subject: ���e���������z�M���������������[��

body:
From: "?o?????????@?q?????????V" <freudianjungian at hotmail.com>
To: wikija-l at Wikipedia.org, FreudianJungian at hotmail.com
Subject: ???e?u???b?N???X?g?b?v????????????
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2006 13:30:33 -0500

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 12/09/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:

> > 1. The field "Requests" on "Recent Changes" be changed to "Requested  feature
> > articles." Instead of asking people to create brand new article, the  focus
> > should be on improving existing articles.

> Why?  Is there any reason to believe that improving a crappy article
> into a featured article is better than creating a featured article
> from scratch?  Maybe most crappy articles are still crappy because
> they're not a very useful topic in the first place.

This is answered in Danny's original message, which I will therefore
assume you didn't read before hitting 'reply'.

> There's nothing wrong with creating brand new articles, as long as
> you're creating *good* brand new articles.  To that end I think we
> should insist that all new articles are sourced.  After a while that
> should be extended - all major additions to old articles must be
> sourced.  Only then, once we've stopped the addition of new unsourced
> additions, can we truly start to tackle the old unsourced information.

I think what will happen is that the volunteers will do whatever the
heck they feel like.

- d.


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests

body:
On 12/09/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/International_logos_%28overview%29
> > is a good example of why graphic designers are paid money.

> To be fair, one should look at the finalists in that contest:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/International_logo_vote/Finalists
> Of course, the logo that actually won was the, um, raw version of the
> puzzle sphere idea, which has made me somewhat wary of community logo
> contests. Nohat saved the day by providing us with a beautiful
> implementation of that concept in the last minute.

Oh, that's fine, that's "cleanup." ;-)

The logo contest actually did quite well for us there - the first,
second and third place logos now being the logos for Wikipedia,
Wikimedia and Mediawiki. But the raw materials submitted ... *shudder*

- d.


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests

body:
On another bent to the topic, could I ask the board to pass a resolution
regarding replacement logos saying:

   1. At least five of top ten contributing languages must agree the logo
   should be changed.
   2. If this is satisfied, the Board and/or Communications Committee
   must agree in principal that a logo change would be timely, acceptable and
   warranted.
   3. Logo competitions must be structured from the beginning by
   independent Wikimedians, as the board elections are.

While I agree that Wiktionary and Wikisource needed to be refreshed,
Wikibooks just seems to be riding the trend, and I'm worried that once these
competitions are over, there'll only be more. It would be nice to keep the
project identities steady.

Nick


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests

body:
I'm not sure I follow your logic here.

I think you are suggesting mixing broad consensus within a language and
consensus across languages.  But why is that relevant to logos per se?

Why is Com Com suddenly the arbiter of what is acceptable?

Who are you accusing of being a WMF insider running elections?  I didn't
even know about them until it was posted to Foundation this week.

-Brad

On 9/12/06, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On another bent to the topic, could I ask the board to pass a resolution
> regarding replacement logos saying:
>
>    1. At least five of top ten contributing languages must agree the logo
>    should be changed.
>    2. If this is satisfied, the Board and/or Communications Committee
>    must agree in principal that a logo change would be timely, acceptable
> and
>    warranted.
>    3. Logo competitions must be structured from the beginning by
>    independent Wikimedians, as the board elections are.
>
> While I agree that Wiktionary and Wikisource needed to be refreshed,
> Wikibooks just seems to be riding the trend, and I'm worried that once
> these
> competitions are over, there'll only be more. It would be nice to keep the
> project identities steady.
>
> Nick
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests

body:
The reason I suggested multiple languages is because this seems harder to
achieve than broad consensus. Thus if it's harder to start a logo contest,
there's less chance of them starting when they're not needed. Although I'm
not complaining, the selection of my illustration for the Wikisource logo
was thanks to the German Wikipedia's approval vote. The English vote was
still in a state of complete indecision.

I just threw the comcom in because it's involved in Communications, and the
visual identity of the projects seems to fall into its domain. It was just
thrown in.

I'm not saying that there's an insider running the elections. In fact, I
can't even remember who the current overseers are, it's slipped my memory. I
have no objection to the current election or election process whatsoever.

What I meant was that any logo contest needs someone to oversee everything,
so that the contests aren't loosey-goosey, open-ended things like they are
now. Someone to establish rules, to answer questions, to co-ordinate between
languages... but without having a personal interest in one logo or another,
as a regular contributor.

As per Angela's comment, that the resolution should apply to new projects,
I'm not sure why that would be needed. New projects need logos, this
proposal was to stunt the amount of //replacement// logos.

Nick

Message: 9
> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 15:31:04 -0400
> From: "Brad Patrick" <bradp.wmf at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <941f4700609121231r103db07eqa1ce425c607568e0 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> I'm not sure I follow your logic here.
>
> I think you are suggesting mixing broad consensus within a language and
> consensus across languages.  But why is that relevant to logos per se?
>
> Why is Com Com suddenly the arbiter of what is acceptable?
>
> Who are you accusing of being a WMF insider running elections?  I didn't
> even know about them until it was posted to Foundation this week.
>
> -Brad
>
> On 9/12/06, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On another bent to the topic, could I ask the board to pass a resolution
> > regarding replacement logos saying:
> >
> >    1. At least five of top ten contributing languages must agree the
> logo
> >    should be changed.
> >    2. If this is satisfied, the Board and/or Communications Committee
> >    must agree in principal that a logo change would be timely,
> acceptable
> > and
> >    warranted.
> >    3. Logo competitions must be structured from the beginning by
> >    independent Wikimedians, as the board elections are.
> >
> > While I agree that Wiktionary and Wikisource needed to be refreshed,
> > Wikibooks just seems to be riding the trend, and I'm worried that once
> > these
> > competitions are over, there'll only be more. It would be nice to keep
> the
> > project identities steady.
> >
> > Nick
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Brad Patrick
> General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> bradp.wmf at gmail.com
> 727-231-0101
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 10
> Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 05:34:50 +1000
> From: Angela <beesley at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <8b722b800609121234w10f9cac5s15e8e10cffb97c58 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 9/13/06, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On another bent to the topic, could I ask the board to pass a resolution
> > regarding replacement logos saying:
> >
> >    1. At least five of top ten contributing languages must agree the
> logo
> >    should be changed.
> >    2. If this is satisfied, the Board and/or Communications Committee
> >    must agree in principal that a logo change would be timely,
> acceptable and
> >    warranted.
> >    3. Logo competitions must be structured from the beginning by
> >    independent Wikimedians, as the board elections are.
>
> I've put this on the Board wiki, though I think it may be more useful
> to expand it so the resolution is applicable to new projects
> (wikiversity, incubator) as well and those won't have 10 languages by
> the time they want a logo.
>
> Angela.


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests


from_name: Robth

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Impossible. Featured articles are determined by FAC, which is as
> ridden or more so with politics as AFD, DRV, and other such eyesores:
> standards are constantly shifting and unevenly applied.
>

I have to say, though I've heard comments like this before, I'm not sure I
agree.  Standards do change on FAC, but that change has come in the form of
a slow improvement in standards; the last truly major shift was the
requirement for inline citations, which came into place around the start of
this year.  I have never seen a well written, well cited, comprehensive
article fail FAC.  This isn't to say that people don't raise frivolous
objections--they most certainly do--but those objections are generally
easily addressed or ignored, and you'll sometimes see FAC regulars pointing
out to objecters that, for instance, FAs are not required to have see also
sections (or whatever).  Likewise, it isn't to say that people don't
complain that objections raised against their article are frivolous, but as
someone who believes that "this is enirely sourced to poorly written
websites", "the prose in the article is subpar", and other ire-drawing types
of objections are quite valid, I don't see this as a sign that FAC isn't
working.  I haven't agreed with the result of every single FAC I've watched
or participated in, but the ones I've disagreed with have generally been
borderline cases.  If someone can bring forward evidence of clearly worthy
articles failing (or conversely, of seriously troubled articles passing),
please do so, but until such evidence is presented I don't find broad
assertions like this particularly convincing.

--Robth
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)


subject: [Foundation-l] foundation-l Digest, Vol 30, Issue 37

body:
Oh gawd. Shouldn't WiktionaryZ's logo be similar to that of Wiktionary? Why
does:

http://wiktionaryz.org/new_logo

even exist?

Nick

BTW, they call the village pump the "International Beer Parlour".

On 9/12/06, foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org <
foundation-l-request at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Tue, 12 Sep 2006 16:55:17 +0200
> From: "Erik Moeller" <eloquence at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests
> To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
> Message-ID:
>         <b80736c80609120755l56081d44g3c8461eb31d5268f at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> On 9/12/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Familiarity in that case is dull.
>
> I agree with Delphine here. The one exception I would make is the
> Commons logo, since it has such a strong connection to Wikimedia as a
> whole. However, I find the Wikispecies logo disappointingly mundane,
> and cringed when I saw a "lamp of knowledge" design for Wikiversity in
> the Wikimedia colors.
>
> Unfortunately, without divine intervention, the trend towards dull
> logos seems unstoppable. Which will leave us with an inconsistent
> mess, as usual. ;-)
>
> WiktionaryZ, by the way, has its own unique logo design:
> http://wiktionaryz.org/
>
> Look, it even has a lens flare effect!  ;-)
>
> --
> Peace & Love,
> Erik


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Liviu Andronic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
On 9/12/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Oh, and a google i'm feeling lucky for 'wikpedia' returns [[Bruno
> Bettelheim]] :)

Here, I'm feeling lucky opens as expected
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.

On 9/12/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > A thousand? I can guarantee a whole lot more than 1000. How about I
> > build a prototype site to handle the petition where people can
> > register their Wikipedia username as someone supporting the petition?
> > It wouldn't be too hard, and if we can find hosting with reasonable
> > database space, we can build it, post about it on village pump /
> > community portal / whatever else. I bet we can get 10000 in a matter
> > of weeks.
> >
> > On 9/12/06, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > You could also come up with a petition, having all Wikipedia users
> > > > sign it, and present it to domain owners. Anyone else have any
> ideas?
> > > >
> > > Having all wikipedia users would be near-impossible, but I think it
> would be
> > > possible to drum up a thousand or so.
> > >
> > > Just about every time I've typed "wikipedia" wrong, i get a parked
> > > domain.... so it is an annoying problem, but is it worth the trouble?
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Liviu


from_name: Andrew Archer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
I have the hosting capacities for a petition, and MySQL databases, but I'd
probably need a little help setting up the system. However, I though
Wikimedia servers could easily handle that.

Andrew Archer

On 12/09/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I very much appreciate the discussion about problem domains.
>
> It would benefit WMF greatly if we had the following:
>
> -List of problem domains (is there a page?)
> -Petition engine to capture usernames against use of said domains
>
> That will give us what we need to pursue action as laid out by Akash with
> a
> minimum of WMF resources having to dedicate time to it.
>
> Thanks.
>
> -Brad
>
> On 9/12/06, Liviu Andronic <landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On 9/12/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Oh, and a google i'm feeling lucky for 'wikpedia' returns [[Bruno
> > > Bettelheim]] :)
> >
> > Here, I'm feeling lucky opens as expected
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.
> >
> >
> > On 9/12/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > A thousand? I can guarantee a whole lot more than 1000. How about I
> > > > build a prototype site to handle the petition where people can
> > > > register their Wikipedia username as someone supporting the
> petition?
> > > > It wouldn't be too hard, and if we can find hosting with reasonable
> > > > database space, we can build it, post about it on village pump /
> > > > community portal / whatever else. I bet we can get 10000 in a matter
> > > > of weeks.
> > > >
> > > > On 9/12/06, Michael Billington <michael.billington at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > >
> > > > > > You could also come up with a petition, having all Wikipedia
> users
> > > > > > sign it, and present it to domain owners. Anyone else have any
> > > ideas?
> > > > > >
> > > > > Having all wikipedia users would be near-impossible, but I think
> it
> > > would be
> > > > > possible to drum up a thousand or so.
> > > > >
> > > > > Just about every time I've typed "wikipedia" wrong, i get a parked
> > > > > domain.... so it is an annoying problem, but is it worth the
> > trouble?
> > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > >
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Liviu
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Brad Patrick
> General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
> Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> bradp.wmf at gmail.com
> 727-231-0101
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] Chickasaw Language Machine Translations Support Added

body:
I will update a link on the machine translations page on meta.  The
Chickasaw People have just joined the project
and a Chickasaw Tribal member (Robert Mayden of the Chickasaw Nation) is
now working on lexicons, grammar rules,
and parsing sets for the Chickasaw Language, a Muskogean Dialect.

I will update translation run posting dates and releases on meta.

Jeff


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests

body:
On 9/11/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hoi,
> It is not necessarily that the Wikipedia or the Meta or the Commons logo
> are that great. What they have is some common identity. I think it is a
> GOOD thing when the Wikimedia Foundation logos have familiarity. This
> does not mean that they have to be the seem but they having commonality
> is good.

For someone who's always fighting for other projects than Wikipedia to
be recognized, I find your argument a bit strange.

In a word as in a hundred, I do not agree with you. Coca-Cola (to name
one) has billions (excuse my exaggerating, I am from the South) of
brands, they're all different.

Familiarity in that case is dull. I'd rather have a brilliant and
unique logo for wiktionary than yet again a round green and red thing
that's not trying to capture the uniqueness of the project. We already
have that familiarity within the name, I think that this is enough. If
you ever want Wiktionary or wikibooks to have their own success,
giving them a distinct identity is in my opinion, the first step.
Otherwise, I believe they'll ever only be "the sisters projects".

And to cap it all, there's already enough confusion between Wikipedia,
Wikimedia and Mediawiki as it is. Keeping the same trend in visual
identity for other projects is only reinforcing this impression of
mess and dilutes the message.

Delphine
--
~notafish


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests

body:
Well, to take

> It is also would
> prevent someone suddenly comimg to the site one to
> find the logo changed without warning.

That is what it looks like might happen here.

/me is not sure what to think.


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests

body:
On 9/12/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:
> Familiarity in that case is dull.

I agree with Delphine here. The one exception I would make is the
Commons logo, since it has such a strong connection to Wikimedia as a
whole. However, I find the Wikispecies logo disappointingly mundane,
and cringed when I saw a "lamp of knowledge" design for Wikiversity in
the Wikimedia colors.

Unfortunately, without divine intervention, the trend towards dull
logos seems unstoppable. Which will leave us with an inconsistent
mess, as usual. ;-)

WiktionaryZ, by the way, has its own unique logo design:
http://wiktionaryz.org/

Look, it even has a lens flare effect!  ;-)

--
Peace & Love,
Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Logo Contests


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 12/09/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/12/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:

> > we do have are as good as possible. Rather than getting another million
> > articles, I believe that we need 100,000 more Feature-quality articles.

> Impossible. Featured articles are determined by FAC, which is as
> ridden or more so with politics as AFD, DRV, and other such eyesores:
> standards are constantly shifting and unevenly applied. Good Articles
> itself has turned into a mockery of FAC.

Raul as Featured Articles Dictator might apply the cattleprod enema a
bit more thoroughly. If FAC has gone off into one of those weird
genetic drift zone of ten people agreeing to 'consensus' that drives
others out and fails to serve Wikipedia, and if GA has done the same
(considering GA was supposed to be the process-light parallel to
unclog FAC), then burning it down and building something that actually
gets back to the really quite short and reasonable FA criteria might
be well in order.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 12/09/06, Phil Sandifer <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> The usual solution in these cases would be to create a lightweight,
> no bureaucracy version, akin to PROD. Article rating was a nice
> technical solution that had a few major bugs like not actually
> working, but what if we strayed away from version rating and had
> general ratings on articles? i.e. instead of the database nightmare
> just let articles all have 1-5 ratings, with some option like "if ten
> people vote to clear ratings, the ratings are reset" so as to not
> have articles sandbagged with ratings of ancient versions?

Write it and get the code past Brion?

Put together an implementation in templates? Presumably to be put on
the talk page.

You might also want to see if the various 1.0 pages have useful ideas.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
Petitions make good evidence of community support for WMF action.

On 9/12/06, David Mestel <david.mestel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Ah, good point.  But I would have thought that if the WMF does own the
> trademark, the case is fairly clear-cut, so they wouldn't bother to
> defend it - but that's probably just my legal naivety...
>
> --
> David
>
> On 12/09/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Domain name complaints are really nasty and costly, especially if they
> fight
> > it.
> >
> > Petitions are free.
> >
> > Andrew Archer
> >
> > On 12/09/06, David Mestel <david.mestel at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > I don't entirely understand the difficulty - surely the WMF has some
> > > kind of trademark over the Wikipedia name, which would allow them to
> > > forbid others to use it?  I'm no lawyer, but I don't see why we would
> > > need to bother with a petition.
> > >
> > > David
> > >
> > > On 12/09/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > "Ray Saintonge" wrote:
> > > > > At what point do we become subject to the law of diminishing
> returns?
> > > > > The possible variations on our different wikinames, national
> domains
> > > and
> > > > > undotted language codes could rapidly get completely out of hand.
> > > > >
> > > > > If a person cybersquats one of these names with malicious intent
> it's
> > > > > hard to imagine that he will be impressed by a petition with 1,000
> > > > > signatures.  Even when we manage to wrest one of these names away
> > > there
> > > > > comes a point where the cumulative burden of keeping all these
> names
> > > > > protected is just not cost effective.
> > > > >
> > > > > Ec
> > > >
> > > > Even worse, i'd warn you that this can attract more people to
> > > cybersquatting
> > > > our domains, as we will be publicising this subject.
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > David
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> David
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 12/09/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:

> > 1. The field "Requests" on "Recent Changes" be changed to "Requested feature
> > articles." Instead of asking people to create brand new article, the focus
> > should be on improving existing articles.
>
> Impossible. Featured articles are determined by FAC, which is as
> ridden or more so with politics as AFD, DRV, and other such eyesores:
> standards are constantly shifting and unevenly applied. Good Articles
> itself has turned into a mockery of FAC.

Yes and no. GA is often a mockery of FAC - I am currently musing over
one near-incomprehensible objection to an article of mine  - but it
doesn't have to be; all it needs is someone to list the article and
someone else to say "yup, sure, that's decent".

There's no real reason the process can't be decentralised further, by
having most of the review work done by individual wikiprojects or the
like, and just listed centrally for some transparency - it's just we
seem to have fallen into this highly centralised system which plays up
the FAC-like issues.

> Most Featured Articles are great articles, but most great articles are not FAs.

Indeed. Perhaps we just need to ask Raul to be a little more sharp
with silly objections

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] draft of WikiCreole 0.1 available for comment

body:
On 9/12/06, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:
> However, now asterisks have two behaviours (bolding & unordered lists). Just to clarify what I think the spec is saying about the
> precedence of these, and what happens when they intersect in weird and unbalanced ways, this test input:
> =============
> A ** test** to ** see
> **what ** bold *
> and lists does ** *** **
>   **   test ** end **
> =============
> Should render as:
> "
A  test to ** see

what ** bold *

and lists does  *
> **

test  end

".
>
> Is that correct? I don't personally mind what the correct answer is, but I do want to make sure that there is only one unambiguous
> and correct answer, and that it can be logically determined from the specs.

Another syntax cleanup proposal also suggested this dual use for *,
and their solution was to evaluate bolding from right to left on a
per-line basis, and any remaining asterisks on the left could become
bulleted lists.  So

A ** test** to ** see
**what ** bold *
and lists does ** *** **
**  test ** end **

Would probably become

A **test to  see
what  bold *
and lists does ** *

 test  end

That behavior might not be desirable, but the general idea of
"interpret matched initial double asterisk as bold, unmatched as list"
is a good one.

On 9/12/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Your above example is invalid mark-up. :-)

**This** line is valid, yet ambiguous under what appear to be current
specs.  When is initial double asterisk bold, when is it list?


from_name: Timwi

body:
> However, now asterisks have two behaviours (bolding & unordered lists). Just to clarify what I think the spec is saying about the
> precedence of these, and what happens when they intersect in weird and unbalanced ways, this test input:
> =============
> A ** test** to ** see
> **what ** bold *
> and lists does ** *** **
>   **   test ** end **
> =============
> Should render as:
> "
A  test to ** see

what ** bold *

and lists does  *
> **

test  end

".

It is not necessary for a specification to specify the behaviour for
absolutely every possible conceivable input. In fact, the HTML and CSS
spec don't do that either. They first define that some inputs are
"valid" and some are "invalid", and then proceed to prescribe the
correct behaviour only for the "valid" ones.

Although a wiki engine must obviously produce some output for any given
input, it does not follow that this output must be strictly prescribed.
If you did that, then you could never introduce new wiki syntax features
without breaking existing behaviour.

Thus, even in wiki syntax, a specification must define what constitutes
"valid" markup, and then define the behaviour for that valid mark-up.

Your above example is invalid mark-up. :-)

Timwi


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
The only real way to find the problem domains would be to go out and search
for them manually I think. Maybe just a wiki list which people can add to?

Andrew Archer

On 12/09/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have the hosting capacities for a petition, and MySQL databases, but I'd
> probably need a little help setting up the system. However, I though
> Wikimedia servers could easily handle that.
>
> Andrew Archer
>
>
> On 12/09/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I very much appreciate the discussion about problem domains.
> >
> > It would benefit WMF greatly if we had the following:
> >
> > -List of problem domains (is there a page?)
> > -Petition engine to capture usernames against use of said domains
> >
> > That will give us what we need to pursue action as laid out by Akash
> > with a
> > minimum of WMF resources having to dedicate time to it.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> > -Brad
> >
> > On 9/12/06, Liviu Andronic < landronimirc at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > On 9/12/06, Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > Oh, and a google i'm feeling lucky for 'wikpedia' returns [[Bruno
> > > > Bettelheim]] :)
> > >
> > > Here, I'm feeling lucky opens as expected
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page.
> > >
> > >
> > > On 9/12/06, Akash Mehta < draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > A thousand? I can guarantee a whole lot more than 1000. How about
> > I
> > > > > build a prototype site to handle the petition where people can
> > > > > register their Wikipedia username as someone supporting the
> > petition?
> > > > > It wouldn't be too hard, and if we can find hosting with
> > reasonable
> > > > > database space, we can build it, post about it on village pump /
> > > > > community portal / whatever else. I bet we can get 10000 in a
> > matter
> > > > > of weeks.
> > > > >
> > > > > On 9/12/06, Michael Billington < michael.billington at gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > You could also come up with a petition, having all Wikipedia
> > users
> > > > > > > sign it, and present it to domain owners. Anyone else have any
> >
> > > > ideas?
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > Having all wikipedia users would be near-impossible, but I think
> > it
> > > > would be
> > > > > > possible to drum up a thousand or so.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Just about every time I've typed "wikipedia" wrong, i get a
> > parked
> > > > > > domain.... so it is an annoying problem, but is it worth the
> > > trouble?
> > > > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > > > >
> > > > >
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Liviu
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Brad Patrick
> > General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
> > Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
> > bradp.wmf at gmail.com
> > 727-231-0101
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>


references:
<171116790609120146o2f798538kab67b387f89c23a9@mail.gmail.com>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKMENOINAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<ee6n5m$8bs$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On 12/09/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

> Thus, even in wiki syntax, a specification must define what constitutes
> "valid" markup, and then define the behaviour for that valid mark-up.

I think you are completely and utterly wrong on this. Every
combination of wikitext has to be able to do something, because it is
a *language*.

If people who can't work computers put a character out of place and
the wiki engine just spits back "INVALID CONTENT", are they going to
edit an article ever again? *Hell* no.

HTML was invented as a human-editable page language. However, the
humans it was invented for were nuclear physicists, rather than the
general public.

When the general public started writing web pages, they didn't write
well-formed HTML - they would bash out something, preview it in
Netscape 1.1 and put it up.  The geeks derided this as "tag soup".

But I submit that the "tag soup" approach was the natural one for
people to use, because that's how people learn a language: test,
change, test again, repeat. That's how people learn wikitext on
Wikipedia: if you just write plain text, it'll more or less work. If
you want to do something fancier, you'll look and see what other
people do and try something like that and see if it works.

People care much more about what they're putting on the page than
constructing an immaculate piece of XML. If wikitext can't cope
sensibly with *anything and everything* people throw at it, then we
might as well just be requiring immaculate XML.

- d.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] 100,
 000 FAs as an achievable goal with a plan (was Contest and quality)

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

David Gerard stated for the record:

> Oh - and when I speak of 100,000 Featured Articles, I quite definitely
> don't mean articles that run the gauntlet of FAC as it presently
> stands. I just read all of this page:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates
>
> That's just from the last month. Note the excellent start, where
> someone complaining about the idiocy of the process is told to go away
> and learn to write ... and has to point out to the objectors that he'd
> just scored a couple of FAs.
>
> Any process that promotes this much bile and vitriol is fundamentally
> damaging to Wikipedia's community operation and in need of severe
> process-culling for sheer poisonousness.
>
> Perhaps from the Arbitration Committee. If only one of them was the
> Featured Articles Director ...
>
>
> - d.

Hmmm.  I will no longer be an Arbiter after the end of this term.  Your
idea is intriguing and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | I'm tired of getting the fuzzy
 sean at epoptic.com | end of the lollipop. --Sugar Kane
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from_name: Akash Mehta

subject: [WikiEN-l] What do we do about religious POV?

body:
"The ministers or the saints of God are called by God Himself through
dreams and visions and then the chief pastor is led by the Lord to lay
hands on each person and seperate them for this ministry. All the
saints are not married. They stay single prepared for the Kingdom of
God and for Zion. They will havo to go through certain periods of
traning to be qualified as pastor or center pastor or sister/brother
in-charge. Holiness is most preffered and a life of seperation for
each servant of God. "

(From [[Pentecostal Mission]])


subject: [Wikitech-l] Category intersection

body:
On 9/12/06, Aerik Sylvan <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:
> So, *if* throwing sql at the existing table is too slow (and it looks like
> it probably is), then the next alternative is to create records for the
> intersections themselves, so the retrieval query is a simple one.

Common queries would need to be stored and maintained separately, yes.
 This is fine and dandy as long as no one tries exotic intersections,
it wouldn't be too much more load than the current system, but that's
an empirical question whose answer is unknown and can't be assumed.

> So you can see that the number of combinations would get to be quite a lot.
> I would propose writing them into the categorylinks table

Wait, write an *exponential* number of combinations into the
categorylinks table?  Even a thousand categories (and Wikipedia has
far more) would work out to a *googol cubed* different combinations.
Not only is there not enough memory and disk space on the planet to
store that, there aren't that many *particles in the universe*.

Am I misunderstanding you?  Maybe only non-empty category
intersections?  That requires slightly more thought as to scalability.
 If you have a million pages, and each has two random categories,
there can be a maximum of a million intersections (if no two pages
have the same two categories).  If you bump that up to three
categories, however, the maximum possible number is three million;
four is six million, etc.  It's O(m*2^n), or linear-exponential time.
That's also far too high to be acceptable, unless you can guarantee
that n remains very small (which you can't).

Basically, the most practical solution in SQL would probably be to
pick the ten thousand or hundred thousand or million most-visited
intersections and maintain them as virtual categories, so they can be
retrieved in the same time as normal categories.  The only question is
what percentage of queries this will deal with, which (as I said) is
unknown at this point.  Domas seemed rather skeptical of the
efficiency of even this scheme, and given your benchmarks in a much
smaller wiki his skepticism seems quite warranted.

Brion's idea of a full-text search seems to be the way to go at this
point, at least to me.  After all, searching for "apple pie" does
nothing but give you the intersection of articles containing the words
"apple" and "pie", and we already do that, so it can't be
overwhelmingly expensive, I suppose.  (But a disclaimer: I am not, in
fact, particularly knowledgeable in *any* of this stuff.)

On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Well, yes ... How does other software with arbitrary tags do it?

And that's a complementary way to go.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
On 12/09/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:

> The only real way to find the problem domains would be to go out and search
> for them manually I think. Maybe just a wiki list which people can add to?

Sounds reasonable. Is it possible to search domain space, regexp or iteratively?

Whatever happens - people shouldn't act on dodgy domains without
Brad's say so. Vigilanteing would be a bad idea.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
How about starting a list on Meta, then putting a call out on "Goings-on"?

Andrew Archer

On 12/09/06, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all, there's a small list here
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Domain_names#Typosquatted
>
> Such a list definitely deserves its own page though.
>
> On 9/13/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/09/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > The only real way to find the problem domains would be to go out and
> search
> > > for them manually I think. Maybe just a wiki list which people can add
> to?
> >
> >
> > Sounds reasonable. Is it possible to search domain space, regexp or
> iteratively?
> >
> > Whatever happens - people shouldn't act on dodgy domains without
> > Brad's say so. Vigilanteing would be a bad idea.
>
> --
> Larry Lo
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
> Tel: +852 95825791
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


references:
<171116790609120146o2f798538kab67b387f89c23a9@mail.gmail.com>
	<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKMENOINAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<ee6n5m$8bs$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<fbad4e140609120944j4ba1fa90xc002f99d56ad512f@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060912164832.GT21794@cgi.jachomes.com>

body:
On 12/09/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 12, 2006 at 05:44:29PM +0100, David Gerard wrote:
> > On 12/09/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

> > > Thus, even in wiki syntax, a specification must define what constitutes
> > > "valid" markup, and then define the behaviour for that valid mark-up.

> > I think you are completely and utterly wrong on this. Every
> > combination of wikitext has to be able to do something, because it is
> > a *language*.

> Well, *my* opinion is that you're in violent agreement, gents.  :-)

I hope so :-)

> > If people who can't work computers put a character out of place and
> > the wiki engine just spits back "INVALID CONTENT", are they going to
> > edit an article ever again? *Hell* no.

> Of course not.
> But Timwi's assertion is, indirectly, at least, that it's necessary
> to define *how to behave when you *get* something ill-formed*, which as
> a subset, requires that you define well-formed clearly.

mmmmmmmmm true. Mind you, you end up with a pile of special cases, but
that may not actually be a bad thing.

Consider things like the ''' hack in Mediawiki - if you have
[letters]'''[letters]'' it doesn't go bold then italic - it goes
apostrophe, italic. This is for French and Italian, when you have "the
aaaa" as l'aaaa and you want the "aaaa" italicised but not the
article. Is that an annoying special case? Yep. Is it an excellent and
useful idea if humans are going to use this thing? Arguably. Then you
have to special-case some more with how to be sure it's not bolding as
well. Etc.

Special case upon special case. This makes deep-thinking geeks go
"eww", because they're used to seeing a mass of special cases and
attempting to abstract out the simpler rule of what's actually
happening. But there *isn't* one, because humans are annoying and
their languages have structure but also way too many bolted-on
irregular bits.

So, uh, cross-wiki syntax will be fun all the way down ;-)

(I'm currently heavily using Mediawiki on WMF projects and MoinMoin at
work, and lightly using UseMod at work. Switching modes is not as
confusing as it might be, because Mediawiki and MoinMoin syntax is
different enough not to mix them up. Much.)

- d.


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Hi, Jimmy Wales,
	please estabish the board of inspectors to investigate admins.

body:
On 12/09/06, Peter Rocky7 <freudianjungianp at hotmail.com> wrote:

Ya know, on wikien-l this guy would have been moderated by now at the
least. Does this make wikien-l insufferably autocratic? Discuss. (Or
not.)

Wikipedia is a project to write an encyclopedia. Since this involves
thousands of people working together without killing each other,
democratic and consensus structures will tend to arise. But they're a
side-effect, not the point of the thing.

- d.


from_name: Aphaia

subject:
[Foundation-l] Hi, Jimmy Wales,
	please estabish the board of inspectors to investigate admins.

body:
Hello all,  hello Rocky7

On 9/12/06, Peter Rocky7 <freudianjungianp at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Who left the first important adminship of Japanese Wikipedia to
> [[:ja:User:Suisui]](=[[:ja:User:KMT]], etc.),
> [[:ja:User:Tietew]](=[[:ja:User:Aphaia]], [[:ja:User:????]], etc.), and
> so on?

It would be where we are expected to laugh, but sorry, your joke is
not so funny as the previous one.

And foundation-l is generally the place for discussion about the
Wikimedia Foundation, considered not the equivalent of BJOADN. (Eh,
you remember my past jokes? Forget them, it was not a good joke,
anyway). Currently we have seen you posting only jokes, and your jokes
are somehow incivil. Rocky7, if you continue to post such and only
such, I think we are better to ask the list administrators to list
your address on discard filter of this mailing list.

--
Kizu Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * vivemus, mea Lesbia, amemus *


from_name: Kirill Lokshin

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> So when a writer's done their best to meet the criteria on the FAC
> checklist (except maybe the vague and subjective 'exceptional' one),
> is there a mechanism that will not feel like too much bloody work for
> little gain?

Might not an alternative be increasing the gain, rather than
decreasing the work? ;-)

--
Kirill Lokshin


body:
I don't believe so. I came upon it in RC while working on MWT and
taking a break by fighting some vandalism (relaxing AND productive,
although it proves that i need to get a life). I contacted the user
about it:

"Hi there, I noticed you've been adding to [[Pentecostal Mission]].
Thankyou for your contributions to Wikipedia; they are much valued.
However, please remember that Wikipedia [[WP:NPOV|follows a neutral
point of view]]. As a result, we cannot assert the existence of any
particular divine being, referring to god with a capital G and as
'Himself' violates this policy. Please do not be discouraged from
editing; just in future be aware that we may have to modify your
contributions slightly so as not to imply the superiority of any
particular religion over another. [...] "

I don't think there's been any significant attempt at removing the
POV, nor has there been any obvious attempt to put it back in after it
has been removed.

{{fact}} seems a little... mean. I know that sounds childish, but
[[WP:BITE]], its true. One of the editors in the last 50 changes
actually has a userpage (besides the CVU members RVing), while another
has a talk page only because a newbie unfamiliar with policy (unsigned
comment) has asked him if he is really who his username implies him to
be. The rest are IP editors.

I don't really care about this article in particular, I mean on a
whole. Is there some sort of POV taskforce / wikiproject? I know
there's some sort of taskforce for 'countering systematic bias' but
I'm not so sure how it works or how effective it is.

On 9/12/06, Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Akash Mehta <draicone at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "The ministers or the saints of God are called by God Himself through
> > dreams and visions ... <snip>"
> >
> > (From [[Pentecostal Mission]])
>
> This seems to be someone writing an article about their religious group from the perspective of that religious group. That's suboptimal, but it's not a huge problem by itself: we can rewrite it for NPOV. More problematic is people fighting to add or maintain POV in an article. Has that happened here?
>
> -- Matt
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:

>I can't face looking at the various .org, .net, etc. domains just now,
>but I've made a first pass at sorting out the list of known ccTLDs -
>
>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Domain_names#National_domains_.28ccTLDs.29
>
>Some of these are unregistered; quite a few are inactive or holding
>pages; at least three are pretty clear squatters.
>
I noticed that wikiversity doesn't appear anywhere on the list; I
presume this is an oversight.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh, definitely. But basically, if I'm going to put in a FAC's worth of
> work, I want to know what's in it for the article, or for me
> bothering.

Well, doing anything special for the article -- aside from the shiny
star -- would probably involve a great deal of talking and wouldn't go
anywhere.

As for you bothering, though, the options are a little more flexible.
We probably can't (easily) offer any tangible rewards, but what might
be a more practical possibility would be better recognition for those
who do the work.

For example, what if we prominently displayed the top, say, 100
entries from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:LWFAN on the Community
Portal (or on the Main Page, for the truly self-aggrandizing).  It
wouldn't be much, granted; but it would still be more than what we
have now (and would, nicely enough, be slanted towards those who made
FA writing a regular pastime).

--
Kirill Lokshin


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
> of it's good enough articles.

True.  But being respectable is not really the same thing as being
popular; and I was under the impression that the former was a more
practical concern for us than the latter.

--
Kirill Lokshin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
Looking good! Now what would we do about domain holders who have got a
private registration rather than published their details on the WHOIS?

Andrew Archer

On 12/09/06, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Squatted_Wikimedia_domains
>
> I just copied the list from [[m:Domain names]], could tidy up the format
> more.
>
> On 9/13/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > How about starting a list on Meta, then putting a call out on
> "Goings-on"?
> >
> > Andrew Archer
> >
> > On 12/09/06, Lorenzarius <lorenzarius at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi all, there's a small list here
> > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Domain_names#Typosquatted
> > >
> > > Such a list definitely deserves its own page though.
> > >
> > > On 9/13/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > On 12/09/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > The only real way to find the problem domains would be to go out
> and
> > > search
> > > > > for them manually I think. Maybe just a wiki list which people can
> add
> > > to?
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Sounds reasonable. Is it possible to search domain space, regexp or
> > > iteratively?
> > > >
> > > > Whatever happens - people shouldn't act on dodgy domains without
> > > > Brad's say so. Vigilanteing would be a bad idea.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Larry Lo
> > > http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
> > > Tel: +852 95825791
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> Larry Lo
> http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Lorenzarius
> Tel: +852 95825791
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Readable and easy to remember passwords

body:
Rotem Liss wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> What do the folks at the RTL middle eastern languages think of our
>> captchas btw?
>>
>
> In the Hebrew projects, it is not enabled in Wikipedia, and the users in
> the
> other projects didn't complain. Most users speak English, or can recognise
> English letters.

Commons does have it enabled, and it's for all wikies. Plus i have read
complaints about it. This captchas are 'made for english people' which can
be good or bad.


from_name: Carl Peterson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
While we not be able to necessarily make a comparison on the basis of
content inclusion, there is still something to be said for establishing a
reputation for quality on the order of Britannica. I think that was more
what was intended than a comment on what articles are included.
Theoretically, every article on Wikipedia should be able to be brought to
the level of featured article. That goal (and the goal of even 100,000 FAs)
may mean that articles which could not be brought to FA level on their own
need to be merged (e.g., a single, comprehensive article on multiple schools
instead of a stub for each individual article), but there should be a way to
bring all content on Wikipedia to the point where there is no need for the
Featured Article designation because every article is at the quality level
of a featured article. In many ways, that is my dream: for the Featured
Article process to be placed on the chopping block because Featured Articles
make up such a large proportion of the articles on Wikipedia that there is
no longer anything special. Or perhaps for the FA criteria to require so
much refinement that all but 1% of our FAs get bumped from that level.

And yes, I dream big.

Carl

On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> They do however illustrate the conflict between providing what people
> want (more articles on sex and pro wrestling apparently) and creating
> what we believe should exist.
>
> We've comparisons with Britannica are difficult because we are
> different things. They work from the top down. We work from the bottom
> up. They are to a large degree a general education. We are tending to
> head towards the sum of all knowledge.
>
> The sum of all knowledge. Before Wikipedia did anyone really think
> what that meant?
>
> Of the various Si-fi encyclopaedias they mostly appear to historic
> encyclopaedias with expansions made for advances in science and the
> discovery of new planets. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy does
> well in terms of realising there are areas of knowledge not normally
> covered by such works but is of course famously light in it's coverage
> of certain areas. Star trek's Memory Alpha does fairly well but it
> apparently misses geography and some other areas (incidentally
> [[Category:Fictional encyclopedias]] is seriously bare).
>
> I don't think we really understand. And article on every school in
> Africa? An article on every village in India?
>
> Comparisons with Britannica are of limited use because we are not
> doing what they are doing. We are doing something that has never been
> done before.
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> geni
> _______________________________________________
> 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: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Can anything be done about Deletion Review?

body:
On 12/09/06, Jim <trodel at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/9/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2006_September_7#Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion.2FEsoteric_programming_languages

> Sorry if this was already stated but it seems to me that we have had this
> type of problem before and the same solution would work here:
> 1) Notify relevant wikiprojects like [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer

The problem with this one was not actually the result - I agree with
pretty much the entire list of keeps and deletes. But it's a gross
abuse of the deletion process, and anyone on DRV who could say
"Endorse process" on this one with a straight face has shown
themselves to be below a certain level of complexity.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 12/09/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:

> One of the things that I've noticed is that articles (esp. in technical
> subjects) are occasionally listed as unsourced when the sources are
> textbooks (listed at the end of the article) that spend one or more chapters
> on the subject, the information from which is distributed throughout the
> article. Is there a policy somewhere that addresses this situation?

N6, thank goodness - instead, there is common sense: the article is
referenced, so delete the tag claiming it isn't.

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Category intersection

body:
On 12/09/06, Aerik Sylvan <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:

> So, *if* throwing sql at the existing table is too slow (and it looks like
> it probably is), then the next alternative is to create records for the
> intersections themselves, so the retrieval query is a simple one.  This
> would make the write time longer, but save a lot on the many reads.  So,
> here's a table of how many combinations that would have to be written for up
> to 10 categories.  Anybody have a histogram of how many categories are on a
> given page?  I'd also guess pages would tend to get *more* categories once
> the intersection tool is available.

Well, yes ... How does other software with arbitrary tags do it?

- d.


from_name: Richard Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Grandmother copyrighted anonymous works

body:
On 9/12/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> I think there is a point you are missing.  If I ask someone else to
> take a photo of me with my camera, then (if nothing is otherwise
> said) both of us normally assume that the photo and all its rights
> will be mine.  Such a shared assumption can be considered an
> [[implicit contract]].  If so, an actual (not just imagined) transfer
> of copyright has occurred.
>
> Zero, I think you're more or less on the right track: there's simply no
expectation on the part of the person pressing the button that they'll have
any continued relationship to the photo.

However, if I remember my business law course correctly,  in order for a
contract to be valid, there must be an exchange of value (at least in the
US). In this scenario, the kind stranger taking the photo receives nothing
of value (a smile and a "thank you" doesn't count). Therefore, there is not
a valid contract.

Not responding specifically to Zero, but in general...
It seems to me that thinking about creative input isn't going to be useful
here either. Imagine if the kind stranger happens to be a professional
photographer, and "takes charge" to arrange the subjects of the photo, and
perhaps even takes two steps to the left so as to include a very dramatic
lighting effect. The pro then hands to camera back to the owner and walks
away.

This is not work for hire; it's not any sort of contract arrangement. It's
just a kind pro giving away services. I'm not any sort of lawyer, but it
sure seems to be that, in handing the camera back to the owner and walking
away, the photo-taker is almost literally handing away any rights to the
photo.

-- Rich

[[W:en:User:Rholton]]


subject:
[WikiEN-l] 100,
	000 FAs as an achievable goal with a plan (was Contest and quality)

body:
On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Let's assume we have a list of criteria pretty close to the above. How
> many editor-hours does it take to get an article up to that standard?
> (Assume you're a clueful editor who can both research and write well,
> and think you can at least give your own article a usable initial
> assessment on this checklist.)

As a low-water mark (and based entirely on my limited personal
experience), I would guess ~50 editor-hours could suffice for an
article where:

(a) The sources are comprehensive, well-known in advance, and
available before starting.
(b) The topic is a narrow one.
(c) The material is generally uncontroversial.
(d) Most importantly: there is only one editor working on the article.

When criterion (c) -- and consequently criterion (d) -- is violated, I
suspect that the editor time involved will increase dramatically.

--
Kirill Lokshin


from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
> > Q: What's this supposed to do?
> > =============
> > ---- test
> > =============
>
> A1.  After some convincing from the wiki community, we changed the
> hyphen for unordered lists to an asterisk, so this will no longer be a
> problem.

Cool.

However, now asterisks have two behaviours (bolding & unordered lists). Just to clarify what I think the spec is saying about the
precedence of these, and what happens when they intersect in weird and unbalanced ways, this test input:
=============
A ** test** to ** see
**what ** bold *
and lists does ** *** **
  **   test ** end **
=============
Should render as:
"
A  test to ** see

what ** bold *

and lists does  *
**

test  end

".

Is that correct? I don't personally mind what the correct answer is, but I do want to make sure that there is only one unambiguous
and correct answer, and that it can be logically determined from the specs.

> > Certainly on the English Wikipedia, we have article names that look like URLs. E.g. these are all valid wiki articles
> or redirects:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/http://www.google.com/
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/http://www.ebay.com
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/http://amazon.com
> > And there's also these:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ftp://
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/mailto:
>
> There are only redirects in Wikipedia that start with http:// or
> ftp://, so you should not be linking to those pages anyway.  That's
> very bad style.

It perhaps debatable whether linking to redirects is bad style, but it's certainly true that being able to link to redirects is very
useful. If you don't believe me, just try turning it off on the Wikipedia, and listen to the howls of protest. :-)

However, there is exactly one link to the [[Http://www.google.com/]] redirect, and I don't think any to the others, so it's not a
big deal if this changes.

> > Danger, Will Robinson! Syntax conflicts ahead.
>
> Whoa!  MediaWiki will certainly implement Creole with placeholders and
> a separate button for editing Creole, so syntax conflicts are not
> important.

Cool, two different edit modes (as opposed to one that's trying to support both native + Creole). Got it.

> I hope this helps clarify things.

It does - Thank you.

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: Kat Walsh

subject:
[Foundation-l] Last minute media alert: Wikimedia on ABC's
	Nightline tonight

body:
US Wikimedians (and anyone who can get ABC): there will be a story
about Wikimedia on ABC's Nightline tonight; those who were at
Wikimania may remember seeing them filming. No, I don't know the focus
of the story, but I'd be surprised if it were entirely rosy, given the
show's usual fare. Check your local listings...

(I was one of many interviewed for it and have no idea what they'll use.)

-Kat
who has to go find a TV set now

--
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
-- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Last minute media alert: Wikimedia on ABC's Nightline
	tonight


subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Last minute media alert: Wikimedia on ABC's Nightline
	tonight


from_name: Anthony

subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/09/06, Sam Korn <smoddy at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 9/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase
> > > of it's good enough articles.
> > Alexa ratings are not everything.
>
>
> Indeed. They're not even the topic of this discussion.
>
What exactly is the topic of discussion?  I thought it was about how
best to achieve the highest quality encyclopedia, but apparently not
as I got put on moderation for that.

So what is the topic?

Anthony


from_name: James Hare

body:
According to TiVo, Nightline is on ABC at 11:35 PM Eastern Daylight Time.

On 9/12/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> US Wikimedians (and anyone who can get ABC): there will be a story
> about Wikimedia on ABC's Nightline tonight; those who were at
> Wikimania may remember seeing them filming. No, I don't know the focus
> of the story, but I'd be surprised if it were entirely rosy, given the
> show's usual fare. Check your local listings...
>
> (I was one of many interviewed for it and have no idea what they'll use.)
>
> -Kat
> who has to go find a TV set now
>
> --
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
> mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
> The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
> -- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Contest and quality

body:
Frankly I agree with you. I've always been annoyed that the current
maintenance collaboration is to create articles that have been
requested for over a year. Articles are constantly requested, yet
there are always requests being filled. So what do we do with the
requests we cannot fill? I propose:
1. Article requests be cleaned up very thoroughly, with entries
deleted if they can't be filled adequately or should not be on
Wikipedia
2. Focus of experienced editor efforts be on clearing out merger
backlogs, voting per specific policies in AfDs, clearing out speedy
backlogs (sysops, obviously) and the like.
3. Attention be paid to the cleanup taskforce and wikification backlogs.
That way we can increase the quality of the encyclopedia. It would be
good if unneccessary stub articles (careful attention should be paid
to whether or not the article should be deleted, but either way
[[Wikipedia:Articles for undeletion]] will pile up with incidents)
could be cleared out, and vandal fighting tools spread to the masses
(every CVU member should know about Lupin's tool or VP/VP2/VS/MWT, for
instance).

You mention that we should aim for 100,000 featured articles. I assume
[[WP:ARCAID]] (merger of [[WP:COTW]] and [[WP:AID]] for those who
weren't informed) will help, however I propose it be expanded so that
there is more advertising of the ARCAID around Wikipedia and
experienced editors are encouraged to contribute. I'm not aware of
other broad attempts to improve the quality of articles (by broad I
mean broad, so SCOTW and the like do not count)

How about we start a wikiproject for the cleanup taskforce? I've
already established one for the wikification taskforce, it has worked
very well and the wikification backlog is being cleared out quicker
every day. A formalisation of the process in a wikiproject would
encourage people to join in, not only to cleanup articles, but to
assist in other measures like publicity for the cause which could
eventually lead in many more people helping out.

And then we could have bureaucrats force 1FA upon RFAs :)

As for your competition, I suggest you give the winner the chance to
donate $100 to Wikimedia instead, its an option I'd personally prefer.

-- Akash/Draicone

On 9/12/06, daniwo59 at aol.com <daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> The following is a modified version of an announcement I posted on Recent
> Changes:
>
> Times have changed in Wikipedia. Once, our goal was to cover as much as
> possible, to reach a million articles, to be the biggest encyclopedia in the
> world. As Jimbo said in his talk at Wikimania, we have to start changing the
> focus from quantity to quality. We have to make sure that the key articles that
> we do have are as good as possible. Rather than getting another million
> articles, I believe that we need 100,000 more Feature-quality articles.
>
> Some numbers that were run yesterday show that we have over 230,000  without
> any sources whatsoever. That's almost 20 percent of our total articles
> without any sources. Even if we were to provide sources for 15 of these articles  an
> hour, it would take upward of two years to cover them all ? and this does not
>  include articles which are inadequately sourced or which contain spurious
> information, which raise this number by several orders of magnitude.
>
> Before suggesting that these are all stubs, I invite you to look at some
> examples: [[Amethyst]], [[Alto saxophone]], [[Alexander I of Russia]] (who
> fought against Napoleon), [[Italian literature]], etc., etc., etc. These  articles
> are the mainstay of a quality encyclopedia.
>
> This means is that there is a lot of work ahead of us. It is time to shift
> the focus. I therefore propose two solutions:
>
> 1. The field "Requests" on "Recent Changes" be changed to "Requested  feature
> articles." Instead of asking people to create brand new article, the  focus
> should be on improving existing articles.
>
> 2. Regular contests should be held to promote article improvement. To that
> end, I will donate $100 in books and media from Amazon to the person who most
> improves an unsourced article related to history or selected from
> [[Wikipedia:Vital articles]]. The contest will end on October 7. A panel of  judges will
> be selected to decide on the entries. For more information about  what
> constitutes an "unsourced article" please contact me. For historical  reasons, this
> will be known as "Danny's third contest."
>
> I hope to see as many people participating in this contest as participated
> in the previous two.
>
> Danny
> _______________________________________________
> 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 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh - and when I speak of 100,000 Featured Articles, I quite definitely
> don't mean articles that run the gauntlet of FAC as it presently
> stands. I just read all of this page:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates
>
> That's just from the last month. Note the excellent start, where
> someone complaining about the idiocy of the process is told to go away
> and learn to write ... and has to point out to the objectors that he'd
> just scored a couple of FAs.
>
> Any process that promotes this much bile and vitriol is fundamentally
> damaging to Wikipedia's community operation and in need of severe
> process-culling for sheer poisonousness.

The problem is hardly one of excessive process, though.  The purpose
of FAC, fundamentally, is to find problems in articles -- the idea
being that we're looking for articles that none of the reviewers can
find fault with -- and this naturally doesn't sit too well with people
who don't like having flaws in their writing pointed out to them.
Occasionally (as in the example you cite), one of said people will
become extremely agitated and start running around shouting about the
evil FAC process; but, for the most part, article writers take their
lumps somewhat more stoically.

The underlying issue is that the FA process is wearing two different
hats.  It's based on criteria that people want to use as a checklist
for *all* articles -- hence the idea of having 100,000 FAs -- but at
the same time fills the role of selecting our "very best work" (with
all the prestige implicit is that) and serving as pretty much the only
formal recognition for articles available in Wikipedia.

--
Kirill Lokshin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
vvikipedia, anyone? (that's a v v, not a w)

I'm not really sure the foundation can do anything. I'm experienced
with domain issues, and these are three of the most commonly followed
options:

* Contact the owner of the domain (WHOIS record must be accurate per
ICANN policy) and request transfer for a nominal sum
* Contact the owner of the domain and demand transfer of the domain,
possibly paying for minimal expenses
* Contact the owner of the domain and demand transfer, threatening
legal action and (preferably) citing some international law
* Be evil and apply for an ICANN transfer, hoping that the owner has
supplied false info to ICANN and therefore will not be notified about
the transfer request, and once the period of a few weeks has passed
the domain will be transferred to Wikimedia

You could also come up with a petition, having all Wikipedia users
sign it, and present it to domain owners. Anyone else have any ideas?

-- Akash/Draicone

On 9/12/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
>
> "enwikipedia.org" is really starting to annoy me now. There are hundreds
> more like that stealing Wikimedia traffic. Is the Wikimedia Foundation
> planning to do anything about domain parking infringing on their trademarks,
> or would it cost too much?
>
> Andrew Archer
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: David Mestel

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
I don't entirely understand the difficulty - surely the WMF has some
kind of trademark over the Wikipedia name, which would allow them to
forbid others to use it?  I'm no lawyer, but I don't see why we would
need to bother with a petition.

David

On 12/09/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Ray Saintonge" wrote:
> > At what point do we become subject to the law of diminishing returns?
> > The possible variations on our different wikinames, national domains and
> > undotted language codes could rapidly get completely out of hand.
> >
> > If a person cybersquats one of these names with malicious intent it's
> > hard to imagine that he will be impressed by a petition with 1,000
> > signatures.  Even when we manage to wrest one of these names away there
> > comes a point where the cumulative burden of keeping all these names
> > protected is just not cost effective.
> >
> > Ec
>
> Even worse, i'd warn you that this can attract more people to cybersquatting
> our domains, as we will be publicising this subject.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
David


body:
What would be ideal is if we could establish a content-area (i.e.,
WikiProject) peer review as a prerequisite for the purposes of content (esp.
for technical articles) then have it go to a "Brilliant Prose Committee" of
qualified persons (e.g., people with actual degrees or a lot of experience)
to evaluate the writing style, the readibility, the grammar, etc. But that
borders on instruction creep and would be strongly opposed as it creates an
elite class distinction and would knock out all the lovely people who derive
meaning in life from firing torpedoes at FACs.

Carl

On 9/12/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Oh - and when I speak of 100,000 Featured Articles, I quite definitely
> > don't mean articles that run the gauntlet of FAC as it presently
> > stands. I just read all of this page:
> >
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates
> >
> > That's just from the last month. Note the excellent start, where
> > someone complaining about the idiocy of the process is told to go away
> > and learn to write ... and has to point out to the objectors that he'd
> > just scored a couple of FAs.
> >
> > Any process that promotes this much bile and vitriol is fundamentally
> > damaging to Wikipedia's community operation and in need of severe
> > process-culling for sheer poisonousness.
>
> The problem is hardly one of excessive process, though.  The purpose
> of FAC, fundamentally, is to find problems in articles -- the idea
> being that we're looking for articles that none of the reviewers can
> find fault with -- and this naturally doesn't sit too well with people
> who don't like having flaws in their writing pointed out to them.
> Occasionally (as in the example you cite), one of said people will
> become extremely agitated and start running around shouting about the
> evil FAC process; but, for the most part, article writers take their
> lumps somewhat more stoically.
>
> The underlying issue is that the FA process is wearing two different
> hats.  It's based on criteria that people want to use as a checklist
> for *all* articles -- hence the idea of having 100,000 FAs -- but at
> the same time fills the role of selecting our "very best work" (with
> all the prestige implicit is that) and serving as pretty much the only
> formal recognition for articles available in Wikipedia.
>
> --
> Kirill Lokshin
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Guettarda

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Last minute media alert: Wikimedia on ABC's
	Nightline tonight

body:
On 9/12/06, Kat Walsh <mindspillage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> US Wikimedians (and anyone who can get ABC): there will be a story
> about Wikimedia on ABC's Nightline tonight;

Then it's a shame I am boycotting ABC... I hope their "news" is more
accurate than their docudramas

those who were at
> Wikimania may remember seeing them filming. No, I don't know the focus
> of the story, but I'd be surprised if it were entirely rosy, given the
> show's usual fare. Check your local listings...
>
> (I was one of many interviewed for it and have no idea what they'll use.)
>
> -Kat
> who has to go find a TV set now
>
> --
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage  |  G/AIM:LucidWaking
> mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
> The good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving
> -- Lao-Tzu        Wikia: creating communities - http://www.wikia.com
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Andrew Archer

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
Domain name complaints are really nasty and costly, especially if they fight
it.

Petitions are free.

Andrew Archer

On 12/09/06, David Mestel <david.mestel at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't entirely understand the difficulty - surely the WMF has some
> kind of trademark over the Wikipedia name, which would allow them to
> forbid others to use it?  I'm no lawyer, but I don't see why we would
> need to bother with a petition.
>
> David
>
> On 12/09/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "Ray Saintonge" wrote:
> > > At what point do we become subject to the law of diminishing returns?
> > > The possible variations on our different wikinames, national domains
> and
> > > undotted language codes could rapidly get completely out of hand.
> > >
> > > If a person cybersquats one of these names with malicious intent it's
> > > hard to imagine that he will be impressed by a petition with 1,000
> > > signatures.  Even when we manage to wrest one of these names away
> there
> > > comes a point where the cumulative burden of keeping all these names
> > > protected is just not cost effective.
> > >
> > > Ec
> >
> > Even worse, i'd warn you that this can attract more people to
> cybersquatting
> > our domains, as we will be publicising this subject.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> David
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Noah Spurrier

subject:
[Wikitech-l] importDump.php error,
 WikiRevision given a null title in import.

body:
>Date: Mon, 11 Sep 2006 21:14:34 +0200
>From: Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>
>Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] importDump.php error, WikiRevision given a
>        null title in import.
>To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l at wikimedia.org>
>Message-ID: <4505B59A.80400 at pobox.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>Noah Spurrier wrote:
>> I am able to import over 700 articles using importDump.php, but
>> part way through the process I get get an exception complaining that
>> a Wiki Revision was given a null title. Any tips on how to resolve this?
>> I'm using MediaWiki 1.7.1 with a wiki dump downloaded current
>> from August 17th.
>
>>From a Wikimedia site? Add '+' to $wgLegalTitleChars.
>
>-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

That worked perfectly; although, it seems strange that the default
MediaWiki configuration is not compatible with a Wikipedia dump.

I edited includes/DefaultSettings.php and added a + to this line 175:
  $wgLegalTitleChars = " %!\"$&'()*,\\-.\\/0-9:;=?@A-Z\\\\^_`a-z~\\x80-\\xFF";
to get this line:
  $wgLegalTitleChars = " +%!\"$&'()*,\\-.\\/0-9:;=?@A-Z\\\\^_`a-z~\\x80-\\xFF";

Yours,
Noah


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
Ah, good point.  But I would have thought that if the WMF does own the
trademark, the case is fairly clear-cut, so they wouldn't bother to
defend it - but that's probably just my legal naivety...

--
David

On 12/09/06, Andrew Archer <archer.andy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Domain name complaints are really nasty and costly, especially if they fight
> it.
>
> Petitions are free.
>
> Andrew Archer
>
> On 12/09/06, David Mestel <david.mestel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I don't entirely understand the difficulty - surely the WMF has some
> > kind of trademark over the Wikipedia name, which would allow them to
> > forbid others to use it?  I'm no lawyer, but I don't see why we would
> > need to bother with a petition.
> >
> > David
> >
> > On 12/09/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > "Ray Saintonge" wrote:
> > > > At what point do we become subject to the law of diminishing returns?
> > > > The possible variations on our different wikinames, national domains
> > and
> > > > undotted language codes could rapidly get completely out of hand.
> > > >
> > > > If a person cybersquats one of these names with malicious intent it's
> > > > hard to imagine that he will be impressed by a petition with 1,000
> > > > signatures.  Even when we manage to wrest one of these names away
> > there
> > > > comes a point where the cumulative burden of keeping all these names
> > > > protected is just not cost effective.
> > > >
> > > > Ec
> > >
> > > Even worse, i'd warn you that this can attract more people to
> > cybersquatting
> > > our domains, as we will be publicising this subject.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > David
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
David


body:
On 9/12/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
> What would be ideal is if we could establish a content-area (i.e.,
> WikiProject) peer review as a prerequisite for the purposes of content (esp.
> for technical articles)

Not too difficult to set up, in theory.  WikiProject-run peer reviews
(in the Wikipedia "get advice for an article" sense, not the academic
sense) are becoming more common (see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiProject_peer_reviews); and
more FAC-like evaluation (rather than suggestion) methods are also
being attempted (e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment#Requests_for_A-Class_status).

> ... then have it go to a "Brilliant Prose Committee" of
> qualified persons (e.g., people with actual degrees or a lot of experience)
> to evaluate the writing style, the readibility, the grammar, etc.

Presumably the nominator would still have the primary responsibility
of fixing the article to meet the criticism of the committee, rather
than actually having the committee be rewriting the thing?

But this hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting wide support,
obviously, if only because of the ensuing bloodbath over who would be
on the committee. ;-)

--
Kirill Lokshin


body:
On 9/12/06, Kirill Lokshin <kirill.lokshin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/12/06, Carl Peterson <carlopeterson at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What would be ideal is if we could establish a content-area (i.e.,
> > WikiProject) peer review as a prerequisite for the purposes of content
> (esp.
> > for technical articles)
>
> Not too difficult to set up, in theory.  WikiProject-run peer reviews
> (in the Wikipedia "get advice for an article" sense, not the academic
> sense) are becoming more common (see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiProject_peer_reviews); and
> more FAC-like evaluation (rather than suggestion) methods are also
> being attempted (e.g.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment#Requests_for_A-Class_status
> ).
>
> > ... then have it go to a "Brilliant Prose Committee" of
> > qualified persons (e.g., people with actual degrees or a lot of
> experience)
> > to evaluate the writing style, the readibility, the grammar, etc.
>
> Presumably the nominator would still have the primary responsibility
> of fixing the article to meet the criticism of the committee, rather
> than actually having the committee be rewriting the thing?
>
> But this hasn't a snowball's chance in hell of getting wide support,
> obviously, if only because of the ensuing bloodbath over who would be
> on the committee. ;-)
>
> --
> Kirill Lokshin
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

In my mind, the process for the committee would be similar to the RFA,
except that no new sysop privileges would be granted per se and the criteria
would be a history of edits of high literary quality, preferably with major
contributions of that nature to an existing featured article. While I would
prefer doing it on the basis of real-life credentials, i.e., education and
work experience, I realize that it would not be a very Wikipedian way of
settling things (on the order of WP:OR) and that an English professor does
not necessarily make a good Wikipedia writer.

And yes, primary responsibility would still rest with the person making the
nomination.

Carl


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
On 12/09/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> I very much appreciate the discussion about problem domains.
>
> It would benefit WMF greatly if we had the following:
>
> -List of problem domains (is there a page?)
> -Petition engine to capture usernames against use of said domains
>
> That will give us what we need to pursue action as laid out by Akash with a
> minimum of WMF resources having to dedicate time to it.

I can't face looking at the various .org, .net, etc. domains just now,
but I've made a first pass at sorting out the list of known ccTLDs -

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Domain_names#National_domains_.28ccTLDs.29

Some of these are unregistered; quite a few are inactive or holding
pages; at least three are pretty clear squatters.

(As an aside, I note that Bomis owns wikipedia.co.uk, but this is
currently inactive - could we poke someone to get this up again?
Redirecting to the portal at wikimedia.co.uk would be great...)

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


from_name: Michael Billington

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Domain parking

body:
>
> You could also come up with a petition, having all Wikipedia users
> sign it, and present it to domain owners. Anyone else have any ideas?
>
Having all wikipedia users would be near-impossible, but I think it would be
possible to drum up a thousand or so.

Just about every time I've typed "wikipedia" wrong, i get a parked
domain.... so it is an annoying problem, but is it worth the trouble?