subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: 'Proper' languages and bumper stickers

body:
"Alphax" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:437150F9.8060102 at gmail.com...
> Mark Williamson wrote:
>> I'd agree with you there, except that ISO is not always nessecarily
>> correct.
>> For starters, ISO 639-2 excludes lots and lots of languages (cf
>> Ethnologue).
>> The (provisional) ISO 639-3 solves this, but as of yet it is not final
>> or officially official.
[snip]
>> [...] Zlatiborian, of course, is not even mentioned.
>> Give it time, perhaps.
> Show me where "Upper New York on the west side" exists in the
> ethnologue, and I will show you Zlatiborian.

Does it have an entry for "Estuary English"?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jan-Paul Köster

subject: [Wikitech-l] "Meta Refresh" called on restricted wiki.

body:
> My next question is "how do I login to wiki that will only allow
> logged in users to read pages"?
>
> Looks like there is need to refresh back to the login page, and not
> the page that says
>

Add

# Pages anonymous (not-logged-in) users may see
$wgWhitelistRead = array ("Special:Userlogin");

to your LocalSettings.php.

Cheers,
JP


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser questions

body:
daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:

>Although I have not been following this discussion, I was asked this  evening
>to grant 5 arbitrators on the English Wikipedia CheckUser powers.
>
Are that many really needed?

>I also wonder whether they should be given the power on a permanent or a
>need-to-know basis. That is, should they always have this ability, or should
>they only be given it when a case requires invesigation, and then have it
>removed? Personally, I favor the latter option. I do not think anybody needs to  be
>able to do this in all instances.
>
Taking the tool away after it has been used seems to defeat the original
purpose of this discussion.  What's the difference between finding a
steward to grant CheckUser privileges and finding one to simply run the
CheckUser himself?

Ec


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] CheckUser questions


list: wikien-l

from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Editor_tags

body:
This is a summary of the criticism of the WP:ET idea's
at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Editor_tags

# Template messages should be bigger! -
## Too small!
## Readers should read (and understand) them, not just
editors
### Not appropriate for NPOV / POV tags (OK for
others)
### Appears to "cover up" any disputes
### Suggests the talk page is in dispute as opposed to
the article itself.
### "They should be like a big honking stopsign to the
reader"
### "they warn readers and tell them to not read the
article."
#### "If they do, then they'll get false information."
# "Messes up categorizations"
# I dont like it!

ROFL
SV

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


from_name: muhammad zaid zainuddin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: diacritics problem (Muhammad Zainuddin)

body:
Yes. take a look at this website in pdf page 7

<http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2633r.pdf>

If you notice, words =like ''sudah'', ''orang'' and anaknya has virama (we
called it ''ma'') diacritic. Tough that're Indonesian but, certain word in
buginese like ''padang'', ''barek'' and ''sallatang'' need this diacritic.

The underline technique is Andy Mallarangeng's idea, the first person to
create the lontara software.

Thank you.

Muhammad Zainuddin


subject: [Foundation-l] Hosting scans of the 1911 Britannica on Wikimedia

body:
Brian wrote:

> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>
>> Brian wrote:
>>
>>> I recently (today) acquired a DVD containing scans of every page of
>>> the 1911 Britannica, along with index files for it all, [...]
>>> TimStarling specifically asked me to tell you all that he is
>>> "confident that the server requirements will be minimal." They would
>>> set up a domain name, generate some web pages automatically using
>>> the index files, and host the entire set of 29,700 files totaling
>>> about 4 GB.
>>
>> What is suddenly wrong with using Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource?
>> Why do you need a new domain and server just for this book?  Didn't
>> you see
>> http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_New_Student%27s_Reference_Work
>
> I think they want this to be on a separate domain because not only is
> 1911EB a famous encyclopedia, Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from
> it, and several projects still want its contents. So, they would
> rather prop it up and give it a separate space specifically designed
> for making 1911EB's contents easily accessible.

Like Lars, I don't see the point of a separate domain for this.  I agree
that Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from it, but it has benefitted
from many other works as well.  With the scanned pages on Commons they
will still be easily available to the several projects that you have in
mind.  Easily editable and Wikified texts will continue to belong on
Wikisource.

Ec


body:
Brian wrote:

> One more thing, these are black and white TIFs, and there is
> discussion about whether they should be mass converted to PNGs to be
> easily viewable.

How does it handle those pages that were originally in colour?  Will
they need to be rescanned?

Ec


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation website

body:
Hi,

Basically I agree with Anthere on that point WMF site should be
improved and activated, and I expect Angela agrees too, if it will
survive. If it is hardly maintained a dormant site isn't a good
representation for a grobally known organisation.

On 11/10/05, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:

> How is having that directly on the Wikimedia FOundation website
> different from having it on the Quarto ?

If so, perhaps so. But I don't think Quarto has featured like Louvre
essay in its backnumbers.

I worked on three editons of Quarto, and as far as I know, there was
no contribution whose theme isn't on Wikimedia project, Board member
activities or of course, WMF administration. A contribution about
copyright issue in French wasn't included into the WQ3, if I recall
correctly.

And for me there is a difference of directness.

It is acceptable for me a contribution to Quarto like this with a
remark "it doesn't refrect WMF view completely" like IRIN article
remarked like a similar way; some editor would complain even in this
level, though. On the other hand, a content of WMF site would give a
stronger impression to visitors, a particular idea is ensured by the
foundation, or others wonder what relevance is between the WMF and the
issue or th what kind of WMF opinion would be reflected at that page.
As people vary, their impression would vary too.

As for this article, I have been dull and not so much aware the Louvre
essay would be put on the site directly, not a part of Quarto. My
memory is vague but somewhere I read it would be a part of Quarto.
However, I had read Anthere's announcement, the Quarto publification
would finish and the website would be renewed drastically. So it was
my fault to pursue this "contradiction".

On the site itself, I think it should exist, but of course,
improvement and acceralation are necessary.

> > If this is what the site is turning into, I'd rather go with earlier
> > suggestion (I think by Elian) of merging the foundation wiki with
> > Meta. Since the Quarto experiment has, as far as I can tell, been
> > abandoned, and press releases are scattered over the projects and meta
> > rather than being in any one "official" place, I'm less and less
> > seeing any point to this site. It doesn't reflect anything official,
> > and locks down editing for no benefit.
>
> Merging Foundation Wiki with meta is absolute nonsense. And I think
> Florence found a very good compromise.

> I totally don't agree. As a matter of fact, there should be a person
> completely dedicated to this website and it should be static. And yes,
> it should reflect editorials from members of the community, the things
> they find that are good and those they find difficult. That's the only
> thing that will give it a little bit of life.

Generally agreed, but I say, not a person but a person per some major
languages - so people in a certain number have to dedicate; now except
some languages most of pages are poorly maintained. Even "latest news"
on the Main Page by language haven't been updated except some
languages.

Perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to get rid of some languages whose
editors support maintenance unless some dedicated translators or site
editors will be available.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911
	Britannica	on	Wikimedia

body:
Brian wrote:

> As for the availability of the DVD, it has been available _for a
> price_, and not easily accessible. This effectively prohibits and
> group projects from moving for which require the use of the images.

I just checked on eBay.  Someone in Wichita is currently selling them
for $18.99.

Ec


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy on including templates in automatic categories

body:
On 11/10/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've been altering templates, as and when I come across them, so that the
> template itself is **not** included in the category to which it
> automagically adds articles.
>
> I've been doing this with a cunning combination of the <includeonly> and
> <noinclude> tags, which enable me to add in rubric to the template warning
> people that it adds articles to a category, and which category.
>
> However I've just been reverted (here: http://tinyurl.com/7b7gw ) with the
> explanation "rv, it's important for these templates to be a member of their
> category".
>
> First off, I disagree: I think it clutters up the categories pointlessly
> with **self references** which are evil(TM).
>
> Second, in this particular case, the template doesn't even appear unless you
> know which letter to click in the {{CategoryTOC}}.
>
> Third, the template is already documented in the category description (here:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Book_covers ) perfectly adequately.
>
> Whatever, I'm wondering whether there is a policy on this, since these tags
> are so new, and if so where is it?
>
> Rather than enter into a revert war, I'd rather thrash it out properly
> first.
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]

I agree with you.  I have had the same idea myself from time to time,
and it is more sloth than doubt that has hindered me from doing this.
It is ludicrous to say that these templates should be in the category.
 That implies something that just isn't true: that the template is
licensed in the same way as the category.  Yes, the category certainly
needs to recognise that it is the table that forces the inclusion of
the category, but that can easily be done with a link in the category
page to the template.  This seems a wholly more appropriate method of
sorting this problem; one that doesn't imply something false.

Sam


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911 Britannica on
	Wikimedia

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>The CD/DVD sets are apparently quite rare, Brian was lucky to get his hands
>on one at a fairly cheap price.
>
Not really.

>There's the trademark issue -- Britannica may attempt to scare us with legal
>threats over this. A disclaimer on every HTML page declaring non-affiliation
>with Britannica would probably put us on sound legal footing, although I'd
>be willing to hear advice about this from people who are more knowledgeable.
>If the "LoveToKnow Free Online Encyclopedia" (1911encyclopedia.org) can host
>this content, then we should be able to find a way too. And we can do it
>without the abominable license restrictions and "copyright traps" scattered
>throughout the work to enforce them.
>
It may turn out that their copyright traps are really their lack of OCR
proofreading. :-)

>Wikipedia owes a lot to the 1911 edition -- we've copied many of its
>articles. A public, canonical copy will be a valuable tool to deal with
>LoveToKnow's frequent OCR errors, its incompleteness, and its specious legal
>threats against us based on our use of unspecified copyright material hidden
>in their doctored online copy. Hopefully the availability of page images
>will spur development of a complete and accurate OCR copy.
>
Someone with a legitimate copyright claim does not need to hide traps in
the text.  Doing so cannot create new copyrights in the test, although
they still have a copyright in the surrounding framework.  I would go so
far as to say that changing text for the sake of hidden copyrights may
be a violation of the original author's moral rights.

Ec


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911 Britannica
	on	Wikimedia

body:
Angela wrote:

>On 11/9/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>
>
>>I suggested EB as an abbreviation, not as a way to avoid
>>trademark issues.
>>
>>
>The potential trademark issue was brought up on this list last July:
><http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-July/003645.html>.
>Since then, Wikisource has been mostly using the EB abbreviation, but
>there are still  many mentions of the full name, so perhaps it was
>decided it wasn't an issue.
>
IIRC , someone had written to PG on this and they didn't seem to be
worried about this.

Ec


from_name: Any File

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911 Britannica on Wikimedia

body:
> A few notes on this: firstly it seems that the guy who made the scans has no
> intention of claiming any rights to them. He seems to be interested in

Could just a scanner claim any rights, in any case? It is not an
"intellectual" act as far as I know.

Would this work consider more linked to Wikipedia or WIkisource?

Are the page in image format ore have they been OCRed?

- AnyFile -


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Help page mirroring and non-GFDL projects

body:
Michael Noda wrote:
> As I first started poking around these pages on behalf of a non-WMF
> MediaWiki instance that would also like to mirror Help pages from Meta
> locally, I would appreciate it if the general case of a non-GFDL wiki
> using GFDL help pages could be addressed, and not just the particular
> instance of Wikinews.  Since we're brand-new and haven't chosen a
> license yet, this will influence our direction in coming to a decision
> there.

There is some talk that a public-domain or non-viral free-use-and-
derivatives license would be better for a set of redistributable help
pages, since unlike traditional documentation (eg a separate manual or
book) they are integrated with the user's content.

The current help pages on meta are not really appropriate for
distribution or use, and we don't have any redistributable packages for
them at this time. (Additionally there are several competing
organization schemes, they're mixed with other pages, they aren't clear
who they're targetted for, they use templates outside the help
namespace, they use images with no obvious way how to package them, it
isn't clear what versions they apply to, etc etc.)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Arbeo M

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Status of Serbia and Montenegro chapter

body:
Delphine M?nard wrote:

> On another note, I am sorry to tell you that you
have, > on top of playing with people's feelings,
failed to
> make your point. At least, *I* have failed to see
where > you were leading.

Delphine a vraiment raison ici! Me neither, I wasn't
able  to figure out what you really mean. To me it
looked like a bizarre mix of serious arguments and
comedy, without being able tell which part is what.

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
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from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Try out the rating scheme

body:
Poor, Edmund W wrote:
<snip>
> No one will blame you. Tell you what, let ME take the blame.
>

Oh no, not again! Quick, somebody stop him! :-D

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

body:
Jack Lynch wrote:
> I certainly agree, it is statements made by the arbiter, not by the
> defendant, which concern me.
>
> "That is not an RfC, it's a rant by a known troublemaker. I see no
> reason to participate in such a clearly broken process."
> (regarding an RfC initiated by Silverback)
> \
> Let's check the outrage at the door and discuss this reasonably, ok?
> Hyperbolic screaming does not benefit your cause. Kelly Martin (talk)
> 12:54, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
>

Geez, you really *are* a lawyer, aren't you? A magistrate acknowledging
that someone has prior convictions is not the same as predjuding their
guilt or innocence. Granted, records of past offences should not
influence the outcome, but they *do* play a strong role in sentancing.

Besides which, I have to agree with Kelly here; attacking the entire
judiciary won't get you anywhere.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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body:
Matt Brown wrote:
> On 11/9/05, Andrew Venier <avenier at venier.net> wrote:
>
>>Wikimedia has no test servers? All of them are production systems?
>>
>
>
> The code has already been tested in such a fashion - the question is whether
> it can stand a production load.
>
> Perhaps the true problem is that we do not have any method of simulating a
> production load adequately.
>

How did the FAA (I think it was them) simulate crashing a jet aircraft
to determine if their new fuel was safer or not? By crashing one, of course.

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Try out the rating scheme

body:
geni wrote:
> On 11/9/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I think the suggestion of using a non-Wikimedia site to trial this
>>first would be a good idea. If that's done with no problems, someone
>>might be more willing to risk it on Wikimedia servers. I'd offer
>>Wikicities, but we're still on 1.4.
>>
>>Angela.
>
>
> Hmm non wikimedia sites with high trafic that use mediawiki 1.5. Could
> be tricky.
>

It's just as likely as finding a website running the latest
bleeding-edge version of (insert name of software here) that isn't
(insert name of developer here).

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Soviet spies

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Chip Berlet wrote:
>
>> Yes, but I am the one who added "Several denied they
>> were spies, and even more were never indicted."
>> And even that caveat is not sufficient to ameliorate the heading.
>>
> Perhaps "Soviet spies" could be restricted to a meta-category without
> any direct content of its own.  It would include only other categories
> such as "convected Soviet spies",

Sounds half-baked to me :)

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Serbia and Montenegro chapter

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>It wasn't a real problem until Milos and the other
>anti-Zlatiborians decided to make a big fuss to try
to >prevent the glorious people of Zlatibor from
getting the >Wikipedia they so richly deserve in their
beautiful >native language, and for petty political
reasons.

Hi Mark!

The other day I wrote that Milos ought to be a little
bit more tolerant of various opinions (including
yours) here.

On the other hand, I don't think using words like
"nationalists", "oppressors" or "anti-Zlatiborians"
will help establishing a good atmosphere of discussion
here when the issues themselves are difficult enough.

Best,

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
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from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [Wikitech-l] mwdumper

body:
At 12:38 -0800 9/11/05, Brion Vibber wrote:
>Gordon Joly wrote:
>>And....
>>
>>Is it possible to dump all the sql from WIkipedia without shell access?
>
>For the most part I'd be surprised if you've got an account allowing
>that much disk space usage in the database but no shell. :)

I have created 5 or 6 wikis, without shell acccess...

>
>If you have something like phpMyAdmin, it may be possible upload the
>giant (multigigabyte for some languages) SQL file and have it source
>it in.
>

I feel I am on the wrong list.... since I using MediaWiki to create
quite small wikis... perhaps these questions belong on Mediawiki-l?

Cheers!

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Wikimedia

body:
Hi Ronline!

>The other thing that makes me worried is the growing
>pressure on new language contributors. We must
>remember that Wikipedians are *volunteers* and most,
>except vandals, are always adding knowledge to the
>community. Pressuring them into reaching a certain
>guideline for their language is abuse, in my opinion.

It would be a pity if those guidelines were primarily
perceived as "pressure". They should of course never
be abused as an instrument to exclude people or groups
but only serve everybody participating at Wikimedia
projects (old and new members) by helping to assure
the success of those projects.

Sadly, it's a fact that roughly half of all Wikipedias
are clinically dead at present. Being enthusiastically
pro-multilingualism here, I believe that we must do
the best we can in order to add more productive,
useful editions in the coming years but at the same
time try hard to prevent any further stillbirths. My
personal opinion is that establishing a few standards
will be more beneficial here than a total
laissez-faire. But I do understand your concern, too.

>New contributors must be encouraged, not discouraged.

Right. The attitude of the established community
towards potential new members must always be a
cooperative, constructive, helpful and friendly one.
But maybe part of the encouragement can also be
something like: "Look, we've been around here for a
while and we've seen what works and what doesn't. We
recommend that you first find a couple more
like-minded people _before_ you start because it's
probably more work than you can imagine now."

Best,

Arbeo

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from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
No, but some people do consider it a sep'rate language.

Mark

On 10/11/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Alphax" <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote in
> message news:437150F9.8060102 at gmail.com...
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> >> I'd agree with you there, except that ISO is not always nessecarily
> >> correct.
> >> For starters, ISO 639-2 excludes lots and lots of languages (cf
> >> Ethnologue).
> >> The (provisional) ISO 639-3 solves this, but as of yet it is not final
> >> or officially official.
> [snip]
> >> [...] Zlatiborian, of course, is not even mentioned.
> >> Give it time, perhaps.
> > Show me where "Upper New York on the west side" exists in the
> > ethnologue, and I will show you Zlatiborian.
>
> Does it have an entry for "Estuary English"?
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daniel Brandt rattles sabre

body:
On 11/10/05, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I urge you to look at the page he has there. You may care to take a
> dated archival copy in case of any of the threatened lawsuits
> eventuating.
>

Ah, more comedy lawyer threats.

What I especially love about Daniel Brandt is the fact that he has made
revealing inside and private information about people and companies his
life's work - but somehow when it's about HIM, it's all different.

-Matt (User:Morven)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Wikimedia

body:
On 10/11/05, Arbeo M <arbeo_m at yahoo.de> wrote:
> Sadly, it's a fact that roughly half of all Wikipedias
> are clinically dead at present. Being enthusiastically

And I do think that right now, our _top_ priority should be to find
ways to populate these barren WPs.

Some ideas:

- Find language activists, or people who have a website about the language
- Find people on ICQ who claim to speak the language, and let them
know about that WP
- Let governmental or other official or authoritative organisations
know about that WP
- Get grant money to initially pay people to write good articles /
translate articles, especially in countries with a low per-capita
income (sub-saharan Africa, for example), and when a sizable article
base has been established, it will be much easier to attract new
editors. This includes having people write articles offline, and then
typing it up yourself.
- Depending on the size of the WP and the narrowness of its reader
base, you can put a sitenotice up at one WP that another WP exists --
the Romanian WP did something similar for a proposal for a Vlax Romany
WP, and it was relatively successful.

These are all things that have worked in the past. There are obviously
many more possibilities.

Mark

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Wikiacc

body:
On 11/9/05, Wikiacc <wikiacc at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/8/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Just find someone with serves access to a non mediawiki wiki and turn
> > it on and see what happens. If all else fails the person who runs the
> > other wiki project I work on would love to have this feature.
>
> I would invite you to do it on WikiTree (wikitree.org), but we're
> still running 1.4 and my developer status (while promised) has not
> happened yet.

I have contacted the owner of the development version of WikiTree
(which runs 1.5) for possible use.

--
--~~~~
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wikiacc


subject: [Wikitech-l] Scarcity

body:
Just a heads up; I'm moving this weekend and may be scarce for a few
days until my phone/internet gets set up.

Any priority site/software issues should be directed to this list or the
bug tracker rather than private email to me to make sure somebody sees it.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


from_name: Ilya Haykinson

subject: [Foundation-l] Wikinews is giving out press credentials

body:
On 11/10/05, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Okay, I do. The foundation as the owner of the name Wikinews is the
> ultimate instance to decide who is allowed what to do with this name. It
> can decide to delegate this decision to the community, even for outside
> relations as in the case of press credentials but it stays their
> decision. If the wikinews community wants to hand out press credentials,
> they should submit their policy to the foundation and have it approved
> by the foundation. Since the policy seems quite okay, I see no reason
> why the foundation shouldn't accept it, but there's certainly a need for
> approval as they want to use the trademark in external relations.

Ok, it is rather silly to debate this for 40+ messages.

Board members, please, read over the policy and either approve it so
that we can stop this time-wasting back-and-forth, or say that you'll
review it, or say that you don't need to review it.

-ilya haykinson


subject: [WikiEN-l] People editing their own Wikipedia articles.

body:
Daniel Brandt is far from the first subject of a Wikipedia article to come
along, find the article, and try to 'fix' it, edit it, delete it, or even
boost themselves on it. And he won't be the last. As Wikipedia becomes more
and more in the public eye, and as well-known people become more and more
familiar with online things, we'll see it quite often.

We should be more prepared for this. Do we even have a page to point people
at if they are themselves the subject of a Wikipedia article, explaining how
Wikipedia works when it comes to biographies of living persons, and how they
should engage with Wikipedia to improve articles on themselves? If not, we
should.

We should also try and interact better ourselves with these people, and
recognise that in most cases their intentions are not evil. They simply
don't understand Wikipedia or the way it works, and thus misread and
misinterpret what's going on.

For instance, just yesterday I noticed that an anonymous contributor had
repeatedly removed a piece from the article on a fairly well-known author.
After several rounds of removing it, the anon created a userid and removed
the info again, with an edit comment that the information was inaccurate.
The username was clearly based on that author's name, so I contacted them
asking if they really were the author in question or if they were a fan
using the author's name. The author subsequently contacted me in email and
verified their identity, and we discussed the issue; it turned out that the
incident being removed was one where the author had been quoted in the press
as having said things they insisted they had never said.

I'm working on a peaceful resolution of this, and I'm very hopeful that it
can be achieved.

What concerns me is that for quite a few users, the very idea that a notable
person was attempting to remove information from the article on themselves
would have made them dig in their heels about Wikipedia's rights and
freedoms, the information would have been kept in the article merely to
spite the person, and no doubt threats of lawsuits and the like might have
resulted. We should be aware that many times, if someone is attempting to
change information in an article about themselves, it is because they
honestly believe it to be inaccurate. Nutcases like Brandt aren't the norm.

-Matt


from_name: Michael Noda

body:
Hi, this is something I asked on irc in #wikimedia earlier today, so
apologies to those of you who have already read this.

On projects like Wikinews which do not use the GFDL, Mediawiki Help
pages are still copied from Meta to the Help: namespace as an aid to
editors.  However, I noticed that for these pages, (for instance,
<http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Help:Diff>), the only copyright notice is
the Wikinews default on the bottom of the page: "All content created
after September 25, 2005 is available under the terms of the Creative
Commons Attribution 2.5 License unless otherwise specified."  Of
course, at the top of the same page, it is acknowledged that the text
is copied from <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Diff>, which, like
all pages on Meta, carries the legend "Content is available under GNU
Free Documentation License."

My question is, is the Wikinews page kosher with the GFDL?  If so,
why?  If not, what specifically must be done to make it compliant?

As I first started poking around these pages on behalf of a non-WMF
MediaWiki instance that would also like to mirror Help pages from Meta
locally, I would appreciate it if the general case of a non-GFDL wiki
using GFDL help pages could be addressed, and not just the particular
instance of Wikinews.  Since we're brand-new and haven't chosen a
license yet, this will influence our direction in coming to a decision
there.

Many thanks for your time,

--Michael Noda


from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Some corporate bias to watch out for

body:
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I just got this from my Google alert on Wikipedia:
http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2145845/tax-group-say-wikipedia

"The Professional Contractors Group (PCG), an organisation for
freelance and temporary contract workers in the UK, has joined the
authoring ranks of Wikipedia, the open source encyclopaedia.

John Kell, political researcher for the PCG, has written three
entries, two on British taxation law, with a decidedly pro-PCG bias."

These articles are being written by [[User:John Kell]]. I recently
placed {{NPOV}} templates on the articles [[IR35]] and [[S660A]] for
reasons that should become obvious in the context of their content,
and [[Professional Contractors Group]] as well. This seems to be an
attempt by a political lobby group to use Wikipedia as a soapbox. I'm
not intimately familiar with the political situation surrounding these
statutes, so I would ask that other users try to help me in making the
articles more neutral.

Ryan
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Wikimedia

body:
Ronline wrote:

> I think that saying that people can make their own
> wiki somewhere else is not a good thing. Wikipedia
is
> already established, and the more regional languages
> we offer, the richer the encyclopedia becomes.

The fact that Wikipedia is now a well-known "brand"
might raise a new issue in the future: for some
languages (especially idioms where the attribute
"separate language" is disputed) it could look like
some kind of recognition or proof of their
distinctness if they are granted a subdomain here. In
those cases, new Wikipedias could be requested not for
the primary aim of collecting and distributing
knowledge (i. e. writing an encyclopedia) but rather
more or less solely for the aim of promoting a
language (or even the political, religious ect. idea
behind it).

Arbeo

P. S. Sorry for posting so much today!

___________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de


subject: [WikiEN-l] Horrable Grammer

body:
There already is a WikiProject Grammar by the way,
listed at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_WikiProjects

SV

--- Freya <cybercat at redjellyfish.net> wrote:

> Sometimes, when I am reading an article, I come upon
> some really
> atrocious grammar - for example, misplacing adverbs,
> especially
> "only," or mismatched pronouns.
>
> We need a committee to check the grammar in
> Wikipedia articles and
> make corrections! We need some really picky people
> on this committee
> too - and I will be glad to help.
>
>
> - Fearless Freya of Arty Atlanta
>
>
> Meet people who share your interests!
>
> http://www.meetup.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
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Wikimedia

body:
One more - I really don't know why I'm finding my own
opinion so interesting today ;-)

Ronline wrote:

>In fact, I think the isolation of Toki Pona and
>Klingon from the Wikipedia community are both
negative
>precedents that shouldn't be repeated again. It is
>exactly this attitude that I am worried about, which
>consists of two points:

>1. That languages which aren't used predominantly be
a
>certain population aren't important and can be
treated
>as "second-class", just because they don't help in
the
>narrow goal of making an encyclopedia accessible to
>all. [...]

I can't really agree with you this time. Toki Pona and
Klingon simply _are_ part of a very different class of
languages than English or Romany. Thus, treating them
equally would be the same as if you treated a cat like
a dog or vice versa.

In my opinion, every natural language is at least
worth being considered for the purposes of
transferring knowledge here. But why should one want
to use a fictional language like Klingon for the
purpose of writing a non-fictional (online) book? Most
probably for entertainment reason only. A nice pastime
for those who like it, sure. But is a project
dedicated to information/knowledge really the right
place for that?

Arbeo

___________________________________________________________
Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de


from_name: Delirium

body:
Ryan Delaney wrote:

>These articles are being written by [[User:John Kell]]. I recently
>placed {{NPOV}} templates on the articles [[IR35]] and [[S660A]] for
>reasons that should become obvious in the context of their content,
>and [[Professional Contractors Group]] as well. This seems to be an
>attempt by a political lobby group to use Wikipedia as a soapbox. I'm
>not intimately familiar with the political situation surrounding these
>statutes, so I would ask that other users try to help me in making the
>articles more neutral.
>
>
These seem to have been cleaned up pretty quickly, which is nice to
see.  Wikipedia's actually better now for Mr. Kell's
contributions---even though the original ones were not neutral, they did
contain some good information that we previously didn't have, and now do.

-Mark


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the
	1911	Britannica	onWikimedia

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> What???  Wikimedia Commons is the best place for images, and indeed
> there have already been several scans of this encyclopedia that have
> been put into Wikimedia projects.  We don't need to use bit torrents
> unless this is a move to do bit torrents for all Wikimedia projects
> (perhaps a good idea but a seperate discussion).  There is also a
> license tag that has been specifically established on commons just for
> content from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica because of the large
> number of potential images that can come from this source.  Look them
> up right now with the associated categories at
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template%3APD-Britannica

There are only 8.  The tag shows them as from the 12th or earlier.
That's technically correct, but not very helpful.  The two that I looked
at, for the abacus and the map of Africa were from earlier editions.
The abacus (as used in Wikisource) was from the 9th; strangely, the
picture was repeated in the 11th, but with an introduced error!  The map
of Africa in 1890 is not from the 11th edition, and the 9th edition was
complete in 1889.  It's presumably from one of the supplementary volumes
that went into the 10th edition, but that would need to be checked out.
It would be interesting to trace the development of the various articles
over all the editions.  ;-)

There is probably a distinction to be made between the images and the
page scans.  The page scan serves a different purpose from the
illustrations.  If the resolution on a page scan is good enough to allow
the text to be read that's all we need.  The general layout of the page,
including the placement of images, does not need higher resolution.  The
images themselves may need higher resolution; I find some of them in the
hard copy fairly difficult to follow.  The Wikisource layout is not
restricted by EB's layout; that's an advantage of the Wiki not being paper.

I understand too that the commons has been growing fast with an average
file size that is much larger than what we would find in a text bsed
project.  In principle I think that these scans do belong in the
Commons, but if any kind of division is needed a logical split would be
by having text page scans in something like a Wikiscan project.

> That trying to organize the content onto a Wiki has been difficult,
> yes. It may also be a good idea to access a direct scan of the image
> to compare against the transcribed text.  The real question is if the
> contents of a whole DVD ought to be moved to commons or not,
> especially if the source of the scans is in the public domain.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the preferred organization in the
Commons and Wikisource.  For the commons a listing by page makes most
sense.  For Wikisource a by article listing makes more sense
irrespective of whether an article is only a short paragraph or 100 pages.

> That is the real issue here, because you can copyright a scan of an
> image.

Not usually, because it lacks originality

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Kurdish Wikipedia blocked in Iran (Censorship)

body:
Hi Erdal,

Such cases of linguistic opression (yes, that is what this is) and
violations of human rights always pain me to hear about.

Another case, which is much worse, though not particularly relevant to
WP: any books published in Burma have to be in either Burmese or
English. If they're in another language, a translation must be
provided so the government censors can read it.

In poor and conflict-ridden areas, where the native languages are
including Shan, Karen, Chin, Jingpho, Mon, Yangbye, Wa... etc, there
is no budget for anybody to pay for translations for every book or
magazine. Thus, since the authoritarian regime came into power, there
has been a severe decline of publication in these languages, some of
which once had a flourishing literary tradition.

Most publications in these languages now were published illegally.

Mark

On 10/11/05, Erdal Ronahi <erdal.ronahi at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> my friend in Iran confirmed that at least two ISP in Teheran block the
> Kurdish Wikipedia (http://ku.wikipedia.org). The identical message on
> both is:
>
> Access Denied!
>
> This page will not be accessible for the reason that in our database it
> has been assinged to the category of blocked contents .
>
> In the event the URL does not contain materials that are forbidden by
> laws, please fill this form out then hit send.
>
>
> However, one user from another part of Iran was able to reach it. The
> mentioned form has meanwhile been filled and sent, but there is no
> reaction yet.
>
> I think that even a partial censoship against Wikipedia is of interest
> for the community. The Kurdish Wikipedia is frequently attacked by
> political vandalizm of Turkish writing users, who want to see all Kurds
> "wiped out", but this is relatively easy to handle. There have been
> reports before that Internet Cafe owners in Turkey are forced to install
> software that blocks Kurdish content, including Wikipedia. This is the
> first time we hear about such an incident from Iran.
>
> Regards,
> Erdal
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


subject: [Wikipedia-l] 'Proper' languages and bumper stickers

body:
The main problem with ISO 639-1 & -2 is that nobody looked to see if
they were covering all of the languages meeting the criteria.

Now, any language which doesn't have an ISO 639-1 or -2 code but
_does_ meet the criteria, must have an application submitted by you
for its inclusion by them. (yes, that sentence purposefully was an
awkward one).

ISO isn't doing any work whatsoever to distinguish between solidly
established written languages and everything else.

The main requirement, IIRC, is that there be at least 50 documents in
the language at any library.

That wrongfully excludes many languages which are written but rarely
published, or which are written but only have very minor publications.

Mark

On 10/11/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>  On 11/8/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > 2005/11/8, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com>:
> >
> > >  - tpi (tok pisin, recent conlang, 160 articles),
> >
> > tpi *is* an official ISO 639-2 code. It is also not a conlang, but a
> > creole - I think you're confusing it with Tokipona, for which the
> > Wikipedia has been closed.
>
> Whoops, it certainly is.  Boy do I have papaya on my face...
> Tokipona, while it lastedas a WM project, did represent another reason
> some people wish to go outside the ISO.
>
> > Apart from that, I am of the opinion that it is good to go by ISO
> > 639-2, but as a default rather than an absolute. That is, we don't
> > always follow ISO 639-2, but for languages on the list we will include
> > unless there is a strong argument being made against, whereas
> > languages not on the list will not be included only if there is a
> > strong argument being made in support. Personally I would like to be
> > slightly more strict - ISO 639-2 for living languages, but dead
> > languages will have to show that there is recent material written in
> > the language as well, rather than just an ISO 639-2 code because of
> > old work.
>
> It should always be possible to make strong arguments for
> exceptions... though perhaps they should be limited to a well-defined
> space (perhaps even off the mailing lists :-).
>
> As for ISO 639-3, this is not at all a patch or substitute for 639-2.
> Each layer of language-codes has a lower bar for what it means to be a
> [meaningful] language.  -1 and -2 are specifically focused on l
> anguage designations that are useful to written work...
>
> We should make use of the good work ISO is doing to distinguish
> between these language categories, where we can.
>
> SJ
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>
>>Like Lars, I don't see the point of a separate domain for this.  I agree
>>that Wikipedia has benefitted greatly from it, but it has benefitted
>>from many other works as well.  With the scanned pages on Commons they
>>will still be easily available to the several projects that you have in
>>mind.  Easily editable and Wikified texts will continue to belong on
>>Wikisource.
>>
>>
>Why are you still talking about a separate domain? That's ancient history. I
>suggested a compromise, why aren't you talking about that?
>
The message that I was responding to was less than 24 hours old.  How
can that possibly be "ancient"?  If your "compromise" needs commenting,
I'll do that when I get to it.

Ec


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> I've made my position clear already - I think the process is fine and
> that you don't need any more input from the Board. If the rest of the
> Board decline to comment, I'd take that as silent approval. All
> members of the Board, if they're at all following what's going on here
> or in the state of the wiki reports which already explained this, are
> well aware of the accreditation scheme, and none have objected to it.

What is not clear is if those people who are accredited have permission to use
the Wikinews name and logo on badges.

-- mav

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the
	1911	Britannica	on	Wikimedia

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>> IIRC , someone had written to PG on this and they didn't seem to be
>> worried about this.
>
> I wrote to Michael Hart and didn't get any reply at all.  If I had, I
> would have posted it.

Thanks for clarifying this.  I believe that he commented on this
somewhere, even if not to us.

> I poked around Distrubited Proofreaders and generally speaking it
> appears as though the rest of the volumes for the Encyclopaedia
> Britannica are going to be using the original trademark to describe
> the contents of the e-book.  In that regard PG doesn't seem too
> worried about the trademark issues.  If the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
> Inc. wants to go after the Wikimedia Foundation and myself as an
> editor who helped with the creation of the project on Wikisource, I
> say bring it on!  Dropping a note on slashdot and a few other tech
> news sites is going to make Brittanica Inc. wish they had gone to Mars
> instead for the negative publicity it would generate.  Besides, they
> havn't asked or demanded anything either, and this project has been
> going for several months now, and widespread links through other
> projects like Wikipedia and Wiktionary.  We also have a formal
> disclaimer that acknowledges the source of the trademark, and even a
> hyperlink to the company website if anybody is really interested.
> That  with a higher Google ranking alone ought to be worth something
> to Britannica, Inc.

The fact that EB has not commented on this at all is the important one.
Until they do we can only speculate about what they think.  They have
apparently not taken offense to the others who have referenced their
name so it is also conceivable that the doctrine of laches may apply as
wel if they do in the future.

We do have some people who like to guess what the law is, and then
proceed to interpret it to their disadvantage.

> Wikisource is using the EB abbriviation mainly because typing out
> Encyclopaedia Britannica as a namespace is a pain to use all of the
> time and consumes server space and bandwidth.  It is easier to type
> EB1911 than 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. (The ae ligature is
> especially nasty to type in from an English language keyboard.)  I'm
> sorry if I didn't make that clear somewhere on Wikisource earlier.  It
> was certainly not done to avoid trademark usage although that was
> another motive of minor concern, not the primary issue.  There are a
> bunch of templates, Wikisource project organization pages, categories,
> and more that were added that some very simple namespace had to be
> created to coordinate all of those pages and keep from making
> ambiguous references to elsewhere on Wikisource.

I would have shortened it to simply "EB11" since it is also the 11th
edition.  Since the reference needs to be in all relevant titles to
distinguish them from other articles on the same topic it is better that
it be as short as possible.

Ec


from_name: Jtkiefer

subject: [Foundation-l] Florida public figure ruling

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,69511,00.html?tw=rss.POL
> In an Oct. 21 ruling, Florida circuit court Judge Karen Cole threw out a
>defamation case against two TV stations because she deemed the plaintiff --
>a Jacksonville woman -- to be a public figure who had been subject to
>"substantial" internet debate.
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
We'll have to remember this case if anyone ever actually goes through
with their threats to sue us for defamation.

-Jtkiefer


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

Delirium wrote:

>
> These seem to have been cleaned up pretty quickly, which is nice to
> see. Wikipedia's actually better now for Mr. Kell's
> contributions---even though the original ones were not neutral,
> they did contain some good information that we previously didn't
> have, and now do.
>
> -Mark

The problem is, I cleaned them up by cutting out a lot of potentially
useful information because it was original research and I didn't know
how to go about citing it, since I'm not familiar with the issue.
Check the edit histories.

Ryan
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from_name: Jason Edgecombe

subject: [Wikitech-l] cluster monitoring

body:
Ashar Voultoiz wrote:

>Hello,
>
>We currently have ganglia wich give usefully reporting about server
>status. What about notifications when something is about to go wrong
>(disk usage at 95%, lot of errors in memcached, too many slow queries,
>server suddenly swapping ..).
>
>Kate wrote servmon that gave (give?) usefull informations about server
>but I am personally to lazy to hack that.
>
>Recently I finally found a job, part of my tasks is to setup a
>monitoring tool. My choice ? Nagios. It's an open source monitoring tool
>that I have setup on larousse some months ago. I asked avar and mark
>their though about having a monitoring tool, their answer was: sure!
>
>So let's start with Nagios.
>
>
>Nagios is still on larousse although it is not running at the momment. I
>could easily upgrade it to lastest version (2.0b4), tweak the config
>files to add the new servers (something like 60+ new friends).
>
>We will have to choose a server to run nagios on. Larousse seems to be a
>good choice as it is mostly idling, serve pages for
>http://noc.wikimedia.org/ and got used for servmon. Larousse could
>become THE monitoring device (and eventually move ganglia from zwinger
>to larousse).
>
>Next step is to agree on a way to check services on the various hosts.
>There is several solution for that:
>
>  1/ run a daemon on each server (nrpe), listening to queries from the
>monitoring host and giving back results.
>
> 2/ hack something that grab data from gmetad and add new metric plugins
>to ganglia. The good point is that we will then have those data showing
>in ganglia.
>
> 3/ make checks through ssh ussing passwordless ssh-key. I personally
>dont like that.
>
> 4/ deploy snmp everywhere
>
>The nrpe approach need to setup a daemon on each server. Problem, most
>of the data are already available through gmetad. The good point is that
>it is easy to setup (rpm -i nrpe , same config files and plugins for
>every servers).
>
>Reusing gmetad data is probably a better idea, the data in nagios and
>ganglia would be the same. One of the problems is that we will have to
>code a nagios plugin that cache the gmetad data to avoid multiples
>queries (we probably dont want to query gmetad for cpu, then for memory
>then for nfs call, then for each disk space usage).
>
>SNMP is a great tool for grabing devices status. Again it s probably
>redundant with gmetad but will let us monitor network equipment such as
>the switches, our ISP router and probably the console switch.
>
>cheers,
>
>
I would be VERY interested in nagios-ganglia integration. I recommend
that you contact the nagios and ganglia teams about this. I think a lot
of people have wanted this.


from_name: Freya

subject: [WikiEN-l] Horrible Grammar

body:
Sometimes, when I am reading an article, I come upon some really
atrocious grammar - for example, misplacing adverbs, especially
"only," or mismatched pronouns.

We need a committee to check the grammar in Wikipedia articles and
make corrections! We need some really picky people on this committee
too - and I will be glad to help.

- Fearless Freya of Arty Atlanta

Meet people who share your interests!

http://www.meetup.com/


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911
	Britannica	on	Wikimedia

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

> Angela wrote:
>
>> On 11/9/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I suggested EB as an abbreviation, not as a way to avoid
>>> trademark issues.
>>>
>>
>> The potential trademark issue was brought up on this list last July:
>> <http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2005-July/003645.html>.
>>
>> Since then, Wikisource has been mostly using the EB abbreviation, but
>> there are still  many mentions of the full name, so perhaps it was
>> decided it wasn't an issue.
>>
> IIRC , someone had written to PG on this and they didn't seem to be
> worried about this.
>
> Ec
>
I wrote to Michael Hart and didn't get any reply at all.  If I had, I
would have posted it.  I poked around Distrubited Proofreaders and
generally speaking it appears as though the rest of the volumes for the
Encyclopaedia Britannica are going to be using the original trademark to
describe the contents of the e-book.  In that regard PG doesn't seem too
worried about the trademark issues.  If the Encyclopaedia Britannica,
Inc. wants to go after the Wikimedia Foundation and myself as an editor
who helped with the creation of the project on Wikisource, I say bring
it on!  Dropping a note on slashdot and a few other tech news sites is
going to make Brittanica Inc. wish they had gone to Mars instead for the
negative publicity it would generate.  Besides, they havn't asked or
demanded anything either, and this project has been going for several
months now, and widespread links through other projects like Wikipedia
and Wiktionary.  We also have a formal disclaimer that acknowledges the
source of the trademark, and even a hyperlink to the company website if
anybody is really interested.  That  with a higher Google ranking alone
ought to be worth something to Britannica, Inc.

Wikisource is using the EB abbriviation mainly because typing out
Encyclopaedia Britannica as a namespace is a pain to use all of the time
and consumes server space and bandwidth.  It is easier to type EB1911
than 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica. (The ae ligature is especially nasty
to type in from an English language keyboard.)  I'm sorry if I didn't
make that clear somewhere on Wikisource earlier.  It was certainly not
done to avoid trademark usage although that was another motive of minor
concern, not the primary issue.  There are a bunch of templates,
Wikisource project organization pages, categories, and more that were
added that some very simple namespace had to be created to coordinate
all of those pages and keep from making ambiguous references to
elsewhere on Wikisource.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daniel Brandt rattles sabre

body:
On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, David Gerard wrote:

> http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-11-10-n36.html
>
> I urge you to look at the page he has there. You may care to take a
> dated archival copy in case of any of the threatened lawsuits
> eventuating.
>
He does have a point about his article: anyone can come along & add
information that would put him in a negative light.

So he decides to do the dumb thing & insist that the article either
gets locked down or deleted. Which ignores the fact that if you get
sufficient attention, you will eventually become the subject of a
Wikipedia article. (Hmm. If we adopt this as an axiom like "Murphy's
Law", what should we call it? "Wikipedia's You Can't Hide Law"?)

And if one has sufficient attention, then it would benefit that person
to try to play nice with Wiipedia. Ask for help with editting that
article. Offer images under GFDL. Create some goodwill so that editors
who spend a lot of time will help watch over the article.

Because the only thing worse than someone succeeding in adding defamatory
information to your Wikipedia biography, is to find that it was a 100-word
stub, & the only edit was a sentence along the lines of "He's not as
handsome as his brother or his dog" to the article, & you're the first
person to notice in over 20 months.  (Now *that* would be a convincing
argument that the subject was non-notable.)

Geoff


from_name: Elisabeth Bauer

body:
Delirium wrote:

> I agree oversight is necessary, but disagree that the Foundation is the
> proper entity to provide it---the Wikinews community is the only entity
> that should or can legitimately do so. The Foundation can, of course,
> step in in an emergency if necessary (which has always been the case on
> all projects), but pre-approval should not be necessary, nor should that
> authority be used in any case except a true emergency.
>
> I don't see the importance of the outside vs. inside distinction in this
> case. It is entirely proper for a Wikinewsie to be given the authority
> to represent themselves to the outside world as "vouched for by
> Wikinews" if, in fact, they are vouched for the Wikinews community. So
> long as they are not presenting themselves as representatives of the
> Wikimedia Foundation, I don't see the need for Foundation approval.

Okay, I do. The foundation as the owner of the name Wikinews is the
ultimate instance to decide who is allowed what to do with this name. It
can decide to delegate this decision to the community, even for outside
relations as in the case of press credentials but it stays their
decision. If the wikinews community wants to hand out press credentials,
they should submit their policy to the foundation and have it approved
by the foundation. Since the policy seems quite okay, I see no reason
why the foundation shouldn't accept it, but there's certainly a need for
approval as they want to use the trademark in external relations.

greetings,
elian


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:
> When did I say that? I never said that.
>
> Although others accused me of trying to joke, I have been entirely
> serious all along.
>
> The day of reckoning will come, Milos, and all of the
> anti-Zlatiborians will not be judged kindly.

Mark, as much as we appreciate your little performance art, please stop
being an ass.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)


body:
When did I say that? I never said that.

Although others accused me of trying to joke, I have been entirely
serious all along.

The day of reckoning will come, Milos, and all of the
anti-Zlatiborians will not be judged kindly.

Mark

On 10/11/05, Milos Rancic <millosh at mutualaid.org> wrote:
> You didn't read last messages well? ;)
>
> Mark said that he supported Zlatiborian hoax because of fun.
>
> On 11/10/05, Arbeo M <arbeo_m at yahoo.de> wrote:
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> >
> > >It wasn't a real problem until Milos and the other
> > >anti-Zlatiborians decided to make a big fuss to try
> > to >prevent the glorious people of Zlatibor from
> > getting the >Wikipedia they so richly deserve in their
> > beautiful >native language, and for petty political
> > reasons.
> >
> > Hi Mark!
> >
> > The other day I wrote that Milos ought to be a little
> > bit more tolerant of various opinions (including
> > yours) here.
> >
> > On the other hand, I don't think using words like
> > "nationalists", "oppressors" or "anti-Zlatiborians"
> > will help establishing a good atmosphere of discussion
> > here when the issues themselves are difficult enough.
> >
> > Best,
> >
> > Arbeo
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________________________________
> > Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de
> > _______________________________________________
> > 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
>

--
"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: A community the size of...

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

> At the time of the Arbitration Committee election, the number of
> ballots cast on the English Wikipedia was about the same as several
> cities with populations ranging roughly from 3,000-6,000 people. The
> upper end of this range is quite close to the number of people who
> edited five times or more last December, according to Erik Zachte's
> statistical reports. So it seems this may be the number that is
> closest to a real-world population for our community. Since those
> statistics have just been updated (thanks, Erik) we can see that the
> English Wikipedia is now nearly equivalent to a town of 15,000 people.

Or, as another way to look at it, consider a similar-sized university.
Considering the heavy turnover in population, and the way in which many
people tend to spend time focusing on particular intellectual interests
more than the wider community, this seems like an especially apt comparison.

With a "population" of 15,000, the English Wikipedia is thus comparable
to a medium-sized university. The Wikimedia projects overall are
probably the equivalent of one of the larger universities.

--Michael Snow


from_name: SJ

body:
 On 11/8/05, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2005/11/8, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com>:
>
> >  - tpi (tok pisin, recent conlang, 160 articles),
>
> tpi *is* an official ISO 639-2 code. It is also not a conlang, but a
> creole - I think you're confusing it with Tokipona, for which the
> Wikipedia has been closed.

Whoops, it certainly is.  Boy do I have papaya on my face...
Tokipona, while it lastedas a WM project, did represent another reason
some people wish to go outside the ISO.

> Apart from that, I am of the opinion that it is good to go by ISO
> 639-2, but as a default rather than an absolute. That is, we don't
> always follow ISO 639-2, but for languages on the list we will include
> unless there is a strong argument being made against, whereas
> languages not on the list will not be included only if there is a
> strong argument being made in support. Personally I would like to be
> slightly more strict - ISO 639-2 for living languages, but dead
> languages will have to show that there is recent material written in
> the language as well, rather than just an ISO 639-2 code because of
> old work.

It should always be possible to make strong arguments for
exceptions... though perhaps they should be limited to a well-defined
space (perhaps even off the mailing lists :-).

As for ISO 639-3, this is not at all a patch or substitute for 639-2.
Each layer of language-codes has a lower bar for what it means to be a
[meaningful] language.  -1 and -2 are specifically focused on l
anguage designations that are useful to written work...

We should make use of the good work ISO is doing to distinguish
between these language categories, where we can.

SJ


from_name: Brian

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Hosting scans of the 1911 Britannica on
	Wikimedia

references:
<43715ABA.3010509@gmail.com>	<Pine.LNX.4.61.0511092215250.3889@sara.aronsson.se>	<dktrtu$h77$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<dktt1r$l1l$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

>I wrote:
>
>
>>When Brian came on to IRC and asked us "What is the best way to upload
>>30,000 images requiring 6 GB to commons?" the reaction from Brion and I was
>>a groan. The hardware requirements for commons are rapidly increasing, and
>>uploading and storing such content in MediaWiki is inefficient and
>>non-portable. If we had them in a separate directory on a separate domain,
>>we could copy them from server to server, make tarballs, run batch
>>conversion jobs -- all with a minimal amount of programming and system
>>administration work. And it wouldn't require writing a bot to create 30,000
>>index pages, we could just write a hundred lines of PHP to index the whole
>>lot. The collection will be easier to use and more reliable, and it will be
>>easy to maintain and update the index pages.
>>
>>All of the navigation text, the headers and footers, could be editable in
>>wiki fashion. You could let anyone change the header that will be displayed
>>on 30,000 pages, with no server strain whatsoever. This is in stark contrast
>>to the system requirements of templates which are used on large numbers of
>>wiki pages.
>>
>>Wikisource has suffered so far due to a lack of specialised software. This
>>kind of initiative could see it become more usable generally.
>>
>>
>
>Come to think of it, I could probably do it as a MediaWiki extension, and
>embed this content in en.wikisource.org. You'd get all of the same features,
>but it would also appear to be integrated with the wiki. You wouldn't be
>able to edit the page images, but I don't think that's a desirable property
>anyway. It would be easy for someone to download the whole collection, run a
>processing script (say, automated correction of the scanning quality), and
>then upload the whole new collection and incorporate it into the wiki. Easy
>as in no bots, no screen scrapers, no server strain, just a tarball download
>and a tarball upload.
>
>-- Tim Starling
>
That sounds like a good alternative to a separate domain or sticking it
on Commons, as long as it doesn't require the tech crew to put in too
many extra hours.


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] check information & fix any problems left in articles
	after deletion

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

Tom Cadden stated for the record:

> The legal position is clear. CC images can be used ....

The legal position is clear.  In answer to my specific query, I have
received a letter from HM Stationery Office stating the opinion of HM
Government: that Crown Copyright is incompatible with the GFDL, and that
we did not have permission Crown Copyright material in Wikipedia.

> CC is an open and shut case.

I agree.  See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:BRP#the_Epopt.27s_letter_to_HMSO

- --
 Sean Barrett
 sean at epoptic.org
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from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] cluster monitoring

body:
Hello,

We currently have ganglia wich give usefully reporting about server
status. What about notifications when something is about to go wrong
(disk usage at 95%, lot of errors in memcached, too many slow queries,
server suddenly swapping ..).

Kate wrote servmon that gave (give?) usefull informations about server
but I am personally to lazy to hack that.

Recently I finally found a job, part of my tasks is to setup a
monitoring tool. My choice ? Nagios. It's an open source monitoring tool
that I have setup on larousse some months ago. I asked avar and mark
their though about having a monitoring tool, their answer was: sure!

So let's start with Nagios.

Nagios is still on larousse although it is not running at the momment. I
could easily upgrade it to lastest version (2.0b4), tweak the config
files to add the new servers (something like 60+ new friends).

We will have to choose a server to run nagios on. Larousse seems to be a
good choice as it is mostly idling, serve pages for
http://noc.wikimedia.org/ and got used for servmon. Larousse could
become THE monitoring device (and eventually move ganglia from zwinger
to larousse).

Next step is to agree on a way to check services on the various hosts.
There is several solution for that:

  1/ run a daemon on each server (nrpe), listening to queries from the
monitoring host and giving back results.

 2/ hack something that grab data from gmetad and add new metric plugins
to ganglia. The good point is that we will then have those data showing
in ganglia.

 3/ make checks through ssh ussing passwordless ssh-key. I personally
dont like that.

 4/ deploy snmp everywhere

The nrpe approach need to setup a daemon on each server. Problem, most
of the data are already available through gmetad. The good point is that
it is easy to setup (rpm -i nrpe , same config files and plugins for
every servers).

Reusing gmetad data is probably a better idea, the data in nagios and
ganglia would be the same. One of the problems is that we will have to
code a nagios plugin that cache the gmetad data to avoid multiples
queries (we probably dont want to query gmetad for cpu, then for memory
then for nfs call, then for each disk space usage).

SNMP is a great tool for grabing devices status. Again it s probably
redundant with gmetad but will let us monitor network equipment such as
the switches, our ISP router and probably the console switch.

cheers,

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Article transclusion

body:
I think it has basically been resolved that this kind of thing is in
fact a Bad Thing and as such will not be repeated in any future such
project.  The WikiProject Cricket's reputation for intransigence is a
direct consequence of repeated AfDs and a reluctance to delete hours
of work, a feeling that anyone who has written articles will
understand.

If people were more prepared to take the charitable view and ask
people not to work in this way, they might have been more amenable
than the strong-arm tactics that have generally been taken.  Maybe
that's all a little late in this dispute but it is worth recognising
in the future.

Sam

On 11/10/05, Jason Y. Lee <jylee at cs.ucr.edu> wrote:
> Can someone tell me why article transclusion is allowed?  Or why it is necessary?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2005 has the same problems as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_English_cricket_season_%2814-25_September%29
>
> The issue here is that many editors are running into articles that look like unnecessary stubs which in fact are transclusions and are completely unaware of it.  Why don't we just disable such transclusions?  I do not believe main space (article) transclusions are necessary and they skew our article count.  The number of cricket articles that I found were a total of 508 articles that happen to be transcluded.  I did not know that, nor did the five other people who nominates similar articles for deletion.
> --
> Jason Y. Lee
> AKA AllyUnion
> _______________________________________________
> 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: Fastfission

body:
It's cute that they announced it, though. If only all POV-pushers were
so convenient. It's also somewhat cute that they "joined the authoring
ranks of Wikipedia" -- as if it takes active membership and not just
clicking on the "Login" button.

FF

On 11/10/05, Ryan Delaney <ryan.delaney at gmail.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> I just got this from my Google alert on Wikipedia:
> http://www.iwr.co.uk/information-world-review/news/2145845/tax-group-say-wikipedia
>
> "The Professional Contractors Group (PCG), an organisation for
> freelance and temporary contract workers in the UK, has joined the
> authoring ranks of Wikipedia, the open source encyclopaedia.
>
> John Kell, political researcher for the PCG, has written three
> entries, two on British taxation law, with a decidedly pro-PCG bias."
>
> These articles are being written by [[User:John Kell]]. I recently
> placed {{NPOV}} templates on the articles [[IR35]] and [[S660A]] for
> reasons that should become obvious in the context of their content,
> and [[Professional Contractors Group]] as well. This seems to be an
> attempt by a political lobby group to use Wikipedia as a soapbox. I'm
> not intimately familiar with the political situation surrounding these
> statutes, so I would ask that other users try to help me in making the
> articles more neutral.
>
> Ryan
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
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>
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> dKiMGY+JEO9xVr7/jOCqq3U=
> =9iQ9
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
>
> _______________________________________________
> 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: [WikiEN-l] Policy on including templates in automatic categories

body:
On 11/10/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> However I've just been reverted (here: http://tinyurl.com/7b7gw ) with the
> explanation "rv, it's important for these templates to be a member of their
> category".

It's somewhat hard for me to imagine why it would be important for
this -- perhaps asking the editor in question to clarify would at
least provide a counter-argument. I mean, as long as the category
description has {{Image template notice}} on it, it should be easy
enough to tell which template corresponds with what category, which
would satisfy any potential benefit that I can think of.

FF


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 11/10/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [[WP:AUTO]].
>

WP:AUTO addresses creating an article about yourself. It doesn't address
finding an article about yourself on Wikipedia nearly so well. Perhaps I'll
start such a guideline, if it turns out there isn't one.

-Matt


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daniel Brandt rattles sabre

body:
http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2005-11-10-n36.html

I urge you to look at the page he has there. You may care to take a
dated archival copy in case of any of the threatened lawsuits
eventuating.

- d.


from_name: GerardM

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Status of Wikimedia

body:
On 11/10/05, Arbeo M <arbeo_m at yahoo.de> wrote:
>
> Ronline wrote:
>
> > I think that saying that people can make their own
> > wiki somewhere else is not a good thing. Wikipedia
> is
> > already established, and the more regional languages
> > we offer, the richer the encyclopedia becomes.
>
> The fact that Wikipedia is now a well-known "brand"
> might raise a new issue in the future: for some
> languages (especially idioms where the attribute
> "separate language" is disputed) it could look like
> some kind of recognition or proof of their
> distinctness if they are granted a subdomain here. In
> those cases, new Wikipedias could be requested not for
> the primary aim of collecting and distributing
> knowledge (i. e. writing an encyclopedia) but rather
> more or less solely for the aim of promoting a
> language (or even the political, religious ect. idea
> behind it).
>
> Arbeo
>
> P. S. Sorry for posting so much today!

Hoi,
Yeah Wikipedia is "well" known but this depends really on who you ask. In
some places in the Western world hardly anyone has heard of Wikipedia even
if there is a version in the major and the minor languages of a country.
There is still a long way to go before we reach these people.

This discussion about focusing on what we do is in a way a "red herring",
the suggestion that we should has been repeated all to often. The arguments
why it is not that relevant can be found either by going back through the
archives.. in a nutshell a new project will attract its own community and
the other projects do not grow any less because of it.

When a group of enthusiasts is willing to jump through the hoops in order to
get their Wikipedia, I would welcome them to it. The hard work starts when
they have their Wikipedia. It takes a lot of perseverance and marketing to
create a vibrant community. When they do they have proven their case. When
they do not, it does not really matter as it does not detract one iota from
any of the other Wikipedia or from any of the other projects. "in het veen
kijkt men niet op een turfje".

With Ultimate Wiktionary I hope we will end the creation of new
Wiktionaries, all languages will be welcome even tlh :) .

Thanks,
GerardM


from_name: Jim Trodel

body:
I agree that having the subject of an article edit that article should be
avoided - unfortunately some of the wikipedians (including Mr Wales*) have
edited their own article so it sets a bad precedent. I would like to see
those that edit their own article encouraged to request the changes on the
talk page and allow others to make the changes.
 my 2 cents,
Jim
 * If you review the history you can see that nearly all of the edits I
refer to here were factual clarifications and clearly not imposing a
particular POV; however, we should strictly follow this guideline regardless
of the nature of the change (especially when it comes to describing the
history of wikipedia and other notable people who are either directly
associated or have made major contributions to wikipedia) in order to
provide a proper example.
 On 11/10/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Daniel Brandt is far from the first subject of a Wikipedia article to come
> along, find the article, and try to 'fix' it, edit it, delete it, or even
> boost themselves on it. And he won't be the last. As Wikipedia becomes
> more
> and more in the public eye, and as well-known people become more and more
> familiar with online things, we'll see it quite often.
>
> We should be more prepared for this. Do we even have a page to point
> people
> at if they are themselves the subject of a Wikipedia article, explaining
> how
> Wikipedia works when it comes to biographies of living persons, and how
> they
> should engage with Wikipedia to improve articles on themselves? If not, we
> should.
>
> We should also try and interact better ourselves with these people, and
> recognise that in most cases their intentions are not evil. They simply
> don't understand Wikipedia or the way it works, and thus misread and
> misinterpret what's going on.
>
> For instance, just yesterday I noticed that an anonymous contributor had
> repeatedly removed a piece from the article on a fairly well-known author.
> After several rounds of removing it, the anon created a userid and removed
> the info again, with an edit comment that the information was inaccurate.
> The username was clearly based on that author's name, so I contacted them
> asking if they really were the author in question or if they were a fan
> using the author's name. The author subsequently contacted me in email and
> verified their identity, and we discussed the issue; it turned out that
> the
> incident being removed was one where the author had been quoted in the
> press
> as having said things they insisted they had never said.
>
> I'm working on a peaceful resolution of this, and I'm very hopeful that it
> can be achieved.
>
> What concerns me is that for quite a few users, the very idea that a
> notable
> person was attempting to remove information from the article on themselves
> would have made them dig in their heels about Wikipedia's rights and
> freedoms, the information would have been kept in the article merely to
> spite the person, and no doubt threats of lawsuits and the like might have
> resulted. We should be aware that many times, if someone is attempting to
> change information in an article about themselves, it is because they
> honestly believe it to be inaccurate. Nutcases like Brandt aren't the
> norm.
>
> -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
>
--
Jim (trodel at gmail.com)
"Our love may not always be reciprocated, or
even appreciated, but love is never wasted"
- Neal A Maxwell
---Intersted in Gmail - let me know I have invites---


from_name: Christopher Larberg

body:
On Thu, 2005-11-10 at 23:05 -0700, Jim Trodel wrote:
> I agree that having the subject of an article edit that article should be
> avoided - unfortunately some of the wikipedians (including Mr Wales*) have
> edited their own article so it sets a bad precedent. I would like to see
> those that edit their own article encouraged to request the changes on the
> talk page and allow others to make the changes.

I don't see what's so bad about having subjects of articles edit their
own articles. They may be able to add information unobtainable elsewhere
(after all, you can't get a much better source than the subject matter
his/herself). There's the danger of POV-pushing, of course, but I don't
see it as much different from fans of something editing the article(s)
about the object of their fandom. We certainly shouldn't discourage
anyone from editing, in my view.
--
Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
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from_name: Erdal Ronahi

body:
Hi,

my friend in Iran confirmed that at least two ISP in Teheran block the
Kurdish Wikipedia (http://ku.wikipedia.org). The identical message on
both is:

Access Denied!

This page will not be accessible for the reason that in our database it
has been assinged to the category of blocked contents .

In the event the URL does not contain materials that are forbidden by
laws, please fill this form out then hit send.

However, one user from another part of Iran was able to reach it. The
mentioned form has meanwhile been filled and sent, but there is no
reaction yet.

I think that even a partial censoship against Wikipedia is of interest
for the community. The Kurdish Wikipedia is frequently attacked by
political vandalizm of Turkish writing users, who want to see all Kurds
"wiped out", but this is relatively easy to handle. There have been
reports before that Internet Cafe owners in Turkey are forced to install
software that blocks Kurdish content, including Wikipedia. This is the
first time we hear about such an incident from Iran.

Regards,
Erdal


body:
On 11/10/05, Christopher Larberg <christopherlarberg at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I don't see what's so bad about having subjects of articles edit their
> own articles. They may be able to add information unobtainable elsewhere
> (after all, you can't get a much better source than the subject matter
> his/herself). There's the danger of POV-pushing, of course, but I don't
> see it as much different from fans of something editing the article(s)
> about the object of their fandom. We certainly shouldn't discourage
> anyone from editing, in my view.
>

The interaction between NOR and a subject's own personal experience is
difficult. The danger is that the subject of an article is likely to make
that article a primary source, and enter information for which there is no
collaborating evidence elsewhere.

-Matt


from_name: Tom Cadden

body:
A number of problems are cropping up with the deletion
of images.

1. Many of the images being deleted are valid but
simply wrongly categorised. Often the problem is
simply that the information requested at the time was
less detailed than what we rightly request now. (for
example {{fairuse}} rather than {{fairusein| }} )

2. Some people doing deletions aren't checking to make
sure that the deletion will not make a mess of some
articles. Is it that hard to clean up problems a
deletion may leave in individual articles?

For example, all images in a template were deleted
because they were down as fairuse. They were simply
wrong categorised. They should have been in as
crowncopyright given the source that was listed on the
image, and crowncopyright images are explicitly
allowed to be used in templates under their legal
conditions. A whole series of templates were turned
into blank boxes with red names by the failure of the
deleter to simply checking the sources of the images
first. (It took 30 seconds to establish that all the
images were from the same source, which was
crowncopyright.) But by then a template used widely
was a mess, and the pages it was in turned into an
amateurish shambles. (The deleter didn't even bother
to remove the template from pages.)

Another example, a featured article lost a series of
fine images taken by the article writer simply because
as a newbie, though he had explicitly 'given' the
images to WP, they were categorised as source unknown.
All the deleter had to do was read what was in the
file to know the user meant them to be covered by
GDFL. (The information could be read on a copy of our
page, still with the images in situ, on another
website.)

Can we please remind the deleters that
(a) old images may be valid but were downloaded when
the commands weren't as informative as we have now.
They can easily be fixed in ten seconds, rather than
blanket deleted. Check to make sure there really are
copyright problems.

(b) have some cop-on about sources. A user may have
innocently used the wrong category. (I rarely download
images but at this stage I know in many cases
automatically if the source of a politics or history
image is genuinely fair use, should be crown
copyright, or is clearly a copyright breach.)

(c) For God's sake read the notes people have typed in
the file. The copyight category is often wrong. If in
doubt check a source.

(d) if you delete images, remove them from articles
first. Otherwise you'll leave articles in a mess with
red boxes where an image once was.  Too many articles
are being turned into messes because no-one bothered
to do any follow up when an image was deleted.

Thom

___________________________________________________________
To help you stay safe and secure online, we've developed the all new Yahoo! Security Centre. http://uk.security.yahoo.com


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Vote to create Wikiversity Vote

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>As far as the people who donated to Wikimedia hoping that it would be
>
>
>>used only for Wikipedia, I think that is both shortsighted on your part
>>with regards to the donors as well as something the donors should be in
>>general better informed about when they give money to the Foundation.
>>
>>
>You misquoted me. I never said donations should only be used for Wikipedia.
>But instead of repeating myself I'll be precise: "The specific purpose for
>which [Wikimedia] is organized is: to create and freely distribute freely
>licensed encyclopedias, textbooks, reference works, and other literary,
>scientific, and educational information in all languages of the world."
>That's straight from the amended articles of incorporation. To spend any
>significant portion of donations on anything else is at best unethical.
>
I don't see a Wikiversity as going beyond the quoted mandate.  Teaching
is a way of distributing information..  Trying to impute restrictions
into donors' minds is pointless.  How many donors have actually stated
such restrictions?

>>Most of what Wikiversity is going to be doing on the website anyway is
>>writing curriculum standards, course syllibi, instructional examples,
>>and testing materials. How is that any different from writing books or
>>encyclopedia articles. Besides, all of these tasks have been happening
>>on Wikibooks anyway. The only real debate is if these tasks should
>>happen as a seperate project or if it is something that belongs within
>>Wikibooks.
>>
>>
>I already said I have no problem as long as the purpose of Wikiversity is
>limited to creating and distributing learning materials, and doesn't include
>actually using those materials to teach.
>
If that were all it did it would be pointless to have the project.  My
own resistance is based in part on on the concern that it might be
limited to the kind of sterile role that you imagine.

>In any case, I think the project should stay within Wikibooks.
>
There is certainly no urgency for moving it out of Wikibooks

Ec


body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

>Mark Williamson wrote:
>
>
>>When did I say that? I never said that.
>>
>>Although others accused me of trying to joke, I have been entirely
>>serious all along.
>>
>>The day of reckoning will come, Milos, and all of the
>>anti-Zlatiborians will not be judged kindly.
>>
>>
>Well, on the day of judgement, you're going to burn in Hell for all
>eternity. And unlike you, I have sources to back up my claim.
>
A good comedian knows when to stop milking his joke.

Ec


body:
On Thu, 10 Nov 2005, Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> Delirium wrote:
>
>> I don't see the importance of the outside vs. inside distinction in this
>> case. It is entirely proper for a Wikinewsie to be given the authority to
>> represent themselves to the outside world as "vouched for by Wikinews" if,
>> in fact, they are vouched for the Wikinews community. So long as they are
>> not presenting themselves as representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation, I
>> don't see the need for Foundation approval.

This seems right to me.  Especially when it is other wikinewsies providing
the verification, monitoring the accreditation pages, &c.

Elian wrote:
> Okay, I do. The foundation as the owner of the name Wikinews is the ultimate
> instance to decide who is allowed what to do with this name. It can decide to

Hmm.  So if, for instance, the Foundation decided that 'Wikinews' could
only apply from now on to original reporting, that is all that would be
allowed on the project?  If the Foundation decided that a particular
editor is unfit to contribute to a project whose name it owns, it can ban
that person from contributing, or from mentioning to others that he has so
contributed?

Would you feel better if there were a "Wiki reporter's guild" project on
Wikinews, which distributed WRG press passes that included neither
Wikinews name nor logo?

> case of press credentials but it stays their decision. If the wikinews
> community wants to hand out press credentials, they should submit their
> policy to the foundation and have it approved by the foundation. Since the

You could make exactly the same claim about any editorial policy on
Wikipedia.  The effects of a change in tagging, AFD, NPOV, or other
quality-related policy on EN:WP likely has far more of an effect on the
external perception of the Wiki[pedia] trademark than a press credential
policy (be it on WP, WN, or even Commons).

Once you stop trusting the community to develop sensible processes, every
policy on every project eventually needs to be vetted by the foundation
(whatever that means - special weekly Board sessions to review new
processes?  expedited treatment of minor process updates?).  Every policy,
no matter how small, affects Wikimedia trademarks in some way -- and the
way they are percieved in some external relations.

--SJ

> policy seems quite okay, I see no reason why the foundation shouldn't accept
> it, but there's certainly a need for approval as they want to use the
> trademark in external relations.
>
> greetings,
> elian


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Daniel Brandt rattles sabre

body:
On 11/10/05, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> He wouldn't happen to live in TRENTON, NEW JERSEY would he? :)
>
> Isnt that the other guy?

Ian


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Christopher Larberg wrote:

>I don't see what's so bad about having subjects of articles edit their
>own articles. They may be able to add information unobtainable elsewhere
>(after all, you can't get a much better source than the subject matter
>his/herself).
>
If it's not obtainable elsewhere, how can it be verified? It's also very similar to original research, IMO.

>There's the danger of POV-pushing, of course, but I don't
>see it as much different from fans of something editing the article(s)
>about the object of their fandom. We certainly shouldn't discourage
>anyone from editing, in my view.
>
>
The difference is that non-fans can in principle look up all the same
sources as fans, checking the things the fans write for accuracy. If
someone writes an article about their own personal experiences without
any outside sources to refer to, on the other hand, how can I check it?
I'd be reduced to just asking the editor "Um, really?"

I faced this dilemma a while back on the Space fountain page, wherein
Keith Lofstrom, the originator of the space fountain concept, stopped by
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Space_fountain and wrote up a
description of the history of how he came up with it. I've asked him to
copy and paste it onto his own homepage so that we'd have an outside
source to refer to, until then I'm not really comfortable putting it in
the article.


from_name: Angela

body:
> Board members, please, read over the policy and either approve it so
> that we can stop this time-wasting back-and-forth, or say that you'll
> review it, or say that you don't need to review it.

I've made my position clear already - I think the process is fine and
that you don't need any more input from the Board. If the rest of the
Board decline to comment, I'd take that as silent approval. All
members of the Board, if they're at all following what's going on here
or in the state of the wiki reports which already explained this, are
well aware of the accreditation scheme, and none have objected to it.

Angela.