subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
JAY JG said:
>
> We are at the stage where people are indeed adding masses of trivial
> one-line articles about schools,

I see no evidence of this.

> which the school inclusionists
> immediately  describe as a "good stub with potential for organic
> growth".

This is a reasoned response to the few perfectly good stubs that I've seen
listed for deletion, mostly only a few weeks after creation.  In general
the consensus seems to be against deletion of such stubs, even the tiny
and almost useless ones like Mahajana school, about which little of value
is known.

It seems from the quotes you have made that Jimbo was saying that we
probably shouldn't go around deleting perfectly good stubs about schools.
I know of nobody who is suggesting that we accommodate a bot-runner
mechanically inserting large numbers of unwanted stubs of any kinds into
Wikipedia.

>
>>And on a side note, I'm rather suprised to find myself--long classed by
>>some as a ruthless deletionist, described here as an extreme
>>inclusionist.
>
> Described where as "an extreme inclusionist"?
>

I may have misread your intent in the phrase "it seemed to be explicitly
excluding the extremes Tony (and various school inclusionists) are
suggesting." My apologies if that is so.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was DoImisunderstand
	Wikipedia?

body:
Gregory Maxwell said:
>
> Unlike NPOV I don't consider no-original-research to be a core (thus
> non-negotiable) principal of the project, rather it's just a useful
> rule.

I think NPOV has been emphasized more, but I don't think it's correct to
imply that "No original research" (or any other official policy) is
negotiable.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do	Imisunderstand
	Wikipedia

body:
Rick wrote:

>--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>wrote:
>
>
>>Rick said:
>>
>>
>>>--- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>>>wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Non-notability has been rejected as a criterion for
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>deletion.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>By some.  There is no consensus on this issue.
>>>
>>>
>>Ergo, it has been rejected.  That's how we make (or
>>don't make) policy on
>>Wikipedia.
>>
>>
>Um, no, there is no consensus either way.
>
>
Absence of a consensus means that it is NOT adopted.

Ec


from_name: JAY JG

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re:
	[Wikipedia-l]Schoolsonen:(wasDoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>Yeah, that I'd attribute to exasperation. Apparently-spammed nominations
>leading to apparently-spammed kep votes.

Maybe we're all a little exasperated.  Some strong policy about schools
would be helpful; think the various suggestions being bandied about have any
chance of becoming policy?

>Of course, they might actually think it was a stub with a future. Are any
>of them working on the school stubs?

Some are; others just whine that all this voting is keeping them so busy
they couldn't possibly try to expand any articles.  And many of the articles
are extremely difficult to expand beyond a paragraph or so, since there
exists little information about them on the internet that is neutral and
verifiable, much less noteworthy ("Its mascot is a chipmunk" - honestly!).

>Rather than impugning their edits here, you could ask them nicely and see
>what they say. Might be interesting.

Ask them nicely what?  If they're robo-voting, or to expand the stubs into
something worthwhile?

Jay.


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Non-commercial only and By Permission Only Images
	to be	deleted

body:
Excellent, Jimbo, thanks for this declaration. My guess would be that
much of the material will simply be retagged as fair use. If the
approach on Wikinews works out, we could then move towards a fair use
whitelist, which could include

- album and book covers
- important historical photos
- logos
- screenshots
- publicity photos
- material that is very old but not yet PD, orphaned works
- ...?

These could then all get their own templates, e.g.

{{Fair use - screenshot}}
{{Fair use - publicity}}

while the generic {{Fair use}} template would be deprecated and images
without a ''specific'' tag would be deleted.

I suggest reviewing the situation again in two months or so.

All best,

Erik


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was DoImisunderstand
	Wikipedia

body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>>
>>JAY JG said:
>> >>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>> >>Gregory Maxwell said:
>> >> >
>> >> > When it comes down to it, if we only use the criteria of
>> >> > "verifiable and NPOV" we end up with the prohibition on original
>> >> > research as being the only real control on what can go into
>> >> > wikipedia after a little tidying up.
>> >>
>> >>That's basically it.
>> >
>> > Fortunately, Wikipedia's notability policies help keep out much of
>> > the trivia your proposal would allow.  Unfortunately, these policies
>> > are much  clearer in the case of articles about individuals than
>> > they are in the case  of articles about schools.
>>
>>Non-notability has been rejected as a criterion for deletion.
>
> By you, perhaps.  Clearly not by many others.

I think it's rather deeper than that.  The concept isn't well defined and
even as a vague notion "non-notability" commands no consensus, though of
course some people like to act as if it does or even as if they were
arbiters of what it means.

>
>>Inappropriate biographical entries can be rejected on grounds of
>>vanity.
>
> And for the large number that cannot be rejected on the grounds of
> vanity,  the various other notability criteria explicitly outlined in
> [[Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not]] serve well.

Indeed.  I'll resist the temptation to point out that the word
"notability" appears nowhere in that compilation, and that the recently
created "Wikipedia:Notability" page, apparently pasted from an article in
Demi's userspace, is not official policy.  The word is not helpful.
Inasmuch as it's widely understood, it's controversial.  Insamuch is it
isn't actively opposed, it's too vague to be useful.
>
>>Humans tend to be a lot less intrinsically encyclopedic, as
>>individuals, than institutions or even cultural manifestations such as
>>the infamous Pokemon.
>
> Define "intrinsically encyclopedic".
>

Empirically this can be defined as "having a calculable likelihood, as a
class of subjects, to sustain an article that wouldn't end up being
deleted if listed on VfD."  In general it seems to be pretty difficult to
get consensus to delete a school article, of instance, even one about a
little-known high school about which nothing much is known, whereas if I
wrote an article about a random human, my friend's brother say, when
listed on VfD it would die a mercifully quick death.


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Merlin

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikipedia downloads only available with 2GB?!

body:
Hi there,

I am trying to download the german "old" table on:
http://download.wikimedia.org/#wikipedia
The link says that the size of that file is 13.97 GiB.

Howver, the file is just 2GB (definatelly) and there are no aditional files like
described on the wikipedia download help page.

Can somebody please give me some help on where to download that proper file? I
tried this one, but it is not complete (which gzip is telling me).

My guess is that the file is stored on a server which does not support files >
2GB and that this is just a mistake.

Any suggestions?

Thank you in advance,

merlin


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en:
	(wasDoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
JAY JG said:
>
> But Tony, the claim (which is often made), and to which I was
> responding,  was that Wikipedia had *no* notability policies.  Clearly
> it does, though it  doesn't specifically use the word "notability" to
> describe them.

Well we could go around in circles about this, but I'll just register my
disagreement with this again and we can move on.  I don't think we can
realistically cast WWIN as a "notability" policy, you think it is.  Fair
enough.


body:
JAY JG said:
>
> Right.  You made a strawman argument and I called you on it.

I must have missed where I did that.  As I said before, I think the
problem is that here we have such a fluid, ill-defined concept that we
could keep on arguing forever to no practical end.


from_name: Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: privacy problem- GOT THE SOLUTION!!!

body:
Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Eric wrote:
> > The aim is to identity each anonymous edit with a unique number. Right?
> > Well then, a different unique number can be coded using a special formula which
> > ends us up with a 1-to-1 relationship.
>
> This means that the IP address can still be reconstructed from the
> "unique number". What you are suggesting is called "security by
> obscurity". Unfortunately, you are forgetting that the source code is
> open, and so any formula - no matter how complex - can be seen by everybody.

I've actually thought about this sort of thing for a site I've been
planning with anonymous users.  The trick is to assign a *meaningless*
number that nonetheless consistently maps to a particular IP address.

    CREATE TABLE anonips (
        anonid INTEGER NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
        ipaddr  INTEGER NOT NULL
    );

Then add a Special:Anonip, limited to sysops, that looks up an
anonymous user number in the table and returns the IP address.

Yes, if you happen to get the same IP as a previous user, you'll know
their old IP address.  But it doesn't have to be perfect.

--
Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon <brent at brentdax.com>
Perl and Parrot hacker


from_name: bernhard blum

subject: [Wikitech-l] old style in version 1.4

body:
I am running mediawiki version 1.4 for a scout wiki (gondi-online.de)
The system runs very well.
Last week I changed something in the database (I don't no what) and no I
get the old style in properties and for example in the editing page of
articles.
What have I done wrong?
Any ideas?
thanks a lot for your help
bernie


from_name: Eric

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re[2]: privacy problem- GOT THE SOLUTION!!!

body:
Eric <ek79501 <at> yahoo.com> writes:

>
>  <monk <at> zoomcon.com> writes:
> >
> > Hello Abigail,
> >
> > Tuesday, May 17, 2005, 3:53:28 PM, you wrote:
> >
> > >>  My first proposal: after I am logged on, I should have the option to
> > >>  disallow my IP address from anonymous posting. So when I am on
> > >>  wikipedia once again, anonymous, the system won't give me the
> > >>  possibility to save changes without logging in (or, may be, pushing
> > >>  explicit button "I want to edit without logging in, with ip-address
> > >>  logged").
> > > This would be a very dangerous facility, if provided.  It would mean
> > > that anyone using a proxy server could block everyone else using the
> > > proxy server, inadvertently.
> > Why? I don't propose letting to log in only for THAT only user. Any
> > user will be able to log in - or even to post anonymously - it just
> > won't be so implicit.
> >
> > > If we did something like this it would need doing with cookies, I suppose.
> >
> > I think, usual "remember my password across session" option is already
> > working through cookies. So if cookies are set properly, I will be
> > already logged on. And if I'm not logged on, cookies are wrong - so I
> > think your proposition has little sense...
> >
>
> I'm not sure if I'm in the right list? If not, I apologize.
> I'm having about these same kinds of concerns. I'll be installing a WIKI
> for a controversial subject where:
> 1) Users are concerned about their identity, and _cannot_ have their IP's seen
> by others.
> 2) Vandalism could be rampant.
> For (1), someone advised me and I was able to easily edit ProxyTools.php to
> always record the IP as 123.123.123.123 and that was great, but ofcourse this
> has problems if we want to deal with vandals. The only way out would then be to
> disable anonymous edits, but as someone on this list made the point: If we do
> that, we're going to loose big time as much less people will edit.
> So I need anonymous editing, with safety of the users ensured and vandalism
> taken care of too.
>
> Is there any way where only SysOps can see the actual IP address, while others
> see the same string "xxx"?
> A good solution would be to have some sort of a coded IP which would still be a
> unique number identifying the user but not the real IP which exposes the
> location of the individual, but this would be too complex.
>
> How can we change it such that, if a Sysop is logged in, he sees the real IP's
> but if its anyone else, they just see "111.111.111.111"
> The IP address is recorded in atleast 3 different databases.
>
> I'm trying to find out a way for doing this. Any advice is greatly appreciated!
>
> thank you
> Eric
>

WOW.

I think I got the solution to this privacy problem. I'm going to be installing
WIKI myself and will hack it for my own needs.
The aim is to identity each anonymous edit with a unique number. Right?
Well then, a different unique number can be coded using a special formula which
ends us up with a 1-to-1 relationship.
The coded IP or number which can even be a mixture of Alphabets and Numerals or
anything, will never reveal the true IP - but will still be a unique
representation for that posting.
That easy.
If the formula is complex enough, no one can figure it out and hence the IP.
Now I gotta figure out how to manipulate text in PHP and to figure out a very
complex formula which "encrypts" the IP.

If there's anyone who has to see the real IP, its only the admins. Its not wise
at all for every Jack to see the IP's.

Great work, Eric! Patting my own back. I did what these WikiMedia people could
not do.
Comments eh? Or any advice for the encryption?

Eric


list: foundation-l

from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Foundation-l] A license for the Ultimate Wiktionary

body:
Hoi,

So far all Wiktionary content has been licensed under a GNU-FDL license.
With the Ultimate Wiktionary new functionality becomes a real
possibility. One of these is providing information using the .dict
format that has been described in RFC 2229. I learned from Hippietrail
that .dict can also be used to have a local dictionary on your PC. At
this moment almost every article has multiple authors it is not
realistic to require the full history with every article as the GNU-FDL
does. To grow the relevance of the Ultimate Wiktionary we do want to
expand the way in which it can be used. I learned from Erik Moeller that
we could regularly create an Ultimate Wiktionary export in the .dict
format and have these distributed with Linux distributions for instance
of with bittorrents. Again the license would be an issue it is not
feasible to export the complete history with every word.

I am not an expert on licenses. It is not really my cup of tea. As far
as I am concerned, the Ultimate Wiktionary content should remain Free
therefore a license needs a viral aspect; the data should stay free. I
really appreciate the history and therefore I do want to keep the author
information within UW. But I also want to expand the use of what we are
working on so I am not bothered about the history remaining with the
data when it finds this other use.

Changing the license within a running project is difficult. As Ultimate
Wiktionary will be a new database it is best to publish its content from
the start using a license that will enable the expanded use that is
possible with the new technology. Exporting TO the Ultimate Wiktionary
will be problematic in that it will replace many of the existing
Wiktionaries. It is not feasible to import the Wiktionary content
including the full history. It will be hard but possible to parse the
current information and enter this into UW. It is possible to mention
the persons that worked on an article on the talk page. Given the aims
of the Wikimedia projects I do not think from a moral point of view
there should be a problem converting Wiktionary data to UW and change
the license in the process. It will be impossible to convert all the
data to UW and/or maintain all the history information as only the data
that can be parsed can be entered into UW in the first place. Also there
will be a large amount of manual work to make this conversion possible

We can also convert the data to the UW, change the license, recognise
past efforts by publishing history details on the talk page and wait for
people to object. An objection would result in the removal of the work
they contributed to. This would be a pragmatic way of coping with issues.

Basically I have two questions;

*What license would be best that is FREE and allows for the expanded use
of the UW data
*Do we need to have the consent of every editor before we can export to
UW or is UW sufficiently different from Wiktionary to make it an
original work in its own right or do we need this only when we change
the license?

Thanks,
   GerardM


list: wikimedia-l


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] A license for the Ultimate Wiktionary


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
Ray Saintonge said:

(Listing extremely brief school stubs for deeltion)

> Even then, a pre-condition for putting the matter on
> VfD  should be that there has been an attempt to contact the
> contributor in a  good faith attempt to resolve the problem.
> (Admittedly this would be  less possible when the contribution is from
> an anonymous IP.)  Absence  of such an effort should be reason enough
> to remove the item from VfD.

I don't think contacting the original contributor is necessary.  There are
cleanup methods already around and people willing to perform them.  For
instance you could pop any really brief school stubs on my Cleanup
taskforce desktop.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tony_Sidaway/Desk

I do agree that people putting some kinds of stubs up on VfD should be
more considerate than at present.  If you've listed a certain class of
article on VfD before and found that it tends to get kept, perhaps you're
not considering alternatives such as cleanup seriously enough.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was
	DoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
David Gerard said:
> Bryan Derksen (bryan.derksen at shaw.ca) [050520 02:00]:
>
>> Perhaps it's time we actually started a page on notability policy so
>> that something more definitive could be worked out rather than relying
>>  on these subjective attempts to figure out what other policies imply?
>>  That would still leave lots of openeings for subjectivity when
>> determining whether any particular article is notable, but at least
>> there wouldn't be so much argument over "non-notable articles must be
>> purged, inclusionist scum!"/"Anything verifiable deserves an
>> encyclopedia article, deletionist scum!"
>
>
> We did already. [[Wikipedia:Notability]] redirects to
> [[Wikipedia:Importance]], which notes that a poll of this sort at
> [[Talk:Fame and importance]] achieved a simple majority but nothing
> like consensus (oddly enough). I noted this earlier on.

The Notability article has been updated today and (last time I looked)
contains a copy-pasted "proposed policy".


from_name: David 'DJ' Hedley

subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
> I do agree that people putting some kinds of stubs up on VfD should be
> more considerate than at present.  If you've listed a certain class of
> article on VfD before and found that it tends to get kept, perhaps you're
> not considering alternatives such as cleanup seriously enough.
>

I agree with this statement. A user i've forgotten the name off put [[Juliet
(artist)]] on VfD a few days ago, claiming 'vanity' and 'poor stub'. The
musician the article is about is easily notable, both by [[WP:MUSIC]], by
Google and by common sense, but the contributor couldn't be bothered to
check that. A poor stub should head for cleanup, but he used that as a VfD
reason, which really I don't see as valid.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
JAY JG said:
> do you see the problem with describing
> even "tiny  and almost useless" stubs as "perfectly good"?

Not really.  A tiny and almost useless stub (look at most of the newer
entries on "List of masts", for instance is perfectly okay if organic
growth will occur.  I have cataloged significant growth occurring on mast
and school articles over periods ranging from six months to two years.
This is clearly one viable way of growing encyclopedia articles.

> Note that he is talking about a "good contributor" writing a "decent"
> article, one that is two pages long, with cited and verifiable
> information;  in that case, we should "cut some slack" for the article.

Well we've got an article on the school he named, he didn't write it.  The
Epopt did in February, 2004, and he also went to that school).  The school
is one of few older schools I've looked at that show no organic growth
(indeed it's now somewhat smaller than the initial draft).  There is a
very contrived link to Wernher von Braun (he lived in the same town, as
did a lot of other rocket scientists, some of whom apparently sent their
kids there).

It seems to be a completely undistinguished article about an utterly
ordinary school.  It comprises six sentences and an external link.

(Bs pbhefr jr nyy xabj gung Wvzob vf gur frperg travhf tenaqfba bs Iba
Oenha.)
>
> On the other hand these "School X is a school in city Y" stubs written
> by  fly-by anonymous contributors are not at all what Jimbo was talking
> about  accoimodating.
>

I agree.  But I'm talking about what is happening on VfD *now*.  We've got
enough eyes and hands now that, unless someone floods VfD, such a stub
listed on VfD tends to grow to a point where it evades deletion.

Thus listing school articles for deletion is probably going to continue to
be a very frustrating process.


subject: [WikiEN-l] On the effects of sowing dragon's teeth

body:
JAY JG said:
>
>
> The reason it is hard to delete school articles is two-fold;
> 1) Wikipedia deletion rules are stacked in favour of inclusion; at
> least  two-thirds of voters (and often more) must vote to delete for it
> to happen,  and votes to re-direct  are interpreted as "keep", though
> the obvious intent  is that the article should not stand on its own.

When I close, I usually go for 75-80%, depends how confident I am about
the presence of socks and the like.

> 2) School inclusionists are now organized, and have set up a
> "Schoolwatch"  page to ensure that all schools are kept.  These people
> vote to keep every  single school, usually with cut and paste comments.
>  Thus a group of a dozen  or so inclusionists can easily force
> Wikipedia to keep every single school  article, no matter how silly,
> uninformative, trivial or unverifiable they  are.  And, in fact, that's
> exactly what they do.  However, whether these  dozen people represent
> the consensus of Wikipedia is another question.
>

I think the group of inclusionists you describe may well exist.  I think
it is more than likely that, like me, they have been influenced by a
perception that there exists a campaign to delete school articles and to
use VfD, as David Gerard has put it, or the purpose of quality control.
In my case the perception arose from the actions following the closing of
an article on Mahajana School with a keep decision.  The school was
inexplicably redirected to the Erode article and then speedy deleted.  It
was restored following a long discussion on votes for undeletion, but then
relisted for deletion again very soon after.

More recently, the robotic listing for deletion of over 50 schools in the
space of 3 days did nothing to dispel my impression that a deletion
campaign was under way.  I can find no other explanation for carrying out
such a procedure on that timescale.

That kind of activity does tend to attract attention.  The kind of people
who are most likely to do something about it rather than just shrug it off
tend to be those who, like me, don't like what they see happening.  It may
also cause some people, like me, to rethink their attitude towards
deletion.  It tends to radicalize people.

So yes, there's something in what you say.  But there is also some truth
to the old story about sowing dragon's teeth.


body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>
>>
>>I look at every article I vote on first. Are you saying I, or these
>>hypothetical conspirators, in fact don't?
>
> You obviously do; you've even voted to delete some schools.

Haven't we all?

> The
> organized  inclusionists do not read the article, nor do they believe
> they should have  to; for them, including all school articles is a
> matter of "principle",  usually of the "Wikipedia is not paper" and/or
> "schools are intrinsically  notable" sort.
>

Well that's a very serious charge.  You're accusing some unnamed people of
making bogus votes on VfD--copy-pasted and without looking at the article
in question.
Do you have some evidence to support this?


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>>
>>It seems to be a completely undistinguished article about an utterly
>>ordinary school.  It comprises six sentences and an external link.
>>
>>(Bs pbhefr jr nyy xabj gung Wvzob vf gur frperg travhf tenaqfba bs Iba
>>Oenha.)
>
> I have to admit, I'm not sure what you mean by that.

http://www.rot13.com/


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] xhtml_slim.pt

body:
On 19/05/05, Brent 'Dax' Royal-Gordon <brentdax at gmail.com> wrote:
> NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> > where is the /template/xhtml_slim.pt file in MediaWiki 1.4 ?
>
> It's no longer used by default in 1.4.  Instead, edit the skins/*.php
> files as appropriate.

To clarify, 1.4 features pure PHP equivalents of the TAL templates,
because they were just causing people more headaches than they were
worth. There are still template versions (*.pt) in the "disabled"
directory, but they may be out of date. The default "MonoBook" skin is
now defined entirely within "skins/MonoBook.php", using <?php ... ?>
sections instead of the TAL directives.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: bbarron at fuse.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
would like to help as much as possible

Hi i am Pastor Rev.Bill Barron and i am running for the city of cincinnati council. i am a goodman  who wants to bring peace and harmony to are city.i have help campaign for others an i am very hands on,and yes more jobs.volunteers&donations are in need call(513)621-2349.campaign hats&bumper stickers are $15.00&$4.00 sign of a cross on bumper stickers,to represent!(smile)send checks or money orders to;Bil Barron for city council 609 walnut st.suite#1016 cincinnati,ohio 45202.seriously i am looking for business parters to make our own money."only ask if you have money to invest". "new" web site. www.revbillbarron.org


from_name: dpbsmith at verizon.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] Juvenalia

body:
I'm thinking out loud, and I am not making any specific proposal or
coming to any particular conclusion.

I haven't been following the recent school brouhaha, but it seems to me
there's an aspect to the school issue that people have been tapdancing
around.

In addition to the general encyclopedias, there are a host of
single-volume encyclopedias on limited topics. The Encyclopedia of
Chicago. The Encyclopedia of Buddhism. Encyclopedia of Western Railroad
History. The American Horticultural Society A to Z Encyclopedia of
Garden Plants. The New International Encyclopedia of Bible
Difficulties. Donna Kooler's Encyclopedia of Crochet. The New
Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding. The Star Wars Encyclopedia. The
Comic Book Encyclopedia.

My guess is that I would personally accept 99% of this material as
being "encyclopedic," even if much of it is on material I personally
have little interest in. Why? Because to me, encyclopedic does not mean
"of personal interest to me." It means "having _some_ reasonable level
of thoroughness, accuracy, and scholarship." An article _needs_ to have
these things if it is to serve the reader.

But Wikipedia is an all-volunteer contribution. That means that it also
needs to serve contributors. But there has to be some kind of balance.

A vanity page is an obvious example of a page that is out of balance.
It serves _primarily_ the ego of the contributor.

Now, what happens when someone wants to contribute to Wikipedia, but
doesn't really have the skill set to do so?

I suspect that a lot of the arguments about certain classes of article
are really related to age-specific interest, and to age-related levels
of skill and maturity. I sometimes fancy I hear in these debates the
voices older siblings putting younger ones in their place. Articles
about Pokemon are baby stuff--wait until you grow up and can write
articles about _serious_ things like Harry Potter. Harry Potter
articles are cruft--they're not _important,_ like Hilary Duff, or
Britney Spears, or Justin Timberlake.

I sometimes fancy that when people say "let _articles_ undergo organic
growth," which is nonsense because article do not grow, people write
them, what they are really saying is "don't discourage young
_contributors_" (who certainly will undergo organic growth).

The problem with high schools has little to do with notability. It is
that the people most likely to be interested in writing articles about
them are people of high-school age, who _for the most part_ tend not to
have the skills to write very good encyclopedia articles. These
articles tend to be out of balance: they mostly serve the needs of the
contributors, rather than the needs of readers.

Now if, in fact, we actually have a crowd of serious worker bees who
really will swarm around all the little irritating particles of school
substubs and deposit the nacre of scholarship on them until they become
sparkling crystals :-) then there's probably no harm in them...

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


body:
Ian Monroe wrote:

>IANAL (and it sounds like one is needed) but you can't change a
>license without the consent of all owners of a work. So its
>impossible, thus Wikipedia is still using GFDL even though no one
>likes it. You might be able to have all /new/ work be on a different
>license, but thats kind of pointless and would come at a cost of
>people not being able to use content from Wikipedia (as-if!).
>
>
When data is imported into Ultimate Wiktionary it will first be
converted beyond recognition of the orignial content. One difference you
discount is that Wiktionay and Wikipedia are GNU-FDL at this moment in
time. Ultimate Wiktionary will be a completely different database and as
such all content can be considered new content with a new license. Why
use the Wikipedia word ??

>I thought it was generally considered to be in compliance with GFDL
>if, for instance, on your mirror of Wikipedia you referenced back to
>Wikipedia.org. We'd want to keep the history online somewhere
>regardless, perhaps a crawl of the Wiktionaries could be done and just
>have it up as static content HTML files (so security and such wouldn't
>be an issue). When distributed Ultimate Wiktionary would referenced
>its own site and the Ultimate Wiktionary would link to the Wiktionary
>archive.
>
>
We are only talking Wiktionary here. This has nothing to do with
Wikipedia. Adding History information on a talk page in the Ultimate
Wiktionary DOES allow for pinpointing who contributed to an article it
just does not show WHAT was contributed.

When we distribute content it will not be in the same format as the
Ultimate Wiktionary. It will be completely seperate from it and we DO
want people to use it and contribute to UW. As UW will be the source of
.dict information people will update UW in order to improve their next
import.

There will be not one wiktionary archive, the potential exists that all
wiktionaries will be imported into UW and what is the point of keeping
these as archives if they serve no purpose?

Thanks,
    GerardM

>On 5/19/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Hoi,
>>
>>So far all Wiktionary content has been licensed under a GNU-FDL license.
>>With the Ultimate Wiktionary new functionality becomes a real
>>possibility. One of these is providing information using the .dict
>>format that has been described in RFC 2229. I learned from Hippietrail
>>that .dict can also be used to have a local dictionary on your PC. At
>>this moment almost every article has multiple authors it is not
>>realistic to require the full history with every article as the GNU-FDL
>>does. To grow the relevance of the Ultimate Wiktionary we do want to
>>expand the way in which it can be used. I learned from Erik Moeller that
>>we could regularly create an Ultimate Wiktionary export in the .dict
>>format and have these distributed with Linux distributions for instance
>>of with bittorrents. Again the license would be an issue it is not
>>feasible to export the complete history with every word.
>>
>>I am not an expert on licenses. It is not really my cup of tea. As far
>>as I am concerned, the Ultimate Wiktionary content should remain Free
>>therefore a license needs a viral aspect; the data should stay free. I
>>really appreciate the history and therefore I do want to keep the author
>>information within UW. But I also want to expand the use of what we are
>>working on so I am not bothered about the history remaining with the
>>data when it finds this other use.
>>
>>Changing the license within a running project is difficult. As Ultimate
>>Wiktionary will be a new database it is best to publish its content from
>>the start using a license that will enable the expanded use that is
>>possible with the new technology. Exporting TO the Ultimate Wiktionary
>>will be problematic in that it will replace many of the existing
>>Wiktionaries. It is not feasible to import the Wiktionary content
>>including the full history. It will be hard but possible to parse the
>>current information and enter this into UW. It is possible to mention
>>the persons that worked on an article on the talk page. Given the aims
>>of the Wikimedia projects I do not think from a moral point of view
>>there should be a problem converting Wiktionary data to UW and change
>>the license in the process. It will be impossible to convert all the
>>data to UW and/or maintain all the history information as only the data
>>that can be parsed can be entered into UW in the first place. Also there
>>will be a large amount of manual work to make this conversion possible
>>
>>We can also convert the data to the UW, change the license, recognise
>>past efforts by publishing history details on the talk page and wait for
>>people to object. An objection would result in the removal of the work
>>they contributed to. This would be a pragmatic way of coping with issues.
>>
>>Basically I have two questions;
>>
>>*What license would be best that is FREE and allows for the expanded use
>>of the UW data
>>*Do we need to have the consent of every editor before we can export to
>>UW or is UW sufficiently different from Wiktionary to make it an
>>original work in its own right or do we need this only when we change
>>the license?
>>
>>Thanks,
>>   GerardM
>>
>>
>>_______________________________________________
>>Wiktionary-l mailing list
>>Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
>>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>>
>>
>>
>_______________________________________________
>Wiktionary-l mailing list
>Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l
>
>
>


from_name: geni

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on
	en:(wasDoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
On 5/19/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> >JAY JG said:
> > > You obviously do; you've even voted to delete some schools.
> >
> >Haven't we all?
>
> Nope.
>
> > > The
> > > organized  inclusionists do not read the article, nor do they believe
> > > they should have  to; for them, including all school articles is a
> > > matter of "principle",  usually of the "Wikipedia is not paper" and/or
> > > "schools are intrinsically  notable" sort.
> > >
> >
> >
> >Well that's a very serious charge.  You're accusing some unnamed people of
> >making bogus votes on VfD--copy-pasted and without looking at the article
> >in question.
> >Do you have some evidence to support this?
>
> "Very serious charge"?  Get real, this is a Wikipedia mail-list.  As for
> evidence, here's one example of an editor who took some valuable time out of
> editing Pokemon related articles to make 17 identical keep votes on schools
> in 9 minutes, and soon after another 10 identical keep votes in 4 minutes:
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Ketsuban]
>   Several times she was able to get in 3 keep votes a minute.  I envy her
> her internet connection; I couldn't have even gotten to all those VfD pages
> in that time, much less read the related article, edited, voted, saved, and
> returned.
>
> Jay.

I could just about match that edit rate using multiple tabs in
firefox. It would be very tricky though and I would have had to open
all the edit window first.

--
geni


from_name: NSK

subject: [Wikitech-l] xhtml_slim.pt

body:
hey

where is the /template/xhtml_slim.pt file in MediaWiki 1.4 ?

Which file in 1.4 needs to be modified in order to add new blocks on the
sidebar (eg google ads)?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do
	Imisunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and encyclopedic merit.)

body:
Gregory Maxwell (gmaxwell at gmail.com) [050519 14:43]:
> On 5/18/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:

> > In my experience, it is far more often ignored because an editor wants to
> > draw some original conclusions about something, and is unaware of the
> > policy, unable to comprehend it, or simply doesn't care.  Currently the risk
> > that Wikipedia will be damaged by "blindly following" the NOR policy is far
> > less than the risk that it will be damaged by *not* following it.

> We have entire areas of study which would be exceptionally difficult
> to document if we were strictly adhering to a no original research
> policy.  For example our articles on Free Software related subject
> often contain information sourced from mailing lists and form the
> editors experience, sources which would not normally be acceptable
> under the normal application of the original research standard.

For the subject, mailing list posts are probably entirely appropriate
reference material. Check [[X Window System]], particularly the "X.Org and
XFree86" section - you can be sure I'd have had lynch mobs after me if I
hadn't referenced clause by clause.

> Deciding what may be accepted as research is as difficult a problem as
> determine what is notable.

That's why we use a thing called "editorial judgement." Not everything
can be Taylorised.

I really don't see any reason to let people get away with "referencing is
haaaaard." It's work - I've written three-paragraph articles then had to
hunt around for references so people can immediately see I'm not just
making it up off the top of my head - but so are a lot of worthwhile
things.

As [[WP:CITE]] puts it: "This applies even when the information is
currently undisputed - even if there is no dispute right now, someone might
come along in five years and want to dispute, verify, or learn more about a
topic."

As [[Wikipedia:Verifiability]] (that thing I keep citing on VFD) puts it:
"Fact checking is time consuming, economically costly, and not particularly
rewarding. It is unfair to make later editors dig for sources."

When people come onto IRC saying "my article was deleted!" my standard
advice is: write three decent paragraphs with two references and it'll
stay. In fact, three paras, two refs and standard formatting will gladden
the heart of whatever pool soul encounters it on Special:Newpages patrol.

Doing it right is *not that hard*, and I find all arguments I've seen to
the contrary utterly unconvincing.

- d.


body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>>JAY JG said:
>> > You obviously do; you've even voted to delete some schools.
>>
>>Haven't we all?
>
> Nope.
>
>> > The
>> > organized  inclusionists do not read the article, nor do they
>> > believe they should have  to; for them, including all school
>> > articles is a matter of "principle",  usually of the "Wikipedia is
>> > not paper" and/or "schools are intrinsically  notable" sort.
>> >
>>
>>
>>Well that's a very serious charge.  You're accusing some unnamed people
>>of making bogus votes on VfD--copy-pasted and without looking at the
>>article in question.
>>Do you have some evidence to support this?
>
> "Very serious charge"?  Get real, this is a Wikipedia mail-list.  As
> for  evidence, here's one example of an editor who took some valuable
> time out of  editing Pokemon related articles to make 17 identical keep
> votes on schools  in 9 minutes, and soon after another 10 identical
> keep votes in 4 minutes:
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Ketsuban]>
>  Several times she was able to get in 3 keep votes a minute.  I envy
>  her
> her internet connection; I couldn't have even gotten to all those VfD
> pages  in that time, much less read the related article, edited, voted,
> saved, and  returned.
>

Well that's Ketsy, bless her socks.  I first bumped into her the other day
when I happened to revert one of her edits on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisexuality and she went to talk.  Nobody's
roboposter.

Funny thing is, Ketsy's *first* Vfd vote against a schools listing was
just two days ago, and she has been editing since February and
participating occasionally on VfD since early March.

So I don't think you can class her as one of these "organized inclusionists".

Try again.


subject: [Wikitech-l] $wgExtraSubtitle

body:
What does $wgExtraSubtitle do?

--
NSK
http://portal.wikinerds.org


from_name: Ivan Krstic

body:
Jeremy Dunck wrote:
> Anyway, it sounds like you want a secure hash, so why not use
> something like MD5 or SHA or something?

He wants administrators to be able to see the IP addresses, so a hash is
not the right tool for the job unless he wants to build his own rainbow
tables. A symmetric cipher would do fine, if he's insisting on
cryptography rather on just removing access to the IP data to regular users.

-IK


body:
On 19/05/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> *What license would be best that is FREE and allows for the expanded use
> of the UW data

The best place to look at when working this out is probably the
Creative Commons [http://creativecommons.org/] - their mission [or one
part of it] is to codify a whole set of licences and present them in a
user-friendly way, so you can take your pick.

The closest equivalent to the GFDL is "Attribution-ShareAlike" (aka
"cc-by-sa") - see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/  How
well this would deal with the massive number of authors involved in
the whole database, I'm not sure, but I get the general impression
that it's slightly more flexible than the GFDL..

There used to also be an option to not require attribution at all, but
this was "phased out" "for simplicity" when they released "version
2.0" licenses (see http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/4216).
Broadly, "cc-sa 1.0" [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/sa/1.0/]
says you can do what you like with the work as long as you let
everyone else do what they like with the result.

> *Do we need to have the consent of every editor before we can export to
> UW or is UW sufficiently different from Wiktionary to make it an
> original work in its own right or do we need this only when we change
> the license?

Massive disclaimer: I am no kind of expert, and someone may well say
I'm completely wrong on this; feel free to take their word over mine
as soon as that happens.

That said, I will say that I understand relicencing to be, legally,
very awkward indeed. Because the GFDL has exactly the kind of
"copyleft"/"share-alike"/"viral" stipulation - you have to keep the
content under similar terms however you manipulate it - anything which
uses the existing data *has to be* "compatible" with the GFDL.
Basically, all the people who've contributed to existing Wiktionaries
own the copyright on their contributions, and have given explicit
permission to license to them under the GFDL; they have *not* given
permission for anyone to use them under a *different* license.

Your idea of "almost complying" and offering people an avenue of
complaint is indeed a nice compromise - and as long as the way the
data is used is "in the right spirit", I doubt anyone but
trouble-makers *would* complain. [In fact, this is more-or-less what
happens at the moment with content that's moved or copied between
languages or projects; although, they're only moved, so far, between
projects with the same license] What the *legal* implications are, I'm
not sure - but then I think I'm right in saying that even the
tremendously popular GPL has never actually been tested in court, so
make of that what you will...

Switching to a license which didn't require attribution at all
probably isn't at all possible though, because contributors haven't
even broadly given "us" (or anyone) the right to use their
contributions without giving them credit. So as far as I can see the
best one can hope for is a simplified way of including the same
information (either by a loose reading of the GFDL, or a simpler
licence in similar spirit, which is the same thing).

One final comment - it's often mentionned in discussions on this topic
that the Free Software Foundation and Creative Commons should be, and
are, working on making their licences (GFDL and cc-by-sa) legally
"compatible", so that works published under one can be used in works
published under the other. I've not heard of any concrete progress on
this, though, beyond "productive discussions", so don't hold your
breath, as the saying goes.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
David Gerard said:
>
> Assuming she edits like me (load a pile of tabs, read and vote) I'd
> expect to see just that result.

Actually it's possible.  When I do VfD votes I always have today's
listings in one tab and use it to spawn other tabs for the article and the
VfD edit.
On some runs in my history over the past couple of days in response to
Neutrality's deletion listings I've done about one a minute.  I never
paste a  vote, always compose a comment relevant to the article, and
always use preview.  I always check external links in the article, as well
as hovering over internal bluelinks to make sure they're valid.
Sometimes I line up a few article tabs in advance, but usually I don't
because it would be easy to get confused.  I always vote delete on
substubs, and always go back a few hours later to see if they've been
fixed, to change my vote if they have.
Some of my votes are many minutes apart, but then I sometimes get hung up
for a while looking at the varsity cheerleaders and playing the goofy
videos.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools
	onen:(wasDoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
JAY JG said:
>
> If you think that all the people who are making boilerplate "keep"
> votes in  incredibly short periods of time are not actually just
> mindlessly and  sequentially voting "keep", but rather are people who
> read the articles,  consider them carefully, then like to line up all
> the votes in many  different tabs so that the votes all show up on the
> Contributions list in as  short a period of time as possible, then no.

Now you've said there are a number of these people, and remember that I've
shown you that Ketsy is by no means an organised inclusionist--she never
voted on a school deletion listing before Tuesday of this week.

So who are these organised inclusionists?

And given that Ketsy is new at this, isn't it at least plausible that she
was responding in a robotic manner to what is very widely perceived as
some particularly robotic deletion listings by a certain editor?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dragon's teeth 2

body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>>Well that's Ketsy, bless her socks.  I first bumped into her the other
>>day when I happened to revert one of her edits on
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bisexuality and she went to talk.
>>Nobody's roboposter.
>>
>>Funny thing is, Ketsy's *first* Vfd vote against a schools listing was
>>just two days ago, and she has been editing since February and
>>participating occasionally on VfD since early March.
>>
>>So I don't think you can class her as one of these "organized
>>inclusionists".
>
> She's very organized now.

Dragon's teeth.


subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

body:
I trust this was wrongly authorised? :p
----- Original Message -----
From: <bbarron at fuse.net>
To: <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 9:04 PM
Subject: [WikiEN-l] (no subject)

> would like to help as much as possible
>
> Hi i am Pastor Rev.Bill Barron and i am running for the city of cincinnati
council. i am a goodman  who wants to bring peace and harmony to are city.i
have help campaign for others an i am very hands on,and yes more
jobs.volunteers&donations are in need call(513)621-2349.campaign hats&bumper
stickers are $15.00&$4.00 sign of a cross on bumper stickers,to
represent!(smile)send checks or money orders to;Bil Barron for city council
609 walnut st.suite#1016 cincinnati,ohio 45202.seriously i am looking for
business parters to make our own money."only ask if you have money to
invest". "new" web site. www.revbillbarron.org
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Matt Brown

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Non-commercial only and By Permission Only Images to
	be deleted

body:
As I've asserted before, stock.xchng has no legal standing to make
these conditions.  They are not the copyright holder, nor have they
been assigned any control over it.

Their terms and conditions are nothing to do with copyright permission
at all.  They are a (legally dubious) contract between stock.xchng and
the individual downloader ONLY, even if the terms are valid.  The
downloader is, notably, NOT made to apply these conditions to anyone
THEY give the image to.

The stock.xchng terms and conditions do not attach themselves to the
downloaded image.  They attach themselves to the person who does the
downloading.

Furthermore, when you upload an image to stock.xchng and make it
freely redistributable, you do not state that any conditions apply.
You click on a checkbox that says 'no restrictions'.

The terms of the download page form the entirety of the license
between copyright holder and downloader.

Given this, I would strongly suggest that removing stock.xchng images
becuase of a legally dubious "contract" that only binds the original
downloader and not subsequent reusers is premature.

Having said this, it wouldn't hurt to clarify with image owners and
remove all doubt.

-Matt (User:Morven)


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Do I misunderstand Wikipedia? On notability and
	encyclopedic merit.

body:
Andy Rabagliati (andyr at wizzy.com) [050519 10:33]:
> On Thu, 19 May 2005, David Gerard wrote:
> > Andy Rabagliati (andyr at wizzy.com) [050519 07:36]:

> > > Without a massively-parallel peer review system, I see no manageable
> > > selection system, unless it includes page views, which in my cursory
> > > examination have not been revealed.

> > The beginnings of precisely such a system is something we hope will be
> > switched on in 1.5. It'll have to be massively distributed to scale at all.
>
> I am looking forward to the "push toward 1.0".

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_1.0 for the push on the
en: Wikipedia. That's a working category I put together of various people's
plans, writings, polemics, etc. on the subject.

The closest we have to a plan at present is to switch on the article
validation feature in 1.5, gather data, see what makes sense and then
perhaps use it for something in 1.6.

- d.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Article validation feature (again) in 1.5?

body:
Sorry to keep on about this, but I'm still not clear as to whether this
will be on in 1.5 - it's not on the 1.5 test wiki. (Brion switched it on
and everything broke, so he switched it off again.)

What will it take for it to be switched on in 1.5 on Wikipedia? Or at least
on en:?

(I ask in particular because if it's going on then we need to work out what
things to rate articles on, debug the interface and so on.)

- d.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Article validation feature (again) in 1.5?


from_name: Zigger

subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML whitelist

body:
The HTML whitelist is inside the function removeHTMLtags in the file Parser.php.

-- Zigger

On 5/19/05, NSK wrote:
> DefaultSettings.php from MediaWiki 1.3.9:
>
> # Allow limited user-specified HTML in wiki pages?
> # It will be run through a whitelist for security.
> # Set this to false if you want wiki pages to consist only of wiki
> # markup. Note that replacements do not yet exist for all HTML
> # constructs.
> $wgUserHtml = true;
>
> Where is this whitelist?
> ...


subject: [Wikitech-l] Blank page after refresh in firefox

body:
This seems similar to http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1763 .
You could try the latest MediaWiki version 1.4.4, as it includes a fix for IIS.

-- Zigger

On 5/19/05, Jure Spik wrote:
> Hi, I've installed the MediaWiki code on my site
>
>     MediaWiki <http://wikipedia.sf.net/> (/http://wikipedia.sf.net//):
>     1.4.0
>     PHP <http://www.php.net/> (/http://www.php.net//): 4.3.11 (cgi-fcgi)
>     MySQL <http://www.mysql.com/> (/http://www.mysql.com//): 4.0.24-standard
>
> and I've got a problem with firefox(IE doesn't have it):
> Pages which can be edited are displayed only the first time I visit
> them, next visits return a blank page (only html and body tags). This
> can be observed on
> http://driversplanet.com/wiki/index.php?title=Epson/EPSON_Stylus_COLOR_600_Color_Inkjet_Printer
>
>
> I've tried to add &action=purge to the URL which works, but setting
> $wgEnableParserCache = false; in LocalSettings.php changes nothing. The
> only change between the working page and the blank page headers is
> "If-Modified-Since: Tue, 17 May 2005 13:37:41 GMT" in the blank page header.
> ...


from_name: Timwi

body:
Eric wrote:
>
> The aim is to identity each anonymous edit with a unique number. Right?
> Well then, a different unique number can be coded using a special formula which
> ends us up with a 1-to-1 relationship.

This means that the IP address can still be reconstructed from the
"unique number". What you are suggesting is called "security by
obscurity". Unfortunately, you are forgetting that the source code is
open, and so any formula - no matter how complex - can be seen by everybody.

I'm not sure if the GPL allows you to keep your formula secret. But even
if it does, you only need an untrustworthy admin, or an accidental
technical problem that reveals the relevant source code, and the IP
addresses can be reconstructed until you find out that the formula has
leaked.

Additionally, you are forgetting that dial-up users sometimes get an IP
allocated that a different user had in the past. If they can see they
get the same ID allocated for their edits as a previous user, it will be
obvious that they had the same IP.

Sorry to bust your bubble.
Timwi


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Aggressive vandalism

body:
!!!URGENT!!!
Dear stewards,

Can one of you please upgrade Cicero and me to sysops on the Limburgic
wikipedia? We have an extremely violent vandal at the moment, blanking all
pages, and our only current sysop is deconnected from the internet. We MUST
block him now. He's razing our whole project. We are
http://li.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebroeker:Cicero and
http://li.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebroeker:HaafLimbo , respectively.

Thank very, very much in advance,

Wouter.

_________________________________________________________________
Nooit ongewenste berichten ontvangen: gebruik MSN Messenger
http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

body:
On 5/18/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> All images which are for non-commercial only use and by permission only
> are not acceptable for Wikipedia and _will be deleted_.  We have
> tolerated them for some time, but only as an interim measure during the
> time when images which were previously not properly tagged could be tagged.

What about images from STOCK.XCHNG?   It's normal for the image
authors on the site to label their images as "There are no usage
restrictions for this photo." but the cite pretty clearly states that
all downloaded images are subject to a list of rules, including:
"# Selling and redistribution of these photos (individually, or as a
whole) without written permission is prohibited. Using the photos in
website templates, on postcards, mugs etc. doesn't count as selling or
redistribution, however you are not allowed to build a gallery using
the photos you downloaded from here.
# You are not allowed to use any of the images found herein for the
purpose of spreading hate or discrimination, or to defame or victimise
other people, sociteties, cultures.
# You are not allowed to use these images to promote adult oriented
and dating services. The same goes for drug retailers!"

If we're trying to harmonize the media in wikipedia under GFDL
compatible licensing, then these may need to go, or at least have
permission cleared with their authors.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: download.wikimedia.org

body:
Walter Vermeir wrote:
>
> I am wondering, are there many people actualy downloading the
> database?

I used to do it regularly (every time a new one came out) when I used to
be crazy about fixing all double-redirects. :)

> If so, is this not something where bittorrent is perfect for?

The servers are not currently overloaded with this. Downloading the dump
is pretty fast. Are you suggesting BitTorrent because it's the Coolest
New Thing? :-)

Either way, BitTorrent should not be only way to download them. I know
Cambridge University forbids BitTorrent (and all other Peer-to-Peer
applications, even Skype) and imposes severe penalties on students who
use it, so I'm sure other universities do it similarly.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: xhtml_slim.pt

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
>
> To clarify, 1.4 features pure PHP equivalents of the TAL templates

This is not true, nobody ported my "Chick" skin for PDAs. :-)


subject: [Wikitech-l] HTML whitelist

body:
This was also suggested at http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=671 .

-- Zigger

On 5/19/05, NSK wrote:
>...
> Could you please make the HTML whitelist configurable via LocalSettings.php
> (or a web interface if you plan to build any) in a future 1.4 or 1.5 version?
>...


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Non-commercial only and By Permission Only Images
	to	be deleted

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 5/18/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>All images which are for non-commercial only use and by permission only
>>are not acceptable for Wikipedia and _will be deleted_.  We have
>>tolerated them for some time, but only as an interim measure during the
>>time when images which were previously not properly tagged could be tagged.
>>
>>
>What about images from STOCK.XCHNG?   It's normal for the image
>authors on the site to label their images as "There are no usage
>restrictions for this photo." but the cite pretty clearly states that
>all downloaded images are subject to a list of rules, including:
>"# Selling and redistribution of these photos (individually, or as a
>whole) without written permission is prohibited. Using the photos in
>website templates, on postcards, mugs etc. doesn't count as selling or
>redistribution, however you are not allowed to build a gallery using
>the photos you downloaded from here.
># You are not allowed to use any of the images found herein for the
>purpose of spreading hate or discrimination, or to defame or victimise
>other people, sociteties, cultures.
># You are not allowed to use these images to promote adult oriented
>and dating services. The same goes for drug retailers!"
>
>If we're trying to harmonize the media in wikipedia under GFDL
>compatible licensing, then these may need to go, or at least have
>permission cleared with their authors.
>
I believe that the rule in law is that the specific overrides the
general.  In other words if the owner of the particular image wants to
allow a broader use than the site itself, that's fine.  Similarly, if
one of our contributors wants to give users a broader right than what
would be allowed by GFDL that's permissible.  Some have already done
that by invoking CC licensing.

Eccentric rules are often not enforceable.  The fact that the intent may
be commendable is not relevant.

Ec


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: xhtml_slim.pt

body:
On 19/05/05, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> Rowan Collins wrote:
> >
> > To clarify, 1.4 features pure PHP equivalents of the TAL templates
>
> This is not true, nobody ported my "Chick" skin for PDAs. :-)

Heh; maybe I should really have used the singular, as the only one I
knew for sure was that "xhtml_slim.pt" had been turned to
"MonoBook.php". [Of course, "porting" any other skin that used the
same TAL template would be a case of a few lines of code to enable the
correct stylesheets.]

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dragon's Teeth #3

body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>>
>>Try again.
>
> How about this
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Howrealisreal]>  Contribution list which includes 35 identical "keep" votes in 30
> minutes;  another example of careful consideration of each school
> article, followed by  lined-up Firefox tabs and rapid-fire voting? And
> don't forget, these  articles are in different locations and on
> different subpages of the VfD  page; these people are clearly going
> through one of the two "Schoolwatch"  pages which have been set up.

Absolutely, no question of it, they're using Schoolwatch.  This guy's
edits are sometimes stretched out, sometimes close together, just like
mine.  I have no reason to believe that he's not doing things exactly as I
do, even down to gawping at cheerleader.

He's also responding to comments.  This is no robotic poster, but a person
discussing and voting on deletion listings.

He also seems to edit a fair bit on school-related articles.  Isn't he
entitled to input on school deletion listings?

And this guy has been editing Wikipedia as long as I have and, like the
other person you gave as an example of an "organised inclusionist", he
didn't vote on a schools VfD until Tuesday of this week--clearly in
response to Neutrality's listing of more than 50 schools for deletion.

I'm beginning to detect a common thread here.  Another dragon tooth.

Please do list more of these alleged "organised inclusionists".  They're
proving most entertaining!


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l]
	Schoolsonen:(wasDoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
JAY JG said:
>>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>>JAY JG said:
>> >
>> > If you think that all the people who are making boilerplate "keep"
>> > votes in  incredibly short periods of time are not actually just
>> > mindlessly and  sequentially voting "keep", but rather are people
>> > who read the articles,  consider them carefully, then like to line
>> > up all the votes in many  different tabs so that the votes all show
>> > up on the Contributions list in as  short a period of time as
>> > possible, then no.
>>
>>
>>Now you've said there are a number of these people, and remember that
>>I've shown you that Ketsy is by no means an organised inclusionist--she
>>never voted on a school deletion listing before Tuesday of this week.
>>
>>So who are these organised inclusionists?
>
> Where did she find all those schools?  Don't you think it was from the
> Schoolwatch pages, set up and maintained by school inclusionists?

It could have been.  On the other hand, it could have been that it would
have been very difficult to miss those VfD listings on Tuesday and
Wednesday.  VfD was absolutely clogged.  50 is a lot of listings.

>
>>And given that Ketsy is new at this, isn't it at least plausible that
>>she was responding in a robotic manner to what is very widely perceived
>>as some particularly robotic deletion listings by a certain editor?
>
> I suppose, but that would still make it an example of unthinking school
>  inclusionist voting, wouldn't it?
>

Absolutely.  Robotic responses to a robotic listings.  Arguably all that
they deserved.  ANd she like this "How is Real" chap, she's an established
Wikipedia regular who had never voted in a school deletion listing in her
life before Tuesday.
Dragon's teeth.


body:
JAY JG said:
>  and in particular, when I see someone
> voting "keep, good stub" etc. on  a completely useless stub.

Oh, you mean someone who disagrees with you?

>>Me, I vote 'keep' on almost all of them because they're NPOV and
>>verifiable (though in most cases they don't have an independent
>>reference listed; as per my proposal on [[Wikiedpa:Schools]], I
>>certainly wouldn't object to that as a very strong guideline). I really
>>don't see that a 'keep' vote requires any greater justification,
>>whatever someone's edit pattern.
>
> I understand your position; I've never objected to your votes, or your
> voting pattern.

But it's pretty much the same as mine, and Ketsy's and this How is Real
chap's.

Except of course that David and I had already voted on school deletions
before Tuesday.

So you've got people who have been at it for some time who aren't mindless
robotic posters, and you've got people who only responded robotically to
robotic deletion listings.

This doesn't quite square the circle.

I have even (shock horror!) voted delete in rather a lot of school
deletion listings in the past.  I change my mind over time.  Who knows,
maybe next month I'll change my mind again and be a school deletionist.

Isn't that a bugger.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was DoImisunderstand
	Wikipedia

body:
Rick said:
>
> --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> wrote:
>> "Wikipedia is not a collection of ideas, concepts,
>> institutions and places
>> I haven't heard of or don't think are significant",
>> perhaps? :)
>
> Yet again a straw man and an un-Wiki attack on the
> motives of VfD nominators.

I'm sorry if you think that's a straw man.  It's how the notability
argument comes across to me.  I am beginning to regard it as a fruitless
consumer of time.
As to motives, I make no speculations about them--I apologise if that
wasn't quite plain.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Aggressive vandalism

body:
>From: "Wouter Steenbeek" <musiqolog at hotmail.com>
>Reply-To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: wikipedia-l at wikipedia.org
>Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Aggressive vandalism
>Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 23:18:52 +0200
>
>!!!URGENT!!!
>Dear stewards,
>
>Can one of you please upgrade Cicero and me to sysops on the Limburgic
>wikipedia? We have an extremely violent vandal at the moment, blanking all
>pages, and our only current sysop is deconnected from the internet. We MUST
>block him now. He's razing our whole project. We are
>http://li.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebroeker:Cicero and
>http://li.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebroeker:HaafLimbo , respectively.
>
>Thank very, very much in advance,
>
>Wouter.
>
Done in the meantime by JeLuF. Thank you very much....

_________________________________________________________________
Direct antwoord op je vragen: gebruik MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: [Wikipedia-l] Schools on en: (was Do
	Imisunderstand Wikipedia

body:
Rick said:
>
> --- Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
> wrote:
>> Non-notability has been rejected as a criterion for
>> deletion.
>
> By some.  There is no consensus on this issue.

Ergo, it has been rejected.  That's how we make (or don't make) policy on
Wikipedia.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: List policy: unsubscribed posts

body:
Kate Turner (keturner at livejournal.com) [050520 00:39]:
> David Gerard wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.misc:

> > Yeah, WTF is happening? wikien-l is getting a new spam literally every
> > minute or two. Is there a new spammer in town with our address?

> i believe there's a new virus around which exists only to spam some kind of
> right-wing propaganda (in German), which may account for some of it.

Looking through the moderation queue (before I set unsubscribed addresses
on wikien-l as well to reject instead of moderate), it was indeed that
stuff.

- d.


from_name: Derek Ross

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger..

body:
On 5/20/05, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>On 5/20/05, Sulev Iva <juvasul at ut.ee> wrote:
>> The place where our Wikis are listed for deletion.
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_deletion#Scotland
>> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_deletion#Another_.22Wikipedia.22
>> Where must we move now?

>Something's gone very wrong when playing chess on the wiki
>(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chess_championship>) is
>acceptable but creating a demo Wikipedia in a new language is not.

>If this does not survive VfD, and you want a temporary small wiki,
>you're welcome at <http://scratchpad.wikicities.com/>. For a longer
>term Wikicity, you need consensus within Wikipedia that this language
>can *not* exist within Wikimedia.

That's a good offer, Angela. Thank you. We may have to take you up on that.
I too feel that its crazy that these articles have been placed on Meta:Rfd when
the main purpose of Metapedia is (and has always been) to discuss the
direction of the Wikipedia/WikiMedia projects and to help co-ordinate work on
existing and new editions. These test-wikis were set up to demonstrate
commitment and to thrash out any problems which might impede their
development before committing a developer to the task of setting them up
properly. This is in order not to waste developer time on creating wikipedias
which sound good in principle but aren't viable in practice and I would say that
it falls under role three of the four roles described on Meta:About. However if
we are going to be "run out of town" before we have had a chance to get
properly started, I can only urge that the new wikipedias be set up properly
immediately without a test period on Meta so that we have somewhere to run
to.

Cheers

Derek

---------------------------------
Post your free ad now! Yahoo! Canada Personals


subject: [Wikitech-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger..


from_name: Sulev Iva

subject: [Foundation-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger

body:
Help!!!

Test pages for V?ro and Scots language Wikipedia
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/fiu-vro/
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/fiu-sco/
are in danger!

It was suggested in Wikipedia-list that we should create these pages
before creating real Wikipedia in our languages.

Now user of Wikimedia Aphaia threats to erase our work
and has already destroyed Scots test page!!

Please do something to keep our work!

Sulev Iva
(Meta User V?rok)
(En User V?rolang)


subject: [Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger

body:
Help!!!

Test pages for V?ro and Scots language Wikipedia
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/fiu-vro/
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/fiu-sco/
are in danger!

It was suggested in Wikipedia-list that we should create these pages
before creating real Wikipedia in our languages.

Now user of Wikimedia Aphaia threats to erase our work
and has already destroyed Scots test page!!

Please do something to keep our work!

Sulev Iva
(Meta User V?rok)
(En User V?rolang)

_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


subject: [Foundation-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger


subject: [Wikipedia-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger


subject: [Foundation-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger..

body:
The place where our Wikis are listed for deletion.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_deletion#Scotland
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_deletion#Another_.22Wikipedia.22
Where must we move now?

Sulev Iva


subject: [Foundation-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger..


subject: [Wikipedia-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger..


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger

body:
Hi Sulev,

you are wrong about Scots, you are using the wrong URL, she has not deleted it.

see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/

I'm sure that if she deleted it circumventing due process Angela
would've restored it.

Mark

On 19/05/05, Sulev Iva <juvasul at ut.ee> wrote:
> Help!!!
>
> Test pages for V?ro and Scots language Wikipedia
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/fiu-vro/
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/fiu-sco/
> are in danger!
>
> It was suggested in Wikipedia-list that we should create these pages
> before creating real Wikipedia in our languages.
>
> Now user of Wikimedia Aphaia threats to erase our work
> and has already destroyed Scots test page!!
>
> Please do something to keep our work!
>
> Sulev Iva
> (Meta User V?rok)
> (En User V?rolang)
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
POSSIT MATERIARI
ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE


body:
Bryan Derksen (bryan.derksen at shaw.ca) [050520 02:00]:

> Perhaps it's time we actually started a page on notability policy so
> that something more definitive could be worked out rather than relying
> on these subjective attempts to figure out what other policies imply?
> That would still leave lots of openeings for subjectivity when
> determining whether any particular article is notable, but at least
> there wouldn't be so much argument over "non-notable articles must be
> purged, inclusionist scum!"/"Anything verifiable deserves an
> encyclopedia article, deletionist scum!"

We did already. [[Wikipedia:Notability]] redirects to
[[Wikipedia:Importance]], which notes that a poll of this sort at
[[Talk:Fame and importance]] achieved a simple majority but nothing like
consensus (oddly enough). I noted this earlier on.

- d.


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:
> David Gerard schrieb:
>>>Sorry to keep on about this, but I'm still not clear as to whether this
>>>will be on in 1.5 - it's not on the 1.5 test wiki. (Brion switched it on
>>>and everything broke, so he switched it off again.)
>
>
> I fixed it (hopefully) and asked Brion to turn it on again.

Ok, I've turned it on.

> The current implementation is mainly for collecting data. You can see a
> limited statistic of each version of each article, but nothing detailed
> - yet.
>
> It would be very helpful for people to try this function and give me
> feedback on what to add/change.

Perhaps I'm dense, but I don't see any way of doing anything with it.
The entire form seems to consist of:

[ ] Use my previous assessment where selected 'No opinion'
[ ] Clear my older validation data
[OK]

Screen shot in Safari 2.0:
http://test.leuksman.com/index.php/Image:Validation-form.png

Looks the same in Firefox 1.0.4.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050520 03:47]:

> 2) School inclusionists are now organized, and have set up a "Schoolwatch"
> page to ensure that all schools are kept.  These people vote to keep every
> single school, usually with cut and paste comments.

I only use cut-and-paste comments myself in response to cut-and-paste
nominations.

>  Thus a group of a
> dozen or so inclusionists can easily force Wikipedia to keep every single
> school article, no matter how silly, uninformative, trivial or unverifiable
> they are.

I look at every article I vote on first. Are you saying I, or these
hypothetical conspirators, in fact don't?

>  And, in fact, that's exactly what they do.  However, whether
> these dozen people represent the consensus of Wikipedia is another question.

Indeed, but that applies to the people flooding VFD with school articles,
and indeed to *any* so-called "consensus" formed only of VFD habitues, so
you're not actually saying something very specific.

- d.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikipedia-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger..

body:
On 5/20/05, Sulev Iva <juvasul at ut.ee> wrote:
> The place where our Wikis are listed for deletion.
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_deletion#Scotland
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meta:Requests_for_deletion#Another_.22Wikipedia.22
> Where must we move now?

Something's gone very wrong when playing chess on the wiki
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chess_championship>) is
acceptable but creating a demo Wikipedia in a new language is not.

If this does not survive VfD, and you want a temporary small wiki,
you're welcome at <http://scratchpad.wikicities.com/>. For a longer
term Wikicity, you need consensus within Wikipedia that this language
can *not* exist within Wikimedia.

Angela.


body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050520 05:26]:

> "Very serious charge"?  Get real, this is a Wikipedia mail-list.

Then it's just trash-talking and ad hominem to a class of editors (those
who want to keep the school articles), and you really should be backing it
u.

>  As for
> evidence, here's one example of an editor who took some valuable time out
> of editing Pokemon related articles to make 17 identical keep votes on
> schools in 9 minutes, and soon after another 10 identical keep votes in 4
> minutes:
> [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&target=Ketsuban]
>  Several times she was able to get in 3 keep votes a minute.  I envy her her
> internet connection; I couldn't have even gotten to all those VfD pages in
> that time, much less read the related article, edited, voted, saved, and
> returned.

Assuming she edits like me (load a pile of tabs, read and vote) I'd expect
to see just that result.

So do you have any other substantiation for this assertion?

- d.


body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050520 06:04]:

> Again, not all school inclusionists, but a certain subset of them.  And I
> have backed them up.

With an example that two people (myself and one other) promptly pointed
out matched our own editing patterns.

> Do you reall think this is likely David?

Having done it ... yes.

> If you think that all the people who are making boilerplate "keep" votes in
> incredibly short periods of time are not actually just mindlessly and
> sequentially voting "keep", but rather are people who read the articles,
> consider them carefully, then like to line up all the votes in many
> different tabs so that the votes all show up on the Contributions list in
> as short a period of time as possible, then no.  But I think my assumption
> is far more reasonable and plausible than yours.

What, that someone edits VFD like I do?

I suspect the root of your assertion is that you can't really believe
anyone would vote "keep" sincerely on almost all school articles. So when
you see someone do so, you immediately assume bad faith editing on their
part; and you won't be swayed from this explanation for what you see.

Me, I vote 'keep' on almost all of them because they're NPOV and verifiable
(though in most cases they don't have an independent reference listed; as
per my proposal on [[Wikiedpa:Schools]], I certainly wouldn't object to
that as a very strong guideline). I really don't see that a 'keep' vote
requires any greater justification, whatever someone's edit pattern.

- d.


from_name: Erik Moeller

body:
Gregory Maxwell:
> On 5/18/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>All images which are for non-commercial only use and by permission only
>>are not acceptable for Wikipedia and _will be deleted_.  We have
>>tolerated them for some time, but only as an interim measure during the
>>time when images which were previously not properly tagged could be tagged.
>
>
> What about images from STOCK.XCHNG?

We have cleared this already on the Wikimedia Commons. In short, the
terms of use are invalid, and the click-through declaration on the
upload submission form of the site is what matters, since there is no
transfer of rights to Stock.Xchng. If the uploader -- the copyright
holder -- specifies that there are no usage restrictions on the photo,
we can use it as such.

See:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Stock.xchng_images/vote
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Stock.xchng_images

All best,

Erik


subject: [Foundation-l] Notes from the last Board meeting

body:
A Board meeting was held on IRC on May 16 with Jimmy Wales, Florence
Devouard, and Angela Beesley, primarily to discuss the upcoming
elections and official positions.

The potential make up of the next Board of Trustees was discussed
extensively. We aim to expand community participation in decision
making next year. Jimmy is in the process of developing a proposal
related to this, which will be submitted to the Foundation mailing
list (http://mail.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l) this
week. Possible extension of terms was discussed, with the suggestion
made that the board be elected for two years in the upcoming
elections, and three years thereafter, so positions will rotate.

We will seek legal advice on the make up of the board, in order to
evaluate the ways in which the existing structure might be changed.
$3000 will be budgeted for this.

For official positions, a description of the job, description of what
is expected from them, a list of tasks, and the limits of the position
will need to be set in advance of people being appointed to these
positions. A list of potential positions will be advertised this week,
and anyone interested in them is invited to contact the board about
taking these roles. In many cases, these positions will be a means of
formal recognition for the informal roles people already have within
the Foundation. Initial appointments will be made on May 23.

Jimmy will discuss the Queen's Jubilee "partnership" with Gerard
Meijssen, since it was felt this should not be in the press release.

Jimmy will talk to Daniel Mayer about access to the Foundation's bank account.

A proposal regarding the DVD is expected from Mandriva on Thursday and
will be discussed at the next meeting.

The next meeting will be held on Monday May 23 at 20 UTC.

Notes from previous meetings are available at
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Meetings

Angela Beesley
Wikimedia Foundation


body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050520 06:37]:

> Not true.  I know there are people who believe *most* school articles
> should be kept.  But the boilerplate votes in short periods of time which
> make no reference at all to the article or the VfD page are examples of
> something else, and in particular, when I see someone voting "keep, good
> stub" etc. on a completely useless stub.

Yeah, that I'd attribute to exasperation. Apparently-spammed nominations
leading to apparently-spammed kep votes.

Of course, they might actually think it was a stub with a future. Are any
of them working on the school stubs?

Rather than impugning their edits here, you could ask them nicely and see
what they say. Might be interesting.

- d.


from_name: Milos Rancic

subject: [Foundation-l] A license for the Ultimate Wiktionary

body:
I think that there is no need to avoid GNU FDL terms. Just put
gzipped/bzip2ed history inside of package and in all of articles can
reference that contribution history can be found in that file.

On 5/19/05, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
>
> So far all Wiktionary content has been licensed under a GNU-FDL license.
> With the Ultimate Wiktionary new functionality becomes a real
> possibility. One of these is providing information using the .dict
> format that has been described in RFC 2229. I learned from Hippietrail
> that .dict can also be used to have a local dictionary on your PC. At
> this moment almost every article has multiple authors it is not
> realistic to require the full history with every article as the GNU-FDL
> does. To grow the relevance of the Ultimate Wiktionary we do want to
> expand the way in which it can be used. I learned from Erik Moeller that
> we could regularly create an Ultimate Wiktionary export in the .dict
> format and have these distributed with Linux distributions for instance
> of with bittorrents. Again the license would be an issue it is not
> feasible to export the complete history with every word.
>
> I am not an expert on licenses. It is not really my cup of tea. As far
> as I am concerned, the Ultimate Wiktionary content should remain Free
> therefore a license needs a viral aspect; the data should stay free. I
> really appreciate the history and therefore I do want to keep the author
> information within UW. But I also want to expand the use of what we are
> working on so I am not bothered about the history remaining with the
> data when it finds this other use.
>
> Changing the license within a running project is difficult. As Ultimate
> Wiktionary will be a new database it is best to publish its content from
> the start using a license that will enable the expanded use that is
> possible with the new technology. Exporting TO the Ultimate Wiktionary
> will be problematic in that it will replace many of the existing
> Wiktionaries. It is not feasible to import the Wiktionary content
> including the full history. It will be hard but possible to parse the
> current information and enter this into UW. It is possible to mention
> the persons that worked on an article on the talk page. Given the aims
> of the Wikimedia projects I do not think from a moral point of view
> there should be a problem converting Wiktionary data to UW and change
> the license in the process. It will be impossible to convert all the
> data to UW and/or maintain all the history information as only the data
> that can be parsed can be entered into UW in the first place. Also there
> will be a large amount of manual work to make this conversion possible
>
> We can also convert the data to the UW, change the license, recognise
> past efforts by publishing history details on the talk page and wait for
> people to object. An objection would result in the removal of the work
> they contributed to. This would be a pragmatic way of coping with issues.
>
> Basically I have two questions;
>
> *What license would be best that is FREE and allows for the expanded use
> of the UW data
> *Do we need to have the consent of every editor before we can export to
> UW or is UW sufficiently different from Wiktionary to make it an
> original work in its own right or do we need this only when we change
> the license?
>
> Thanks,
>    GerardM
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


body:
(To correct myself...)

I think that there is no need to avoid GNU FDL terms. Just put
gzipped/bzip2ed history inside of package and in all of articles
put reference (that contribution history can be found in that file).


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re:
	[Wikipedia-l]Schoolsonen:(wasDoImisunderstandWikipedia

body:
JAY JG (jayjg at hotmail.com) [050520 07:23]:
>From: David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au>

> >Yeah, that I'd attribute to exasperation. Apparently-spammed nominations
> >leading to apparently-spammed kep votes.

> Maybe we're all a little exasperated.  Some strong policy about schools
> would be helpful; think the various suggestions being bandied about have
> any chance of becoming policy?

[[Wikipedia:Schools]] is actually resembling fruitful discussion. I hope
no-one tries to take it to a vote until it's clear that's worked or failed.
Premature votes are death to consensus.

> >Rather than impugning their edits here, you could ask them nicely and see
> >what they say. Might be interesting.

> Ask them nicely what?  If they're robo-voting, or to expand the stubs into
> something worthwhile?

Ask why they're voting a particular way.

Possibly wait to ask about future votes, not the past few days; where the
perception seems to have been of deliberate flooding of VFD with school
votes to make a point (even though Neutrality says that wasn't his
intention, and I believe him). Await a slightly calmer time.

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] The schools table

body:
Rick (giantsrick13 at yahoo.com) [050520 07:46]:
> --- David Gerard <fun at thingy.apana.org.au> wrote:

> > Far too often I see it used to mean "it must not be
> > important because I've
> > never heard of it."

> Far too often I see this straw man argument used to
> villify people with good intentions.  I've seen far
> too many times, "Keep it, it must be notable, I've
> heard of it."  Isn't that just the other side of the
> same coin?

Only insofar as notability is itself a deletion reason per policy, which it
isn't.  (Things relating to it certainly are.)

>  Please refrain from making personal
> attacks on the motives of people who make VfD
> nominations.

I'm talking about actual nominations made out of sheer ignorance, not a
hypothetical straw man.

- d.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Live and Let live? Oh, really?

body:
Sure, not everyone has the Christian religion, but aren't the terms BC
and AD most commonly used amonst archeologists and historians? We
shouldn't give up on an accurate description of the most used
terminology in favour of neutrality if the world isn't neutral about
it itself.

While the term incorporates a religious figure - Christ - I don't
really see the use of it as POV. You don't have to be Christian to
actually understand what it means.

--Mgm

On 5/20/05, Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Ed writes:
> > This whole thing smacks of an "anti-religious agenda",
> > rather than any sincere effort towards neutrality.
> > When we couldn't agree on British vs. American spelling,
> > we chose this solution:...
> >
> >...Ever hear of live and let live? Sheesh!
>
> I am rather disturbed by the rather paranoid claims filling
> this list that people are anti-Christian, and persectuing
> Christians, and discriminating against Christians, etc.
> These angry accusations are false, hurtful, and simply
> disingenuous.  I can't believe that anyone seriously
> believes that following NPOV and referring to dates in a
> neutral way is meant as an evil plot against that poor and
> few in number minority, the Christians....
>
> It seems to me, rather, that some people are just venting
> anger, as they refuse to let others "live and let live".
> Frankly, for the majority of people on this planet who do
> not worship Jesus as their God, messiah and saviour, it
> makes no sense to force them to use religious Christian
> terminology.  It is those who ask for a "live and let live
> policy" who are being attacked, not the Christians.
>
> I already have put up with enough abuse today, as several
> of my fellow faculty and staff came - as well as many
> students - in with T-shirts advertising "Jesus Day" at a
> public school.  It had a motto that said that only through
> Jesus will anyone find God, and that all others are doomed
> to be without God (i.e. damned to Hell.)  Apparently being
> in the vast majority is not enough for some right-wing
> Evangelical Protestant Christians.  They have to push their
> threats of damnation via religious proselytizing in public
> arenas?!
>
> I'm one step away from filing a complaint, as this clearly
> constitues a hostile workplace environment.  And what's
> next?  Jihad T-shirts from Islamists demanding that all
> Americans accept Allah and the Quran?  Atheist t-shirts
> from Communists demanding that all Americans accept Marx
> and Engels?  That behaviour is just great...if you hate
> your neighbor and want to start a religious war.
>
> Let's stop pretending we have NPOV and that we tolerate our
> fellow man, and let's start acting that way in practice.
>
>
> Robert (RK)
>
>
> I'm astounded by people who want to "know" the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown. - Woody Allen
>
>
>
> Discover Yahoo!
> Have fun online with music videos, cool games, IM and more. Check it out!
> http://discover.yahoo.com/online.html
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: JAY JG

body:
>From: Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com>
>
>I am rather disturbed by the rather paranoid claims filling
>this list that people are anti-Christian, and persectuing
>Christians, and discriminating against Christians, etc.
>These angry accusations are false, hurtful, and simply
>disingenuous.

A rather interesting parallel to the accusations that have sometimes filled
this list claiming that people are anti-Semitic, don't you think?

Jay.


from_name: Nicolas Weeger

subject: [Foundation-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger

body:
> Test pages for V?ro and Scots language Wikipedia
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/fiu-vro/
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/fiu-sco/
> are in danger!

I can't find any hint of fiu-sco in the deletion log, can't see anything about it.

> Now user of Wikimedia Aphaia threats to erase our work
> and has already destroyed Scots test page!!

Did you tell Aphaia about the purpose of the pages? [ok, read the revelant pages, she understood the purpose]. Maybe she didn't read wikimedia-l and doesn't know what has been decided. Remember: assume good faith first (no, i am not accusing *you* of lying, merely pointing out that it's almost certainly a misunderstanding between you two). Also, on VfD, she indicates that it's the *number* of planned articles that bothers her, not their *existence*.
(disclaimer: i don't know meta policy)

> Sulev Iva
> (Meta User V?rok)
> (En User V?rolang)

Nicolas Weeger

Acc?dez au courrier ?lectronique de La Poste : www.laposte.net ;
3615 LAPOSTENET (0,34?/mn) ; t?l : 08 92 68 13 50 (0,34?/mn)


subject: [Foundation-l] sco/fiu-vro in danger


from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Live and Let live? Oh, really?

body:
Alphax writes to me:
> At present, there is *no* neutral way to represent dates.
> Let's just call a spade a spade and not try to make
> something sound like something it's not.

You're very confused.  I am not making any such claim.

Alphax writes:
> If you feel you are being forced to use Christian
terminology,
> why use the Christian date system at all? CE is still
based
> (albeit incorrectly) on the birthdate of one Jesus of
Nazareth.

Stop being disingenous.  We all agree that the numeric
dating system currently in use has to be the one that is
used in all articles.  It is just the Jesus-worshipping
honorifics (BC/AD) that some of us object to.  The growing
consensus in the academic community is to use
religion-neutral terms such as BCE/CE.

Alphax, you know this, as we have explained this many times
to you.  So please do not pretend that you are still
unaware of this.

I had written:
>> I already have put up with enough abuse today, as
several
>> of my fellow faculty and staff came - as well as many
>> students - in with T-shirts advertising "Jesus Day" at a
>> public school. It had a motto that said that only
through
>> Jesus will anyone find God, and that all others are
doomed
>> to be without God (i.e. damned to Hell.) Apparently
being
>> in the vast majority is not enough for some right-wing
>> Evangelical Protestant Christians. They have to push
their
>> threats of damnation via religious proselytizing in
public
>> arenas?!

Alphax replies:
> e-van-gel-i-cal adj., of the Gospel noun, one who is
committed to
> the Gospel of Jesus Christ; the only gospel of salvation;
by grace,
> through faith, under the authority of the Bible,
empowered by
> the Holy Spirit, to the Glory of God. You live in the US?

Again, stop pretending that all members of this list are
illiterate.  We understand fully how Protestant Chrisitan
fundamentalists define this term.

> You have heard of Freedom of Religion?

Yes, and please stop making such bizarre implications.  No
one is preventing Christians (or Muslims or Jews) from
having their own theology, from having their own beliefs,
from worshipping in their own houses of worship, or from
following their own religious practices.

Freedom of religion, however, prevents people from one
religion from harassing people from another religion. US
law prohibits people from harassing others with this kind
of religious proselytization.  (In fact, I already have
been notified that if I choose to bring a case against the
people I referred to, I will almost certainly win.  I am
trying to find a non-legal way to do deal with them.  They
do think that all Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Hindus,
Buddhists, and agnostics are damned to hell, and they are
making difficult to work where I am an employee.)

You seem to imagine that "Freedom of religion" actually
means "Freedom for religious fundamentalists to create a
hostile workplace environment", and that "Non
fundamentalists have no rights at all."  You worldview is
the same as that of religious dictators.  You also seem
ignorant (in the literal sense of the term) of US law.

> We live in a society that has seen the marginalisation,
> desecration and humilitation of Jesus Christ.

Are you joking, or trying to start a holy war against all
non-fundamentalist Christians?  It is enraged
fundamentalists like you who start inquisitions, crusades
and jihads.  I hope other Wiki-En editors are keeping a
close eye on your submissions.

Robert

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