from_name: Robert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are we doing homework, or is this a privilege?

body:
For what its worth, I still cannot find the webpage with IP
evidence that RickK says he is viewing. Can anyone find
this page?  In any case, I have been sitting on two
excelent articles (one Judaism related, one science
related) for the last three months.  If I had my druthers I
would have added the material from these articles a long
time ago!

> If RK tried to edit while his account was blocked, these
> would show up in the IP block list, but they would be
> gone from it shortly afterwards. If he tried to edit,
> well, we needn't assume nefariousness: it could just
> mean that he followed a red link or has "edit pages on
> double-click" turned on; I know that switching that
> option on leads to the occasional accidental edit.

Last year I was observing several students search for
information on the Internet, and watched them use various
sites including Wikipedia.  I also watched a few (by
accident) edit blank articles by following red links (links
to articles not yet written.)  This, I would imagine, is
fairly common.  I didn't stop these students from doing so,
and instead only intervened the moment after - asking them
what their intentions were, and what they thougt this new
screen means.  (You know, the screen that pops up when you
follow a red link to a blank article.)

It was interesting to see their reactions when they learned
that they could add content! Unfortunately, none at the
time showed an interest in putting in serious editing time,
probably because I lectured them on the necessity of using
real sources, and not just writing off the top of their
heads!  They will spend hours text-messaging each other,
but they didn't want to spend time in research.

Too many saw the ability to work on Wikipedia (or any other
Wiki) as "like homework", and not as the privilege that it
actually is.  Writing for the public in general is a
privilege, one not given to many people in other nations.

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

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list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Christiaan Briggs

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Writing about sexual topics responsibly is not
	censorship

body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:

> _*How is the image useful*_?

Um, it describes the act of autofellatio. That's about as useful as it
gets. Personally I'd rather we had a photo of a guy getting much of his
penis in his mouth.

> Can you give me a single example of a case where a PHOTOGRAPH of a
> sexual act is meaningfully more useful than a line drawing?

All cases I would have said. A photo shows actuality, a sketch can be
inaccurate.

>> If it's pertinent and not gratuitous, I don't tend to have a problem
>
> It IS gratuitious.

Heh, well many people probably think the act itself is gratuitous. It's
actually a pretty good picture, which says to me many people
complaining about this picture aren't complaining so much about the
picture but about the act.

> Most people do not want to see photographs of explicit sex acts when
> browsing an encyclopedia. Given the lack of educational value such
> images have, I see no reason to drive those people, including me, off
> with such images.

Where does this "most people" come from? You have some data I assume.

Christiaan


body:
Nicholas Knight wrote:

> No, it's an objection to shoving explicit and disgusting images in
> what is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the purpose of trying to
> force the world to somehow "de-prudify" itself.

The problem with your argument is that the opposite is also true.

Christiaan


body:
Skyring wrote:

>> Something of this kind cannot be avoided except by banning *all*
>> sexually explicit images--something I've seen seriously advanced.
>
> Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images
> and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be
> completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want
> to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children
> viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia
> with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.

Nail on the head.

Christiaan


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Responsible handling of sexual topics

body:
At 08:29 AM 2/14/2005 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>Tony Sidaway wrote:
> > The site in question has an age disclaimer.  Are we trying to build an
> > encyclopedia, or an electronic playpen into whch people can dump their
> > kids without supervision?
>
>But, consider this restatement: Are we trying to build an
>encyclopedia, or an electronic playpen where annoying trolls can dump
>their porn photos without supervision?

I don't see how putting a photo of someone performing autofellatio onto the
autofellatio article is trolling. That's just about the only article I can
think of where it would actually fit in.

If it's a copyvio or if there are _better_ images to replace it with,
that's a separate issue that's already covered pretty clearly by existing
policy.

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from_name: Zoney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
On Sat, 12 Feb 2005 13:49:33 -0800 (PST), Daniel Mayer
<maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> > At 07:58 PM 2/11/2005 -0800, Daniel Mayer wrote:
> > >That is what talk pages and edit comments are for.
> >
> > Hear hear. Wikimedia has tons of wonderful features for assisting editors,
> > but the actual text of the article that we're using them to write is
> > intended primarily for _readers'_ benefit IMO. The "meta" stuff should be
> > hidden behind-the-scenes wherever humanly possible.
>
> Then could you or anybody else who cares about this go to
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(policy)#Moving_tags_to_talk_pages.3F
> and comment?
>
> My moving campaign has brought this to a head and may result in a policy one
> way or the other.
>
> -- mav
>

No. I won't support an outright "removing tags to talk page". Like I
said, some indicator needs to be given to the oft-times
none-too-discerning public. Now I agree that the current templates go
much much further, and offer editing instructions, and furthermore,
some templates are definitely designed for the talk page, not the main
article page.

But with NPOV warnings, and suchlike, SOME indication should be
provided on the article page to READERS that all is not well. I see
Geni / my suggestion of simple messages (at most 3/4 severities of
warning) with a pointer to talk for those who wish to get involved, as
a sensible suggestion.

I have outlined reasons why I think this is at least *better than the
current situation*. (Yes, the message may not be seen on mirrors - but
this is true for current templates, and for no (on talk only)
templates)

Zoney

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from_name: Skyring

body:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 14:57:14 -0800 (PST), Robert <rkscience100 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Finally, professional line-drawings (as opposed to photos)
> are apparently less of a problem. They are nearly
> universally considered less offensive (and/or gross) and
> are more often perceived as academic and professional (when
> drawn and labeled well.)

I agree wholeheartedly on this. They are often used in textbooks and
encyclopaedias. Some books on massage and sexual instruction have some
really well-done and tasteful illustrations. Those from The Joy of Sex
(for an example see
http://www.theconnection.org/photogallery/sex/default.asp?counter=1)
are beautifully done.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Autofellatio - NO to that image

body:
Arno M wrote:
> I'd like to put my reply to sannse's e-mail here.
>
> That autofellatio image should go - and go immediately.
>
> People have the right to go through this wikipedia without being confronted
> with this kind of pornographic material without warning.
>
> It's like you going down a street and having some idiot expose himself
> to you without warning. Would you like that? How about your kids? Would you like them to see this kind of thing without warning or supervision?
>
> I see nothing here inconsistent with freedom of expression. This kind of
> exhibitionist behaviour is anarchy, NOT freedom.
>
> Oh, and for the record and at the risk of raising the hackles of certain
> wikipedians, I also remain very opposed to links to pornographic sites within wikipedia. Autofellatio also has this, as do certain other pages.
>
> This tells minors where to go looking for such material and again, that's
> not on. This is NOT a pornography website referral centre.

Out of interest Arno, why are you looking at the Autofellatio article if
you risk getting offended?

TBSDY


subject: [WikiEN-l] Avoiding offence without censorship

body:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 23:38:14 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Christiaan Briggs said:
> > Here're some technical ideas for dealing with potentially offensive
> > content:
> >
> ...
> Simply put a content disclaimer linked from every page.
>
> Oops, we already do that...

Yeah, but that's not the first thing that hits your eye when you open
a page. Think Reverend Hardmind using certain pages as examples to his
large television audience. They go to the URL on screen - it could
even be a tinyurl like http://tinyurl.com/3klr6 - and here's an image
of a bloke sucking himself off. Do we want our godfearing churchgoing
children exposed to such filth, he asks?

If the images are too explicit, then we are open to just such a
campaign and pointing to disclaimer links isn't much of a defence in
the public mind.
--
Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Retracting my goodbye

body:
Rick wrote:
> Jimbo and I have had an exchange of emails, and it became clear that I misinterpreted his comments.  I'm sure it will sadden many of you, but I'm going to be staying.
>
> Thanks to those who contacted me and asked me to stay.
>
> RickK
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
>  Read only the mail you want - Yahoo! Mail SpamGuard.

As one who only just saw this whole thread, I'm glad to see you back :)

TBSDY


from_name: sannse

body:
David Gerard wrote:
> csherlock at ljh.com.au (csherlock at ljh.com.au) [050214 11:23]:

>>Out of interest Arno, why are you looking at the Autofellatio article if
>>you risk getting offended?
>
>
>
> I too would like to know the answer to this question.
>
> (It's like people who complain the picture on [[clitoris]] is not worksafe
> and can't come up with why they were reading about clitorises in the course
> of their job.)
>
> nb: the photo on [[autofellatio]] is indeed awful.
>

I think it's perfectly reasonable to want to read about a sexual or
otherwise explicit subject without seeing explicit images of it.  I am
quite interested to know what exactly autofellatio is, if it really is
possible and what proportion of the population are able - but I'm really
not interested in seeing an image of it.  And if I am, I'll turn of
safe-search on google and search for images there.

The argument that I can turn off images on my browser seems a bad one to
me - for a start, many people don't know how to do this (never
underestimate the non-techyness of the general user).  It's also
inconvenient to have to switch images on and off for different pages
(especially as I use tabs).  And for the general reader, why would they
/expect/ to have to turn images off when reading a general encyclopaedia?

--sannse

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list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Stirling Newberry

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Foundation Organization

body:
On Feb 14, 2005, at 11:03 AM, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:

> Mark Williamson wrote:
>> So, you think it's good that the majority of the board members were
>> not voted in but rather chosen silently by Jimbo? I said "more
>> complete democracy", not "completely direct democracy".
>
> I think it was very good.  Transition in a responsible manner takes
> time.
>

It is indeed very important to prevent "capsizing" of projects that
reach a certain critical mass - they have things of value, and attract
people who want to take control of them. For examples, take a look at
what happened to the reform party. There will be more democracy when,
paradoxically, there are more people.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RK welcome

body:
slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
> Rick, the autoblocker does that when a page is viewed, not only when
> an attempt is made to edit.
>
> Sarah
>

I can confirm this - I  blocked myself to check it a couple of days ago.
   Several different actions triggered the autoblock - including viewing
the block log (which we direct blocked users to on the block message)
and logging in (which RK could have done, quite validly, to look at his
watchlist). I think that some page views did too - I suspect it varies
depending how the specific page view is dealt with.

This is a bug, not evidence that RK tried to avoid his ban.

--sannse

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list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] On the blocking of anonymous proxies (pt. 2)

body:
kylelutze wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
> well, here's my question then, if you don't want to block proxies, then
> what is your suggestion to take care of the massive ammount of spam?
> wikipedia isn't ment to be an opinion based site for people to express
> their views, it's meant to be an encyclopedia, stating only the facts,
> so why would people need to be anonymous when editing or adding new
> articles, unless trolling?
>
> On another point, for blocking proxies, it may be nice to somehow take
> advantage of the abusive host blocking list (ahbl.org, hosted by
> sosdg.org). I believe that's the one for blocking proxies, etc. or there
> may be another one on that site. I personally believe that proxies
> shouldn't be used for going to wikipedia as you can hide your IP by
> creating an account.
>
> Kyle
>
Well if you propose blocking these you propose blocking ME and a couple
of hundred thousand Thai's who are with True / Asia internet as the
provider forces us to use open proxies. I am one of the most active
editors on nl.wikipedia. So they will be glad to hear you think that.
For your info I cannot change internet ISP. I wonder how many other
people this is the case for!

Walter van Kalken (Waerth)


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Skyring wrote:

>On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 06:58:26 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
><minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
>
>
>>Skyring said:
>>
>>
>>>My problem is the argument that could be raised that Wikipedia is a
>>>repository for explicit images that are inappropriate for children and
>>>therefore the site should be blocked by educational institutions and
>>>concerned parents. I think we should take steps to address this before
>>>it suddenly takes top billing on talkback shows.
>>>
>>>
>>Something of this kind cannot be avoided except by banning *all* sexually
>>explicit images--something I've seen seriously advanced.
>>
>>
>
>Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images
>and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be
>completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want
>to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children
>viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia
>with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.
>
>
>
This would be possible using a new flag in the image syntax, which could
then be used to trigger appropriate behavior depending on user settings.
Unfortunately, the problem is determining what the appropriate default
behavior should be. So a technical solution to filtering does not leave
us any better off, it just pushes the argument sideways into the choice
of the default behaviour, as well as the classic "censorship flag"
argument of just where the boundaries should be set -- should the
standards of an adult encyclopedia be set by the lowest common
denominator of the easily offended, not to mention [[wowser]]s who live
to be offended on the behalf of others?

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Autofellatio: a reader "deserves whatever they get"?

body:
Matt R wrote:

>
>Your argument is that any poor fool who visits such a page "deserves whatever
>they get". I disagree. For a start, it may be that the person does not even
>understand what the topic means -- the reason that they're looking it up in
>Wikipedia in the first place (it's quite possible that I'd choose to visit
>Wikipedia first, rather than Google or a dictionary, when investigating an
>unfamiliar noun). Furthermore, I don't think it follows that, even if a reader
>knows what it means, that there would be any expectation of a graphic
>photographic illustration. It's unusual to see "porno-style" images in an dry,
>academic reference work -- like Wikipedia. And still furthermore, I think it is
>quite legitimate to want to read the text but not view such an image -- I would
>fall into this category, for instance. Images can be very potent -- which is
>why "Goatse" is a photo and not a chunk of prose.
>
>I do think readers must be given the opportunity to choose whether they see
>images like this or not. I don't think they should have to fiddle around
>crippling their browsers to achieve this, either. It would be nice to have some
>elegant cookie/server-filtering/optional software feature, but inlining is an
>effective (albeit inelegant) solution for now.
>
>-- Matt
>
>[[User:Matt Crypto]]
>
>
>
I'd just like to point out that some of the most alarming and (to me)
disgusting images I have ever seen were in medical encyclopedias, which
are undoubtedly serious academic works. As medical topics are covered in
more detail, we should expect to see more (unfortunately, quite
appropriate) pictures of hideous injuries and deformities included in
these articles.

Similarly, the images in gynaecology and urology textbooks (necessarily)
exceed anything ever generated by a pornographer in their anatomical
explictiness, although they cannot even remotely be described as
sexually arousing.

-- Neil


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [Wikipedia-l] public service ads in Wikipedia?

body:
Tony Sidaway (minorityreport at bluebottle.com) [050214 09:16]:
> Chad Perrin said:

> > Fair enough.  The question, then, becomes one of whether the risk of
> > perception of bias on the part of Wikipedia is a valid barrier to
> > acceptance of advertising revenue.

> Yes.  I really think that's a decision the Foundation should take.  If and
> when they come to it.

Advertising on wikipedia tends to be treated as one of the Worst Ideas Ever
because when it was first even *mooted*, the Spanish wikipedia promptly
forked. Producing the Enciclopedia Libre and taking a large chunk of the
userbase with it. A truly pointless fork, because it's got pretty much the
same goals.

So the question would be whether it would risk a similar effect.

- d.


from_name: Rick

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: RK welcome

body:
Thanks, Sarah.  Are we really positive about that?  If so, then my objections are no longer valid.

RickK

slimvirgin at gmail.com wrote:
Rick, the autoblocker does that when a page is viewed, not only when
an attempt is made to edit.

Sarah

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 22:40:59 -0800 (PST), Rick wrote:
> >From [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist]]:
>
> 07:28, Feb 13, 2005, Snowspinner blocked #16525 (expires 07:28, Feb 14, 2005) (unblock) (Autoblocked because you share an IP address with "RK". Reason "Arbcom ruling for a four month ban.".)
_______________________________________________
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body:
csherlock at ljh.com.au (csherlock at ljh.com.au) [050214 11:23]:
> Arno M wrote:

> >I'd like to put my reply to sannse's e-mail here.
> >That autofellatio image should go - and go immediately.
> >People have the right to go through this wikipedia without being confronted
> >with this kind of pornographic material without warning.

> Out of interest Arno, why are you looking at the Autofellatio article if
> you risk getting offended?

I too would like to know the answer to this question.

(It's like people who complain the picture on [[clitoris]] is not worksafe
and can't come up with why they were reading about clitorises in the course
of their job.)

nb: the photo on [[autofellatio]] is indeed awful.

- d.


body:
We've had this discussion on several pages.  Nobody can agree on what "explicit images" means.  Do we slap that tag on the pictures from Abu Graib?  From Auschwitz?  From Dresden?  How about images of Adolf Hitler and George Bush?

RickK

Christiaan Briggs <christiaan at last-straw.net> wrote:
Skyring wrote:

>> Something of this kind cannot be avoided except by banning *all*
>> sexually explicit images--something I've seen seriously advanced.
>
> Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images
> and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be
> completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want
> to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children
> viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia
> with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.

Nail on the head.

Christiaan

_______________________________________________
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from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
--- Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> No. I won't support an outright "removing tags to talk page". Like I
> said, some indicator needs to be given to the oft-times
> none-too-discerning public. Now I agree that the current templates go
> much much further, and offer editing instructions, and furthermore,
> some templates are definitely designed for the talk page, not the main
> article page.

Neither will I. Some templates, like {{POV}} or {{vfd}} help to warn readers.
Others like {{protected}} are temporary in nature. Both of these types of
templates are valid to have in the article space.

But some like {{expand}} or {{cleanup}} are primarily instructions to writers.
For these, the disadvantages of having templates in the article space outweigh
the advantages (as I've listed at [[Wikipedia talk:Template messages]]). Thus
they should be on talk pages and, if needed, an HTML comment can be left in the
article itself.

That targets the message to the intended audience while leaving articles with a
minimum number of self-referential templates that need to be cleaned-up by
third party users or seen by readers.

-- mav

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body:
Are we really supposed to believe that people who would object to the appearance of a photograph at [[Autofellatio]] won't also object to the text at [[Fuck]]?

RickK

Tony Sidaway <minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
Skyring said:
>
> Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images
> and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be
> completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want
> to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children
> viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia with
> porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.

There is no way to stop them doing that except to have extremely strict
control of all sexual topics on Wikipedia.If you have a strong stomach
look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_punch That article has been
on Wikipedia since July. No illustration is necessary, the description of
the act alone would tell most parents that Wikipedia is not child-safe.
For this reason I think the argument for appeasement is a bust. We're
making an encyclopedia and we should make decisions on an
article-by-article basis. Does this article serve a useful purpose? Does
this illustration improve the article's usefulness to someone who wants to
know about the topic? Does this link provide relevant information at an
acceptable signal-to-noise ratio?

_______________________________________________
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list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jim Higson

subject: [Wikitech-l] xml wiki representation

body:
A while ago I started some experimental client software that took the output
from wiki2xml, I got sidetracked but now I've got some more time I'm
wanting to get back to it.

A few questions:

I've searched the list and see there is now a proper flex/bison parser. The
wiki2xml convertor has not had any checkins for a while so I presume it's
now defunct?

Does the flex/bison parser produce roughly the same XML as wiki2xml? (same
tag names, nesting etc)

Is there a DTD, XML schema for the wikiXML? How about a rough spec?

Jim


body:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 01:21:02 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> Incerdently how many people saw this (the link contains the image in question)
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Recentchanges&oldid=10224385

I saw it. The discussion here led me to it. I think it's a pretty good
illustration for the article - and I note that it has been replaced by
a line drawing - but it is exactly the sort of thing that wowsers
would use to criticise Wikipedia, on any number of levels.

--
Pete, responding to the point raised


subject: [Wikipedia-l] NYTimes.com: Google may host encyclopedia project

body:
--- "Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> We have to guard against a lot of different kinds of dangers to our
> mission, and slow institutional transition is a good way to make sure
> we don't have any sudden huge shifts in policy.

<aol>Ditto</aol>

-- mav

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Quenya Language response

body:
Ron H (aceron99 at hotmail.com) [050213 17:41]:

> I decided to wait a few days before responding to any of the threads. I've
> read all your comments, and would like to briefly respond.

You didn't address the point that whereas a Wikipedia in a natural language
is essentially a resource for readers to learn about things in general, a
Wikipedia in Quenya would be essentially a playground for its writers. As
such, as with Toki Pona, wikicities.com would probably be more appropriate.

- d.


from_name: Arno M

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autofellatio: a reply to two wikipedians

body:
csherlock at ljh.com.au (csherlock at ljh.com.au) [050214 11:23]:
> Arno M wrote:

> >I'd like to put my reply to sannse's e-mail here.
> >That autofellatio image should go - and go immediately.
> >People have the right to go through this wikipedia without being confronted
> >with this kind of pornographic material without warning.

> Out of interest Arno, why are you looking at the Autofellatio article if
> you risk getting offended?

I too would like to know the answer to this question.

(It's like people who complain the picture on [[clitoris]] is not worksafe
and can't come up with why they were reading about clitorises in the course
of their job.)

nb: the photo on [[autofellatio]] is indeed awful.

----------------------------------------------------

The answer is as follows.

I saw sansee's posting here on this site. I went to the page (not on a work computer) ,
saw the picture and regarded it as inappropriate. I then came back and ultimately
chose to make a protest on this matter here on this page.

As for looking at it at all, how wise do you think it is to criticise something you
have not seen? At least in this instance, not very wise, period.

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from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Rick wrote:
> Are we really supposed to believe that people who would object to the appearance of a photograph at [[Autofellatio]] won't also object to the text at [[Fuck]]?

I object to said image, but not the text at [[Fuck]].


from_name: Alphax

subject: [WikiEN-l] Infoslurp listed on Mirrors and Forks

body:
Please check [[Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks/Ghi]] to see what is
happening about this. I've listed Infoslurp.com, but I'm not sure how to
go about sending the standard letter.

[[en:User:Alphax]]


subject: [Foundation-l] blocked again op Japan

body:
And again I am blocked on the Japanese wikipedia. You almost think they
do not want to have editors who actually make usefull edits. I might
start removing interwiki links to Japanese wikipedia from nl: as they do
now want strangers to edit and thus directly violate the spirit of
wikipedia.

Frustrated,
Waerth


subject: [Foundation-l] blocked again op Japan


subject: [WikiEN-l] All quiet on the Stormfront?

body:
Now that I have finally noticed the dates on the postings (thanks, Jay) , I can say
that nothing new since Feb 11 has appeared there. But then again they know that we've
seen them.

Let's hope that any proposed 'blitzkreig' has been called off.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] All quiet on the Stormfront?

body:
Now that I have finally noticed the dates on the postings on that NeoNazi chat site (thanks, Jay)
,I can say that nothing new since Feb 11 has appeared there. But then again they know that we've
seen them.

Let's hope that any proposed 'blitzkreig' has been called off.
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Admins who abuse their powers

body:
steven l. rubenstein (rubenste at ohiou.edu) [050214 09:41]:

> Mikkalai is now making the argument that a specific article was deleted,
> but that a new article could be written in the same name-space.  The
> opportunity for abuse is clear.
> If the only problem with an article is its contents, then there is no need
> to delete it -- editors can delete the contents that is inappropriate or
> bad, and put in good contents.
> It logically follows that if people believe an article must be deleted, it
> is because they -- or many of them -- consider the article unsalvageable;
> no amount of editing content can save it.

In practice, you'll see a lot of deletion votes that say "there could be a
good article about this but this isn't it and can't be made into it." So
in practice, an article may well be deleted and new text with the same name
created there.

> It seems pretty obvious to me that Mikkelai's claim that the name-space was
> not deleted, so he can write a new article in it, is just an attempt to
> circumvent the vote for deletion.  Not only does this demonstrate bad
> faith; it sets a bad precedent.  Anyone who was invested in any deleted
> article can just bring it back and write some more.  And others would once
> again go through the lengthy process of a vote for deletion.

Not necessarily. See above.

- d.


body:
"Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Nicholas Knight said:
>
>>No, it's an objection to shoving explicit and disgusting images in what
>> is supposed to be an encyclopedia for the purpose of trying to force
>>the  world to somehow "de-prudify" itself.
>
>
> Who has advanced this argument for including the picture?

No one. If you'll look back at the exact sequence of the conversation,
you'll understand where this came from. It's predicated on images like
the autofelleto one becoming accepted parts of Wikipedia, and is not
specific to the photograph in question."

------

I share Nicholas'es concerns here. It is , in my firm opinion, very
unfortunate that links to porno sites (eg that autosolo one) have
become standard practice here. We do not need porno pictures becoming
standard practice.

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body:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 17:32:30 -0800, Nicholas Knight
<nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
> Skyring wrote:
> > On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 01:21:02 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Incerdently how many people saw this (the link contains the image in question)
> >>
> >>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Recentchanges&oldid=10224385
> >
> >
> > I saw it. The discussion here led me to it. I think it's a pretty good
> > illustration for the article - and I note that it has been replaced by
> > a line drawing - but it is exactly the sort of thing that wowsers
> > would use to criticise Wikipedia, on any number of levels.
>
> Uh, look at the URL a little closer. Geni is pointing out that someone
> put that image up on the Recentchanges page.

Yeah. My comments stand.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Delirium

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> Perhaps you don't remember, but before there was a legally incorporated,
> not-for-profit Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia and related projects were
> in fact a side project operated purely at the whim of Jimmy Wales and
> his for-profit company, Bomis, Inc.

While that's true from a legal perspective, it's never been the case
that the project was *completely* at the whim of Jimmy and Bomis,
because it relies mostly on volunteer labor---Bomis has never employed a
significant share of the article writers.  So many things that would
have been legally permissible---like making a unilateral decision to put
in pop-up ads or making certain features subscription-only---were in
practice not possible.

(The current situation is largely similar, really.  Most of the
community's impact on decisions isn't in the once-every-year-or-two
votes for representatives, but in the constant involvement and oversight.)

-Mark


subject: >>: Re: [Foundation-l] On the blocking of anonymous proxies (pt. 2)

body:
kylelutze wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> sorry, I didn't know that was the situation for people there, in that
> case I think we need to come up with a better alternative solution,
> what, I don't know yet
>
You don't have to .... after the IRC conversation just now ,,, I think
quitting wikipedia is better. I cannot believe people think everywhere
is the same as in the merry States or Europe. I have to spend HALF AN
HOUR of my fucking day whining just so I can make some small
edits???????????

Walter/Waerth


from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
Arno M said:
> "The article is about a sexual act.  I don't see what the problem is
> with porn in this instance, as long as the site itself contains lots of
> high quality free material (which this one does)."
>
> The question is again one of minors accessing pages like this one and
> being shown  porn sites through it.

The site in question has an age disclaimer.  Are we trying to build an
encyclopedia, or an electronic playpen into whch people can dump their
kids without supervision?
> I see no difference between publishing porn and creating links to
> it, at least as far as responsible reporting on sexual matters goes.

Given the above:

>
> It also, at least to a degree, threatens to render ineffective the
> removal of THAT picture.
>
Right.  Removal of pictures from Wikipedia only defers the problem that
you perceive.


body:
Bryan Derksen wrote:

> I don't see how putting a photo of someone performing autofellatio
> onto the autofellatio article is trolling. That's just about the only
> article I can think of where it would actually fit in.

*Somewhere* we have to draw a line, I think, but we just all disagree on
where.  For example, many would argue that adding a rotten.com image of
a car crash to [[car accident]] is inappropriate, despite it being
clearly on topic and arguably informative (an image gives a much
different understanding of what flying through a windshield really is
like as opposed to a text description).  Or, to take everyone's favorite
example, we don't have an image of the goatse.cx man on [[shock site]],
despite it being eminently on topic there---and arguably this is one
place where a picture really is worth a thousand words in terms of
explaining "what's this goatse thing and why is it a big deal?"

My personal preference would be to keep most "squickish" images as
links.  When I'm browsing the encyclopedia, I don't necessarily want to
see, without purposely clicking on "show me this image", images of: an
anus on [[anus]]; autofellatio on [[autofellatio]]; goatse on [[shock
site]]; a clitoris on [[clitoris]]; a car crash on [[car accident]]; a
cut-open chest on [[heart surgery]]; and so on.  None of those images
particularly offend me (no, not even goatse... as a long-time internet
denizen it barely even surprises me anymore), but they're eye-catching
enough to be distracting from the text.

-Mark


body:
"The article is about a sexual act.  I don't see what the problem is with
porn in this instance, as long as the site itself contains lots of high
quality free material (which this one does)."

The question is again one of minors accessing pages like this one and being shown
porn sites through it. I see no difference between publishing porn and creating links
to it, at least as far as responsible reporting on sexual matters goes.

It also, at least to a degree, threatens to render ineffective the removal of THAT picture.

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body:
Skyring said:
>
> Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images
> and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be
> completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want
> to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children
> viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia with
> porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.

There is no way to stop them doing that except to have extremely strict
control of all sexual topics on Wikipedia.If you have a strong stomach
look up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donkey_punch  That article has been
on Wikipedia since July.  No illustration is necessary, the description of
the act alone would tell most parents that Wikipedia is not child-safe.
For this reason I think the argument for appeasement is a bust.  We're
making an encyclopedia and we should make decisions on an
article-by-article basis. Does this article serve a useful purpose?  Does
this illustration improve the article's usefulness to someone who wants to
know about the topic? Does this link provide relevant information at an
acceptable signal-to-noise ratio?


subject:
avoiding forks (was Re: [Wikipedia-l] public service ads
	in	Wikipedia?)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>This combined with the existence of other much less-successful wiki forks,
>gives us our only data on the subject. On top of that is the huge momentum
>behind the Wikipedia brand and the fact that it is very, very popular. This
>kind of popularity requires a lot of money to keep things running, thus making
>forks even less likely to be successful.
>
>
I think this is likely true as far as a broad encyclopedia goes,
although I do think we need to develop some sort of review system at
some point, because forks of reviewed/edited subsets of Wikipedia are
still very much possible.  For example, a group of [X field] academics
inspired by Larry Sanger type sentiment might well fork the articles in
that field and create a specialty-topic encyclopedia that would compete
with us on that subject.  (The branding would be about
neutral---Wikipedia's bigger brand would probably be a wash with a group
of academics' stronger credentials in that particular field.)  We're
already competing with a few of these that predate us; the online/gratis
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, for example, is probably still a
more well-regarded philosophy reference than Wikipedia.

(We do seem to have blown everyone away in mathematics though, thanks in
large part to a handful of very good and very prolific Wikipedian
mathematicians.)

-Mark


body:
On Feb 14, 2005, at 1:29 PM, Delirium wrote:
>
> (We do seem to have blown everyone away in mathematics though, thanks
> in large part to a handful of very good and very prolific Wikipedian
> mathematicians.)
>
> -Mark
>

That and the meltdown of another similar math project.


from_name: Charles Matthews

subject:
[WikiEN-l] "It's what some editors feel..." The reality
	ofeditorial authority

body:
"Daniel P.B.Smith" wrote

>I think "citing sources" can be used as a selective way to attack
articles.

I'm sure that's right.

>When it is used in this way it is dishonestly raising the bar
for purposes of attack.

Could be.  What is weird is the kind of 'inversion', where in a contentious
area (contentious in the real world, that is) attacking opinions and cites
becomes an attempt to settle matters here on WP. One can see why this
happens; but if it is pushed it really does become trying to win a debate by
proving one set of sources is better than another.  Which is as near as
dammit to 'let's have the show right here', in other words original research
by another name.  The oddity being that citing sources is supposed to stop
that.

Anyway, I think NPOV continues to trump 'you haven't cited your sources'. An
editor who can't state _both sides_, approximately fairly and touching on
representative reasons why opinions are held, is not going to produce good
WP articles, however dense the footnotes.  Plenty of examples in the
academic world where the proprieties are observed and the result is
partisan.

Charles


from_name: Robin Shannon

subject: [WikiEN-l] Autofellatio - NO to that image

body:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 14:42:24 -0800, Nicholas Knight
<nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
> This is the nature of randomness.

Except, that the random page button is not actually random...

--
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from_name: Christopher Mahan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Template madness

body:
--- Daniel Mayer <maveric149 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- Zoney <zoney.ie at gmail.com> wrote:
> > No. I won't support an outright "removing tags to talk page".
> Like I
> > said, some indicator needs to be given to the oft-times
> > none-too-discerning public. Now I agree that the current
> templates go
> > much much further, and offer editing instructions, and
> furthermore,
> > some templates are definitely designed for the talk page, not the
> main
> > article page.
>
> Neither will I. Some templates, like {{POV}} or {{vfd}} help to
> warn readers.
> Others like {{protected}} are temporary in nature. Both of these
> types of
> templates are valid to have in the article space.
>
> But some like {{expand}} or {{cleanup}} are primarily instructions
> to writers.
> For these, the disadvantages of having templates in the article
> space outweigh
> the advantages (as I've listed at [[Wikipedia talk:Template
> messages]]). Thus
> they should be on talk pages and, if needed, an HTML comment can be
> left in the
> article itself.
>
> That targets the message to the intended audience while leaving
> articles with a
> minimum number of self-referential templates that need to be
> cleaned-up by
> third party users or seen by readers.

If it makes any difference to anyone, I'm with mav on this one.

=====
Chris Mahan
818.943.1850 cell
chris_mahan at yahoo.com
chris.mahan at gmail.com
http://www.christophermahan.com/

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from_name: Sj

subject: [Wikitech-l] Increasing the upload limit on commons

body:
On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 08:22:54 -0500, Mark Pellegrini
<mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
> A few things though. The next "victim" will be Oyez project, a project
> that puts US Supreme Court recordings online. (Like the first site
> I harvested, they're CC-by-SA).
>
> I would like to see the upload limit on commons bumped up to 40 megs at least.
> It's hard putting an entire SCOTUS argument file into 20 megs.

And it's likewise hard putting an entire 120-min conference session
into 20 megs.
I second this request (40 megs would also allow the inclusion of .oggs
I have from last month's Web Credibility conference).

--
+sj+


body:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 04:17:22 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> find . -name '*Rand*'
> grep -i rand includes/SpecialRandompage.php
> find . -name '*.php' -exec grep -il cur_rand {} /dev/null \;
> lynx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mersenne_twister
>
> Random enough. :)

nope :P
when we can afford some kind of quantom machine to come up with
genuine randomness, then it will be random enough for me.

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from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Wikitech-l] Problem on URL with Devanagari characters

body:
Hi,

I filled up a report about a problem with Devanagari characters.

http://bugzilla.wikipedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1527

URL:
*
http://hi.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B6%E0%A4%A8%E0%A4%BF%E0%A4%B5%E0%A4%BE%E0%A4%B0
(??????)
*
http://hi.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B9%E0%A4%AB%E0%A4%BC%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A4%E0%A4%BE
(?????)

Thanks a lot,
Yann
--
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http://fr.wikipedia.org/ | Encyclop?die libre
http://www.forget-me.net/pro/ | Formations et services Linux


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: xml wiki representation

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> Jim Higson schrieb:
>> A while ago I started some experimental client software that took the
>> output from wiki2xml, I got sidetracked but now I've got some more time
>> I'm wanting to get back to it.
>>
>> A few questions:
>>
>> I've searched the list and see there is now a proper flex/bison parser.
>> The wiki2xml convertor has not had any checkins for a while so I presume
>> it's now defunct?
>
> Yup. If you know Bison, we'd be glad if you could take a look at it.
> Especially the HTML parsing needs a lot of work.

I'm affraid not. I did a class last year in lex+yacc, so I mostly know my
way round a spec, but I've no experience using it for a real language,
especially one like wikitext which wasn't designed with formal grammars in
mind.

A quick overview of what I'm doing: For my undergraduate disertation I'm
writing a partial reimplementation of the mediawiki interface without any
dynamic component on the server. This isn't intended to replace the current
PHP interface, I am running it as an experiment into what is possible using
very low spec web servers.

At the moment what I've got uses a javascript half-port of wiki2xml. If the
project were to be taken any futher it would have to use a functionally
identical parser to the Bison one, which as far as I can see would involve
either modifying Bison to output javascript (very hard) or a C to
javascript converter (also very hard!). As you can probably tell, I'll
never fully reimplement the parsing process and don't intend this code to
be used except for as a neat demonstration. Still, I'd like my intermediate
XML format to be near the 'official' one because it is possible my
presentation layer might be teamed up with a server-side parser (using
something like &action=parsedxml instead of &action=raw). Even so, it isn't
trying to be a replacement interface because it places too many
requirements on the client and for the /Special:foo pages it will probably
always delegate to PHP. At best it might one day be possible to run this
project in parallel to a mediawiki wiki.

> In the flexbisonparse module, there is also a "preprocessor" of mine
> which tries to convert HTML to wiki text as far as possible, which might
> then ease the parser code. Using the preprocessor, basically only <div>
> and <font> need to be taken care of by the parser, and the usual wiki
> tags (<pre>, <nowiki>, <math> etc.).
>
>> Does the flex/bison parser produce roughly the same XML as wiki2xml?
>> (same tag names, nesting etc)
>
> No. But the new one is better! :-)

Good, except this means a bit more work for me ;)

>> Is there a DTD, XML schema for the wikiXML? How about a rough spec?
>
> No DTD or the like, but try the example at the end of this mail (can't
> attach files on the mailing list...)
>
> Your help with the parser would be much appreciated.

I wish I could give more help with it. I can't really do much of anything
until this disertation is done. After that possibly.

The example was very helpful, thanks.

Jim


from_name: Magnus Manske

subject: [Wikitech-l] xml wiki representation

body:
Jim Higson schrieb:
> A while ago I started some experimental client software that took the output
> from wiki2xml, I got sidetracked but now I've got some more time I'm
> wanting to get back to it.
>
> A few questions:
>
> I've searched the list and see there is now a proper flex/bison parser. The
> wiki2xml convertor has not had any checkins for a while so I presume it's
> now defunct?

Yup. If you know Bison, we'd be glad if you could take a look at it.
Especially the HTML parsing needs a lot of work.

In the flexbisonparse module, there is also a "preprocessor" of mine
which tries to convert HTML to wiki text as far as possible, which might
then ease the parser code. Using the preprocessor, basically only

and  need to be taken care of by the parser, and the usual wiki
tags (
, <nowiki>, <math> etc.).

> Does the flex/bison parser produce roughly the same XML as wiki2xml? (same
> tag names, nesting etc)

No. But the new one is better! :-)

> Is there a DTD, XML schema for the wikiXML? How about a rough spec?

No DTD or the like, but try the example at the end of this mail (can't
attach files on the mailing list...)

Your help with the parser would be much appreciated.

Magnus

Example :

This is '''bold''' and ''italics'' and '''''both'''''.

List test
* dot
** two dots
# number
## two numbers
#* number, dot

Link test : [[solo link]], [[target|text]],
[[image:test.jpg|thumb|100px|text]], [[target|]]

:Indent

{|
! a th-like element
|parameter| a cell
| another cell
|-
|parameter=something| another cell, another row
|}

== Heading 2 ==
=== Heading 3 ===

<nowiki>A nowiki text</nowiki>

XML:

<paragraph>This is <bold>bold</bold> and
<italics>italics</italics> and
<italics><bold>both</bold></italics>.</paragraph><paragraph>List
test</paragraph><list type='bullet'><listitem>dot<list
type='bullet'><listitem>two
dots</listitem></list></listitem></list><list
type='numbered'><listitem>number<list type='numbered'><listitem>two
numbers</listitem></list><list type='bullet'><listitem>number,
dot</listitem></list></listitem></list><paragraph>Link test :
<link><linktarget>solo link</linktarget></link>,
<link><linktarget>target</linktarget><linkoption>text</linkoption></link>,
<link><linktarget>image:test.jpg</linktarget>
<linkoption>thumb</linkoption>
<linkoption>100px</linkoption>
<linkoption>text</linkoption></link>, <link
emptypipeatend='yes'><linktarget>target</linktarget></link></paragraph><list
type='indent'><listitem>Indent</listitem></list>
<tablerow><tablehead>a
th-like element</tablehead><tablecell><attrs><attr name='parameter'
isnull='yes'></attr></attrs> a cell</tablecell><tablecell>another
cell</tablecell></tablerow><tablerow><tablecell><attrs><attr
name='parameter'>something</attr></attrs> another cell, another
row</tablecell></tablerow>
<heading level='2'> Heading 2
</heading><heading level='3'> Heading 3 </heading><paragraph><extension
name='nowiki'>A nowiki text</extension></paragraph>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Responsible handling of sexual topics

body:
Jimbo said:
> Tony Sidaway wrote:
>> The site in question has an age disclaimer.  Are we trying to build an
>> encyclopedia, or an electronic playpen into whch people can dump their
>> kids without supervision?
>
> But, consider this restatement: Are we trying to build an
> encyclopedia, or an electronic playpen where annoying trolls can dump
> their porn photos without supervision?

I don't recognise that as a restatement.  Could you explain?


body:
Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote

> But, consider this restatement: Are we trying to build an
> encyclopedia, or an electronic playpen where annoying trolls can dump
> their porn photos without supervision?

You call that a rhetorical question?

What would be the wiki way?  That's not a rhetorical question, but a real
one.  I suppose if we declare porn (i.e. erotica lacking encyclopedic
content) to be spam, at very least, then we know we hate spam on WP, and we
know we sanction spammers.  That might be the 80 for 20 for this one; and
the wiki way accepts the 80 for 20 first.  We also know that it is policy
that things shouldn't be posted _just_ to make a point about WP.  That
should take out another big tranche.  And so on.  If someone argues for a
sex manual, we say that it is agreed that 'how to' is not WP, but Wikibooks,
if anything.

Does this make sense?  I doubt that we shall ever manage not to offend
anyone.

Charles


from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Mon, Feb 14, 2005 at 06:27:48PM -0000, Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Delirium said:
> > *Somewhere* we have to draw a line, I think, but we just all disagree
> > on  where.  For example, many would argue that adding a rotten.com
> > image of  a car crash to [[car accident]] is inappropriate, despite it
> > being  clearly on topic and arguably informative (an image gives a much
> > different understanding of what flying through a windshield really is
> > like as opposed to a text description).
>
> That sounds like a pretty good idea, though rotten.com may object.  There
> are probably plenty of public domain US car crash pictures.

I haven't seen rotten.com's collection of car-crash pictures, but I've
read many of their "Rotten Library" articles, most of which seem to be
quite good research on unusual and icky subjects (from trepanation to Al
Qaida, from SpongeBob SquarePants to the Gunpowder Plot).  They do tend
to have a lot of images, though I suspect many of them are a little bit
copyright-infringe-ish around the edges.

Having pictures of an actual car crash would have other problems, though
-- for one, permission from the persons involved in the crash.  We don't
want to infringe upon the privacy of them or their heirs.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: java based format parser

body:
Magnus Manske wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Stefan Groschupf schrieb:
> | Hi there,
> |
> | may someone know if there is a java based parser for the wikimedia
> | formating language.
> | I would love to transform an article into html and transfer for example
> | [image:xxx] to <img src... etc.
> | I found the lucene project in the cvs but this only cleanup the strings.
>
> Try the flexbisonparse module from the CVS. It contains a
> mostly-finished Bison-generated C parser that turns wiki text into XML.
>
> <cardealer>
> It needs a few minor fixes and a total rework of the HTML part, but
> otherwise it's in good shape...
> </cardealer>
>
> Be sure to write a *real* parser, not "merely" a converter. We have
> plenty of those, half-finished. Wiki syntax is really tricky when it
> comes to special cases and syntax combinations.

If a Java parser is tried, this might be of interest:

https://javacc.dev.java.net/

It might be possible to adapt the Bison specs to work with javacc, although
using the JNI to call the Bison generated C parser would be a lot simpler,
depending on what the Java based parser is being used for.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
avoiding forks (was Re: [Wikipedia-l] public service ads in
	Wikipedia?)

body:
Uhhm... {{sofixit}}...

Mark

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 22:56:29 +0200, NSK <nsk2 at wikinerds.org> wrote:
> On Monday 14 February 2005 21:03, Marco Krohn wrote:
> > nevertheless I very much agree that the Wikipedia is
> > very good concerning mathematical topics.
>
> Personally, one of the reasons I started the http://www.adapedia.org project
> (now being migrated to better software) was Wikipedia's terrible (NPOV:
> allegedly inadequate) coverage of Computer Science and Mathematics.
>
> You don't have an article about quadratic classifiers. The Classifier article
> talks about linguistics. The Software agent article is as short as a kids'
> poem.
>
> I have to recognise, however, that the naive bayes article is better. Perhaps
> because it's based on an excellent book, which I happen to possess for some
> years now.
>
> --
> NSK
> http://portal.wikinerds.org
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Writing about sexual topics responsibly is not
	censorship

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Delirium said:
>
>> Having no images would
>>make it a  crappy encyclopedia.  Having so many unpleasant images
>>sprinkled through  it that every article on medical procedures or
>>disasters or accidents or  anything else potentially related is
>>completely unreadable also would  make it a crappy encyclopedia.
>
>
> Yes, we must get it right.  But there are no intrinsically unpleasant
> images, just ones that are useful in an article and ones that are not.
> I've already explained why I think autofellatio is an excellent case of an
> article that needs a photographic illustration.  We should be able to
> display that illustration without apologising, and it really would help if
> people would learn how to operate their web browsers.

_I KNOW HOW TO OPERATE MY WEB BROWSER!_ I shouldn't have to make five
mouse clicks (or two keystrokes and three mouse clicks at most
efficient) to avoid seeing this crap in a general-purpose encyclopedia.

You want to inline it in an article in a medical encyclopedia? That's
fine, go ahead, but _this is not a medical encyclopedia_.


from_name: Skyring

body:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 22:10:11 -0500, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> Nicholas Knight wrote:
>
> > I continue to see no usefulness in it, and the "why not" is because
> > people _will not use wikipedia_, and quite likely, existing editors
> > would leave. I certainly would if this became an accepted part of
> > Wikipedia. It would be a final demonstration that the people here are
> > not the least bit interested in constructing a useful educational
> > resource, but seek only to shove a social agenda down other's throats.
>
> Now you've really lost me.  Who seeks "only to shove a social agenda
> down other's [sic] throats"?

We can hardly shove a social agenda down our own throats, now can we?

--
Peter in Canberra


body:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 19:26:22 -0800, Nicholas Knight
<nknight at runawaynet.com> wrote:
>
> On this list I've seen exactly one argument, and that rather
> half-hearted, as to why it's not crap. I'm of the impression, due to
> their own statements, that nobody here is thrilled with the image, and
> are simply labouring under some sort of impression that Wikipedia has
> some bizarre obligation to provide it.

The photograph is limited in that it is cropped so that it is not
explicitly an act of autofellatio. I think it probably is, but I would
have preferred an image that made it quite clear.

However, my beef is not with the image per se. I reckon if you go
looking for the Autofellatio article, you shouldn't be surprised or
shocked if you find material relating to the subject.

My problem is the argument that could be raised that Wikipedia is a
repository for explicit images that are inappropriate for children and
therefore the site should be blocked by educational institutions and
concerned parents. I think we should take steps to address this before
it suddenly takes top billing on talkback shows.
--
Peter in Canberra


body:
Bryan Derksen said:
> At 08:29 AM 2/14/2005 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>> > The site in question has an age disclaimer.  Are we trying to build
>> > an encyclopedia, or an electronic playpen into whch people can dump
>> > their kids without supervision?
>>
>>But, consider this restatement: Are we trying to build an
>>encyclopedia, or an electronic playpen where annoying trolls can dump
>>their porn photos without supervision?
>
> I don't see how putting a photo of someone performing autofellatio onto
> the  autofellatio article is trolling. That's just about the only
> article I can  think of where it would actually fit in.
>
> If it's a copyvio or if there are _better_ images to replace it with,
> that's a separate issue that's already covered pretty clearly by
> existing  policy.

Indeed, whether or not the existing picture is appropriate can be decided
by consensus.  Before Jimbo's intervention there were very, very few
people seriously arguing that the picture was inappropriate, and I still
do not understand that argument.  The question was whether to link.  Even
now there is no consensus to link, though it seems to be heading in that
direction.
In short, though a lot of people decry the chaos of the discussion, it
showed Wikipedia's normal decision making processes working very
effectively.  There was a very brief edit war at one point but nothing
that couldn't be handled capably by administrators doing their normal job.


from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Happy Valentine's Day!

body:
To all of you :-)

Yes, this is the mail I promised yesterday.

So here it is again:
http://it.wiktionary.org/wiki/Buon_San_Valentino%21
This is the page how it looks like now.
(Oh, you have problems in using the Italian interface? Just change it
clicking on "preferenze" in the upper right part).

You all had so wonderful discussions on this theme - telling about
similar days to Valentine's Day, about where it is not a special day,
about usages etc. So I hope homework was done and the articles created -
this in order to allow to link to them from a special Valentine's Day
project page.

So would you please send me the links to these pages (or add them to the
discussion page of the link above)? I'd like to add them to create
inter-wiki links - I feel this is very important to make people know
more about such themes. Really it doesn't matter wich language your page
is in: maybe it will be a way to have it translated into another
languages as well - just one more possibility to spread culture.

And don't forget: if there are events of other places: create small
projects like these - it is important - one can only respect what he/she
knows, but it is hard to do this if one doesn't even know that something
particular exists.

And btw.:
Who wants to add his/her translation and send the whole list of wishes
to a special person is still in time :-)

Ciao!

Sabine


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Happy Valentine's Day!


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, AndyL wrote:

> Today's Toronto Star has a very nice NYTimes article on wikipedia and
> wikinews including a large photo of Jimmy Wales. A week or so ago, by the
> way, the Toronto Globe and Mail (a "quality broadsheet") had an article on
> Barbados' plans to ditch the monarchy which included a sidebar on
> "Commonwealth Realms". At the bottom of the sidebar was a credit line
> listing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_realms as the sidebar's
> source.
>
The latest Dr Dobb's Journal (March, 2005) has a table showing various
Intel CPUs with information about the number of transistors & clock
speeds (p. 17). At the bottom of the table, the sources are tersely given
as "Intel, Wikipedia."

I wonder if this would meet satisfy some contributors to Wikipedia as a
adequate citation of source.

Geoff


body:
Delirium said:
>
> *Somewhere* we have to draw a line, I think, but we just all disagree
> on  where.  For example, many would argue that adding a rotten.com
> image of  a car crash to [[car accident]] is inappropriate, despite it
> being  clearly on topic and arguably informative (an image gives a much
>
> different understanding of what flying through a windshield really is
> like as opposed to a text description).

That sounds like a pretty good idea, though rotten.com may object.  There
are probably plenty of public domain US car crash pictures.
> Or, to take everyone's
> favorite  example, we don't have an image of the goatse.cx man on
> [[shock site]],  despite it being eminently on topic there---and
> arguably this is one  place where a picture really is worth a thousand
> words in terms of  explaining "what's this goatse thing and why is it a
> big deal?"

There is currently a poll on whether to inline this, link it, or keep it
as an external link.  The Alexa site has a small inline screenshot that
looks just fine to me.


from_name: Joe

subject: [Foundation-l] Shavian Wikis

body:
On 2/13/05 9:30 PM, "Robert Scott Horning" <robert_horning at netzero.net>
wrote:

> Joe wrote:
>>
>> If the English loanwords in Tok Pisin were spelled the same as their English
>> origins, much of it would be mutually intelligible.  Besides the slight
>> difference in grammar and various words from other languages, the biggest
>> difference is in spelling.  This isn't meant to be an exact match,
>> though--just an example.  I recognize the difference.
>>
>>
>>
> I've had a chance to hear native speakers of Tok Pisin.  For a native
> English speaker, it is a really bizzare experience, because you start
> listening to them speak, and you think you understand about 50%-60% of
> what they are speaking due to familiar words.  Then suddenly as you
> start listening a bit more you discover that you are completely lost and
> don't even have a clue as to what is being said.  From my own linguistic
> experience, I would have to say that I understand a native German
> speaker due to cognates better than I understand a native Tok Pisin speaker.

I admit, I haven't heard it spoken natively, but I was able to work out most
of the grammar after no more than a couple hours of reading.  Maybe that's
more of a testament to its simplicity than its similarity.  I've been
working a little on the Tok Pisin Wikipedia under the name WurdBendur (which
I also use on en:).  It doesn't seem very active, but I assure you that a
Shavian Wikipedia would at least match it.

> If you are trying to determine if a language is truly unique enough to
> justify having it as a seperate language wiki on Wikipedia, Tok Pisin
> clearly fits the bill with some very different language structures than
> are commonly found in English, and IMHO qualifies as a seperate
> language.  Certainly as different as between Dutch or German or between
> Spanish and Portuguese, and perhaps more so.

Probably more, but my real point was not so much about the actual difference
as it was about its status as a language.  While Tok Pisin is different
enough to be a unique language in its own right, it's typically labeled as a
pidgin and said to be simply bad English.  It doesn't seem to be widely used
online, and information about it is scarce.  There may be more Shavian users
on Wikimedia.

A Shavian Wiki would be even more similar to the English one (exactly the
same except for spelling).  But I'm wondering if there would be a way to
offer Shavian without creating a new Wikipedia.  There are converters that
could transcribe the English automatically (though not very accurately),
which might be integrated into Wikipedia.

Alternatively, phonemic (or phonetic) text could be stored as one Wikipedia
and very easily converted by simple substitution between several phonemic
alphabets or spelling systems.  This could serve a purpose similar to the
Simple English Wikipedia, that being to aid people who don't understand
written English well (or who have difficulty pronouncing it in the case of a
phonemic Wiki).

But if this were possible, it could effectively combine Shavian, Unifon,
ITA, IPA, and others in a single Wiki.  Are there other Wikis that convert
scripts, say between Roman and Cyrillic for example, or has this been
considered before?

> The only hesitation to creating it as a language Wikipedia is sheer
> number of participants able to contribute content, and at the moment I'm
> not volunteering.  It does appear, however, that roughly 26 people have
> already volunteered to add content to the current Tok Pisin Wikipedia
> and about 60 articles. ( http://tpi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page )

I'm not contesting Tok Pisin, though.  I fully support it if people (like
myself) want to use and edit it.

Regards,
Joe


subject: [Foundation-l] Shavian Wikis


body:
On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 06:58:26 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway
<minorityreport at bluebottle.com> wrote:
> Skyring said:
> >
> > My problem is the argument that could be raised that Wikipedia is a
> > repository for explicit images that are inappropriate for children and
> > therefore the site should be blocked by educational institutions and
> > concerned parents. I think we should take steps to address this before
> > it suddenly takes top billing on talkback shows.
>
> Something of this kind cannot be avoided except by banning *all* sexually
> explicit images--something I've seen seriously advanced.

Well, no. All we need do is have some sort of flag for explicit images
and make sure that these are handled appropriately. It could be
completely transparent to the user through using cookies. I don't want
to ban such images, nor do I think it is possible to stop children
viewing them. I just want a way to stop wowsers equating Wikipedia
with porn and demonstrating this on prime time TV.

--
Peter in Canberra


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>I suspect this is just going to make for more tag wars, tag vandalism and
>the like.  No pictures until the user actually reads, and admits he has
>read, the content disclaimer.  Give him a cookie (and make sure it will
>expire  after the session if he's on a public machine).  Casual readers
>will still get the text but they don't risk coming face to face with Mr
>Goatsex, Mr Autofellatio, Mr Guy About To Be Shot Dead and Mr Guy Whose
>Head is being Hacked Off.  No need to grade the pictures.  They should be
>chosen according to the nature of the article.
>
>
This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater though.  There are some
pictures absolutely nobody objects to---diagrams in geometry articles,
for example.

-Mark


body:
Rick wrote:

>Are we really supposed to believe that people who would object to the appearance of a photograph at [[Autofellatio]] won't also object to the text at [[Fuck]]?
>
>
I believe there are several of us in this conversation who are objecting
in exactly that manner. =]

-Mark


from_name: Daniel Wunsch

body:
On Monday 14 February 2005 17:53, Jim Higson wrote:

> If a Java parser is tried, this might be of interest:
>
> https://javacc.dev.java.net/

an alternative might be ttp://www.antlr.org/
if someone would try to write a proper parser in java,
i'd be glad to help.

> It might be possible to adapt the Bison specs to work with javacc, although
> using the JNI to call the Bison generated C parser would be a lot simpler,
> depending on what the Java based parser is being used for.

not a good idea - one of the best things about java is that you
can just  throw in a jar file and it works on all supported platforms,
if you do it right.

playing around with FUSE and java has tought me one thing:
JNI is slow, clumsy and absolutely no fun. polluting your code with
dependencies on native code leads to far too many problems.

i'd avoid it whenever possible.

daniel


from_name: slimvirgin at gmail.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia in the news

body:
And another one. Michael Snow reports in today's Signpost that an
error in The Washington Post was traced back to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-02-14/Misinformation_on_Wikipedia

This again underlines the importance of checking facts and citing
sources (though mind you, The Washington Post should have done the
same), and the need for NPOV, cite sources, and disputed templates to
be on articles, not on talk pages, so that readers are warned.

Sarah

On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 17:59:40 -0800 (PST), Geoff Burling
> The latest Dr Dobb's Journal (March, 2005) has a table showing various
> Intel CPUs with information about the number of transistors & clock
> speeds (p. 17). At the bottom of the table, the sources are tersely given
> as "Intel, Wikipedia."
>
> I wonder if this would meet satisfy some contributors to Wikipedia as a
> adequate citation of source.
>
> Geoff
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

>It really doesn't take long to click a "show me pictures" button, agree
>not to blame Wikipedia if you see something you find unpleasant, and then
>get on with your life.  And it isn't as if our editors need to see
>pictures in order to edit the pages.
>
>
It doesn't, but I'm not worried about people suing us or blaming us, but
Wikipedia being a crappy encyclopedia.  Having no images would make it a
crappy encyclopedia.  Having so many unpleasant images sprinkled through
it that every article on medical procedures or disasters or accidents or
anything else potentially related is completely unreadable also would
make it a crappy encyclopedia.

If you really must see an autofellatio picture, it doesn't take very
long to click on the link.

-Mark


from_name: Marco Krohn

body:
wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 14.02.05 19:39:26:
>
> On Feb 14, 2005, at 1:29 PM, Delirium wrote:
> >
> > (We do seem to have blown everyone away in mathematics though, thanks
> > in large part to a handful of very good and very prolific Wikipedian
> > mathematicians.)

http://planetmath.org is far from being "blown away" by Wikipedia (IMVHO)

nevertheless I very much agree that the Wikipedia is
very good concerning mathematical topics.

> That and the meltdown of another similar math project.

which is?

best regards,
  Marco

______________________________________________________________
Verschicken Sie romantische, coole und witzige Bilder per SMS!
Jetzt bei WEB.DE FreeMail: http://f.web.de/?mc=021193


list: commons-l

from_name: David Blomstrom

subject: [Commons-l] Re: Image Permission (Location Maps)

body:
Thanks for all the feedback. I just wondered if it's OK to create a
special credits page where I can record all the legal boilerplate,
discuss the authors/contributors, link to their websites, etc., then
just LINK to it from each actual image, rather than post a large
paragraph or two under each small image?

An alternative would be to create a JavsScript pop-up function. People
might click the word "Credit" or "Copyright," and a small window would
pop open with all the details right there.

I'm not averse to giving people credit; I'll gladly link to their
websites and even include brief bios. It's just inconvenient to post a
big block of information conspicuously on every page one of these images
would appear.

Thanks.

Josh Gerdes wrote:

> James D. Forrester wrote:
>
>> On Saturday, February 12, 2005 10:54 AM,
>> commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org <>
>> wrote:
>>
>> [Re-ordered]
>>
>>
>>> Josh Gerdes wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> David Blomstrom wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Wikipedia uses a series of location maps on articles about the
>>>>> states, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming - the the map on
>>>>> the right side of the page, just below the state flag and seal.
>>>>>
>>>>> It sounds like I'm allowed to use these images on my website as
>>>>> long as I include the proper credit. The only problem is the
>>>>> credits are awfully long for images this small; I don't want to
>>>>> insert a big credit on each page.
>>>>> So I wanted to ask if these maps belong to Wikipedia in the first
>>>>> place...or are they public domain?
>>>>>
>>>>> Incidentally, I will be linking my pags to Wikipedia; in fact, I
>>>>> already have.
>>>>> Thank you.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Yes, you must include the proper credits, at least for those who
>>>> modified the pictures from the public domain original. According to
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:U.S._county_map, those
>>>> images were created by Eric Pierce
>>>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wapcaplet) and James D.
>>>> Forrester (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jdforrester). I
>>>> believe that in this case, crediting the two authors and linking to
>>>> the Wikipedia article should be sufficient. It would also be
>>>> polite, though not legally necessary, to credit the creator of the
>>>> original public domain image, The General Libraries of The
>>>> University of Texas at Austin (http://www.lib.utexas.edu). However,
>>>> you should probably read
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Users.27_rig
>>>> hts_and_obligations
>>>>
>>>> for more details.
>>>>
>>>> Josh Gerdes
>>>> [[en:User:JoshG]]
>>>
>>>
>>> OK, thanks. I have one more question. I have no problem offering the
>>> proper credit; I just don't want to post a bunch of extra
>>> text by every
>>> single image. I'd rather have a clean design, like on the Wikipedia
>>> pages (which don't mention the University of Texas. :)
>>>
>>> Therefore, would I be allowed to simply add the word "Credits," linked
>>> to a page that offers all the credit information, including
>>> the names of
>>> the individuals you cited in your e-mail, the University of
>>> Texas, etc.?
>>>
>>> Thank you.
>>>
>>
>>
>> BTW, I have released my contributions to the US-State images under the
>> Creative Commons Attribution and Attribution with Share-Alike licences,
>> second versions and above, after being asked to by Ram-man. Not sure
>> about
>> Eric, however, and I really don't have any idea as to which ones I
>> created
>> and which of them did he, though I did do final touch-ups to all
>> 3300-odd
>> ones. Thus you can use at least some of them under the CC-BY or
>> CC-BY-SA,
>> instead of GFDL, if that's easier.
>>
>> HTH.
>>
>> Yours,
>
>
> I just thought you would like to know that, according to Eric's user
> page, he releases his PNG and JPEG images contributions under "all
> Creative Commons Attribution Licenses".
>
> Josh Gerdes
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
>
>
>


from_name: Axel

body:
Daniel Wunsch schrieb:
> On Monday 14 February 2005 17:53, Jim Higson wrote:
>
>
>>If a Java parser is tried, this might be of interest:
>>
>>https://javacc.dev.java.net/
>
>
> an alternative might be ttp://www.antlr.org/
> if someone would try to write a proper parser in java,
> i'd be glad to help.
Hi

A better Java parser is also interesting for our eclipse plugin project.
Although we already have a handwritten parser, it might be better to
create a new one with a parser generator.

I made a short description of the existing CVS modules and further
possible improvements (like PDF generation) here:
http://www.plog4u.org/index.php/Using_Eclipse_Wikipedia_Editor:Development
Maybe someone of you can comment on this.

How can we join our development efforts?

--
Axel Kramer


body:
On Tue, Feb 15, 2005 at 09:45:29AM +1100, Skyring wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Feb 2005 12:20:45 -0800 (PST), Rick <giantsrick13 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > We've had this discussion on several pages.  Nobody can agree on
> > what "explicit images" means.  Do we slap that tag on the pictures
> > from Abu Graib?  From Auschwitz?  From Dresden?  How about images of
> > Adolf Hitler and George Bush?
>
> I would say that images which would not normally be found in school
> encyclopaedias or museums such as the Smithsonian would be a good rule
> of thumb, and I'm not just talking about sexual images.

The Smithsonian, of course, is the work of the U.S. government, which
has all manner of politically-driven standards it must follow.  This is
not a problem we have.

> I was in the Holocaust Museum in Washington a few weeks back and
> although schoolchildren are welcomed and encouraged to attend, certain
> exhibitions had warnings posted at the entrance. And rightly so.

I was in the National Museum of the American Indian a few months ago.  I
was surprised by how -little- there was about the bloodier and more
unpleasant parts of the history.  I don't know if that's because the
museum operators chose to exhibit mostly "friendly" or "politically
correct" bits, or because people with a well-deserved grudge didn't care
to participate in creating the museum.  Or maybe I somehow missed the
wing with the smallpox blankets and the Trail of Tears.

> I don't think there is any hard and fast guide as to what exactly
> makes an image offensive, disturbing or explicit, but I think that the
> Wikipedia community could be trusted to find a consensus on a case by
> case basis. My feeling is that the Autofellatio photograph would be
> generally agreed as being one that should not be generally accessible
> to schoolchildren.

My opinion is that the Autofellatio photograph is not a very good image
for an encyclopedia ... *not* because it depicts a man licking his
penis, but because it is stylistically poor and unfitting.

Likewise, my opinion is that the Goatse.cx image is not fitting for
Wikipedia because displaying it is far too close to *participating* in
the trolling-behavior with which that image is so closely linked.

Schoolchildren don't much enter into it.

> I use schoolchildren as an example, not because I want to emasculate
> or prudify Wikipedia to the level that it offends nobody, but because
> schoolchildren are prime users of information resources such as
> Wikipedia, and the last thing we should do is to make it difficult for
> them to use Wikipedia. I know that some people here think that
> individula users should accept all responsibility, but many teachers
> and parents don't see it that way.

I'm guessing that by saying that we would "make it difficult for school-
children to use Wikipedia" you mean that by depicting sexuality frankly
we would tickle the sensors of [[censorware]] programs, causing
Wikipedia to be blocked.

Sadly, there are many fools in the world, and fools appear to be the
chief market for censorware.  Both the flaws and the deliberate biases
of popular censorware products have been more than adequately
demonstrated.  We are talking about software which already regularly
blocks educational material on breast cancer and HIV/AIDS; which has
been found to selectively block pro-choice (abortion-rights) sites but
not pro-life (anti-abortion) sites; and which in one case has blocked
TIME Magazine's Web site when TIME criticized censorware.

(See http://www.peacefire.org/info/blocking-software-faq.html.)

I don't see any way Wikipedia can benefit from kowtowing to that kind of
nonsense.  If Wikipedia is blocked by censorware, so much the worse for
censorware; it will be one more illustration of its uselessness and one
more charge to be brought against its use.

> I was engaged in discussion in another forum, and someone brought up
> an example of the Wikipedia article on the Nile River. An innocuous
> article, one might imagine, but it so happened that at the time my
> correspondent was opening it up for the benefit of a schoolchild it
> had recently been vandalised and consisted of nothing but obscenities.

This sounds to me like you're comparing people who upload controversial
images with people who vandalize Wikipedia.  That doesn't seem to me
like a very productive comparison to make.

> Maybe we should be thinking about having default material that is
> known to be in a useful and "safe" state and that the "live" material
> can only be accessed by specifically setting some flag or clicking on
> an accept button or some similar mechanism.

Wikipedia's job is to describe the world, and the world is "live" and
not "safe", too.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] Blocking on Japan

body:
It took some but for today I am unblocked do not know for how long though :(

I placed this on Japanese wikipedia today

Walter van Kalken

My name is Waerth, or in real life Walter. I am a Dutch person living in
Thailand. I am active on the nl:, en:, af: and th: wikimedia projects.
In the last two months everytime I try to do something here I am blocked
... at least my ip address is blocked not my username.

Now I heard japanese wikipedia has a blocking policy for open proxies. I
understand they give problems. But I also know some people are forced by
their ISP's to use them. Like myself. My ISP uses it and I have no
choice. I cannot break contract because it would cost me 6000 Thai baht.
And my provider gives a good service, I get a discount of 20% on my
mobile and home telephone because I use them and they are one company.
This provider ... Asianet is used by more than 300.000 people in Thailand.

Many Thai people are genuinely interested in Japan and learning
Japanese. Also there are many Japanese in Thailand. Some of which will
use Asianet as well! By blocking open proxies you are shutting out
millions of people of enjoying the Japanese wikipedia. And you are
directly violating one of the wikimedia projects goals,,.. to be
accessable to everybody. I can complain about this policy because I know
how wikipedia works. Many people can not complain because they do not
know how to do that. So they go away frustrated and you loose potential
contributors.

How do I think you can solve this? On dutch nl: I am a sysop and a
proponent of hard blocking policies. If somebody vandalizes they get
blocked for 24 hours, period. I heard there are problems on Japanese
wikipedia with getting sysops and there is a shortage of hands so that
is why Japanese as the only wikipedia decided to block open proxies. So
you need to get more sysops.

Being a sysop doesn't mean much. You just help to keep wikipedia clean.
It is not about power!! All you get is some extra buttons to revert
vandalism, secure a page and block a vandal. I want to urge on all
active users to ask for sysop status to solve this problem! You see if
everybody is a sysop, there are no problems with power! because
everybody is the same .... a sysop. And everybody can spend 10 minutes a
week on cleaning. It is not much extra work really. And than it is easy
to unblock the open proxies. Because you have a big group of sysops to
stop the vandals! And welcome the people that couldn't use Japanese
wikipedia before now.


subject: [Foundation-l] Blocking on Japan


from_name: Josh Gerdes

body:
James D. Forrester wrote:
> On Saturday, February 12, 2005 10:54 AM, commons-l-bounces at wikimedia.org <>
> wrote:
>
> [Re-ordered]
>
>
>>Josh Gerdes wrote:
>>
>>
>>>David Blomstrom wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Wikipedia uses a series of location maps on articles about the
>>>>states, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyoming - the the map on
>>>>the right side of the page, just below the state flag and seal.
>>>>
>>>>It sounds like I'm allowed to use these images on my website as
>>>>long as I include the proper credit. The only problem is the
>>>>credits are awfully long for images this small; I don't want to
>>>>insert a big credit on each page.
>>>>
>>>>So I wanted to ask if these maps belong to Wikipedia in the first
>>>>place...or are they public domain?
>>>>
>>>>Incidentally, I will be linking my pags to Wikipedia; in fact, I
>>>>already have.
>>>>
>>>>Thank you.
>>>
>>>Yes, you must include the proper credits, at least for those who
>>>modified the pictures from the public domain original. According to
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:U.S._county_map, those
>>>images were created by Eric Pierce
>>>(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Wapcaplet) and James D.
>>>Forrester (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Jdforrester). I
>>>believe that in this case, crediting the two authors and linking to
>>>the Wikipedia article should be sufficient. It would also be
>>>polite, though not legally necessary, to credit the creator of the
>>>original public domain image, The General Libraries of The
>>>University of Texas at Austin (http://www.lib.utexas.edu). However,
>>>you should probably read
>>>
>>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights#Users.27_rig
>>>hts_and_obligations
>>>
>>>for more details.
>>>
>>>Josh Gerdes
>>>[[en:User:JoshG]]
>>
>>OK, thanks. I have one more question. I have no problem offering the
>>proper credit; I just don't want to post a bunch of extra
>>text by every
>>single image. I'd rather have a clean design, like on the Wikipedia
>>pages (which don't mention the University of Texas. :)
>>
>>Therefore, would I be allowed to simply add the word "Credits," linked
>>to a page that offers all the credit information, including
>>the names of
>>the individuals you cited in your e-mail, the University of
>>Texas, etc.?
>>
>>Thank you.
>>
>
>
> BTW, I have released my contributions to the US-State images under the
> Creative Commons Attribution and Attribution with Share-Alike licences,
> second versions and above, after being asked to by Ram-man. Not sure about
> Eric, however, and I really don't have any idea as to which ones I created
> and which of them did he, though I did do final touch-ups to all 3300-odd
> ones. Thus you can use at least some of them under the CC-BY or CC-BY-SA,
> instead of GFDL, if that's easier.
>
> HTH.
>
> Yours,

I just thought you would like to know that, according to Eric's user
page, he releases his PNG and JPEG images contributions under "all
Creative Commons Attribution Licenses".

Josh Gerdes


from_name: Nicholas Knight

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Nicholas Knight said:
>
>>_I KNOW HOW TO OPERATE MY WEB BROWSER!_ I shouldn't have to make five
>>mouse clicks (or two keystrokes and three mouse clicks at most
>>efficient) to avoid seeing this crap in a general-purpose encyclopedia.
>>
>
> Could you explain why you used the word "crap" in the above explanation of

Because that's what these images are.

> why you don't want to use your browser controls?  Do you consider five
> mouseclicks to be more or less pleasant than viewing something you,
> personally, have assessed as "crap"?

What does that have to do with _anything_?

Why should I have to jump through hoops to avoid seeing a disgusting
image that could easily NOT be inlined in the article?


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> Delirium said:
>
>>Tony Sidaway wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I suspect this is just going to make for more tag wars, tag vandalism
>>>and the like.  No pictures until the user actually reads, and admits he
>>>has read, the content disclaimer.  Give him a cookie (and make sure it
>>>will expire  after the session if he's on a public machine).  Casual
>>>readers will still get the text but they don't risk coming face to face
>>>with Mr Goatsex, Mr Autofellatio, Mr Guy About To Be Shot Dead and Mr
>>>Guy Whose Head is being Hacked Off.  No need to grade the pictures.
>>>They should be chosen according to the nature of the article.
>>>
>>>
>>
>>This is throwing the baby out with the bathwater though.  There are
>>some  pictures absolutely nobody objects to---diagrams in geometry
>>articles,  for example.
>
>
> Here's a good one my girlfriend showed me the other day.  Just a
> geometrical arrangement.
>
> WARNING: any indecency you see here is purely in your head.
>
>
> http://img32.exs.cx/img32/4306/mouse5fo.jpg

I have to say, this is one of the more ridiculous things you've said in
this thread.

> It really doesn't take long to click a "show me pictures" button, agree
> not to blame Wikipedia if you see something you find unpleasant, and then
> get on with your life.  And it isn't as if our editors need to see
> pictures in order to edit the pages.

Why do you want so badly to make people accept a picture of a guy
sucking his own penis right along with a picture of Earth?


body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:
> It really doesn't take long to click a "show me pictures" button, agree
> not to blame Wikipedia if you see something you find unpleasant, and then
> get on with your life.  And it isn't as if our editors need to see
> pictures in order to edit the pages.

And who are you, by the way, to tell people they can just get on with
their lives? Do you have some sort of proof that no one will be
permanently affected by such an image?


from_name: Hannes Delago

subject: [Wikitech-l] what happened to en db download?

body:
> >> Brion, any chance to include the imagelinks table into the dump script,
> >> too?
>
> > You may use rebuildlinks/refreshlinks scripts from maintenance/ package.
> > If imagelinks would be included, so should links, categorylinks,
> > brokenlinks, math and all other metadata tables, which can be generated
> > out from cur..
>

Well yes, but refreshlinks.php takes a LONG time to run and tends to bomb out eventually on my installation... so I've tried to
rework the obsolete rebuildlinks script for imagelinks only, but couldn't get it to work for images included by templates etc. and
finally had to give up on this. I use the imagelinks table to decide which images to include in a notebook installation - more
precisely, to drop (or not to mirror) orphaned images which are not referenced by a NS_MAIN or NS_TALK article (a considerable
percentage).

> links, categorylinks and brokenlinks (and a couple of others) are actually
> included in the dump (http://download.wikimedia.org/archives/en/).  i think
> the lack of imagelinks is an oversight in the dump script.

It would really help if imagelinks could be included in the dump script - doesn't use much disk space anyway.

Regards
  Hannes.


from_name: sannse

body:
Tony Sidaway wrote:

> Indeed, whether or not the existing picture is appropriate can be decided
> by consensus.  Before Jimbo's intervention there were very, very few
> people seriously arguing that the picture was inappropriate, and I still
> do not understand that argument.  The question was whether to link.

As I made clear - the link is a *compromise* position as far as I am
concerned.  I think that will be true of many of those voting for that
option.

--sannse

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body:
Rick wrote:
> Are we really supposed to believe that people who would object to the appearance of a photograph at [[Autofellatio]] won't also object to the text at [[Fuck]]?
>
> RickK
>

Yes.  I am personally in exactly that category.

--sannse

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from_name: Stefan Groschupf

body:
Hi,
thanks for the response to everybody.
Some comments.

+ Using c in java makes for my project no sense and I personal made a
lot of bad experience with jni.
+ javacc would be from the performance point of view the best choice
however it will be very hard to write a javacc parser for the wikipedia
syntax, since the syntax is not very strictly.
+ Axel parser looks interesting since - at first it already exists. :-)
and the concept of using Radeox Wiki Engine make sense.
However as Axel already mentioned the code is not very 'contribution'
friendly and it is not a own 'jar'.

Before I heard of Axel parser I spend some hours to write a parser
based on apache nekohtml.
http://www.apache.org/~andyc/neko/doc/html/

The advantage is that nekohtml can be extended by filters, use the
Xerces Native Interface (XNI) framework and already will parse some
possible html snippets in the text.
Attention the result of the nekohtml parser extend by a wikipedia
filter set is not HTML but a in memory DOM object that can be
transformed to xhtml.

I have more or less written the basic stuff and defined an interface
that need to be implemented to handle the content of a 'tagged' text
snippet.
Anyway I need now to implement as many Classes as tags exist in the
wikipedia syntax. :-o

For me two possibilities would be interesting refactor and separate the
parser from Axel.
Or I can contribute my code in cvs somewhere and we clue things
together.

Anyway I personal searching for quick solution. ;-)

Stefan

---------------------------------------------------------------
company:		http://www.media-style.com
forum:		http://www.text-mining.org
blog:			http://www.find23.net


body:
Stefan Groschupf schrieb:
> Before I heard of Axel parser I spend some hours to write a parser based
> on apache nekohtml.
> http://www.apache.org/~andyc/neko/doc/html/
>
> The advantage is that nekohtml can be extended by filters, use the
> Xerces Native Interface (XNI) framework and already will parse some
> possible html snippets in the text.
> Attention the result of the nekohtml parser extend by a wikipedia filter
> set is not HTML but a in memory DOM object that can be transformed to
> xhtml.
>
> I have more or less written the basic stuff and defined an interface
> that need to be implemented to handle the content of a 'tagged' text
> snippet.
> Anyway I need now to implement as many Classes as tags exist in the
> wikipedia syntax. :-o
>
> For me two possibilities would be interesting refactor and separate the
> parser from Axel.
> Or I can contribute my code in cvs somewhere and we clue things together.
Sounds interesting, could you please send me the current sources so that
I can make some tests with the parser inside the eclipse plugin?

If you like I can also give you CVS access.

--
Axel Kramer


subject: [Foundation-l] And blocked again

body:
Well it was nice for the 2 or 3 hours I was able to do something. I am
blocked yet again op Japanese wikipedia.

Waerth/Walter van Kalken


subject: [Foundation-l] And blocked again