subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
You mean existing MW devs who speak the language? That's doubtful.
These languages aren't German and Spanish.

If you mean potential new developers who speak te language, that's
slightly less doubtful, depending on the language. For example I don't
doubt that we could find a Konknni speaking developer but I am more
hesitant to say the same for Kabyle or Latgalian, and will absolutely
not say it for Saterfrisian.

Mark

On 27/03/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/3/28, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>:
>
> > Andre, your recent comments and questions are full of angry
> > rhetoric and irony.  Perhaps you can try to turn that energy into
> > providing useful help to some of the new language communities,
> > helping to improve their applications, finding developers who
> > speak the new language, etc. instead of just spitting your poison
> > on these lists.  Maybe you are already doing good and useful work,
> > but your recent postings haven't made this known.
>
>
> Helping them improve their applications won't help if they get rejected for
> something completely different than having bad applications. And who am I to
> find developers who speak the language?
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: James Farrar

subject:
[WikiEN-l] blogs vs websites - (was Bauer DRV question -
	history)

body:
On 27/03/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "Denny Colt" wrote
>
> > I am wondering why the 'blog' aspect itself has this dirty Scarlet Letter
> > connotation...
>
> If you want to use a blog as a source, the burden of proof lies with you to substantiate its reliability. The low barriers to access for blogging mean this is the only sane approach.

OK, fine; that seems reasonable. It's no excuse for a speedy deletion
in the current case, though.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
Andre, you shouldn't feel this way. (unless perhaps you are being sarcastic).

I feel that your arguments are beneficial. Maar wie ben ik om dat te
zeggen, I am just a troll according to some people (Bonaparte, the
banned sockpuppeteer, and Yann, the steward).

Mark

On 27/03/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Helping them improve their applications won't help if they get rejected
> > for something completely different than having bad applications. And who am
> > I to find developers who speak the language?
> >
>
> En daarnaast, ik ben gewoon een negatieve oude zak die voornamelijk ruzie
> zit te maken. Maar niet lang meer, hoop ik. Ik hoop dat ik eindelijk eens
> kan besluiten om echt met Wikipedia op te houden.
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


list: foundation-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

body:
Then why didn't the world explode when vec.wiki was created without
already-translated messages?

Mark

On 27/03/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/27/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No, apparently not.
> >
> > But they insist on keeping these Wikis hostage.
> >
> > Way to foster friendship and help new Wikis, guys. You've been waiting
> > a year? Great, we have some more things you've gotta do before you can
> > get your Wiki!!
> >
> > l'll bet the dinosaurs became extinct while waiting for their own dino.wp...
> >
> > Mark
> >
>
> There are a small number of system messages that are system critical.
> --
> geni
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject:
[WikiEN-l] blogs vs websites - (was Bauer DRV question
	-	history)

body:
"James Farrar" wrote
x
> On 27/03/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > "Denny Colt" wrote
> >
> > > I am wondering why the 'blog' aspect itself has this dirty Scarlet Letter
> > > connotation...
> >
> > If you want to use a blog as a source, the burden of proof lies with you to substantiate its reliability. The low barriers to access for blogging mean this is the only sane approach.

> OK, fine; that seems reasonable. It's no excuse for a speedy deletion
> in the current case, though.

Disagree. Articles on living people containing statements likely to damage their way of making a living have to get across some high hurdles. Anything apparently defamatory hardly needs an 'excuse' for zapping. We have a policy on this, which insists on reliable sources. We also discourage the importation into Wikipedia of quarrels from the rest of the Internet (a growing problem). We also discourage under teh heading of 'conflict of interest' various kinds of campaigning; and a recent Arbitration shows that this type of reasoning is likely to be used on material from 'activist' websites. So, even setting aside the issue of whether the blog references in question can be made to stand up, deleting the article (pro tem) is not something I'd want to criticise. Getting potential defamation off the live part of the site gives one a chance to go more properly into the issue. Articles can be restored, you know.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


list: commons-l

from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Commons-l] How's the POTD working on Gmail?

body:
On 27/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 27/03/07, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 26/03/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > Last few days' pictures have been fine for me - link displaying at top
> > > in a useful manner. Has anyone else been getting the message
> > > displaying without the link?
>
> > I actually just inserted another line that says 'Body of email:', so
> > now it's getting chopped off instead of the link. *grins*
> > Good to go with comcom RSS etc promo??
>
>
> Sounds good to me! Let's draft a press release - the world's basically
> never heard of Commons.

You perhaps don't read every line of my every mail, do you? Oh well, I
guess that's understandable. :)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Press_releases/Picture_of_the_Day_RSS

Brianna


from_name: Philip Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On Mar 27, 2007, at 12:56 PM, Michael Bimmler wrote:

> Could we please refrain from referring to the fact that Cary /
> bastique happens to be foundation staff. I think he has made it
> perfectly clear in one of his last emails that he felt insulted as
> Wikipedian and not as Wikimedia Foundation staff member.

In a word... no.

It's incredibly damaging to efforts to create responsible sourcing
practices on Wikipedia for someone who, earlier in the thread, spoke
as a representative of the Foundation to speak in support of bad
policy. I know that Foundation members don't always speak on behalf
of the Foundation. Just as Jimbo doesn't always speak ex cathedra.

But we still do take their words seriously, and they need to be more
carefully chosen all the time - not just some of it.

-Phil


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On 3/27/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> Furthermore, you are responding to my initial email which I have already
> modified by saying that there were exceptiosn.
>
> You are also ignoring the underlying issue in which the blogs being used
> were not reliable sources, and were merely opinion pieces.
>
> Blogs as sources are the exception and not the rule, and each needs to
> be considered and weighed before it is used, and not after.  Blogs are
> generally unrelaible and non-notable and should not be used as reliable
> sources.

So far you've stated that blogs should generally not be used as sources but
that there are exceptions. This is basically true, but when we go back to
the Barbara Bauer thing, we seem to be devided on the reliability of the
Writer Beware blog. Written by people with over 20 years of experience in
their line of work, and an extension of the website of a notable
organization in its field. That, to me, sounds like one of the exceptions.

Then there is for example, Malaysian politicians. If notable people blog,
their blogs are perfect sources to cite their opinions.

And then there's journalists who blog as part of their reporting (for
example the reporters of CBBC's Newsround in the UK).

They all seem to have in common that their reliability hinge on who's
writing it and if their opinion or report of events is relevant to the
article it is used in.

Basically they're no different than a regular website. Perhaps we should set
up a page where we help people determine the reliability of a blog. It avoid
blanket statements like "they're all non-notable" and they avoid people
using them without looking at them closely.

Do you agree with me so far, Cary?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On 27/03/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Jeff, I respectfully request that you stop responding to my posts with
> insults such as "You're completely incorrect" and "Your thinking is
> backward".  Please, no more commentary on me.

I'm sorry, but the phrase "you're completely incorrect" is not an
insult; it's not a comment on *you as a person*, it's a comment on
*your opinions*.

So, in fact, is "your thinking is backward"; may I suggest you think
about the difference between "your thinking is backward" and "you are
backward"?

Frankly, if we can't criticise the opinions of people who happen to be
Foundation staff, we might as well give up.


body:
You've hit the nail on the head and I wonder the same thing. Phil Sandifer
asked the same thing in another thread and I'd like to see why this idea
exists.

Mgm

On 3/27/07, Denny Colt <wikidenny at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/27/07, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > And what makes blog entries less reliable than your average website.
> > You're
> > applying too much of a generalization.
> > Newspapers are a good example. Generally reliable, but that doesn't mean
> > they all are.
> >
> > Mgm
>
>
>
> This might be my semi-newbieness asking  but could someone explain to me
> why
> we even differentiate "blogs" at all? all a blog *is* is a private web
> site/web space.
>
> Whats different between:
>
> 1. dennycolt.blogspot.com
> 2. www.dennycolt.com, running with blog softwares...
> 3. www.dennycolt.com, with hand-edited pages
>
> I don't understand why the ruckus about blogs specifically--shouldn't it
> be
> "personal non-notable websites by non-notable people, if editors judge it
> to
> be a crap website"? A 'blog' is just a site organized... with a certain
> structure. Some news sites that are RS even run off blogging/blog style
> CMS
> software... simply because they're good at organizing stuff.
>
> Would a blog about NBC written by the CEO of NBC be bad? I am actively
> using
> a blog on the [[RegisterFly]] article that is on blog.icann.org that is
> written by the CEO of ICANN, Paul Twomy. It's written an in a personal
> tone
> but it's a fine source for the ICANN/registerfly issue.
>
> on the same token, a privately held website on flora of south america
> could
> end up being a great, fantastic source on south american trees. or a
> blogspot.com by Jerry Seinfeld on his about stand up comics. or a movable
> type blog on emeril.com by emeril lagasse could be a good authority on
> cajun
> cooking, and so on...
>
> I am wondering why the 'blog' aspect itself has this dirty Scarlet Letter
> connotation...
>
> --
> - Denny
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 27/03/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Articles can be restored, you know.

Indeed they can; however, the balance of proof in DRV is effectively
different from that in AFD.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Andreas R.

subject:
[Wikitech-l] SpecialUpload: why is the output of showSuccess() not
	always shown? / where is the redirect to the new page happening?

body:
I am writing some code that should allow to upload multiple files (from an
archive), but for this to work properly showSuccess() should be called
always to show those files which succeeded and those that didn't (or
produced warnings)...
However, in the first case, ie. the last uploaded file didn't exist
previously, MediaWiki redirects? / shows the Image:... page of that last
file.

However, I cannot see that case (i.e. case 1.) from the code in
SpecialUpload.php:
In function processUpload() we have
        function processUpload() {
                [...]
                if( $this->saveUploadedFile( $this->mUploadSaveName,
                                             $this->mUploadTempName,
                                             $hasBeenMunged ) ) {
                        /**
                         * Update the upload log and create the description
page
                         * if it's a new file.
                         */
                        $img = Image::newFromName( $this->mUploadSaveName );
                        $success = $img->recordUpload(
$this->mUploadOldVersion,

$this->mUploadDescription,
                                                        $this->mLicense,

$this->mUploadCopyStatus,
                                                        $this->mUploadSource,
                                                        $this->mWatchthis );

                        if ( $success ) {
                                $this->showSuccess();
                                wfRunHooks( 'UploadComplete', array( &$img ) );
                        } else {
                                // Image::recordUpload() fails if the image
went missing, which is
                                // unlikely, hence the lack of a specialised
message
                                $wgOut->showFileNotFoundError(
$this->mUploadSaveName );
                        }
                }
        }
i.e. either we are successful and call showSuccess() or
showFileNotFoundError(..) on failure. I also looked at the called
functions, but didn't find any redirects.

So how can I force to save files and also that the output of showSuccess()
is always shown?
Any hints would be appreciated.

Regards,
Andreas

PS: it's a repost (now from gmane web interface) since the original posts
obviously didn't make it to the newsgroup, although the automatic registration
mail from gmane server said it would be automatically posted after verification
of the e-mail address.


from_name: Ed Sanders

subject: [Foundation-l] Foundation Licensing Policy

body:
The three uses of EDP images are given as
1. "should be to illustrate historically significant events"
2. "to include identifying protected works such as logos"
3. "to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted
contemporary works"

The problem with #2 is that it doesn't give the context in which such an
identification is required. Should a logo only be allowed when it's
design is discused? Or when the company is discussed? Or on the article
about the company? Or simply whenever the company is mentioned?

The problem with #3 is it gives no clarification as to how narrow the
limits should be. If I have an article about a film (a copyrighted
contemporary work) and I upload 30 screenshots, I could argue each one
"complements" the article, and who's to say that only using 30 of the
~200,000 frames of the film isn't within "narrow limits".

Ed
-----
en:ed_g2s


from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] On a lighter note for a change

body:
On 3/27/07, Jussi-Ville Heiskanen <cimonavaro at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 3/27/07, Avi <avi_wiki at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>   We are quoted in this month's issue of Focus, the Mathematical Association of America's newsletter, on page 5, for bringing a source for the term "spline".
>
>   PDF link here:  http://www.maa.org/pubs/march07web.pdf
>
>
>
> I fear we at wikipedia, and consequently that MAA article as well has it wrong.
> I rather suspect that splines were used already by folks copying illustrated
> manuscripts way back int the day, well before aeronautics had significantly
> progressed beyond flapping wing mechanisms.

I haven't got any evidence of that, and think it unlikely; the actual
wood used for classical splines, even small thin pieces, doesn't bend
nearly tightly enough to curve around in illustrated manuscript sized
drawings.  Modern hand illustrators do it largely freehand, and I have
never seen one use a spline.

On the other hand, I have in my library some of the very early
professional publications in Naval Architecture, and they all
reference using splines when they talk about designing and lofting,
back into the late 1700s at least.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: Berto 'd Sera

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old (was New language)

body:
Hoi!

As per not communicating the swap you are absolutely right and I excuse
myself personally. I know it won't help much but as you can understand this
is not "everyday business" and we have no standard procedure to manage such
events. Yet I read Byelorussian and it should have been my own
responsibility to reach you and inform you. I did not do it and I officially
excuse myself for that.

Feel free to contact me personally at any time for any possible problem, you
can write in Russian if it makes things easier. I will have to answer in
English only if the answer has to be notified to LangCom, as I'm the only
Russian speaker in LangCom and a Cyrillic answer would not be of any use to
the other members.

Now to the answers: the domain is being setup by Brion these days, AFAIK
there are a few minor technical problems, but that's all. It should be up
very quickly.

Domain names are not "fabricated" on community demand; they follow an
international ISO standard. The X part means it's a private code that has
value for wmf only (it's a standard, too). Under the current rules the wiki
should be simply shutdown, since it does not have an ISO code.

The Board decided to delegate an ad hoc Committee for this kind of decisions
and IMHO that's a good warranty for everyone. In the meantime we decided not
to have any particular descriptive code for the old Byelorussian edition,
since it would have implied some kind of political recognition, which is NOT
what wmf is about.

If in the future your linguistic flavor will obtain a valid ISO code we will
be glad to adopt it just as we adopt any other internationally recognized
code, but we are not willing to issue ANY code on our own. This is a final
decision.

DISCLAIMER: this is my personal POV and NOT a collective statement from wmf
LangCom.

Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Eugene Zelenko
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 4:34 PM
To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] New language

Hi!

> > Be however warned that there have been no proposals accepted in the
> > last few months.
> This is a bit pessimistic :) The normative Byelorussian wikipedia just was
> created and substituted the old version, the latter was renamed into
> be-x-old.

When be-x-old will be available? And why nobody asked opinion of
ex-BE:WP community regarding domain name?

Also, I think, will be good idea to notify about such swaps in future...

With best regards,
Eugene.

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


body:
3. "to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted
contemporary works"
My main problem is with #3, which basically opens the door to use any
image which is mildly relevant. I can't see any valid uses of this
exception.

Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> On 3/27/07, Ed Sanders <ejsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The problem with #3 is it gives no clarification as to how narrow the
>> limits should be. If I have an article about a film (a copyrighted
>> contemporary work) and I upload 30 screenshots, I could argue each one
>> "complements" the article, and who's to say that only using 30 of the
>> ~200,000 frames of the film isn't within "narrow limits".
>
> Or .... 10 minutes out of two hours? 100,000 times over again.
> (http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/google/viacomyoutube31307cmp.html)
>
> Even if the board intended the resolution to be that open ended, keep
> in mind that this resolution sets the absolute limit of what will be
> tolerated on the Wikimedia servers.
>
> It is not the case that what the resolution forbids is permitted.
>
> We are all still charged with educating people and enforcing sane
> policies which uphold our core missions. This resolution is not a free
> pass on vigilance.
>
> If the culture on a project is pushing us away from our core mission,
> the best solution is NOT to petition the board for a stricter base
> requirement (which will no doubt have unintended side effects),
> instead you should be making an effort to change the culture.
>
> Many of our users are either completely uninformed or substantially
> confused by what "Free" means in the context of our projects
> (hopefully this is easier for Frwiki and the like). While this
> resolution will, no doubt, help raise awareness, each and every one of
> us also have a part to play both internally and externally.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [WikiEN-l] Jimmy Wales foreshadows possible changes to Wikipedia

body:
There was no "foreshadowing", nothing new announced, nothing new said.
The same old same old.

Keith Old wrote:
> Folks,
>
> The Sydney Morning Herald has an article featuring an interview with Jimmy
> Wales.
>
> http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/wikipedia-wont-be-so-dicky/2007/03/27/1174761429336.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
>
>
> It foreshadows changes such as stable versions and credential checking.
>
>
> *"One of those tools was an upcoming feature called "stable versions", which
> Wales said would "allow the community to flag particular versions of
> articles as being non-vandalised so that those would be shown to the public
> first in certain high-risk areas".*
>
> *This would help to reduce the number of instances where blatant errors have
> passed through unchecked, many of which going unnoticed for weeks.*
>
> *One of many to fall victim to false Wikipedia entries is the former
> governor-general of Australia, Peter Hollingworth.*
>
> *Mr Hollingworth called in to the ABC radio program Australia Talks last
> week, as it was interviewing Mr Wales.*
>
> *"I found an entry on me at one stage which I found offensive and inaccurate
> and it had been put on there by someone I had never heard of and I purely by
> accident found it when someone else told me that I should check it out," he
> said.*
>
> *"Now I fully support the whole idea of the democratisation of knowledge ...
> [but there is still] the question how you balance this out with truth and
> accuracy."*
>
> *Mr Wales said while many inaccuracies were picked up within minutes, one
> way to avoid them would be to, for particularly vulnerable articles, "make
> sure that new edits perhaps are reviewed by someone in the community before
> they go live".*
>
> *He was considering adding this feature to future versions of Wikipedia, but
> stressed that control would remain in the hands of the community.*
>
> *"We are not contemplating any kind of a system where there is going to be
> hundreds of editors in a building reviewing what the public's doing - that
> model makes no sense for us," he said.*
>
> *The Wikipedia community was also "discussing the possibility of a voluntary
> credential verification process" for contributors.*
>
> *Mr Wales would not give specific details on how contributors would be
> verified, but the idea arose after revelations this month that one of
> Wikipedia's most trusted editors, who claimed to be a professor, was
> actually a 24-year-old with no advanced degrees.*
>
> *He said verifying professional credentials for certain contributors would
> not be particularly difficult."*
>
> As noted earlier, this misleading content was based on media reports but I
> digress.
>
> The other interesting thing is that the photo is from "Wikipedia Commons".
>
> Regards
>
> *Keith Old*
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bauer DRV question - history (was
 Wikimedia	Foundation sued)

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> On 27/03/07, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>
>>> I don't see any particular problem with that.  The Admins know what they
>>> are doing.
>
>> So do a lot of others who have put in a lot of time without ever having
>> bothered to become an admin.
>
>
> Becoming an admin these days is a stupidly big deal. RFA needs an
> enema in so many ways. Lots of good people don't bother any more - so
> the process filters for a cross between politicians and semi-humanoid
> killbots.
>
> Jimbo, this isn't the RFA you remember.

I know that, and agree about the need for change to RFA, but the point
remains: our admins are a good bunch, and in some cases (WP:BLP cases in
particular), restricting things to admins to make a decision is a good
thing.  Sure, other people can help, and not all good people become
admins, but the admins do a good job.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
Hoi!

Depending on how deep you want to go in the subject you can use this
simplified picture:
http://eng.i-iter.org/you-don-t-let-baby-out-incubator-until-you-are-sure-he
-she-can-survive

or you can give me more detailed questions. It's a long and interesting
story for a linguist :) From a strictly linguistic POV we simply solved what
can be defined as a long "trademark war". Nothing else within this issue
falls under our competence.


body:
Nick Wilkins wrote:
> On 3/26/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>> I don't see any particular problem with that.  The Admins know what they
>> are doing.
>
>
>
> ... woah.
>
> That's quite the statement.  We've apparently come quite far from the idea
> that adminship is no big deal.  Not that I have a problem with that, per se,
> but telling non-admins to trust "the Admins" with policy decisions is
> something that seems a major departure from previous practice here.

We are talking about very rare cases.  The particular case in question
is quite remarkable.

We have a choice: WP:OFFICE where actions are carried out by single
staff members or by me personally (which does not scale, and carries
with it enormous risks of bias), or relaxing just a little bit and
trusting the community of admins to oversee each other.

What is NOT a choice is keeping vicious crap up on the site while people
discuss it.  There's no point to that.

--Jimbo


body:
On 27/03/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/3/27, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
>
> > As far as Gerard and I have talked about this issue and I understand
> > it, it seems like a sensible policy to me. If you want a new language,
> > it should not be that difficult to at least prepare the groundwork for
> > MediaWiki localization before you start. If you cannot even get that
> > organized, how are you ever going to write a useful encyclopedia?
> >
>
> What if your interest is in writing an encyclopedia, and not in translating
> software? If you have 10 people happily writing articles, but none of them
> having interest in going through all 200+ MediaWiki-pages, does that mean
> that it can never be an encyclopedia?

Exactly. There is a lot of crud in the MediaWiki messages. Even when
you start a new wiki in English, how many people go through the
messages to localise them and create all the referenced pages such as
Project:About? (I sure don't.) As opposed to, how many dive into the
exciting project of content creation?

Why is localisation so important? The messages will be translated as
the wiki progresses. I am not convinced that localisation before
launch is more likely to ensure a successful project. Is there some
research or some cases that show this?

regards,
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> I've been a user for almost three years but not an admin, should my
> opinion not count for anything in this particular discussion?

The alternative is that we oversight the whole thing and let me decide
personally.  What I want us to try to do is open up the process of
dealing with serious WP:BLP issues in a more open manner, and that means
trusting our admins.

--Jimbo


body:
Rich Holton wrote:
> I am an admin, and I am truly sorry that you feel this way. And even
> sorrier that you stated that you feel this way.
>
> As a project that was founded on and thrives on cooperation, the last
> thing we need is an increase in the perceived elitism of admins.
>
> If there are potential legal reasons to keep "hidden" the revision
> history of certain deleted articles while the deletion is under review,
> revealed only to a small group, then let's make it clear that it is for
> legal reasons.
>
> If this is not the case, then let's reveal the revision history.

Legal reasons are not the whole of our ethical obligations to the world.

--Jimbo


body:
On 3/27/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> The issue is self-published sources.  It's really the same if you blog or it
> you use a vanity press.  It's the preponderance of blogs that causes them to
> be singled out. It's a readily available medium, and anyone can register a
> blog and spout off on whatever topic they want.  The main issue is "be
> careful with self-published material"...whether it is a blog, a non-blog
> webpage, or a book published by a vanity press.

Being careful with it is a fine admonision, but a lot of people take
it too far.  A lot of writers and pundits both blog and do columns and
so forth.  If they do a print publication column, what's the
difference between that and a blog?  One level of editing, maybe, but
not much.

The prior people in thread noting that it's hard to tell the
difference between a serious ongoing business and vanity publishing
site.  Even without getting your own server and learning FrontPage (or
HTML / CSS / etc for the hardcore), there are plenty of options for
putting info out there that look independent and professional but
aren't.

And there are a lot of amateurish looking professional sources.  Not
everyone spends time making their website pretty as opposed to doing
stuff.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/27/07, Ed Sanders <ejsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
> 3. "to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted
> contemporary works"
> My main problem is with #3, which basically opens the door to use any
> image which is mildly relevant. I can't see any valid uses of this
> exception.
>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_and_Snowy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII

--
geni


from_name: Cary Bass

subject: [Foundation-l] Communications Projects Group

body:
Call for volunteers:

The Wikimedia Foundation is looking for volunteers to contribute to
forming a Communications Projects Committee, for the purpose of acting
on specialized communications requests, such as researching press lists,
analyzing media coverage, as well as other functions not presently
covered under ComCom.

This committee will be made up of translators, wiki liaisons and
consultants, from a variety of countries, including graphic artists.  We
are looking for volunteers who are willing to make ComProjCom their
first priority.

ComProjCom will be responsible for executing and carrying out PR
campaigns.  Members of ComProjCom will also be given the opportunity for
training and eventual entry into the Communications Committee.

Interested parties should contact Sandra Ordonez at
sordonez at wikimedia.org or myself with your details and/or specialties.

Cary Bass


from_name: Michael Bimmler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On 3/27/07, James Farrar <james.farrar at gmail.com> wrote:

> Frankly, if we can't criticise the opinions of people who happen to be
> Foundation staff, we might as well give up.
>

Could we please refrain from referring to the fact that Cary /
bastique happens to be foundation staff. I think he has made it
perfectly clear in one of his last emails that he felt insulted as
Wikipedian and not as Wikimedia Foundation staff member.

Feel free to discuss the merits of Jeff's statements and whether they
are insulting (although one might argue that this list is not the best
place for it...), but please don't build conspiracy theories as "He
may not be criticised because he is foundation staff!!!"...

Thank you

Michael


body:
On 3/27/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "Denny Colt" wrote
>
> > I am wondering why the 'blog' aspect itself has this dirty Scarlet
> Letter
> > connotation...
>
> If you want to use a blog as a source, the burden of proof lies with you
> to substantiate its reliability. The low barriers to access for blogging
> mean this is the only sane approach.
>
> Charles

There aren't any high barriers to starting a website either. We should treat
both the same.

Mgm


subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
On 3/27/07, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> BLP? BLB? BAR?
>
> I have to admit, Citizendium does have a point.
>
> The acronymization of Wikipedia has gotten totally out of control.
>
> Or should I say, the AOW has gotten TOC.
>

No because TOC is table of contents

A better one would be

TLAs are running into WTF more often

(both of those are valid WP:Whatever links)

--
geni


body:
Policy requires possibly defamation to be properly sourced. If she was
convicted and the source was a news article, there wouldn't be any problem
even though we wouldn't have any of the evidence to judge for ourselves. So,
how come SFWA material is deemed unreliable?

Mgm

On 3/27/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:
>
> "James Farrar" wrote
> x
> > On 27/03/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
> > <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> > > "Denny Colt" wrote
> > >
> > > > I am wondering why the 'blog' aspect itself has this dirty Scarlet
> Letter
> > > > connotation...
> > >
> > > If you want to use a blog as a source, the burden of proof lies with
> you to substantiate its reliability. The low barriers to access for blogging
> mean this is the only sane approach.
>
> > OK, fine; that seems reasonable. It's no excuse for a speedy deletion
> > in the current case, though.
>
> Disagree. Articles on living people containing statements likely to damage
> their way of making a living have to get across some high hurdles. Anything
> apparently defamatory hardly needs an 'excuse' for zapping. We have a policy
> on this, which insists on reliable sources. We also discourage the
> importation into Wikipedia of quarrels from the rest of the Internet (a
> growing problem). We also discourage under teh heading of 'conflict of
> interest' various kinds of campaigning; and a recent Arbitration shows that
> this type of reasoning is likely to be used on material from 'activist'
> websites. So, even setting aside the issue of whether the blog references in
> question can be made to stand up, deleting the article (pro tem) is not
> something I'd want to criticise. Getting potential defamation off the live
> part of the site gives one a chance to go more properly into the issue.
> Articles can be restored, you know.
>
> Charles
>
> -----------------------------------------
> Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
> Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
geni wrote:
> On 3/27/07, Ed Sanders <ejsanders at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 3. "to complement (within narrow limits) articles about copyrighted
>> contemporary works"
>> My main problem is with #3, which basically opens the door to use any
>> image which is mildly relevant. I can't see any valid uses of this
>> exception.
>>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintin_and_Snowy
I would put that under "identifying protected works" as they are the
subject of the article
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII
Only the images on that page which identify a specific part of the game
being discussed should be sued, as such they would also fall under
"identifying protected works".


body:
Hoi!

Obviously not :) If and when they will be sent to us for a recommendation
the answer will be "rename it according to standard". But they do not have
any "trademark war" going on so chances are we'll never get to write
recommendations on that issue.

I understand that this is not the most relaxed moment in your life. Yet, you
perfectly know that if be-x-old problems had limited to the way in which the
code is spelt the issue would never have reached LangCom.

If you guys had solved your problems in peace at internal level nobody would
have had spent their time on this issue. It did not happen and now your
problems are going to be solved by external parties. You had your chance and
you had it for years. Sorry.

Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Eugene Zelenko
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 7:01 PM
To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Be-x-old (was New language)

Hi!

Just for self-education... Are all Chinese language suffixes (zh-...)
ISO-complaint?

Thank you,
Eugene.

On 3/27/07, Berto 'd Sera <albertoserra at ukr.net> wrote:
> Hoi!
>
> As per not communicating the swap you are absolutely right and I excuse
> myself personally. I know it won't help much but as you can understand
this
> is not "everyday business" and we have no standard procedure to manage
such
> events. Yet I read Byelorussian and it should have been my own
> responsibility to reach you and inform you. I did not do it and I
officially
> excuse myself for that.
>
> Feel free to contact me personally at any time for any possible problem,
you
> can write in Russian if it makes things easier. I will have to answer in
> English only if the answer has to be notified to LangCom, as I'm the only
> Russian speaker in LangCom and a Cyrillic answer would not be of any use
to
> the other members.
>
> Now to the answers: the domain is being setup by Brion these days, AFAIK
> there are a few minor technical problems, but that's all. It should be up
> very quickly.
>
> Domain names are not "fabricated" on community demand; they follow an
> international ISO standard. The X part means it's a private code that has
> value for wmf only (it's a standard, too). Under the current rules the
wiki
> should be simply shutdown, since it does not have an ISO code.
>
> The Board decided to delegate an ad hoc Committee for this kind of
decisions
> and IMHO that's a good warranty for everyone. In the meantime we decided
not
> to have any particular descriptive code for the old Byelorussian edition,
> since it would have implied some kind of political recognition, which is
NOT
> what wmf is about.
>
> If in the future your linguistic flavor will obtain a valid ISO code we
will
> be glad to adopt it just as we adopt any other internationally recognized
> code, but we are not willing to issue ANY code on our own. This is a final
> decision.
>
> DISCLAIMER: this is my personal POV and NOT a collective statement from
wmf
> LangCom.
>
> Berto 'd Sera
> Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
> http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Radical redefinition of OR

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote

> Nearly 600 years after the Battle of Acre is recent.

Yeah, well, I thought you'd argue that the nineteeth century is 'recent'. More of the subtle misdirection. Get with it, man.

>Judging from
> Maalouf's notes there does not appear to be any serious attempt to look
> at the Arab perspective until the 1950s with Gabrieli (1957 not 1969)
> and the French translations of Ibn Jubayr and Ibn al-Qalanisi.

You were arguing about the availability of sources, not the will to look at them? Shifting your ground.

> Maalouf
> (p.270) makes an interesting about the suppression of stories of
> Frankish cannibalism: "In the twentieth century, however, these accounts
> have generally been concealed - perhaps in the interests of the
> West's'civilizing mission'?"

Let's have the full quote, shall we?

"The Frankish chronicles of the epoch contain numerous accounts of the acts of cannibalism committed by the Frankish armies in Ma'arra in 1098, and they all agree. Until the nineteenth century, the facts of these events were included in the works of European historians [...]" and goes on to cite one such, Michaud. Then on to the bit you gave.

So

(a) we are talking about European sources (Frankish)

and

(b) this is entirely not your point, which was about whether non-European (you presumably took Byzantine as European) sources were available until 'recently', but is about whether there was a period of European historiography of the Crusades which was selective of the sources that it had always had.

Looking at Runciman's bibliography: Latin translations of Abu'l Feda started in 1789; Armenian sources before 1850; Latin translation of Syriac sources in the 1870s.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
You have got it wrong. Two languages that DID not have language files in
MediaWiki. They had a full Wikipedia and now these languages ARE supported
in MediaWiki itself. To get there.. THEY did not have to do anything.. I
have been asking developers for a favour, and I am grateful to Nikerabbit
for the great work he did for me.
Thanks,
     GerardM

On 3/27/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 2007/3/27, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> > The result would be like it was before that an increasing number of
> > projects
> > are not supported with a language message file. There are two parts to
> > this
> > problem; MediaWiki is not only used by Wikipedia and MediaWiki is not
> only
> > used by the Wikimedia Foundation. Creating a message file for a language
> > is
> > a job that does not take long. It needs doing.
>
>
> But does it need doing before anything else is done?  If people are happy
> to
> work in a strange interface, why not let them? And if they HAVE made an
> interface, as you say 2 languages have already been bullied by you into
> doing, then why not simply use that? All it takes is someone with SVN
> access
> to upload it, no?
>
> Once a new project IS started, a message file HAS to be created. The
> > difference is that the moment when the message file is created is moved
> > forward. The difference is that a new language has to be supported like
> > any
> > other language. It is not acceptable that new languages are getting a
> > substandard service.
>
>
> Apparently it is more acceptable to you to not give it any service at
> all....
>
> Every language is to be treated equal; at this moment some languages are
> > more equal then others.
>
>
> And I don't see how you are improving on this situation by not allowing
> the
> languages a place in Wikipedia at all.
>
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
"The Cunctator" wrote

> Or should I say, the AOW has gotten TOC.

The Act Of War has a Table Of Contents? Maybe with {{NoTOC}} we could outlaw war.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
William Pietri wrote

> Assuming we feel the content meets
> appropriate standards like BLP, then I'd prefer we just carry on.

I agree. If the BLP policy is not enough to keep defamation off the site, it should be fixed up so that it does. We should concentrate on making biographies comply with WP:BLP.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
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Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


body:
Hoi again,

Both domains seem to be up and running, Brion has been quick :)

http://be-x-old.wikipedia.org

http://be.wikipedia.org

I personally asked the new be.wikipedia.org to publish a pointer to be-x-old
on the first page and I am pleased to see that the pointer is there and it's
well evident.

I wish good luck to both wikies.

Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html


from_name: Eugene van der Pijll

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
The Cunctator schreef:
> BLP? BLB? BAR?
>
> I have to admit, Citizendium does have a point.

Probably. Using these abbreviations does not look like [[CZ:PRO]].

For more differences between the CZ and WP cultures, see also
[[CZ:WP2CZ]].

Eugene


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
On 27 Mar 2007 at 08:07:40 -0400, Marc Riddell
<michaeldavid86 at comcast.net> wrote:

> After you have placed a "citation needed" flag into an Article, is there a
> specific length of time you wait for either the citation to be added, or the
> statement in question to be removed by the person who wrote it, before
> deleting it yourself? The Article in question, BTW, is the one on [[Franz
> Kafka]].

Well, if you mess with the Kafka article, it wouldn't surprise me if
you're suddenly dragged into an inscrutable legal proceeeding... or
else wake up finding yourself transformed into some sort of insect.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Gary Kirk

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia, the encylopedia that anyone can't edit

body:
I would say that a fair amount of those sprotects were applied before
the expiration feature was introduced, as Geni sugqests. It just needs
some people to go through and unprotect those articles which really
don't need it any more.

I think a default time of a week is a good idea too.

On 27/03/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yep. Could do with it defaulting to e.g. a week instead of defaulting
> > to indefinite.
>
> Or not have a default so admins have to actually make a choice. That's
> what we have for blocks (well, it defaults to "other", but that has
> much the same effect).
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Gary Kirk


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bauer DRV question - history (was Wikimedia
	Foundation sued)

body:
On 27 Mar 2007 at 10:03:41 -0400, Philip Sandifer
<snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

> The only thing that makes the case remarkable is that the WMF got
> sued. But this is not a lawsuit about a false, defamatory, or even
> sloppily done article. This is a lawsuit targeted at WMF on an
> article where the process had previously worked and worked pretty
> well. It's a lawsuit targeting us at, if not our best, at least at
> our pretty darn good.

I wouldn't say that WMF was "targeted" by this suit; they weren't the
only defendant, or probably even the most important one.  Most
likely, the major target is the SFWA, which put her on their "20
worst agents" list.  Various other sites and forums were added to the
suit in a scattershot approach to attack everybody who published
anything that she didn't like, but WMF is unlikely to be the main
reason she filed it.

If this suit proceeds to trial, it will probably get mainstream
coverage, and at that point she'd probably be inescapably notable;
right now, with the only apparent coverage being in blogs and forums,
the notability is fairly marginal, though not necessarily below the
threshold for inclusion given that at least some of the blogs in
question are notable ones in the field of science fiction writing.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikimedia Foundation sued

body:
> >But in this case the public is on our side.
> >
> The public does not rule in the courts; judges do.

See [[Jury]].


body:
> Yep. Could do with it defaulting to e.g. a week instead of defaulting
> to indefinite.

Or not have a default so admins have to actually make a choice. That's
what we have for blocks (well, it defaults to "other", but that has
much the same effect).


body:
On 27/03/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> What is required is that some localisation has to have happened. It does not
> say full localisation. At this moment it is not possible to localise in the
> first place. The notion that a policy should be changed because there is a
> current stumbling block is silly.
>
> Get a friendly developer to create some message files. Be part of the
> solution.
>
> Thanks,
>     GerardM

That sounds remarkably like "it's not our fault; blame the
developers". There is nothing technically that means a wiki couldn't
start with a message file, is there? And the only thing keeping some
projects from being approved is this lack of a message file? Wouldn't
common sense say, let the project go ahead for now and the message
file will happen when the devs get around to it?

regards
Brianna


body:
I'm so happy to see the word "educational" survived. :D

cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

On 27/03/07, Kat Walsh <kat at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The board has now passed its resolution on the media licensing policy,
> available now at:
> http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy
>
> This policy is intended to reflect the principles in the message
> posted earlier at
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027547.html
> and to make the guidelines for acceptable media licenses clearer
> across all projects.
>
> A beginning draft of an FAQ page is on Meta at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_policy_FAQ_draft -- please
> add your own questions and suggest answers.
>
> Please pass this information on to your project communities!
>
> Cheers,
> Kat Walsh
>
>
> --
> Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
> * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage
> mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Commons-l] Fwd: [Foundation-l] Foundation Licensing Policy

body:
No surprises for us.

>>Whereas the mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to "empower and
engage people around the world to collect and develop educational
content under a free content license,"<<

Note my favourite phrase _educational content_. goodbye, useless crud! :]

cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kat Walsh <kat at wikimedia.org>
Date: 27-Mar-2007 13:18
Subject: [Foundation-l] Foundation Licensing Policy
To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>

The board has now passed its resolution on the media licensing policy,
available now at:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Resolution:Licensing_policy

This policy is intended to reflect the principles in the message
posted earlier at
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027547.html
and to make the guidelines for acceptable media licenses clearer
across all projects.

A beginning draft of an FAQ page is on Meta at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Licensing_policy_FAQ_draft -- please
add your own questions and suggest answers.

Please pass this information on to your project communities!

Cheers,
Kat Walsh

--
Wikimedia needs you: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Fundraising
* *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *  * *
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Mindspillage | (G)AIM:Mindspillage
mindspillage or mind|wandering on irc.freenode.net | email for phone

_______________________________________________
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http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Out of process deletions

body:
On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 13:53:23 -0400, "The Cunctator"
<cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:

>The acronymization of Wikipedia has gotten totally out of control.

Maybe, maybe not.  I pipeline them when talking to newbies or people
that may not understand, but I would not use the full text version of,
say, WP:BLP when discussing things with experienced editors any more
than I would talk to colleagues about the Transport Control Protocol
stacks or their Internet Protocol addresses.

Brevity is, after all, the soul of wit.  Just so long as we don't
become the soles of Ar.

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bauer DRV question - history (was
	Wikimedia	Foundation sued)

body:
On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 10:03:41 -0400, Philip Sandifer
<snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

>The only thing that makes the case remarkable is that the WMF got
>sued. But this is not a lawsuit about a false, defamatory, or even
>sloppily done article. This is a lawsuit targeted at WMF on an
>article where the process had previously worked and worked pretty
>well. It's a lawsuit targeting us at, if not our best, at least at
>our pretty darn good.

Well - good in parts.  Not all of it was actually *that* well sourced
or neutrally written, I'd say.  But I don't disagree on principle -
there's another disgruntled subject being discussed at the moment, my
comment to him was that we could not guarantee that he would /like/
the result, but we should be able to guarantee that he can at least
accept that it is fair.

Of course, as far as this woman is concerned, I suspect her "fair" is
our hagiography.  Scammers tend to lack self-criticism.  I remember
how upset Alan Ralsky was when people started subscribing him for all
kinds of junk mail...

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


body:
On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:03:39 +0100, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>On 3/27/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>> I don't see any particular problem with that.  The Admins know what they
>> are doing.
>
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Daniel_Brandt_deletion_wheel_war#Doc_glasgow_deleted_the_article_inappropriately

... "As a mitigating factor, Doc was participating fully in discussion
at WP:DRV and discussion there supported deletion."

Your point was?...

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


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Citation needed flags

body:
on 3/27/07 8:26 PM, Daniel R. Tobias at dan at tobias.name wrote:

> Well, if you mess with the Kafka article, it wouldn't surprise me if
> you're suddenly dragged into an inscrutable legal proceeeding... or
> else wake up finding yourself transformed into some sort of insect.

I've already had one interesting response (the last time I checked) on
Kafka's Talk Page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Franz_Kafka

Hmmm.

Marc


from_name: John Lee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On 3/27/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> > On 27/03/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> Blog entries are bad sources and BLP violations.
> >>
> >
> >
> > See, this is the sort of rule that if applied without thought leads to
> > occasional stupid results.
> >
> I'm sorry, David, you are right.  Let me rephrase that.  I've never seen
> a blog entry that was reliable enough to be used as source material.
> These blog entries do not meat WP:RS, and any material derived from them
> should be eliminated.
>
> Cary.
>

IMO, most blogs are unreliable for the same reason most personally published
sources are unreliable - any old crank can get his views published if he has
the moolah (or time to set up a blog).

But there are many blogs that can be cited. In Malaysia, for example, many
politicians blog. It seems silly to avoid quoting from their blogs in
articles where their views are relevant. Their blogs should be avoided as a
source for other things such as facts, but for their opinions, I don't see
how you can get any more reliable.

Johnleemk


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2007/3/27, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> Hoi,
> You have got it wrong. Two languages that DID not have language files in
> MediaWiki. They had a full Wikipedia and now these languages ARE supported
> in MediaWiki itself. To get there.. THEY did not have to do anything.. I
> have been asking developers for a favour, and I am grateful to Nikerabbit
> for the great work he did for me.
>

I'm starting to understand less and less of this. First you say that there
should be message files before the project is started. Now you say that it's
not the people from the projects who have to create these, but the
developers. Surely, if there IS already the material you want from the
people of the project, there is even LESS reason to have them wait longer?

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


from_name: William Pietri

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Bauer DRV question - history
 (was	Wikimedia	Foundation sued)

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> [...]
> there's another disgruntled subject being discussed at the moment, my
> comment to him was that we could not guarantee that he would /like/
> the result, but we should be able to guarantee that he can at least
> accept that it is fair.
>
> Of course, as far as this woman is concerned, I suspect her "fair" is
> our hagiography.  Scammers tend to lack self-criticism.  I remember
> how upset Alan Ralsky was when people started subscribing him for all
> kinds of junk mail...
>

I think that's a great way of stating our real goal. It's not about
what's legal; we want subjects of articles to come away feeling that the
article is fair, both because it is and because they see us trying to
work with them.

But some people indeed aren't reasonable. That doesn't mean that we
shouldn't try hard to be reasonable with them, just that we can live
with them never being satisfied as long as a neutral observer can see
both the fairness of our article and our desire to treat even difficult
people fairly.

William


body:
2007/3/27, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> Hoi,
> You have got it wrong. Two languages that DID not have language files in
> MediaWiki. They had a full Wikipedia and now these languages ARE supported
> in MediaWiki itself. To get there.. THEY did not have to do anything.. I
> have been asking developers for a favour, and I am grateful to Nikerabbit
> for the great work he did for me.

In short, you are using these languages as a weapon in your fight to get
your favorite tool in through the MediaWiki developers - as long as you
don't implement my thing, I'm not going to allow any new languages. Firstly,
you are not the one to decide what the developers must do first and what
later. And second, even if you were, prospective Wikipedians are not the one
who should be the victim of your petty fights.

I regret that you are on the Wikipedia languages committee when you are
willing to sacrifice Wikipedia languages for the, in your opinion, greater
good of MediaWiki languages.

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


body:
I'm sorry, but all of this seems rather strange to me.
First, the world is not going to explode if a wiki does not have a language
file - the wiki will just return to the default language, English. You do
not *need* a language file to customize the interface - that is what the
MediaWiki namespace is for. You can begin customizing the interface
gradually, see what you need, and do it at your own pace.
If for some reason that I do not comprehend, that is unacceptable, then you
can generate a language file from the customized wiki itself! Just go to
Special:Allmessages, click on the "PHP" output format (for the English
Wikipedia, this page would be
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Allmessages&ot=php ) and
you have 80% of your language file right there. The rest is basic language
information, such as whether you write left to right or right to left, and
you can see it, for example, at the top of the Spanish language file at
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/languages/messages/Me
ssagesEs.php?view=markup (for full, copious comments as to what these
statements are, see the corresponding English file at
http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/languages/messages/Me
ssagesEn.php?view=markup ).
After this, you can submit a bug to BugZilla. Adding a new
internationalization file is usually a fairly trivial operation. What the
developers won't do is internationalize the file for you - you need to
provide them with the details. But again, this is *not* something that has
to be done *before* the wiki is set up.

Titoxd.


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
Andre Engels schrieb:
> 2007/3/27, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
>> Hoi,
>> You have got it wrong. Two languages that DID not have language files in
>> MediaWiki. They had a full Wikipedia and now these languages ARE supported
>> in MediaWiki itself. To get there.. THEY did not have to do anything.. I
>> have been asking developers for a favour, and I am grateful to Nikerabbit
>> for the great work he did for me.
>>
>
>
>
> In short, you are using these languages as a weapon in your fight to get
> your favorite tool in through the MediaWiki developers - as long as you
> don't implement my thing, I'm not going to allow any new languages. Firstly,
> you are not the one to decide what the developers must do first and what
> later. And second, even if you were, prospective Wikipedians are not the one
> who should be the victim of your petty fights.
>
> I regret that you are on the Wikipedia languages committee when you are
> willing to sacrifice Wikipedia languages for the, in your opinion, greater
> good of MediaWiki languages.
>
>

Andre, now that reaction is a bit silly, don't you think? We are not
fighting here - we are trying to make sure projects really have a good
chance. People can work on the contents on incubator without problems,
but it is also relevant to make sure the UI is there. I know what it
means to pull up a small wikipedia and having to hassle with loads of
vandalism that comes around without even permitting me anymore to create
content or care about localization. If all that basic stuff is done
before a wikipedia is started it helps a lot ... really a lot. Believe
it or not - I am talking based on my very personal experience.

Then again: when we started nap.wikipedia people wanted to create
contents, I was the only admin that could edit the UI, but I had my
problems with that since I had to edit everything more than once not
being native, but the only techie that was around for that langauge.
Still we have some localization problems since not anybody can work on
it and who does has limited time - just not even a handful of people can
edit the UI ... so Incubator (and for now Betawiki) is a great place to
make sure things work out fine. As for Neapolitan now it is too late to
get people to work there. They simply don't see the reason why they
should do things there and so we are still with a half-way (in the mean
time probably 3/4) localized UI - and that does not help the language.
But be sure: I am grateful for the time that one very specific user
takes to do some localization every now and then.

Small wikipedias do work and function in a different way than big ones
do. There are often language issues related as well: what if there is
programming needed to get the chars right? Even one and half a year
after having started the nap.wikipedia we still don't have a solution
for the '' (double quote that causes italic script) that we find within
a word - we have to write ' instead of the single quote ... that is
plain annoying. And: I am the only one who could hurry after the
programmers to do that stuff and I don't have time to do so ... so we go
along with that. By requiring certain stuff to be done first you avoid
that kind of mess and you avoid people to have that really bad
experience that new editors get annoyed since they cannot write like
they should/would. By doing the localization + some creation of contents
first: well we can make sure newbies do not have to deal with such
issues. (how would I love to see English with such an issue ... and how
would I like to see how long it takes to have it solved).

It is not just a "we play the hard way" thigie - it is a "let's make
sure that potential editors that are not wikiphile find their way
through the wiki" and let the communities build up easier. Of course in
the beginning all seems to be somewhat more difficult, but all that is
done before the project is acutally an own wiki will help it afterwards
to have a nicer way to go, an easier job to build communities etc.

I repeat: we are not sacrificing any language, we are trying to make
sure they can survive and grow more easily. Who knows me should know
that I am all for new languages, but it does not make sense if the
communities afterwards have to hassle with thousands of issues they were
not aware of and they don't even know with who to talk. These people
most of the time are simply left alone and that has nothing to do with
"our own little fights".

If you need an example for a wikipedia that instead of localising in
their language localises into another one ... just to have something
similar since there seems to be nobody able to create their UI, please
let me know ... I will happily show you the project. I did not bring up
that issue up to now, but probably it is time to do so in order to show
why certain requests are legitimate.

Thank you for your understanding and maybe help to get the nap issue
solved after such a long time (the '' - '' thingie I mean).

Best wishes from Italy.

Sabine


body:
It's important for our project's integrity that we follow our own
standards and not be pushed into either keeping or deleting the
article on the grounds of acceding to or defying the demands of its
subject, or fighting or caving into a lawsuit.  However, it's
interesting to note that the wiki whiners are already commenting on
the case and noting how we deleted that article while keeping
Brandt's, so perhaps the way to get Wikipedia to delete a bio is to
sue it:

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=7684

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
Hoi!

You cannot invent a name for it. It must be a valid ISO 639-3 name (it seems
to be INH for ingush, but you'll better check it).

The policy for language requests is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Language_proposal_policy

You will have to make a request for it on meta and bring in at least some
native speakers to help. On a total number of ~400K native speakers we will
obviously not request 100 people, 4-5 people will usually be fine. Once you
meet the basic requests, to make up an incubator page we will also need some
details on the cyrillic flavor you need, in case it's not standard.

Feel free to write to me directly in russian if you or other partecipants in
the project have problems with english.

Berto 'd Sera
Personagi dl'ann 2006 per l'arvista american-a Time (tanme tuti vojaotri)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Tagir Aushev
Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 9:54 PM
To: wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

Dear all,

Seems it is one of the most popular question here, but still...
I would like to create a new language wiki-page.  The Ingush one.

The English page about this language already exists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingush_language .

As far as I could check the names like "in" and "ing" are still free.

So I would like to request for creation of incubator page for this
language.  What we (me and people who actually also interesting for that)
have to do for that?

Thank you in advance,
	Tagir.

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: Aphaia

body:
On 3/27/07, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> The result would be like it was before that an increasing number of projects
> are not supported with a language message file. There are two parts to this
> problem; MediaWiki is not only used by Wikipedia and MediaWiki is not only
> used by the Wikimedia Foundation. Creating a message file for a language is
> a job that does not take long. It needs doing.

I agree on that it would be nice to have those localized files. But
the proposed Wikipedia community will be the community for building an
encyclopedia powered by MediaWiki primarily, not for serving possible
future non-Wikimedia Foundation projected powered by MediaWiki ... as
for other possible Wikimedia project,  I would point out that a new
language community is occupied with tasks to launch one project
generally, and launching Wikipedia successfully is the most powerful
and surest accelerator for other projects in many cases. I am afraid
the current LangCom policy is going to the opposite way.

Also I noted every LangCom member doesn't seem to support the idea
"first localization, next project". I respect your evangelism,
GeraldM, but your current attitude doesn't seem to encourage people to
be involved into the project.

As for "seek friendly devs", it would be nice for the launching
project to have such friends, but if the more experienced editors on
LangCom have difficulties to introduce them, how can those supporters
of the new project, I assume potential project-newcomers,  find such a
help?  I failed to find the sense of this argument.

> Once a new project IS started, a message file HAS to be created.

I was involved into two project launching, and every time I need to
localize a huge of messages. But anyway message files are respectively
added in every MediaWiki versions ...  we have no idea the launching
project community to keep the energy to follow such massive new
message additions. And I know even on major projects like Japanese
Wikipedia (there I am no sysop for your information) and occasionally
meet not localized messages. Some are left, some are fixed, some are
left until someone urges sysops to localize. But the project itself is
running every day. That's the life, isn't it? And I have no good
reason to take a severe attitude for small communities around five or
luckily more, while we allow such somehow lazy attitude for existing
projects with over 100,000 accounts.

> Every language is to be treated equal; at this moment some languages are
> more equal then others.

Yes,  I agree with you at this point, and therefore expect you
consider your approach again for pursue of equality.

Cheers,
--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *


from_name: Tagir Aushev

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
Dear all,

Seems it is one of the most popular question here, but still...
I would like to create a new language wiki-page.  The Ingush one.

The English page about this language already exists:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingush_language .

As far as I could check the names like "in" and "ing" are still free.

So I would like to request for creation of incubator page for this
language.  What we (me and people who actually also interesting for that)
have to do for that?

Thank you in advance,
	Tagir.


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 27/03/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/3/27, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>:

> > They will not benefit from going live
> > now, and having to struggle to attract developer
> > attention on their own later.

> So instead we don't let them get life, and force them to attract developer
> attention now when it is even more difficult?

Does no-one on the language committee have svn access?

- d.


from_name: Andreas R.

subject: [Wikitech-l]SpecialUpload: why is the output of showSuccess()	not always shown? / where is the redirect to the new page happening?

body:
Travis Derouin <travis at ...> writes:
> I think you have to clear the redirect that updateArticle sets in $wgOut.
>
> $wgOut->redirect(''); // clear the redirect, we want to show a nice
> page of images
Thanks a lot, Travis.
Your answer saved me a lot of time since I intended (after hours of reading the
code and thinking that in updateArticle/insertNewArticle only the case of real
page redirects is handled) to look even deeper at other parts to find the place
where the redirect is perhaps set (to disable it there) instead of just
deleting the redirect :)

> I had to do something like this for the multiupload extension, which
> may be of some use to you:
>
> http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MultiUpload
No, I actually already had written the code, and then noticed it didn't behave
the way I wanted it to in certain cases (and could also reproduce this behavior
with SpecialUpload). My task was to upload certain files that are in a ZIP
archive (instead of the ZIP archive itself).

Regards,
Andreas


from_name: Sage Ross

body:
On 3/27/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> I would tend to agree.  The "stable versions" feature should make a lot
> of this unnecessary.  But now that we have the ability to make
> semi-protection time limited, this should likely be the default attempt.
>
> bobolozo wrote:
> > We now have about 1500 articles in
> > Category:Semi-protected, which new editors and IP
> > addresses can't edit.  I picked a few at random, and
> > most I checked were entirely uncontroversial articles
> > which had briefly had some trouble from an IP address,
> > which was over months ago and there was no reason to
> > believe it would ever occur again.
> >
> > This is in violation of one of our basic principles.
> >
> > Would it not make more sense for admins to be expected
> > to automatically make this sort of semi-protection
> > have a time limit, assuming there was no reason to
> > believe the article was a permanent vandal magnet?
> >
> > An ever growing list of permanently semi-protected
> > articles is not what we want, especially given that
> > it's happening out of sheer laziness.
> >

On a related note, I think it would be a good idea to semi-protect all
portals.  There's no good reason for new editors to be changing
portals, which are all code and no content.  All the content they
might want to edit is in the subpages, and I have never seen a
constructive portal edit by an IP.  (I'm sure there are some, but they
are probably all by Wikipedians who weren't signed in.)  Portals get
blanked regularly, and often remain that way for significant periods
of time.

-Sage


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
It is now. The Language Prevention Committee (Langprevcom for short)
won't allow you to have your new Wiki until you have a localised
messages file. But then they probably won't allow it anyways for some
other reason, and you will have to wait several billion years.

Mark

On 27/03/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm sorry, but all of this seems rather strange to me.
> First, the world is not going to explode if a wiki does not have a language
> file - the wiki will just return to the default language, English. You do
> not *need* a language file to customize the interface - that is what the
> MediaWiki namespace is for. You can begin customizing the interface
> gradually, see what you need, and do it at your own pace.
> If for some reason that I do not comprehend, that is unacceptable, then you
> can generate a language file from the customized wiki itself! Just go to
> Special:Allmessages, click on the "PHP" output format (for the English
> Wikipedia, this page would be
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Allmessages&ot=php ) and
> you have 80% of your language file right there. The rest is basic language
> information, such as whether you write left to right or right to left, and
> you can see it, for example, at the top of the Spanish language file at
> http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/languages/messages/Me
> ssagesEs.php?view=markup (for full, copious comments as to what these
> statements are, see the corresponding English file at
> http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/languages/messages/Me
> ssagesEn.php?view=markup ).
> After this, you can submit a bug to BugZilla. Adding a new
> internationalization file is usually a fairly trivial operation. What the
> developers won't do is internationalize the file for you - you need to
> provide them with the details. But again, this is *not* something that has
> to be done *before* the wiki is set up.
>
> Titoxd.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


body:
Why?

Mark

On 27/03/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/28/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Then why didn't the world explode when vec.wiki was created without
> > already-translated messages?
> >
> > Mark
> >
>
> Because the copyright cabal is too busy argueing with the italians to
> get round to yelling at minority languages for not localiseing their
> copyright notices.
>
> [[MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning]]
>
> Needs to be localised.
>
>  As does [[MediaWiki:Licenses]] if you are going to allow local image uploads.
>
> --
> geni
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On Wed, 28 Mar 2007, Steve Bennett wrote:
> But what do you really want to do when a respected, widely used blog
> claims that some living person bribed a member of parliament, and
> provides some kind of "proof"?

I'd say it depends.  For instance, in the extreme case where the blog was
a blog by a member of parliament who has been there, I'd give the blog at
least as much credence as I'd give a newspaper article about the same thing.
Sure, he could be lying in the blog, but he could also lie to the newspaper.

> If the claims are that
> important, surely they will be picked up, verified and repeated by
> newspapers or other media?

That might be true if it's actually about a member of parliament, but there
are claims that can have limited audiences, and yet be "important" in the
sense that they are still encyclopediac subjects.  It may be that nobody
picks up the claim because nobody picks up most claims related to the topic,
rather than because this claim is particularly unimportant.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On 3/27/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> [[Groklaw]] for an example famous to geeks.
>
> The Nielsen-Hayden blog way beats mainstream newspapers for
> reliability regarding science fiction. WP:RS is a good idea but its
> present state is the product of obsessives unable to tolerate the
> concept of editorial judgement being required.

That's why it's hard to propose a rule based simply on the thing being a blog.

I prefer to look at this by questioning what the blog is being used
for, and I think it's much the same as the way hearsay evidence is
approached in a court: material in blogs is great for showing what the
author thinks, but it's no good as a source for the facts that the
material asserts.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


from_name: Travis Mason-Bushman

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On 3/27/07 11:19 PM, "Ken Arromdee" <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:

>> If the claims are that
>> important, surely they will be picked up, verified and repeated by
>> newspapers or other media?
>
> That might be true if it's actually about a member of parliament, but there
> are claims that can have limited audiences, and yet be "important" in the
> sense that they are still encyclopediac subjects.  It may be that nobody
> picks up the claim because nobody picks up most claims related to the topic,
> rather than because this claim is particularly unimportant.

Or, perhaps, we could consider that if there are no indisputably reliable
sources about a living person, we should not have an encyclopedia article on
that person until such reliable sources are available. Or is that too
difficult a concept to grasp?

Loosening our "reliable sources" criteria is all well and good when
considering something like Pokemon or Star Wars characters, but we're
talking about the lives and reputations of real people, and I am vehemently
opposed to weakening the criteria for biographical sources.

What we write appears on one of the most popular Internet sites in the
world, and there is a moral and ethical imperative for us to be responsible
and prudent when talking about real people. Yes, that means accepting only
sources which are clearly reliable to support information of a negative
nature.

-Travis Mason-Bushman


body:
On 3/27/07, Denny Colt <wikidenny at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/27/07, Cary Bass <cbass at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> >
> > Blog entries are bad sources and BLP violations.  They should never be
> > used as source material in a biography.  They are not news.  A great
> > portion of this article was derived and sourced from blog entries.  The
> > history was restored and has been available again for some hours.
> >
> > Cary
>
>
> If an author writes a book on Jimmy Wales, and gets it published, and it
> sells a zillion copies, and it's fair, and balanced, and NPOV, and so
> on...
> it's a fine source.
>
> If the book is released by the author as an e-book in PDF form, the PDF is
> still a fine source.
>
> If the book is made into a basic HTML and posted as a website by the
> author
> is still a fine source.
>
> If the book is released chapter by chapter in a newspaper, the individual
> newspaper articles are fine sources.
>
> But if the author posts each chapter of the book as a "blog" entry on a
> website, it's a bad source.
>
> Huh?

Actually the three examples preceding the blog example would probably not be
considered reliable sources either, as they are self-published. Obviously,
however, this is ludicrous for, say, people like Jakob Nielsen. If their
books are citable, why shouldn't their self-published works (especially on
the same topics) be citable as well?

Johnleemk


from_name: Michael Noda

subject: [WikiEN-l] April Fool - how to prepare for the onslaught

body:
On 3/27/07, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/28/07, Omegatron <omegatron+wikienl at gmail.com> wrote:
> > "From Wikipedia, an infinite number of monkeys on an infinite number of
> > typewriters"?
>
> I kind of like that idea. I think we should do something centralised,
> because if we don't, 30 different Wikipedia subgroups will all decide
> that *they're* going to do something. Better one gag than 30.

The April 1 Main Page project has some excellent material lined up; I
don't think people will be disappointed.


subject: [Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

body:
2007/3/27, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com>:

> I really do sympathize with the communities stuck in
> the incubator, but from what has been said here it
> seems to be for their own good in the long run.

I don't see how they are helped by it at all.

There are very serious problems with the lack of developer
> resources for anything outside of the largest
> Wikipedias.

 And how are those problems helped by holding a couple of languages hostage?

They will not benefit from going live
> now, and having to struggle to attract developer
> attention on their own later.

So instead we don't let them get life, and force them to attract developer
attention now when it is even more difficult?

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


body:
On 3/27/07, Denny Colt <wikidenny at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 3/27/07, John Lee <johnleemk at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > ...
> >
> > Actually the three examples preceding the blog example would probably
> not
> > be
> > considered reliable sources either, as they are self-published.
> Obviously,
> > however, this is ludicrous for, say, people like Jakob Nielsen. If their
> > books are citable, why shouldn't their self-published works (especially
> on
> > the same topics) be citable as well?
> >
> > Johnleemk
>
>
> Huh? If the book is published normally, and as a *book* is a fine source,
> but then the author turns around and just freely releases the SAME book
> online or via a newspaper or Readers Digest or whatever, why would the
> SAME
> material not be a bad source? It's the same material by the same person.

Ah, I was thinking of the typical e-book, i.e. something someone typed up in
MS Word, converted into PDF format, and then put up on his site. (I've
written an ebook myself, but I wouldn't dream of using it as a source for
any article...) If what you had in mind is similar to what Philip Greenspun
has done (he republishes his books on his website after they hit the
bookstores), then there shouldn't be an issue.

The important question is whether the material is self-published, because if
it is not subject to editorial vetting, it's no good as a secondary source -
and as a tertiary source, WP is not in the business of publishing material
from primary sources, unless these sources have been utilised by secondary
sources.

Johnleemk


from_name: Ron Ritzman

body:
On 3/27/07, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone BUSH IS GAY
> LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL can edit."

Wikipedia, the free bathroom wall^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hencyclopedia
that anyone can vandalize^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hedit.

Better yet, unprotect the main page just for that day.


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-03-28

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r20768).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

  17 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 494 of 511 tests (96.67%)... 17 tests failed!


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/27/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:03:39 +0100, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On 3/27/07, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >> I don't see any particular problem with that.  The Admins know what they
> >> are doing.
> >
> >
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Daniel_Brandt_deletion_wheel_war#Doc_glasgow_deleted_the_article_inappropriately
>
> ... "As a mitigating factor, Doc was participating fully in discussion
> at WP:DRV and discussion there supported deletion."
>
> Your point was?...
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --

arbcom thinks this admin makes mistakes with regards to deletion.

--
geni


from_name: daniwo59 at aol.com

subject: [Commons-l] A Commons Iliad

body:
Hello,

I am currently working on a new project to create an annotated, illustrated
version of the Iliad by Homer. I have done the first book, using images from
Commons, and linking terms to the appropriate Wikipedia articles. I need help
and ideas for images for the remaining books. If you have suggestions, please
 let me know, or better yet, add them to the wikisource Iliad at
_http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Iliad_ (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Iliad) .  For an exa
mple of how it should look, see
_http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Iliad/Book_I_ (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Iliad/Book_I) .

Here is an ideal opportunity to integrate three projects, Wikipedia,
Wikisource, and Commons to produce something that is bigger than the sum of the
three. Your help is greatly appreciated.

Danny

************************************** AOL now offers free email to everyone.
 Find out more about what's free from AOL at http://www.aol.com.
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body:
On 3/28/07, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Better yet, unprotect the main page just for that day.
>
> Been done:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Log&page=Main_Page

Ok, how about this. At 12:00AM EDT on April 1st, nominate the mage
page for deletion and leave it open for 24 hours.

Then again, that's probably been done too.


body:
Well, I can't read Mark's mind, but my guess is that he was trying to
be ironic and was in fact using that phrase to refer to the Langcom,
as did Arbeo in the title of the thread.

-Node

On 27/03/07, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:
> Thank God there is no such thing as a language prevention committe ...
> they would have quite a bunch of problems with me and my colleagues. Or
> was there one created lately I did not know of? whoops ... that must
> then have happened while I was around to talk aobut languages and Open
> Source and Open Content in universities ... well... probably it is
> better to believe that some people are day dreaming and simply see
> things that are not there.
>
> /me veeery ironic
>
> Sabine
>
> Mark Williamson schrieb:
> > It is now. The Language Prevention Committee (Langprevcom for short)
> > won't allow you to have your new Wiki until you have a localised
> > messages file. But then they probably won't allow it anyways for some
> > other reason, and you will have to wait several billion years.
> >
> > Mark
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: James Farrar

subject: [WikiEN-l] Blog Entries (Bauer fork)

body:
On 27/03/07, wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:

> Just because the New York Times' source for _a_ story is _a_ blog doesn't mean that
> _any_ blog has the same reliability as The New York Times.

Indeed, but just because _some_ blogs are full of rubbish, doesn't
mean that _all_ blogs should be ignored completely (which is, AIUI,
the current BLP policy).


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] blogs vs websites - (was Bauer DRV question-history)

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Ray Saintonge [mailto:saintonge at telus.net]
>Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2007 06:14 PM
>To: 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] blogs vs websites - (was Bauer DRV question	-	history)
>
>Guettarda wrote:
>
>>The issue is self-published sources.  It's really the same if you blog or it
>>you use a vanity press.  It's the preponderance of blogs that causes them to
>>be singled out. It's a readily available medium, and anyone can register a
>>blog and spout off on whatever topic they want.  The main issue is "be
>>careful with self-published material"...whether it is a blog, a non-blog
>>webpage, or a book published by a vanity press.
>>
>Being careful is key.  I have a large number of book(let)s on philately
>and postal history.  A significant proportion of these were privately
>published by the author out of a genuine interest in the subject, and
>there is no question of controversy.  The one that I have in front of me
>now was limited printing of 65 copies.  Similar situations arise in
>relation to many local histories.  If we waited for professional
>historians to review this material we would never be able to use any of it.
>
>Ec

That sort of philately or postal history publication is subjected to intense peer review in the philatelic community. If you are reading the philatelic press and are in the appropriate sections of the American Philatelic Society you can can determine the reputation of such publications by inquiring.

Fred


body:
On 3/27/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, apparently not.
>
> But they insist on keeping these Wikis hostage.
>
> Way to foster friendship and help new Wikis, guys. You've been waiting
> a year? Great, we have some more things you've gotta do before you can
> get your Wiki!!
>
> l'll bet the dinosaurs became extinct while waiting for their own dino.wp...
>
> Mark
>

There are a small number of system messages that are system critical.
--
geni


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
Andre Engels wrote:

> Be however warned that there have been no proposals accepted in
> the last few months.

Andre, your recent comments and questions are full of angry
rhetoric and irony.  Perhaps you can try to turn that energy into
providing useful help to some of the new language communities,
helping to improve their applications, finding developers who
speak the new language, etc. instead of just spitting your poison
on these lists.  Maybe you are already doing good and useful work,
but your recent postings haven't made this known.

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


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
2007/3/28, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se>:

> Andre, your recent comments and questions are full of angry
> rhetoric and irony.  Perhaps you can try to turn that energy into
> providing useful help to some of the new language communities,
> helping to improve their applications, finding developers who
> speak the new language, etc. instead of just spitting your poison
> on these lists.  Maybe you are already doing good and useful work,
> but your recent postings haven't made this known.

Helping them improve their applications won't help if they get rejected for
something completely different than having bad applications. And who am I to
find developers who speak the language?

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] New language

body:
> Helping them improve their applications won't help if they get rejected
> for something completely different than having bad applications. And who am
> I to find developers who speak the language?
>

En daarnaast, ik ben gewoon een negatieve oude zak die voornamelijk ruzie
zit te maken. Maar niet lang meer, hoop ik. Ik hoop dat ik eindelijk eens
kan besluiten om echt met Wikipedia op te houden.

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