donation this day was $28.44.

A total of about $37.62 was donated through MoneyBookers since the last update, bringing that
total to $810.30. Still no update on mail and Dexia donations.

:Grand total at end of day: '''$122,396.29'''

Breakdown of Day 12 PayPal donations:

 AUD    138.84    (104.20 USD)
 CAD 	369.82 	  (304.33 USD)
 EUR 	1,652.61  (2,007.41 USD)
 GBP 	196.25 	  (351.94 USD)
 JPY 	49,128.00 (443.87 USD)
 USD 	5,121.35
 Total 	8,333.09 USD

Copied from: http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/2005q4/index.php/2005-12-27/report/

==Special thanks to those who gave large donations==
An anonymous donor gave the largest donation on this day; $500 USD. Denis Bider gave $365.24, the
second highest amount. There were also many donors who gave the equivalent of about $100 or more
(listed in no particular order); Emil Vlad, Roberta W. Orr, David Tam, John Gerbracht, Dwayne
Pelletier, S Page, Reg Handford, Dallan Quass, and 11 anonymous donors.

:<small>Note: While large donations are great, it should be noted that about 70% of all the money
donated to the Wikimedia Foundation comes from donations that are the equivalent of $50 or less
and the average donation is about $25.</small>

==Selected donor comments==
Let's all thank everybody who donated on this day by reading their comments.

:Full listing at: http://fundraising.wikimedia.org/2005q4/index.php/2005-12-27/detail/

*"Wikepedia is the most uesful site next to Google" by anonymous
*"les autres sources de savoir sont toues en train de devenir payantes" by anonymous
*"Macht weiter so! Es ist garnicht so einfach ohne Bezahlung richtige Informationen zu bekommen."
by Peter Hammerl
*"Because I know of no better place online" by anonymous
*"To the most important WWW project ever. Well thought and well made" by anonymous
*"If I have a question or an problem - Wikiedia is the solution!! Yes this is the best of the
web!!" by Andreas Galster
*"Il gesto e' piccolo ma trovo giusta dare una mano penso che anche una piccola offerta sia utile
speriamo che diventi sempre migliore .Continuate cosi'." by alessandro motta
*"Yeah, keep it going, keep it coming ! Support a great cause!" by Iain Davidson
*"THE best online source of knowledge; unsurpassed in quality and content!!" by Roberta W. Orr
*"Here's to the only medium that lets me fix other people's mistakes immediately." by denis bider

*"The technical information available on this site is incredibly thorough and useful." by Randall
Huggins
*"Wikipedia makes boring school assignments so easy!" by Marcus Kaplan
*"It's wonderful to be able to enjoy such quality information in such a clean free way. Thank you
all!" by anonymous
*"Roll out http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Semantic_MediaWiki !" by S Page
*"Happy to support this excellent project. You are fundamentally changing the way the world gets
its information. : )" by anonymous
*"One of the greatest sites ever. Wikipedia is the first place I go to learn about something." by
Jonathan Ryan
*"This may be the best thing ever." by Jason Fialkoff

Some of my personal favorites:
*"Wikipedia is better than corn chips, and I really like corn chips." by Chris Kilgour
*"Give until it hurts. That is the only way to free knowlege" by Tarek Fatah
*"Wikipedia is to the 21st Century what the library of Alexandria was to antiquity" by anonymous
*"Once we dreamed The Net would put knowledge at our fingertips. Now, finally, it's true." by Joe
Moross
*"Worth so much more than I could ever give..." by John Eubank
*"Together we can build something great." by anonymous
*"Love this thing" by Hiver F Ambroise

-- Daniel Mayer

__________________________________
Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year.
http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/


subject: [Foundation-l] Day 12 Fund Drive Report


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Day 12 Fund Drive Report


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] On Transparency

body:
 "Steven Ericsson Zenith" wrote

> That is, every admin must necessarily have their identity exposed and it
> surprises me somewhat to see the resistance here - and I find it hard to
> justify.

I'm surprised that you're surprised.  I use my real name, but I respect the
reasons others do not.
>
> Authority (in the sense of an encyclopedia) comes because the individuals
> involved are transparent and respected in some conventional sense.  Hidden
> identity provides no basis for authority since the landscape of
> individuals is unknown and the changes to that landscape impossible to
> track. Such that, even if a group of anonymous admins is able to command
> respect for a period, there is no guarantee, no way to judge, that a group
> of admins have the same capacity in the future. Indeed, if the current
> group of admins do manage to establish public confidence then the public
> is immediately at risk since that group can be opaquely usurped.

> The short end is that for the long term welfare of Wikipedia admins - all
> contributors - need to be transparent - otherwise Wikipedia is simply a
> propaganda engine.

I don't follow you at all.  We should put certain things in the disclaimer,
against giving WP undue authority.  But if we had all real-name
contributions, we should have to put almost exactly those things in, anyway.
>
> That the journal Nature should give any support to the scientific articles
> in Wikipedia is a cause of great concern - since Wikipedia is not a
> specialist encyclopedia they have by inference given unfounded credence to
> the whole.

Concern to whom?  What kind of support?  They found a number of _mistakes_.
The fact is that Britannica has similar mistakes, just no so numerous.

Caveat emptor still applies.  People shouldn't believe everything in the
newspapers, nor on Wikipedia.  That doesn't make newspapers or Wikipedia
useless.

Charles


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

>I don't know if you've seen my test page, but just below the title,
>there's a line "This is the stable version. The current working version
>is [[here]]".
>
>
Perhaps choosing words that less drastically separate the two versions
will make it psychologically easier to bridge the gap that makes readers
into editors.

"This is the public version. An updated, editable draft is [[here]]."

I think this would still get across the point that one is more stable
and reliable, without creating an atmosphere that denigrates the ongoing
process.

--Michael Snow


body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> Perhaps choosing words that less drastically separate the two versions
> will make it psychologically easier to bridge the gap that makes
> readers into editors.
>
> "This is the public version. An updated, editable draft is [[here]]."
>
> I think this would still get across the point that one is more stable
> and reliable, without creating an atmosphere that denigrates the
> ongoing process.

Well, it does imply that the "stable" version isn't public.

Why can't it be "This is a work in progress. An older version of more
reliable quality can be found [[here]]"?


subject: [WikiEN-l] off on holiday next Wed

body:
On 12/26/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
> geni wrote:
> > On 12/25/05, David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:
>
> >>See [[Whitby Gothic Weekend]] - this is a special event being put
> >>together by someone who runs one of the side events of that.
>
> > Needs pics.
>
>
> http://reddragdiva.fotopic.net/

Oh a weekend of bitable booby babes in corsets!


from_name: Petko YOTOV

subject: [Wikitech-l] Live Grabber of Wikipedia content

body:
http://www.hockeyliving.com/info/Special:Recentchanges

Not only sucks the content, but also links directly to the images at
http://upload.wikimedia.org/

-- [[:bg:User:5ko]]


from_name: Sam Spade

body:
How about:

(*warning, objectionable link*)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Deeceevoice

?

Sam Spade

On 12/27/05, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/27/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A Snoop Dogg bootleg or unofficial compilation came up for undeletion
> > recently, having obviously been deleted in error at AfD.  I undeleted
> > it and so did David Gerard.  Now someone has listed every single
> > article on unofficial Snoop Dogg albums for deletion--an active that I
> > can only describe as extremely stupid.
>
> This is one of the rare cases where [[WP:POINT]] can be quoted usefully.
>
> --
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 12/28/05, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> How about:
>
> (*warning, objectionable link*)

I'm tempted to pull [[WP:POINT]] on that one. That page has no place
on Wikipedia because it uses shock tactics to make a point--something
that is in fact ruthlessly excluded from the article space of
Wikipedia.

But I think people are getting tired of me being the one to stick my
neck out, so I'll let someone else do it.  Or not.


body:
Displaying vandalism instantaneously is the real problem and better work flow management will help
to mitigate that problem a great deal. Delayed edits for anons and new users will also help; even
going so far as preventing any edit by an anon or new user from being saved (and thus displayed)
until a trusted user has checked it for obvious vandalism. Many things can be used to minimize the
risk of showing obscene vandalism to readers. Let's at least *try* those before doing something
that will fundamentally change the character of the project.

We also need to make sure that live versions are clearly marked as the latest but unreviewed
version of articles. That readers need to be extra careful with those versions but at the same
time should not regard stable versions as infallible either.

If the stable designations is to mean anything, then the amount of review needed to get it will
ensure that stable versions will be, on average, significantly less current than the live version.

So showing stable versions by default will *kill* one of the best aspects of Wikipedia; its
ability to record history as it happens. It will also encourage needless forking of articles with
stable versions whenever its subject is in the news. Not because doing that is best for covering
the subject, but *only* to be able to report on the current events (no stable version = live
version is displayed).

For these reasons and others, I am **EXTREMELY** against hiding the live version behind stable
ones on Wikipedia. If that is what they want, then there will be plenty of mirrors that will only
display stable versions of our articles. Or they could simply choose to view stable versions by
default; either by clicking on a 'View stable version of this article' link for selected articles
or logging in and setting their preferences for that.

Hiding the live version behind a stable one is like cutting your nose off to spite your face. It
tries to solve a problem that does not exist; the Nature article showed that we are on the right
track with our current methods. We just need better ways to prevent the display of obvious
vandalism at any time (even a few seconds is unacceptable since a reader may have loaded the
article during that time). We *DO NOT* need to also hide all the other valid edits that go on.
Hiding those just to prevent the display of vandalism is a blunt tool that *will* cause more harm
than good. We need to focus on our real problems and surgically target solutions to combat them.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for having a stable article system in the mold of the old sifter idea.
It will be very useful as part of workflow management and attaining our goal to have print and
CD/DVD versions of our content. It will also be useful on the website since it gives readers the
option to cite slightly more trustworthy versions if they value that over having the most
up-to-date version that has only been checked to make sure there is no obvious vandalism.
Prominent links to the stable version should be provided along with easy ways for readers to
choose to only view those by default if they want. But the wikipedia.org website is where the
development of the content goes on. So that needs to be the focus. We just need better workflow
management to ensure we don't display obvious vandalism to readers.

Again, being current and up to date is our most lauded characteristic. Hiding the live version
behind stable ones kills that *unless* the 'stable' label is diluted and bastardized to only mean
'no obvious vandalism'.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! for Good - Make a difference this year.
http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/


body:
Not me, but I'm a bit unsure why you want to put it on the chopping block...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:RfAr#Tony_Sidaway

Sam Spade

On 12/28/05, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/28/05, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> > How about:
> >
> > (*warning, objectionable link*)
>
> I'm tempted to pull [[WP:POINT]] on that one. That page has no place
> on Wikipedia because it uses shock tactics to make a point--something
> that is in fact ruthlessly excluded from the article space of
> Wikipedia.
>
> But I think people are getting tired of me being the one to stick my
> neck out, so I'll let someone else do it.  Or not.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I think its free speech on her own user page. I don't think anyone
needs to apologize to her. As Martha Stewart says on Apprentice, "She
just didn't fit in", but we can do better in bringing racial
harassment to attention and reacting appropriately.

Fred

On Dec 28, 2005, at 6:43 AM, Sam Korn wrote:

> On 12/28/05, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> How about:
>>
>> (*warning, objectionable link*)
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Deeceevoice
>>
>> ?
>>
>
> That would also qualify as [[WP:POINT]].
>
> --
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Fwd: bug fix for media wiki : mail() function]

body:
Hi,

can someone more familiar with the mail feature please take care of this?

Thanks,
Magnus

Original mail from : Tony Weber

Message body follows:

Hi,

I recently installed Media Wiki, and email would not send.
It happens
because some email server refuse bare LF in the email body.  See
http://cr.yp.to/docs/smtplf.html.  Media Wiki code composes
email body
with bare LF "\n" instead of CRLF "\r\n".  The fix is
simple: replace
all bare LF with CRLF.

In the file UserMailer.php, add a line immediately after the
function
userMailer():

--- BEFORE ---

function userMailer( $to, $from, $subject, $body,
$replyto=false ) {
	global $wgUser, $wgSMTP, $wgOutputEncoding, $wgErrorString,
$wgEmergencyContact;

--- AFTER ---

function userMailer( $to, $from, $subject, $body,
$replyto=false ) {
	global $wgUser, $wgSMTP, $wgOutputEncoding, $wgErrorString,
$wgEmergencyContact;
	$body = preg_replace("/^(?=\n)|[^\r](?=\n)/", "\\0\r",
$body); //
replace LF with CRLF: see http://cr.yp.to/docs/smtplf.html

This regular expression matches all characters which precede
"\n" except
"\r".  It then replaces them with the original character
(\\0) plus
"\r".  As a special case, it also matches a "\n" as the
first character,
and replaces it with "\r\n".

Best regards,
Tony


body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

>
>>> The whole point of a
>>> wiki, and the key behind Wikipedia's incredible growth, is that every
>>> reader is an editor, and in light of that it isn't a good idea to
>>> create seperate views of an article for readers and editors. Any
>>> reader reading the stable version instead of the current version will
>>> be one less potential editor to improve the current version.
>>>
>> I don't know if you've seen my test page, but just below the title,
>> there's a line "This is the stable version. The current working version
>> is [[here]]".
>>
>>
> That doesn't really change much if the stable version is the default.
> Who's going to bother checking out the current working version that
> isn't already a routine Wikipedia contributor? It's hard enough
> getting a lot of visitors to click on the "edit" link when they _do_
> see a problem in need of fixing, if they have to also click on a link
> in order to see the problem in the first place then I don't see how
> the situation is likely to improve.

Well, the guy who just wants some info probably won't follow the link to
the work-in-progress page. But he got what he came for, namely some
(within the usual encyclopedia limits) trustworthy information. IMHO
that's a good thing.

For the rest of the people who come by, the curious ones with at least a
little time on their hands - they might even be less scared to edit if
they know it's not directly showing for many people! Editing a dedcated
work-in-progress version is IMHO less scary for a newcomer than "your
changes will be visible immediately"!

>
>> No. Throw a switch in your user settings, and the haunting will go
>> away ;-)
>> (Note that this is not implemented yet in my version; neither is showing
>> the stable version by default.)
>>
>>
> That's how we should start the experiment, IMO. Change as little as
> possible with each new step.

As I said before, the question is if we are primarily a wiki (show
work-in-progress first, with link to stable version) or an encyclopedia
(show the stable version first, and link to the work-in-progress).

>
>> We already *have* created an encyclopedia. Now our focus has to shift
>> towards /being/ an encyclopedia. Our ways have to change accordingly.
>>
>>
> I still disagree with this. We've created an encyclopedia once I can
> go out and buy a copy for my shelves (either on DVD or paper-bound,
> whichever). Wikipedia as it exists today is still very much a work in
> progress despite having a number of quite nice articles. And I think
> it should always _be_ a work in progress. There are plenty of other
> sites that display Wikipedia's content, but only one site that
> _creates_ Wikipedia's content. Don't do anything that hinders that
> function.

You can buy the German wikipedia on DVD. ?9,90 including a softcover
book about Wikipedia. This is the third release of this DVD, by the way.

Magnus


from_name: Ben Hallert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 29, Issue 231

body:
> (*warning, objectionable link*)
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Deeceevoice
(Bunch of people saying this is WP:POINT)

Out of curiousity, could someone specify how this is a WP:POINT
situation?  All of the objectionable content was put there by vandals,
not the user.  Also, it's in user space, and I'm not certain I see how
it actively disrupts Wikipedia.  By definition, can anything in user
space disrupt Wikipedia?  Please forgive me if I'm missing something,
but I've seen (and been guilty before receiving some education of)
throwing around WP:POINT casually without actually reading the
specifics of what it is.  It's more than 'making a point', it's
'disrupting wikipedia to make a point'.

Thanks!

Chairboy


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> "This is the public version. An updated, editable draft is [[here]]."
>
> Well, it does imply that the "stable" version isn't public.

Gah. I meant the editable version isn't public, of course.

*edit*


from_name: Adrenalin

body:
On 12/28/05, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com> wrote:
> Give me a list of pages that have to be moved, and items that have to be
> changed, and I'll run it.

Ok, in what format must be the list ? All the pages from mo. must to
be moved to .mo-cyr, on mo. will remain only two links to ro. and to
mo-cyr.(like on http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page), creation of
new pages must be closed, if you visit
http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/anyword you must be redirected to
Main_Page, also the Navigation items must in one script, the latin one
(Main Page must be changed to Pagina principal?, P. com. | ?. ???. ->
Portalul comunit??ii, Current events -> Evenimentele curente,
Schimb?ri recente | ???????? ??????? -> Schimb?ri recente, Random page
-> Pagin? aleatorie, Ajutor | ?????? -> Ajutor, Donations -> Dona?ii).
On main Wikipedia page(wikipedia.org) the language name must be
changed from "????????????" to "Moldoveneasc?" the link remain
http://mo.wikipedia.org.

In fact I'm also a web developer, isn't the pages stored in a database
? I imagine what each subdomain have it's own database, i think you
must just change the db name, and create a new mo.(with pages like i
said above).
Or i can make a script what will crawl all the page and I'll give you
all the pages name in which format you want.

Thank you, and sorry for disturbing you in holiday(hope at least in
your country is some snow, this winter in Moldova is too hot and all
the snow was gone).

--
Best Wishes,
Adrenalin.


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Petko YOTOV wrote:
> http://www.hockeyliving.com/info/Special:Recentchanges

Killed it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Billy Covington

subject: [Wikitech-l] Change red links color in Monobook?

body:
Hello!
I've been trying and trying, editing main.css for Monobook time and time
again, with no success. I would like to change my "red links" or rather,
"broken links" from red to #c2a32d, but when I change the css statement to:

a.new, #p-personal a.new {
    color: #c2a32d;
    font-weight: bold;
    }

it takes the "bold" but doesn't change the link color to the color I
specified. They stay red! Can anyone tell me what's up with this???

Thanks in advance for any help you might be able to offer.

--Billy


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Merry Christmas from Daniel Brandt (David Gerard)

body:
Thanks.  Two questions though: It sounds promising,
but would this really make any more difference than a
lawyer's c&d?  And how does one identify who is
upstream of Brandt?

David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>:

DMCA notice. Anyone from any country can send one of
these. To him and
two levels of upstream. Possibly as a press release as
well.

  http://www.holysmoke.org/ga/ga45.htm

- shows how [[Tilman Hausherr]] has successfully used
DMCA notices sent
from Germany when Scientology-related organisations
played fast and
loose with his photos.

The takedown provisions of the DMCA are a matter of
great concern, but
a
DMCA notice when someone is pretty damned clearly
*ripping off your
stuff* is IMO quite morally sound.

__________________________________________
Yahoo! DSL ? Something to write home about.
Just $16.99/mo. or less.
dsl.yahoo.com


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 12/28/05, Magnus Manske <magnus.manske at web.de> wrote:
> As I said before, the question is if we are primarily a wiki (show
> work-in-progress first, with link to stable version) or an encyclopedia
> (show the stable version first, and link to the work-in-progress).
>
That is the basic question.  The best way to answer the question is to
consider which one the current system is better at.  A new site can
always be created to accomplish the other task.

Anthony


from_name: Michael-Forest

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for the creation of a Norman Wikipedia

body:
Discussion for the creation of a Norman wikipedia has been held and approved
unanimously (10 in favour).  A link containing the discussion may be found
here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Approved_requests_for_new_languages#Norman_.2810_support.29

Request was originally for the creation of a J?rriais Wikipedia, but it has
been agreed upon to create a pan-Norman wiki, instead, using J?rriais as the
de facto standard.  There is currently a thriving test-wiki in Norman
(though at least 95% of the articles are in J?rriais).  I am requesting that
the Wikipedia be created at nor.wikipedia.org, or, if there is a problem
with this owing to nor's designation as the ISO code for Norwegian (though
there likely would be no wikipedia conflict; norwegian already has a
2-letter domain code), nrm.wikipedia.org would also work.

Thank you for your time,
Mich?-For?t


from_name: Effe iets anders

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiMusic

body:
Took me some time to answer, sorry for that.

2005/12/12, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
>
> On 12/12/05, effeietsanders-list <effeietsanders.l at gmail.com> wrote:
> > hi Gregory, thank you for your imput,
>
> No problem. I have also provided comment on the project talk page
> about copyright.
>
> > 2005/12/12, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > Saying Lilypond is hard is like saying wikitext is hard.
> > > Lilypond is just one step above ABC and much more expressive, anything
> > > else would not be sufficient to produce and maintain a professional
> > > quality score.
> > >
> > > I'm not convinced.
> >
> > In short: I want not only "proffessionals" to add their information, but
> > also people with little knowledge of music. This is very hard with
> Lilypond.
> > Please take a look into http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_IIfor
> > further discussion we already had.
>
> Can you make an example for me of the sort of valuable addition which
> would be performed by someone who could not handle lilypond?
>
> I haven't used lilypond in many many months, and never used it for
> much but here is the lilypond for mary had a little lamb in C  "E D C
> D E E E D D D E G G E D C D E E E E D D  E D C".
>
> I'm not sure how much simpler you can get! :)

We could add a function, for example, in whitch you have a keyboard on the
screen, so people able to play a sound, but cannot handle the notation, can
enter it into the database. I would like Lilypond to be the standardformat,
maybe I wasn't clear about that, but I want more options to edit it.
Dfferent interfaces, drag- and drop functions, so people with very little
knowledge of music can reproduce a sheet of music, if they have it on paper
to the screen etc.For you it might stay easier to edit directly into
lilypond, but I think there are a lot of people not able to, and I would
love this project to be as open as a wikipedia. Possibly the restriction
could be editing the sheets, that could possibly be resptricted to a certain
group of users.

And further: The Wikimusic I have in mind is not just sheet. It's also text,
plain text (as for the anthems now in wikisource and/or wikipedia) and
information *about* the music, so written in XXXX by YYYY, interpreation
etc. (information now found in wikipedia sometimes as well. But that belongs
as well in this kind of database. But I can think that some information
wouldn't fit in WIkipedia, but would be wanted in a Wikimusic.) but also
playeble music. So if someone can play piano, (s)he can play it, record it,
and upload it. I'd love it to be multiple versions, one with piano, one with
violin, maybe in different qualities. That are in my view the keys for a
succesfull wikimusic.

> > Most people qualified to edit such work would be able to visually
> > > qualify such changes.. How could you expect to help out if you can't
> > > read music?  For such a project all changes should be clearly
> > > explained. I don't see the problem with regular wiki procedures.
> >
> > If there come a lot of edits, it'll be hard to determine if a edit is
> okey
> > or not. I'm not saying it has to be done the way I mentioned, but that
> we
> > have to think about it.
>
> If we demand that the scores be accurate and true, we can ask people
> to justify their edits.
> If we are only asking that they sound good then there isn't a clear
> model for success in the Wiki world.  I've yet to see proof that
> Wiki's are a scaleable medium for material where there is not a set of
> fairly easy objective criteria.

Asking to justify will be hard, just as in Wikipedia it is already hard.
Asking with every edit for justification will be the neckshot for a starting
project.  But as there is this newfunction in the software, semiprotection,
that might be a good way to semiprotect automatically all sheets, with
(maybe) the exemption of the original uploader? Just some policythings to
think about.

> > There is already a great public domain score site, Mutopia. Tell us
> > > why what you propose would be worth anyones time when mutopia already
> > > exists?
> >
> > There are even more small projects on the web, and the few I found,
> probably
> > not even 10 % of them, don't have the infrastucture I would like to see
> in a
> > wikimusic-like project. For example, they seem to have no talkpages,
> they
> > seem to have no recent changes, they seem to have no "real music" files.
> > They don't have possibilities for entering musin in an easy way as well,
> nor
> > a way to find the music you search, as a non-musician.
>
> True, Mutopia lacks performances... But it is not easy to get people
> to work on those in any case. They have also worked out much of the
> complex legal waters.
>
> I don't see how talk pages would be all that useful.. We hardly use
> them for images....
>
> Would music really see much fluid collaborative editing?

I think talkpages will be usefull, because this will not be a imagedatabank.
There will be more. There will be four kinds of data in every "entrence", at
least (if it's a perfect "article"), and also information about, so
discussion will be wanted. If you want justifications, you need talkpages.
You can't discuss through summarylines, as some people think... ;-)

> I just hope so much that the music will no longer be limited to a small
> > group of people, that everybody can enjoy it. I hope so much that if I
> have
> > a tune in my head, and I want to find out whitch one it is, how it is
> > calles, and who composed it, I can easely find it. Through a WikiMusic.
>
> Searching for 'tunes' is a hard subject. It is not at all remotely
> solved. Nothing you've proposed in Wikimusic will help people find
> some melody they half remember.

I saw it on some other websites already happening. you could add a Parsons'
code in the mediawiki. for more information about that: see the projectpage.

> I really recommend you to take a look at
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_II , because some of the
> > things you mentioned are already discussed over there. (As well as some
> > legal issues). If you think there might be some problems, please add
> them.
>
> I have. :)
>
great :)

i hope you understand me well: there has to be done a lot of things before
such a project can start, because there are needed a lot of additions in the
sftware, as i see it. I sincerely hope that the "technicians" will be
looking to those points as well, which changes might have to be made, etc.
That's an area I can't work on, as I have very little understanding of the
complex MediaWiki-software.

Greetings, Effeietsanders


from_name: effeietsanders-list

subject: [Wikitech-l] WikiMusic

body:
Took me some time to answer, sorry for that. (lots of things to do in
december :P)

2005/12/12, Gregory Maxwell < gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
>
> On 12/12/05, effeietsanders-list <effeietsanders.l at gmail.com> wrote:
> > hi Gregory, thank you for your imput,
>
> No problem. I have also provided comment on the project talk page
> about copyright.
>
> > 2005/12/12, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:
> > >
> > > Saying Lilypond is hard is like saying wikitext is hard.
> > > Lilypond is just one step above ABC and much more expressive, anything
>
> > > else would not be sufficient to produce and maintain a professional
> > > quality score.
> > >
> > > I'm not convinced.
> >
> > In short: I want not only "proffessionals" to add their information, but
>
> > also people with little knowledge of music. This is very hard with
> Lilypond.
> > Please take a look into http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_II
> for
> > further discussion we already had.
>
> Can you make an example for me of the sort of valuable addition which
> would be performed by someone who could not handle lilypond?
>
> I haven't used lilypond in many many months, and never used it for
> much but here is the lilypond for mary had a little lamb in C  "E D C
> D E E E D D D E G G E D C D E E E E D D  E D C".
>
> I'm not sure how much simpler you can get! :)

We could add a function, for example, in whitch you have a keyboard on the
screen, so people able to play a sound, but cannot handle the notation, can
enter it into the database. I would like Lilypond to be the standardformat,
maybe I wasn't clear about that, but I want more options to edit it.
Dfferent interfaces, drag- and drop functions, so people with very little
knowledge of music can reproduce a sheet of music, if they have it on paper
to the screen etc.For you it might stay easier to edit directly into
lilypond, but I think there are a lot of people not able to, and I would
love this project to be as open as a wikipedia. Possibly the restriction
could be editing the sheets, that could possibly be resptricted to a certain
group of users.

And further: The Wikimusic I have in mind is not just sheet. It's also text,
plain text (as for the anthems now in wikisource and/or wikipedia) and
information *about* the music, so written in XXXX by YYYY, interpreation
etc. (information now found in wikipedia sometimes as well. But that belongs
as well in this kind of database. But I can think that some information
wouldn't fit in WIkipedia, but would be wanted in a Wikimusic.) but also
playeble music. So if someone can play piano, (s)he can play it, record it,
and upload it. I'd love it to be multiple versions, one with piano, one with
violin, maybe in different qualities. That are in my view the keys for a
succesfull wikimusic.

> > Most people qualified to edit such work would be able to visually
> > > qualify such changes.. How could you expect to help out if you can't
> > > read music?  For such a project all changes should be clearly
> > > explained. I don't see the problem with regular wiki procedures.
> >
> > If there come a lot of edits, it'll be hard to determine if a edit is
> okey
> > or not. I'm not saying it has to be done the way I mentioned, but that
> we
> > have to think about it.
>
> If we demand that the scores be accurate and true, we can ask people
> to justify their edits.
> If we are only asking that they sound good then there isn't a clear
> model for success in the Wiki world.  I've yet to see proof that
> Wiki's are a scaleable medium for material where there is not a set of
> fairly easy objective criteria.

Asking to justify will be hard, just as in Wikipedia it is already hard.
Asking with every edit for justification will be the neckshot for a starting
project.  But as there is this newfunction in the software, semiprotection,
that might be a good way to semiprotect automatically all sheets, with
(maybe) the exemption of the original uploader? Just some policythings to
think about.

> > There is already a great public domain score site, Mutopia. Tell us
> > > why what you propose would be worth anyones time when mutopia already
> > > exists?
> >
> > There are even more small projects on the web, and the few I found,
> probably
> > not even 10 % of them, don't have the infrastucture I would like to see
> in a
> > wikimusic-like project. For example, they seem to have no talkpages,
> they
> > seem to have no recent changes, they seem to have no "real music" files.
> > They don't have possibilities for entering musin in an easy way as well,
> nor
> > a way to find the music you search, as a non-musician.
>
> True, Mutopia lacks performances... But it is not easy to get people
> to work on those in any case. They have also worked out much of the
> complex legal waters.
>
> I don't see how talk pages would be all that useful.. We hardly use
> them for images....
>
> Would music really see much fluid collaborative editing?

I think talkpages will be usefull, because this will not be a imagedatabank.
There will be more. There will be four kinds of data in every "entrence", at
least (if it's a perfect "article"), and also information about, so
discussion will be wanted. If you want justifications, you need talkpages.
You can't discuss through summarylines, as some people think... ;-)

> I just hope so much that the music will no longer be limited to a small
> > group of people, that everybody can enjoy it. I hope so much that if I
> have
> > a tune in my head, and I want to find out whitch one it is, how it is
> > calles, and who composed it, I can easely find it. Through a WikiMusic.
>
> Searching for 'tunes' is a hard subject. It is not at all remotely
> solved. Nothing you've proposed in Wikimusic will help people find
> some melody they half remember.

I saw it on some other websites already happening. you could add a Parsons'
code in the mediawiki. for more information about that: see the projectpage.

> I really recommend you to take a look at
> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/talk:Wikimusic_II , because some of the
> > things you mentioned are already discussed over there. (As well as some
> > legal issues). If you think there might be some problems, please add
> them.
>
> I have. :)
>
great :)

i hope you understand me well: there has to be done a lot of things before
such a project can start, because there are needed a lot of additions in the
sftware, as i see it. I sincerely hope that the "technicians" will be
looking to those points as well, which changes might have to be made, etc.
That's an area I can't work on, as I have very little understanding of the
complex MediaWiki-software.

Greetings, Effeietsanders


from_name: Heiko Evermann

body:
Hi Magnus,
> >Regarding vandalism and bad pages, the wiki answer to these is that we
> >have lots of people to fix those problems for the same reason the
> >poblems are there. There will be more vandalism the bigger Wikipedia
> >grows, but so will the number of people who can spot and fix that
> >vandalism, for the same reason.
>
> The real problem isn't outright vandalism. The problem is the
> Steigentaler incident type. Wrong information, inserted by accident or
> by purpose. A stable version can prevent this. The current system has
> shown it can't, not in all cases.
The precise way to put it would be
"A stable version **can** prevent this." It will not not neccessarily  do so
in all cases, but in some it might. My prediction is:
* just like the recent changes patrol catches some mistakes, the new "stable
versions feature" will find some more mistakes, **but** others will remain.
And then some other "Steigentaler incident" will take place and people will
complain again. There are some people for whom you will never get it right.
In north Germany we have a Low Saxon proverb: "Do wat du wullt, de L??d
snackt doch". (In English: Whatever you do, people will complain.)

The problem I see with the stable version policy is that it is presented as a
one-size-fits-all remedy. If you want to introduce stable versions for all
articles you will get a resource problem. Suddenly there have to be stable
versions and people will get lazy with their checks.

The problem I see is a very big one. Once some error slips through the checks,
the problem for Wikipedia will be an even bigger one. We present a version as
stable and nevertheless it was wrong. Now imagine Steigentaler having the
passages he did not like in a *stable* version.

In summary: I do not think that stable versions is a wise decision.

Kind regards,

Heiko Evermann


from_name: Sam Korn

body:
On 12/28/05, Sam Spade <samspade.thomasjefferson at googlemail.com> wrote:
> How about:
>
> (*warning, objectionable link*)
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Deeceevoice
>
> ?

That would also qualify as [[WP:POINT]].

--
Sam