from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
...Again, I personally don't care.

But while the idea of an article about (FYRO) Macedonia might anger
some Greeks, it fits directly in to Wikipedia according to rules, no
doubt about it. Along the same lines, we have articles about
autofellatio, holocaust denial, neonaziism, etc.

In those cases, there are only two clear options: Either the articles
exist, or they don't.

In this case, however, there are many potential solutions to the same
problem, so I think it's worth adding to an overall evaluation of each
option whether or not it is likely to repell people from any certain
country or region from using or editing Wikipedia in the future.

Although ideally, we should be able to do whatever is most logical for
any given situation, the human component is something that if left
unconsidered can have a devastating effect on any project.

Mark

On 12/03/06, Andreas Vil?n <andreas.vilen at gmail.com> wrote:
> So? For example the entire concept of an article about the country of
> Macedonia angers many Greek people. Since when was the fact that
> someone could get angry about something an argument not to do
> something?
>
> /Andreas
>
> On 3/13/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > That's already been proposed, and it seems like a good idea.
> >
> > The only troubling part of your proposal is that data could be stored
> > in the database in Cyrillic, which I think might anger some Romanians.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 12/03/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> > > Caroline Ford wrote:
> > > > There seems to be no way that Romanians will tolerate cyrillic language
> > > > (even via a software setting) on their wikipedia.
> > > >
> > > > Caroline/secretlondon
> > > >
> > > Okay, then.
> > >
> > > Let the ro: and mo: Wikipedias be interfaces to the same underlying
> > > data, then but let the Wikipedia be a Cyrillic-free zone, both in terms
> > > of content and interface, and mo: Wikipedia be the same as ro:, only
> > > with interface and content optionally presented in Cyrillic, with
> > > two-way transliteration for editing, as per the Chinese and Serbian
> > > Wikipedias.
> > >
> > > -- Neil
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ridiculous nomination for deletion

body:
He certainly needs a good going over with a clue-by-four until he
understands that using the term "our military" on a multi-national
encyclopedia is both inappropriate and extremely offensive.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

>There seem to be a lot of terms being used lately for rhetorical effect
>without much attention paid to what they really mean. To "go over the
>head" of someone implies that you bypass normal channels. In many cases,
>including for example Jack Thompson, they aren't bypassing the editors,
>they actually tried dealing with the editors and that didn't solve the
>problem.
>
So isn't that "going over the heads" of editors then?  They tried
dealing through the normal channels, and it didn't come out to their
liking, so they decided to change tack and go over the editors' heads
instead, getting the Foundation to do something about it.

>Also, "top-down" is a management style - though you would never know
>that from Wikipedia, where it redirects to an article about software
>design, which I trust is not what you were referring to. In management
>terms, a top-down system is one where the executives make all the key
>decisions themselves, plan how the work will be done, and give
>assignments to their subordinates, who have little discretion or input
>in the work they do. If anyone can tell me when they were given an
>assignment on Wikipedia in which they lacked input or discretion, I'd be
>happy to hear about it.
>
>
Isn't a directive from the front office saying "nobody can edit this
page" a top-down directive?  How else would you describe it?  Nobody is
saying that Wikipedia *as a whole* operates in a top-down manner, just
that some cases are being dealt with in a top-down manner.

I can see why it's rhetorically convenient to use weasel words to
describe the situation, but I don't see why plain English is inappropriate.

-Mark


from_name: geni

body:
On 3/12/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:
> He certainly needs a good going over with a clue-by-four until he
> understands that using the term "our military" on a multi-national
> encyclopedia is both inappropriate and extremely offensive.

It is also mildy ironic timeing considering this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4799174.stm

--
geni


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Andreas Vilén

subject: [Wikipedia-l] deletion of Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
Please stop feeding this "future civilization" troll and ban him from
the mailing list.

/Andreas
On 3/11/06, future civilization <future_civilization at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Tell this to marky please, he MUST respect the decision taken by ANTHERE here to delete that Wikipedia and not to edit there. He must respect the result of the vote. He must try and refrain from making personal attacks there as he did.
>
>   Every edit made there on the Moldovan Wikipedia is a personal attacks against romanians/moldovans and is a real proof of his anti-romanian feelings.
>
>   Anti-Romanian (alternatively spelled antiromanism) is hostility toward or prejudice against Romanians as a religious, ethnic, or racial group, which can range from individual hatred to institutionalized, violent persecution. Is what Mark Williamson just makes there.
>
>
>
>
> Francis Tyers <spectre at ivixor.net> wrote:
>   Please try and refrain from making personal attacks.
>
> Fran
>
> On Sat, 2006-03-11 at 07:14 -0800, future civilization wrote:
> > No only that Marky and try not to play who's the smart around here. You breake the decision taken by Anthere here where she told you to stop editing and respecting the result of the vote. You're not allowed to edit that wikipedia again? Do you understand this? There was a vote about it, I don't care if you didn't vote or not. Many other people voted and now its time for you to accept it.
> >
> > It's so hard for you to accept this? You must accept Anthere's decision and don't you ever edit that wikipedia again. You russian anti-romanian.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> > The edits to which Mr Civilization is referring are a number of
> > articles I created, for example http://mo.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997
> >
> > Now, the last time I checked, creation of stub articles is hardly a
> > bannable offence.
> >
> > Mark
> >
> > On 10/03/06, future civilization wrote:
> > > Several IPs coming from Phoenix, Arizona (home address of Mark W.) made several edits (and also several personal attacks) on Moldovan Wikipedia thus breaking the result of the vote to delete the Moldovan Wikipedia and decision taken to freeze/or to rapidly delete this wikipedia made here.
> > >
> > > A ban for Mark for about a month maybe will chill him out and stop him from doing disruptive edits any more. A respect for the result of the vote would be too much from him as he immediately lounched himself in personal attacks.
> > >
> > > There is no more talking about this Moldovan Wikipedia, people decided to close and delete it. Now, its your job to do it and respect the decision.
> > >
> > > There was a vote for a long period of time: one month. Everybody had the chance to express himself and now the result of the vote shows very clear: people want DELETION OF MOLDOVAN WIKIPEDIA. Now, put this in practice.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > future civilization wrote:
> > > Yes, indeed. Mark doesn't have any authority and/or credibility, as himself admits. He is very interested in closing/opening any wikipedia but he uses a very disruptive language towards the new users. This disruptive language shows his limited comprehension on wikipedias in various languages. In this way he discourage people who are enthusiast to close/open new wikipedias. He has no power to decide for such a decision at the very least he wants to ask for attention. Maybe this is explained by his early age in life. You can't have any authority having only 16-17 years.
> > >
> > > His style is to demolish everything and has a strongly counter-effect, a strong negative one on what happens in Wikipedia. I checked his blocking log and shows a mean, very strong negative behaviour.
> > >
> > >
> > > You appear to take an extremely keen interest in the closing / opening
> > > of wikipedias, more so than the average poster on this list. I am just
> > > worried about newcomers who are excited about creating a wikipedia
> > > getting discouraged because someone, without the community's backing,
> > > acted as though he had the power to approve or deny the request. This
> > > came out extremely strongly in your last message to Manuel.
> > >
> > > I am not saying that you should stop being interested in the creation
> > > and destruction of wikipedias -- I am just worried about your style of
> > > discussing them.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > Silas Snider wrote:
> > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> > > Hash: RIPEMD160
> > >
> > > Mark Williamson wrote:
> > > >> Question:
> > > >> What authority do you, Mark, have over the creation of a new wikipedia?
> > > >> Are you a developer? I don't seem to ever see you contributing patches,
> > > >
> > > > Put simply, I don't. I have no real authority. However, I do know that
> > > > I have some sway, because different people have varying degrees of
> > > > respect for me in the matter of languages. There are certainly those
> > > > who don't trust me at all or who think I don't know much of anything
> > > > at all about languages, but I think most people believe that I know
> > > > quite a bit about languages but at the same time have problems with
> > > > other things about me so they take most of my opinions/advice under
> > > > advisement.
> > > >
> > > > If some developer wants to create a Tetum WP immediately, I have no
> > > > say in that. However, I'm pretty sure that the Wikimedia community as
> > > > a whole will have much more enthusiasm for the creation of a Tetum
> > > > Wikipedia if its test-wiki is more vibrant and is in 100% Tetum.
> > > >
> > > >> etc. on wikitech-l. In fact, almost all the posts that I can see of
> > > >> yours involve some kind of discussion over orthography or languages in
> > > >> various wikipedias, especially when discussing closing one.
> > > >
> > > >>From what you say here, it seems to me that you're a relative
> > > > newcomer. Before the Moldovan controversy, there was almost never any
> > > > discussion about closing Wikis, given that the only 2 that have been
> > > > closed so far are Toki Pona and Klingon.
> > > >
> > > > I'm not sure what's wrong, though, with the fact that almost all of my
> > > > posts are about languages -- is that a bad thing? Certainly, if you
> > > > look at other posters, many of them tend to have areas of particular
> > > > interest as well.
> > >
> > > No, its not a bad thing, I was just trying to establish why I thought
> > > you were not a developer (in case it turned out that you were).
> > >
> > > >
> > > >> My point is: on what grounds do you consider it your job to be the
> > > >> arbiter of when a proposal for wikipedia creation is good enough?
> > > >
> > > > Who said I do consider it my job? Besides you, that is.
> > >
> > > You appear to take an extremely keen interest in the closing / opening
> > > of wikipedias, more so than the average poster on this list. I am just
> > > worried about newcomers who are excited about creating a wikipedia
> > > getting discouraged because someone, without the community's backing,
> > > acted as though he had the power to approve or deny the request. This
> > > came out extremely strongly in your last message to Manuel.
> > >
> > > I am not saying that you should stop being interested in the creation
> > > and destruction of wikipedias -- I am just worried about your style of
> > > discussing them.
> > >
> > > >
> > > > Mark
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > > Sincerely,
> > > Silas Snider
> > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > > Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)
> > > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> > >
> > > iD8DBQFEESQELeGN0GHdxM0RA1bOAJ9cv+yhyURgAsRZtglt96Iqr+4gsACfQIRl
> > > hWdkEhAIf6yWdx9WCmbi3AU=
> > > =K/Tl
> > > -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________
> > > Do You Yahoo!?
> > > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> > >
> > > __________________________________________________
> > > Do You Yahoo!?
> > > Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> > > http://mail.yahoo.com
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> >
> >
> > ---------------------------------
> > Yahoo! Mail
> > Bring photos to life! New PhotoMail makes sharing a breeze.
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Mail
> Bring photos to life! New PhotoMail  makes sharing a breeze.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Anthere

body:
Andreas Vil?n wrote:
> Please stop feeding this "future civilization" troll and ban him from
> the mailing list.
>
> /Andreas

Future civilization has been banned from wikipedia-l for more than 24
hours Andreas.

ant


body:
Anthere wrote:
> Andreas Vil?n wrote:
>
>>Please stop feeding this "future civilization" troll and ban him from
>>the mailing list.
>>
>>/Andreas
>
>
> Future civilization has been banned from wikipedia-l for more than 24
> hours Andreas.
>
> ant

By the way, someone is blanking all articles on mo.wikipedia, upon the
motive that it was decided so, and point out to my email.

It is totally incorrect. I do not support blanking the pages, nor the
deletion of the project.

This action, comments left by private email and comments left on my talk
page is slowly beginning to get me a bit upset :-)

Ant


from_name: Carl Fûrstenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Apology

body:
How can we know the content of an email to the foundation, if neither Jack
or the foundation have revealed the content of the letter in question?

On 3/12/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It appears we know the contents of the email Jack Thompson sent to the
> wikimedia foundation. Information that is theoreticaly of use to
> editors who may want to fix the article. The foundation was not the
> source of this information


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject: [WikiEN-l] [WikiEn-l] Please disable image uploads

body:
I just recieved a comment on my talk page regarding the copyright status of
a certain picture: "The planes are property of the Military of Peru, Thus
the pictures are not something that can be copyrighted."

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Sam Korn

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] What variant to use for Irish,
	Scottish and Welsh localities?

body:
On 3/11/06, Francis Tyers <spectre at ivixor.net> wrote:
> How about for towns with two names which are similar, but spelt
> differently:
>
> e.g. Cwmbr?n (Welsh) and Cwmbran (English) in Wales.
>
> (In case that 'a' didn't come out correct it is an a-circumflex)

Ironically, I have seen the town written with the Welsh spelling in
English and (once or twice) with the English spelling in Welsh.

I'm not quite sure what the moral of this story is.

--
Sam


from_name: Wikipedia Romania (Ronline)

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
I'm sorry to say this, but I think that any form of Latin --> Cyrillic
conversion would be most unacceptable for the Romanian Wikipedia. Unlike
Serbian (and Tatar, for example), Romanian is not a biscriptal language - it
is a language written in the Latin script. Making ro.wiki similar to
sr.wikimakes it seem as if the Cyrillic script is a script in which
Romanian can be
written as well, which is not true. The Cyrillic script for Moldovan is
being used in Transnistria only, and while there may be a need to cater for
content in that variant, mixing it up with the Romanian Wikipedia is, IMO,
much too contoversial. In total, only about 1% of total Romanian or Moldovan
speakers write in Cyrillic, and an increasingly large amount of them know
Latin as well.

People here know my viewpoints on such issues (I am very pro-minority
rights), but I personally find this proposal much too controversial. It
risks putting an end to the Romanian Wikipedia community.

Ronline


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Nathan Spaeth

subject: [Wikitech-l] Writing a Forum Extension

body:
I am planning on adding forum functionality to my wiki via extension. I'dd
first like to get comments from those of you more knowledgeable in regards
to php and MediaWiki. I would appreciate suggested modifications, or even
better, signs of support, so that I know that I'm not going about this in a
bassackwords way. Solutions to the problems at the bottom are especially
looked for. Here is my plan (which makes extensive use of subpages):

It would be called via something like <forum><forum>. This could be on talk
pages or main article pages. This will create a thread index, much like you
see with your normal VBulletin or PHPbb type forums. This page and all of
its subpages should then (desirably) be protected from editing.

Each thread would be a subpage of the the initial article. Each message
would be a subpage of the article. Each message would be included into the
thread page via template includes ( {{{{}}}} ).
So using 'Gatorade' as an example, we would have these potential addresses
(with Taste as a potential thread Title)...

Gatorade                 -The thread index
Gatorade/Taste       -The Taste thread, containg all of the messages in this
thread
Gatorade/Taste/16  -The 16th message of the Taste thread, viewed by itself

or

Talk:Gatorade                 -The thread index
Talk:Gatorade/Taste       -The Taste thread, containg all of the messages in
this thread
Talk:Gatorade/Taste/16  -The 16th message of the Taste thread, viewed by
itself

Some benefits of this system:
Requires very little modification to the main MediaWiki code. = Easy to
update MediaWiki in the future

It prevents people from making multiple threads with the same title. If
someone else came down a few months later and wanted to talk about 'Taste',
if they managed to avoid the 'Search' function they migh Possibly use the
same title as before, in whichcase they would get a warning about it and the
suggestion of adding on to the previous discussion if necessary.

It is easy to link to forums instead of the conventional way with urls like
:
http://someforum.somesite.com/viewtopic.php?t=138
http://someforum.somesite.com/viewforum.php?f=3&sid=e48431baee22f58e06561de4a6a5cf9d
and
http://someforum.somesite.com/index.php?s=3843d342de247afe550768eae06be2d2&showtopic=911

It Doesn't require it's own db schema and content is fully integrated with
MediaWiki.

Some drawbacks:
Its a bit clunky because it doesn't have its own db schema.

There were some other ones, but I forgot them now :/

Here are some problems I know I will face when implementing this:
The disabling of directly editing a whole Namespace and only the namespace
or, all potential article subpages for one particular Article.
Preventing each edit or new message from showing up on recent changes and
instead have a more Customized Recent Changes Message like 'Talk:Gatorade :
Loplin posted a reply in the Taste thread.'

Again, comments are appreciated.
Thanks
Nathan Spaeth

--
If you have a penny and I have a penny, and we exchange pennies, we both
have one penny but if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange
ideas, then, we will both have two ideas.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
I would personally make it a block for disruption rather than
stupidity, but only if a warning with the first offense doesn't
straighten him out.

Mgm


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 3/12/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >The designated agent is there for takedown notices of copyright
> >infringements, and they have to be in writing, not over the phone.
> >
> >
> Do you think that if the Wikimedia Foundation gets a phone call from
> someone complaining about copyright infringement, they're going to say,
> "Sorry, we're not going to do anything unless you send it in writing
> with all the elements required for a takedown notice"?
>
I don't know, but that's pretty off-topic.

> >Also, Jimmy has stated that most of the problems that people are
> >complaining over are not legal problems, but inaccuracy problems.
> >
> >
> The two are not neatly separable. Fundamentally, defamation cases
> involve inaccuracy problems.
>
But inaccuracy problems aren't necessarily defamation.

> >So, if I find an inaccuracy in Wikipedia, should I call up Danny?
> >
> No, you should edit the article, unless the article is actually about you.
>
> --Michael Snow

I thought there was no policy that articles on living people were
treated any differently.

Anthony


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Moldovan Wikipedia

body:
On 3/12/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> If you agree that minorities should be catered to, but you don't
> believe ro.wiki is the appropriate location, then what IS the
> appropriate location?
>
> Mark

A subdomain, such as mo-cyr:.
At the moment, however, there doesn't seem to be the demand for that.
But I think far too much energy has been put into this case to cater for a
use that at the moment isn't even there, when other Wikipedias, such as
Romany, which have active users willing to contribute and many potential
readers, sit in waiting.


body:
Oh... Sorry, I just got a bit upset I guess. Sorry about that.

/Andreas

On 3/12/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Andreas Vil?n wrote:
> > Please stop feeding this "future civilization" troll and ban him from
> > the mailing list.
> >
> > /Andreas
>
> Future civilization has been banned from wikipedia-l for more than 24
> hours Andreas.
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by
 Danny	under any circumstances

body:
G'day Florence,

> Gordon Joly wrote:
>
>>BCNU.... and  YMMV as always,
>
> Talking about inclusive and exclusive... what do BCNU and YMMV mean ?

BCNU = "I'll be seeing you".  You may find it amusing to imagine Gordon
with his thumb and index finger pressed together to form a circle, which
is in turn held over his eye to emphasise the "seeing".  Then again, you
might not.

YMMV = "Your Mileage May Vary", a totally outdated saying unfit for such
modern marvels as you and I.  The *real* abbreviation ought to be YKMASD.

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/279 - Release Date: 10/03/2006


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 18:40:31 +0000, you wrote:

>Which policy allows admins to block for stupidity?

WP:POINT arguably, also preserving them from the effects of their own
idiocy, as a matter of kindness.  Not that I'd have blocked for an
apparently honest mistake.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: David Gerard

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny
	under any circumstances

body:
>Using first names (or handles or nicknames) only is a method to keep
>the "in crowd" in, and the "out crowd" excluded.
>Some, like David Gerard, use real names almost everywhere in Wikipedia.

Er, no. I just said "Danny" here because he is User:Danny in most if
not all Wikimedia projects. I could say "Danny Wool", but a username
is often more likely to be known within the project, as it's the
username that does things.

And I mentioned not removing office tags *without at least asking*
because people were doing just that - on the assumption that the
Foundation is inherently corrupt or something and they must strike a
blow for the Community. Or something.

- s.


body:
On 3/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 18:40:31 +0000, you wrote:
>
> >Which policy allows admins to block for stupidity?
>
> WP:POINT arguably

WP:POINT only aplies when you are doing things that you don't want to
happen in order to make a point

--
geni


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Phone calls in office

body:
On 3/12/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Jimmy Wales wrote:
> > Steve Bennett wrote:
> >
> >>Can't speak for him, but maybe a rough idea of these numbers of angry
> >>phone calls would help us understand? I mean, are we talking one a
> >>week, or ten a day?
> >
> >
> > The total number of phone calls to the office from the general public
> > must be on the order of 50 per day.  The phone is constantly ringing,
> > say, every 10 minutes or so.  6 per hour.
> >
> > That's my guess, but Danny will likely be able to give a more accurate
> > estimate.
> >
> >
> >>What is *their* tone normally like? Is it primarily "uh, there seems
> >>to be some sort of error, what do I do about it?" or "you have 24
> >>hours to remove it before a court injunction arrives on your door
> >>step"?
> >
> >
> > They vary widely.  Some are just inquiries.  Some are looooong
> > explanations of some trivial point.  Some are extremely upset.  Some say
> > that there is an error.  Some say libel.  Some are sane. Some are raving
> > lunatics.  Some are in tears.
> >
> >
> >>How much time does it take to deal with a single one of these queries,
> >>in following up with the aggrieved person, buying them lunch or
> >>whatever?
> >
> >
> > It varies depending on the call.
>
> Incidently...
>
> Wikipedia is not only in english. And complaints or requests for
> information also exist in other languages, thought not as numerous than
> in english of course. I'll speak only of the french case then.
>
> My phone number is on the net, along with Nicolas Weeger's one (the
> president of the french chapter). It is necessary for proposals and
> mostly press requests (when a hot topic goes on the net, phone calls
> from press can be up to 5-10 people a day roughly).
>
> In the past few weeks, I have observed an increasing number of phone
> calls (I think because of traffic increase). Last week, it was roughly
> about 10 phone calls per day.
>
> Aside from days with a hot press topic, I would divide this 10 phone
> calls on average as
>
> 5 phone calls are from people who believe they are calling another
> office. They typed "red cross" on the net, found wikipedia article on
> the red cross. They think they are at the red cross. They follow the
> contact link. They find a phone number and they ask you for information
> on the situation in Africa, or how to get publishing rights for a famous
> author, or a seat for tonight in their favorite restaurant.
> TODO : explain to them that no, this is not the office of president Bush
> or their next sportwear shop, but Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
> When you are in bad luck, they insult you for not giving you the address
> they are looking for.
> TODO : stay calm and remember you are trying to give free access to
> information to everyone in the world. You may not remember the post
> office number though.

Hmm...perhaps say so on the contact page?

1 phone call is from someone who perfectly understood she is at the
> encyclopedia office, and want to know more about the cancer her sister
> in law just died from. Usually, the call is during the night; this is
> when people are scared by the dark and think of life and death.

TODO: Explain to them that all the information we have is already on
the encyclopedia?

1 phone call is from the press. Sometimes, they want YOU (neat !).
> Sometimes they want Jimbo (I give Florida office). Sometimes they want a
> spanish person (I succeeded to get interviewed instead last time though
> :-)). Sometimes they want the Technical Director...
> TODO : look franctically for the press interview partners page on
> internal to get the *right* number. Or go to irc speedily (I recognise
> Danny's speedy visits to irc as well to fix an issue :-))

Well that's sort of neat and yet kind of annoying?

1 phone call is someone looking for a job. Usually, the call comes from
> Nigeria. The line quality is very bad. They are nice, but generally
> sticky.
>
> 1 phone call is a business proposition.
> TODO : whilst you now feel like screaming, todo is to listen and tell
> them to write to board AT wikimedia.org. At least, they usually call at
> decent hours...

Hmm..I want a job, but that's beside the point.

1 phone call is a complainer.
> My current most active one is actually a person from a sect. He started
> calling me during Christmas holidays. Last phone call was 3 days ago.
> One day, he called 5 times.
> The most peculiar characteristic about these ones is that they seem to
> be very careful to call you at 2 in the morning, on week-ends or when
> you just succeeded to put the baby to sleep.
> TODO : good question... I am still wondering :-)

Hmm...

-------
>
> Now, the unfortunate fact is that, in reality, my home is not an office.
> The phone number is my personal phone number.
> At 2am, I usually sleep.
> And I am not paid to answer phone calls from lunatics :-)
>
> Recently, I have removed my phone number from various places.
>
> So, we have a long term issue, because I do not think phone calls will
> go down. Quite the opposite. And some of them (press, complaints,
> business proposals) are important to answer.
>
> Note that many others choose to write to our email ticketing system on
> OTRS. Today, they are 150 emails pending in the board AT wikimedia.org
> queue. I go there every day to at least identify the *most* urgent
> requests... and let all others pending. But each time some one is
> complaining, it is necessary to distinguish what is reasonable complaint
>   to what is pure raving... it takes time...
>
> So yes, when those requests are pilling up, I suppose we are acting
> rather quickly on wiki. Without explaining in length why we do this :-)
> We hope those who know relay the information of *why* we remove an
> article or delete a picture.
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

Don't we have some sort of office for such things? I mean I'd hate to put
individuals like you who are probably quite busy on the spot for such
things.

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: Alin Dosoftei

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Request for Romany Wikipedia

body:
Well, I worked on it for a few months (almost alone, that's why it took so
much time), just some chucks of the interface file remained for translation.
Now at this link it is said that this partial translation is obsolete:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LanguageRom.php

So is it possible to launch it in this phase?

Desiphral

On 3/10/06, Servien Ilaino <servien at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> *the is = the rest is
>
> 2006/3/10, Servien Ilaino <servien at gmail.com>:
> > I would like to remind everyone the is awaiting creation aswell...
> >
> > Serv
> >
> >
> > 2006/3/10, Andreas Vil?n <andreas.vilen at gmail.com>:
> > > I remember looking for a romany wp, since it's an official minority
> > > language in Sweden, and was surprised I didn't find any. I support
> > > this suggestion wholeheartedly, even if I can't contribute in the
> > > language.
> > >
> > > /Andreas
> > >
> > > On 3/10/06, Wikipedia Romania (Ronline) <rowikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Hi,
> > > >
> > > > I would like to request the creation of a Wikipedia in the Romany
> language,
> > > > with the code "rom", the request having already been approved over
> at:
> > > >
> > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages
> > > >
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Requests_for_new_languages/Vlax_Romany
> > > >
> > > > There is a test Wikipedia at:
> > > >
> > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Test-wp/rom/
> > > >
> > > > This currently contains 14 articles, some written in the Latin
> alphabet and
> > > > some in Devanagari. The Wikipedia will be biscriptal, with
> conversion being
> > > > possible 1-on-1, but this will be implemented automatically later
> on.
> > > >
> > > > The interface file is at:
> > > > http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/LanguageRom.php
> > > >
> > > > The test Wikipedia is also linked from the Wikimedia Romania portal,
> at:
> > > > http://www.wikimedia.ro/
> > > > So, it would be time to set up an actual Wikipedia in this language,
> which
> > > > is spoken by Roma (Gypsy) people, and has around 250,000 speakers in
> Romania
> > > > and more than 1.5 million worldwide. The Roma are the largest
> minority in
> > > > Europe, and the largest language in Europe without a Wikipedia.
> > > >
> > > > Thanks,
> > > >
> > > > Ronline
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


body:
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 21:56:44 +0000, you wrote:

>WP:POINT only aplies when you are doing things that you don't want to
>happen in order to make a point

Or things you don't think will happen.  Or you are just being bloody
minded.  Jason Gastrich found lots of ways :-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: Filip Maljkovic

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
Exactly! The situation is not really same as with Serbian Wikipedia. In
the SR case, Cyrillic and Latin scripts are both equal and are both
considered standard scripts. Therefore, an automatic transliterator
makes sense. However, in RO/MO case, only a small percentage of
speakers, let alone Wikipedians, use Cyrillics. It would make no sense
for RO to have both scripts if one of them is virtually never going to
be used. But, that can be avoided. SR Wikipedia now has the engine and 4
extra tabs for 4 written standards of the Serbian language and users can
always see those tabs. However, if coded properly, one could make such
an extension where the extra tab (for Cyrillic script) could be seen
only if a user wanted it to be seen (which would basically require
checking a box in user preferences). That way, Romanian users wouldn't
have to know that the transliteration tool even existed, AND Moldavian
speakers could turn the feature on if they wanted.

Filip

Caroline Ford wrote:

>There seems to be no way that Romanians will tolerate cyrillic language
>(even via a software setting) on their wikipedia.
>
>Caroline/secretlondon
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
>[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Neil Harris
>Sent: 12 March 2006 18:08
>To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy
>
>Jacky PB wrote:
>
>
>>Hello,
>>
>>I feel that I need a clarification on wikipedia policies related to hobby
>>
>>
>wikipedias.
>
>
>>Consider the case of the Moldovan language. The Moldovan wikipedia has
>>
>>
>been created and administered by Mark Williamson, which does not speak the
>language correctly. He copied (and replaced the latin script with cyrillic)
>a lot articles from ro.wiki, just to create what looks like a viable
>wikipedia. I presume exotic languages are a hobby for him, I have no problem
>with this. Even originality is not a problem, given that the purpose of wiki
>is to inform.
>
>
>>However, the Moldovan language is not extinct, so the oppinion of
>>native speakers should count. The problem being that no
>>Moldovan-speaking wikipedia user supports Mark Williamson. And when I
>>say no user, I really mean that there is none. Actually, most Moldovan
>>users dislike the existence of this wiki, because the Moldovan
>>language is actually a creation of the Soviet authorities. To support
>>this affirmation, note that there is no registered Moldovan user on
>>en.wiki, meta.wiki, and not even mo.wiki. :)
>>
>>So, given that this hobby wikipedia actually hurts the very people it
>>was intended  to help, is it normal that it remains online? I remind you
>>
>>
>once more that no actual Moldovan supports it. By Moldovan speaker I mean a
>person able to write Moldovan correctly.
>
>
>>I mean, if wikipedia policy is to grant users hobby wikipedias, Mark
>>
>>
>should get his, but maybe not using the official ISO code.
>
>
>>Yours,
>>Dpotop
>>
>>PS: I am sorry for bugging you with this, but some things discussed here
>>
>>
>must be clearly said.
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>
>In the apparent absence of community support for mo:, and after watching the
>many comments on this list, I think the best short-term option is to start
>work on the transliteration software settings.
>
>Then we can lock, rather than delete, the mo: Wikipedia, with a note saying
>why, what the planned changes are, and when they are expected to be carried
>out.
>
>Then, when the automated transliteration software has been properly
>configured to support both Cyrillic and Latin scripts in both the content
>and user interface, the content of mo: can be deleted, perhaps after a
>period of a few weeks to allow for any valuable content to be archived, and
>transferred if necessary.
>
>Whether mo: should simply redirect, or whether it should (for example)
>change the user interface or default language settings, would then be a
>matter for the Moldovan community.  Liaison between the larger community and
>as many actual Moldovan speakers as possible would be very useful in getting
>this process going, and would also be useful in expanding the Moldovan
>Wikipedia community.
>
>Given that someone has (I believe) already written some language-appropriate
>Latin <-> Cyrillic transliteration code, and given MediaWiki's support for
>automated transliteration (eg. in the traditional and modern Chinese
>Wikipedias), the only problem is the will to get the transliteration code
>set up.
>
>If I've followed the debate properly, I hope this would be a win for both
>Latin and Cyrillic users.
>
>Perhaps Jacky and Mark would like to help with getting the transliteration
>tables ready?
>
>-- Neil
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>--
>No virus found in this incoming message.
>Checked by AVG Free Edition.
>Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/279 - Release Date: 10/03/2006
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikipedia-l mailing list
>Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Download history tool?

body:
On 3/12/06, Ilmari Karonen <nospam at vyznev.net> wrote:
> > Time t0  User A comment1
> > Time t1  User A
> > Time t2  User A comment2
> > Time t3  User B comment 3
> >
> > It shows this as
> > Time t0 User A comment1//---//comment2
> > Time t3 User B
> >
> > So if you attempt to compare between t0 and t3, you of course get all
> > the changes made in t1, t2 and t3, whereas you probably just wanted
> > t3. Not sure how to deal with that one.
>
> It's probably better to give diffs against the *last* edit in each
> group.  Doing so not only solves this particular case, but is probably
> more meaningful in general.

Ok, after totally confusing myself for the last hour or so, I agree
that that is more meaningful. It's also the way the code works, since
my t0-t3 are actually in reverse chronological order. I actually
rewrote the code to do it the other way, and am now pretty sure that
the first way was better ;)

Well, that's nice.

Steve


body:
G'day Florence,

> Mark Gallagher wrote:
>> G'day Florence,
>>> Gordon Joly wrote:
>>>> BCNU.... and  YMMV as always,
>>>
>>> Talking about inclusive and exclusive... what do BCNU and YMMV
>>> mean ?
>>
>> BCNU = "I'll be seeing you".  You may find it amusing to imagine
>> Gordon with his thumb and index finger pressed together to form a
>> circle, which is in turn held over his eye to emphasise the
>> "seeing".  Then again, you might not.
>>
>> YMMV = "Your Mileage May Vary", a totally outdated saying unfit for
>> such modern marvels as you and I.  The *real* abbreviation ought to
>> be YKMASD.
>
> ?!?!?

Heh, I guess I was a bit obscure.  Whimsical mood; you know how it is.

> Well, I found this one :
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Your_mileage_may_vary

That's a pretty good description.  YMMV means, basically, "things may be
different for you than they are for me".

> http://www.kcmetro.cc.mo.us/~crosby/IllBeSeeingYou.html ???

"I'll be seeing you" is a phrase used by some when they say goodbye.
It's equivalent to "See you later" or "Until we meet again".

The thing with the fingers was a reference to the television show
/Prisoner/ or, for our younger readers, /Babylon 5/.

> /me goes banana

The YKMASD thing I just made up to be funny (did it work?), and stands
for Your Kilometreage May Act Slightly Differently, which is pure parody.

Cheers,

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 268.2.1/279 - Release Date: 10/03/2006


body:
On 3/12/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
> I agree with geni (world to end soon; film at 11): Eclectick should not
> be blocked.  He's astoundingly ignorant and way too aggressive, but I
> still hope that careful raps with the cluebat will straighten him out.

Me2. I'm not an admin, and I have a somewhat utopian view of how they
should behave. But I would be cut as hell to be blocked for pure
stupidity or ignorance. Unless the guy showed wilful disregard for
procedure (as opposed to thinking that AfD was a good place to deal
with this stuff), or was a repeat offender, or refused to head
warnings etc etc.

I guess I don't like blocking. And I feel like people deserve a "you
will be blocked" warning at least. But I suppose adminning is
frustrating work too. So...(conclusion at 12:30, straight after Sean's
film).

Steve


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
Caroline Ford wrote:
> There seems to be no way that Romanians will tolerate cyrillic language
> (even via a software setting) on their wikipedia.
>
> Caroline/secretlondon
>
Okay, then.

Let the ro: and mo: Wikipedias be interfaces to the same underlying
data, then but let the Wikipedia be a Cyrillic-free zone, both in terms
of content and interface, and mo: Wikipedia be the same as ro:, only
with interface and content optionally presented in Cyrillic, with
two-way transliteration for editing, as per the Chinese and Serbian
Wikipedias.

-- Neil


subject: [WikiEN-l] Reporting interesting editors to the press

body:
Hi all,
 Is there a policy or anything on tipping off the press that famous
people are editing articles related to themselves? Nothing like the US
congress article, but I've been following one where two somewhat well
known editors are apparently attempting to whitewash history. There's
a small chance that or or two local papers might find this amusing
enough to run a 50 word article in the IT section on it.

Before I do anything rash and silly, what guidance could one offer me,
or what could one say to talk me out of doing this?

Thanks,
Steve


body:
On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless
> maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).

You have obviously never seen provisional liquidators or policemen
with warrants in action. There are lots of ways an organisation like
Wikimedia Foundation could be shut down a lot faster than overnight.
Hopefully none of them will happen :)

Tip for imagination: Policeman with warrant walks in, says "This place
is shutting down in the next five minutes, and those servers over
there are coming with me".

Steve


body:
On 3/12/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> Forgot to add the connection between the above points and the "some
> articles having different policies" -- it's because appealing to the
> Foundation is not official policy, but is an unwritten and semi-secret
> method for getting changes to happen, only those who know about that
> avenue (or figure it out) get to use it -- creating the effective
> policy difference.

Yep, only those who know the secret back passage can get the number of
grandchildren in their article changed to its correct date. It seems
to me from what I've read that most of the changes that get made in
these cases are made as normal edits by Danny or someone. Only a very
small number of articles get the "office" treatment, and those are
publicly signposted.

No one has yet pointed out a case where this avenue has been abused,
either. That is, where an NPOV article become SymPOV due to threats by
lawyers etc.

So you're probably taking it a little too seriously.

Steve


body:
On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 23:46:37 +0100, you wrote:

>Yep, only those who know the secret back passage can get the number of
>grandchildren in their article changed to its correct date. It seems
>to me from what I've read that most of the changes that get made in
>these cases are made as normal edits by Danny or someone. Only a very
>small number of articles get the "office" treatment, and those are
>publicly signposted.

Which is actually little different from {{db-attack}}.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


list: foundation-l

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images

body:
W. Guy Finley wrote:

>On 3/9/06 11:08 AM, "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
>
>>W. Guy Finley wrote:
>>
>>
>>>I think the first step is that any unlicensed image being uploaded as fair
>>>use and does not have a source and fair use rationale should be speedied.  I
>>>bet that's more than half of them right there.  The process of tagging them
>>>as no source and then waiting a week is just way too long and too
>>>susceptible to error.  It's the UPLOADER'S duty to make sure he/she is
>>>meeting license requirements, if they aren't met the image should go.  It
>>>shouldn't be the duty of the reviewer to prove it and that's usually the
>>>perception.
>>>
>>>
>>When you consider that some of these have already been here for a long
>>time without attracting attention, one more week is obviously a very
>>short time to wait.  It avoids the error of creating unnecessary
>>confusion.  Nobody's challenging the uploader's duty, or passing that
>>duty on to the reviewer; your unique perception does not make it so.
>>There's no reason to panic about this.
>>
>>
>Peruse IFD or CP lately Ray?  Have fun wading through it.  Nobody is
>panicking, I think those who are trying to police images are getting worn
>out.  After all, you make so many friends doing it.
>
>To many editors "fair use" is "it's cool and I want to use it, that's fair"
>and so they steal it and use it.
>
I absolutely agree that those individuals do not understand what fair
use is.

>You put the blatant copyvio image up for
>IFD and the uploader objects, no one else votes (because IFD is already full
>of scores of copyvio images already, who wants to go and review them all
>every day to vote on IFD) and the thing gets kept.
>
Why should it be a voting matter?  My argument was to provide adequate
time for uploaders to respond, not to make a presumption that their
efforts  are correct.  If within that adequate time they can do not
bettter than a lame "It's cool" kind of argument they shouldn't depend
on a vote to save them.

>Even better, there are many editors who think that citing a website that is
>a repository of copyvio and unlicensed images qualifies as the image's
>source, it does not.
>
Agreed.

>Asserting "fair use" of an image is a nuanced legal concept that many
>editors cannot grasp so I feel something is needed to help rectify the
>situation.
>
The nuances are not always easy to grasp, and there is no consistency in
legal interpretations by the courts.  I'm very much in favour of using
fair use material, but it must be real fair use.

Ec


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images


body:
This just came to my mind: If the policemen removes the servers, doesn't
they break the GFDL?

On 3/12/06, Jesse W <jessw at netwood.net> wrote:
>
> > Steve Bennett stated for the record:
> >
> >> On 3/12/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
> >>
> >>> My point was that such a shutdown wouldn't happen overnight (unless
> >>> maybe you pissed off the executive branch of the government enough).
> >>
> >> You have obviously never seen provisional liquidators or policemen
> >> with warrants in action. There are lots of ways an organisation like
> >> Wikimedia Foundation could be shut down a lot faster than overnight.
> >> Hopefully none of them will happen :)
> >>
> >> Tip for imagination: Policeman with warrant walks in, says "This place
> >> is shutting down in the next five minutes, and those servers over
> >> there are coming with me".
>
> This might be a violation of WP:BEANS, but...
>
> If that happened, this would be my understanding of the fallback plan:
>
> #A quick topic change on #wikipedia (and #wikipedia-overflow ), along
> with a post by one of the Foundation members (unless the policeman also
> had a gag order, which is possible)
> #A massive influx of people to http://wikiinfo.org (or whatever it's
> called - the fork run by one of our Arbitrators)
> #Various wiki pages set up there to discuss new hosting, funding, etc.
>
> #wikipedia could not be taken down unless the policeman was able to get
> a warrant to take down the entire freenode network, which would set up
> such massive shock waves that the removal of Wikipedia would be a small
> thing - freenode hosts a *lot* of projects.
>
> While it might be possible to do a coordinated takedown of the main
> editable forks of Wikipedia, this would be considerably more trouble.
>
> Also, don't we have database master replication across international
> borders, specifically, for the toolserver?  If we're replicating the
> database from Florida to Germany, even if the servers in St. Petersberg
> were taken down, wouldn't the toolserver still work?  And as some of
> our admins are not residents of the USA, couldn't they still work with
> the remaining servers to reconstruct a non-US based system?  Or are we
> considering Interpol's involvement, and a coordinated set of policemen
> in multiple countries?
>
> Just pointing this out,
>         Jesse Weinstein
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-03-13

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

Running test BUG 361: URL within URL, not bracketed... FAILED!
Running test External links: invalid character... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2702: Mismatched <i> and <a> tags are invalid... FAILED!
Running test A table with no data.... FAILED!
Running test A table with nothing but a caption... FAILED!
Running test Link containing "#<" and "#>" % as a hex sequences... FAILED!
Running test Template with thumb image (wiht link in description)... FAILED!
Running test Link to image page... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A ISBN with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887: A <math> with a thumbnail... FAILED!
Running test BUG 561: {{/Subpage}}... FAILED!
Running test Simple category... FAILED!
Running test Basic section headings... FAILED!
Running test Section headings with TOC... FAILED!
Running test Handling of sections up to level 6 and beyond... FAILED!
Running test Resolving duplicate section names... FAILED!
Running test Template with sections, __NOTOC__... FAILED!
Running test Link inside a section heading... FAILED!
Running test Media link with nasty text... FAILED!
Running test Bug 2095: link with pipe and three closing brackets... FAILED!
Running test Parser hook: static parser hook inside a comment... FAILED!
Running test Sanitizer: Validating the contents of the id attribute (bug 4515)... FAILED!

Passed 266 of 288 tests (92.36%) FAILED!


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
Thanks for the reply, but a reply really needs to come from
Jimmy/Danny/Anthere/ Angela etc. on this.

On 3/12/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
>
> >On 3/12/06, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Delirium wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>I didn't say anything quite that extreme, and contrary to Jimbo's
> >>>assumption, I'm not particularly angry about it either.  I'm just
> >>>worried that the current policy of letting some people go "over the
> >>>head" of editors by taking things to the Wikimedia Foundation, which
> >>>then deals with them in a top-down manner, will introduce systemic bias
> >>>into the encyclopedia.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Current policy does not let anyone go "over the head" of editors and the
> >>Wikimedia Foundation does not deal with them in a "top-down manner".
> >>
> >>
> >>> This leads to some articles having different policies
> >>>than other articles,
> >>>
> >>>
> >>This is false.
> >>
> >>
> >Now I'm confused. Can you tell me which of the following is inaccurate
> >/ not true?
> >
> >1. Calling the Foundation to complain about Wikipedia is not an
> >officially recognized way to change content on Wikipedia.
> >
> >
> This is the inaccurate statement. Contacting the Wikimedia Foundation
> with a complaint has been officially recognized as a way to address
> inappropriate content for as long as the organization has existed.
> That's why we have a designated agent, for example, as required by law.

According to Anthony, this is not the case... I'll wait for Jimmy to
resolve this question.

> >2. Calls to the Foundation complaining about Wikipedia content have led to
> >a) edits to Wikipedia by Foundation staff
> >b) Blanking of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff
> >c) Protection of Wikipedia articles by Foundation staff
> >d) Various combinations of the above
> >
> >
> Also, deletion of Wikipedia articles as well as images and other files.
> I don't see a problem with this. Do you expect the Foundation to not do
> anything about legitimate complaints? It has to take action regarding
> such complaints, otherwise it loses any legal protection it has against
> being liable for the content on Wikipedia.

I wasn't claiming this was a problem -- I was just trying to
accurately represent the situation.

> >3. Actions listed above by Foundation staff are sometimes marked by
> >WP:OFFICE and any interference with such actions by any editor can
> >lead to revokation of editing/sysop rights.
> >
> >
> Again, why is there a problem? Violations of plenty of other policies
> can lead to revocation of editing or administrative *privileges*.

Again, I wasn't calling this a problem. See above.


from_name: Jacky PB

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
Hello again, and thanks for your interest in the
problem.

Here is my views on a possible transliteration engine
on ro.wiki.

Personaly, I have nothing against having it. However,
as the vote on mo.wiki shows, only few share my
position. And the two reasons are quite
straightforward:
1. Historically speaking, the cyrillic script is a
remnant of Soviet colonial policies, only maintained
(by force) in Transnistria.
2. No request for moldovan in cyrillic came from a
Moldovan speaker.

Given than, I believe that the best solution is Mark
installing the script in his private space, or maybe
in the test wikipedia area, pending the arrival on
wikipedia of actual Moldovan users interested in the
issue.

What do you believe?
Dpotop

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Don't remove a WP:OFFICE tag put there by Danny
 under any circumstances

body:
Gordon Joly wrote:
<snip stuff about Danny>
> And by the same token Jimbo, Danny, SJ, Angela, Eloquence, Athere...
> we all know who they are.
>

You mean Anthere... but do you know who Elian, mav, notafish, soufron
and Brion are?

--
Alphax - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax
Contributor to Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
"We make the internet not suck" - Jimbo Wales
Public key: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alphax/OpenPGP
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from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
Because they are motivated by a burning hatred for anything "Russian",
including Cyrillic.

Mark

On 13/03/06, Ole Andersen <palnatoke at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/03/06, Caroline Ford <caroline at secretlondon.me.uk> wrote:
> > There seems to be no way that Romanians will tolerate cyrillic language
> > (even via a software setting) on their wikipedia.
>
> In that case, the obvious solution is to have it elsewhere (if it is
> wanted by anyone, of course). Why anybody would object to any language
> being written by somebody else in a particular alphabet, is beyond my
> understanding. Nobody is being forced to use it.
>
> All in all - if someone wants to recreate dawiki in Devanagari or
> enwiki in the Hebrew alphabet, why should I care? It may be a waste of
> resources, but not ground for hissyfits as we have seen here.
>
> Ole
> (User:Palnatoke on several WPs)
>
> --
> http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
> * CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc *
> h:+45 36 47 31 59 w: +45 35 45 44 29
> Triskelion 2. april: http://palnatoke.org/Triskelion.htm
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: SPUI

subject: [WikiEN-l] more WP:OFFICE shenanigans

body:
Apparently WP:OFFICE is being used to keep any content written by a
self-identified pedophile from being in an article, just because of the
identity of the person who wrote it, whether or not the content is NPOV.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Justin_Berry#OFFICE_protection


from_name: Jovana Milicevic

subject: [Foundation-l] Digest from Wikimedia SCG

body:
Since there was not so much media activities, I didn't send report every
week.

12. February 2006.
- The article about Rancic Milosh's visit to Zagreb was published on the
site seecult.org
- The article about Rancic Milosh's visit to MAMA (Zagreb) was published on
the site of daily Danas
14. February 2006.
-Milos Rancic speaked in the program called Digital icons, on the second
channel of Belgrade radio.
16. February 2006
-Milosh Rancic had an interview for the radio B92. It will be broadcasted on
18th or 19th February
18. February 2006.
-Wikipedia was shown up as the main news on the National television website,
at the part called "intersting".
3. March 2006.
-Cultural portal of the southeastern Europe, SEECULT.org published article
about WIkipedia at the part called "intersting".

Jovana Milicevic
Wikimedia Serbia and Montenegro


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Digest from Wikimedia SCG


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Few questions...

body:
NSLE (Wikipedia) wrote:
> Hi all, I've got a few questions. I floated the idea of adding a new CSD
> criteria in the admin channel yesterday to deal with April Fools hoax
> articles, but was told CSD G1 (patent nonsense) would take care of them. Is
> that necessarily right, as I seem to recall reading somewhere that some of
> last year's hoaxes had to go through (V/A?)FD?

Oh dear, I can just see "Jokes for Deletion" now, with plenty of "nf,
d." (not funny, delete).

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]


from_name: Andreas Vilén

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
So? For example the entire concept of an article about the country of
Macedonia angers many Greek people. Since when was the fact that
someone could get angry about something an argument not to do
something?

/Andreas

On 3/13/06, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> That's already been proposed, and it seems like a good idea.
>
> The only troubling part of your proposal is that data could be stored
> in the database in Cyrillic, which I think might anger some Romanians.
>
> Mark
>
> On 12/03/06, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
> > Caroline Ford wrote:
> > > There seems to be no way that Romanians will tolerate cyrillic language
> > > (even via a software setting) on their wikipedia.
> > >
> > > Caroline/secretlondon
> > >
> > Okay, then.
> >
> > Let the ro: and mo: Wikipedias be interfaces to the same underlying
> > data, then but let the Wikipedia be a Cyrillic-free zone, both in terms
> > of content and interface, and mo: Wikipedia be the same as ro:, only
> > with interface and content optionally presented in Cyrillic, with
> > two-way transliteration for editing, as per the Chinese and Serbian
> > Wikipedias.
> >
> > -- Neil
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> "Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Delirium

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

>>Isn't a directive from the front office saying "nobody can edit this
>>page" a top-down directive?  How else would you describe it?
>>
>Why does it need to be described in the first place? For rhetorical
>purposes, as is clear by the choice of description you're applying.
>
>
How can we talk about things on a mailing list of we aren't allowed to
use words and phrases?  I'm interested in discussing the class of cases
where the front office gives a directive relating to an article, e.g.
"do not unprotect this article"; or "rewrite this article from scratch
with no pedophiles as authors"; or some other such directive.  A
shorthand way of referring to such cases, which captures the essence of
the matter being disputed, is "top-down directive".

If you really prefer, I could say something like, "non-optional
suggestions resulting from Wikimedia Foundation activity", but that
seems a bit silly.  Do you have a better term you'd prefer?

-Mark


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
Dpotop ignored the users I listed. It doesn't matter WHY a script is
present, only that it IS.

Mark

On 13/03/06, Jacky PB <dpotop1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Hello again, and thanks for your interest in the
> problem.
>
> Here is my views on a possible transliteration engine
> on ro.wiki.
>
> Personaly, I have nothing against having it. However,
> as the vote on mo.wiki shows, only few share my
> position. And the two reasons are quite
> straightforward:
> 1. Historically speaking, the cyrillic script is a
> remnant of Soviet colonial policies, only maintained
> (by force) in Transnistria.
> 2. No request for moldovan in cyrillic came from a
> Moldovan speaker.
>
> Given than, I believe that the best solution is Mark
> installing the script in his private space, or maybe
> in the test wikipedia area, pending the arrival on
> wikipedia of actual Moldovan users interested in the
> issue.
>
> What do you believe?
> Dpotop
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
> I feel that's a very inaccurate representation of the Romanian point of view
> on this proposed transliteration. What must be understood is that Cyrillic
> is controversial for Romanian simply because of historical context. This
> can't be discounted, and I think people should a bit more sensitive to this
> issue. It doesn't compare with Devanagari for English or, say, Arabic script
> for Swedish. But the point is that even those Wikipedias would never be
> accepted.

Ronline, you're speaking from a very idealistic place. In your world,
gays, gypsies, and Jews are all accepted as equals by Romanians. But
the reality is, many Romanians do not share these ideals with you.
*You* may not have a burning hatred for anything Russian, but it's
clear many Romanians do.

Case in point -- if there were an English WP in Devanagari, no
Americans would go to the lengths Romanians have gone to to campaign
for its closure. The attitude would be, "It's a bit ridiculous, but
why should we care?"

So much time has been spent on the Moldovan Wikipedia that it's
apparent many Romanians do care about the issue, and it's also very
clear that they have a burning hatred for anything Russian,
considering the fact that I have been called "Russian" (in Romanian)
as an insult by Romanians, which doesn't make a lot of sense -- I'm
certainly not Russian, but I'm not sure why it should be used as an
insult. Are Russians evil demons or something??

> In any case - Mark seems to believe that Romanians have a "burning hatred"
> for anything Russian, including Cyrillic. This is definitely not the case.
> Rather, the writing of Romanian in Cyrillic is something that is not
> performed by any Romanians, bar a series of people who declare themselves
> ethnic Moldovans in an unrecognised state. For that reason, implementing a
> conversion script touches on people's sensitivities. The Latin script is a
> link that Romania has to the rest of the Western world. Using a Cyrillic
> script that would be treated on par with Latin implies a sort of Cyrillic
> hegemony for most of Romanians and Moldovans, and serves as a painful
> reminder for the times when people in the Moldovan SSR were forced to learn
> the language using Cyrillic characters.

"Forced to learn the language using Cyrillic characters" is a phrase I
have seen used almost exclusively by Romanians. Moldovans just speak
of a script change, of reversion to Latin script. These people had
much more important things to worry about at the time than what script
they wrote in. Even during perestroica, there were no protests to
revert to Latin -- the MSSR gov't simply did that without any sort of
popular outcry.

> * The Kurdish Wikipedia uses both Arabic and Latin script, but there is no
> conversion. This, IMO, is quite a messy approach. Either have two separate
> Wikipedias (there's nothing wrong with that), or imply automatic conversion.

The main problem is Kurdish dialects. They are largely mutually
unintelligible, and are also divided along the lines of script. Sorani
and Gorani usually use Arabic, Kurmanji and Zazaki usually use Latin.

> * The Tatar Wikipedia uses the Latin script, which is non-official, yet
> there is no content at all in Cyrillic. There is no clear policy on this
> (ideally, conversion should be implemented).

Actually, while I was troubled by this for a while, I found out that
Latin is the official script for Tatar in Tatarstan. This is in
conflict with the fact that Cyrillic is, by a recent national law, the
official script for all languages of the Russian Federation, however,
the Tatar law still exists and Tatars themselves seem to be embracing
Latin.

> * Automatic conversion is messy. For example, the Serbian Wikipedia
> continues to be Cyrillic-default, and one must switch to Latin everytime (
> i.e. when a link is clicked from a Latin page, it still takes you to the
> Cyrillic version). AFAIK, pages also can't be edited in Latin. I presume
> this is the case for the Chinese WP as well.

When you edit, the existing content is not converted, no. However, you
can add new content in Latin. Same at zh.wp, except that it chooses
one script or the other based on your IP range and cookies.

Mark


from_name: Keith Old

body:
Sean,

I have speedy kept the article as:

* the nominator did not sign the nomination;

* all of the votes were keep with seveal speedy keeps; and

* the nominator appeared to want just one sentence deleted which should be
handled through the talk page process.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster

On 3/13/06, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Please permit me to call attention to
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Natural_circulation
>
>
> Full disclosure: I am the article's originator, and apparently a mortal
> threat to national security.
>
> - --
> Sean Barrett     | Power corrupts. Absolute power is really cool.
> sean at epoptic.org |
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
> iD8DBQFEFGPgMAt1wyd9d+URAgmPAJ4uwXZGrCuPB+jxMP3wV2IikuJyIQCggWjH
> ngsu+h+d8kE+U4xGG/iojv8=
> =jjW3
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: textbook-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] major WikiBooks cleanup

body:
Karl Wick wrote:

>For the record, I myself am just a student (well, graduated now.) I'd
>welcome constructive contributions from everyone who is able to make them.
>
>And no plans for any pruning, just looking for the way to present the
>available information in the way where the greatest number of people can
>find meaningful material as painlessly as possible. It's about focus.
>
>Karl
>
>
I'd like to note that the pruning and interior cleanup of Wikibooks has been happening now for some time.  The very active Votes for Deletion is a demonstration of this, which has also served as a general forum for trying to determine on a case by case basis what kinds of content ought to remain and what should go.

For the record, I tend to try and keep stuff here rather than remove stuff all over the place, but there has been some content added to Wikibooks that simply didn't belong.  Several projects like the 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica or posting the Quoran have been moved to Wikisource, some content has been moved to the Academic Publishing and Fiction Wikicities, and the Jokebook has become its own independent project all to itself and completely removed from Wikibooks.

Is the the kind of pruning that was being refered to?

I also like what Karl has been doing on the front page.  The previous front page had been a good introduction to Wikibooks and served its purpose, but Wikibooks has simply grown so much that all of the books on Wikibooks is now simply overwhelming to a brand new user.  If you look at the bottom of the page, even the number of active Wikibooks projects in other languages has grown considerably, and (unofficially) I've culled out those alternative language Wikibooks projects that have less than 10 pages of actual content.

If you look at the front pages of the top six (by page count) language Wikibooks, you see a huge variety of approaches to cataloging this information.  Indeed the discussion that took place on Staff Lounge for English Wikibooks took special note of the French and German Wikibooks as well as from other Wikimedia projects and some of the ideas that seemed to fit our current situation were adopted.

A good demonstration about the growth and development of Wikibooks is clearly the number of Wikibooks that are now available in PDF format.  I count over 21.  Because it does take some effort to make a PDF version, this is an example of content that has developed at least to a point that somebody found it worthwhile to assemble the pages of the Wikibook and put a printable edition out.  This is an outstanding development.  These have been available for some time, but I've got to thank Robin for putting these together in one place.

--
Robert Scott Horning


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 3/13/06, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> "geni" <geniice at gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:f80608430603111428p74b30b71ve7e5f645f7a828c7 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 3/11/06, Carl F?rstenberg
> <azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation
> > > could handle the worst case scenario (it could happen sooner or later,
> > > so I
> > > think it's better to be prepared)
> > It's not a likely scenario. A more likely one is that a large number of
> > mid level politicians (i.e. the ones for whom wikipedia is the top hit
> > on Google) figure out they can have anything embarrassing knocked out of
> > wikipedia for say the week before the election.
>
> At which point *our* article on said politician moves lower down the ranks
> at Google having been overtaken by the huge number of other web-pages
> commenting on their rank stupidity at trying to censor one of the most
> visible sites on the Internet :-)
>
> HTH HAND
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>

You say that as though it's a good thing (or a joke).  I'd say it's neither.

Anthony


from_name: Michael Snow

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>
>>> The designated agent is there for takedown notices of copyright
>>> infringements, and they have to be in writing, not over the phone.
>>>
>> Do you think that if the Wikimedia Foundation gets a phone call from
>> someone complaining about copyright infringement, they're going to
>> say, "Sorry, we're not going to do anything unless you send it in
>> writing with all the elements required for a takedown notice"?
>
> Well Michael...
>
> In all good faith, this happens. Whether on the phone or on otrs, when
> the message sounds reasonnable, and in particular when it cites a book
> or a website where the image or text comes from, yes, we actually
> remove the image or the text, on the assumption of good faith.
>
> When the request sounds a bit the one of a lunatic, we do not
> necessarily do so... We do not straight ask the person information
> required for a takedown notice, but we certainly do ask a little bit
> more information to justify the claim of cp infringment :-)

Sorry, I should have been more precise, but I was referring to the first
type of complaint only, not random rants containing legal threats. Those
get disregarded if the basis for the complaint isn't apparent and they
don't comply with the formalities, yes.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images

body:
On 3/12/06, W. Guy Finley <wgfinley at dynascope.com> wrote:
> Asserting "fair use" of an image is a nuanced legal concept that many
> editors cannot grasp so I feel something is needed to help rectify the
> situation.
>
> --Guy  (User:Wgfinley)
>

There's far too much of a focus on what's legal and what isn't, and
far too little focus on what's free and what isn't.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images


body:
Delirium wrote:

> Michael Snow wrote:
>
>>> Isn't a directive from the front office saying "nobody can edit this
>>> page" a top-down directive?  How else would you describe it?
>>
>> Why does it need to be described in the first place? For rhetorical
>> purposes, as is clear by the choice of description you're applying.
>
> How can we talk about things on a mailing list of we aren't allowed to
> use words and phrases?

Nobody's denying you the ability to use words and phrases. I'm pointing
out that these words and phrases are being used as rhetoric, and that
insisting other people should agree to and adopt your rhetoric is
counterproductive.

>   I'm interested in discussing the class of cases where the front
> office gives a directive relating to an article, e.g. "do not
> unprotect this article"; or "rewrite this article from scratch with no
> pedophiles as authors"; or some other such directive.  A shorthand way
> of referring to such cases, which captures the essence of the matter
> being disputed, is "top-down directive".
>
> If you really prefer, I could say something like, "non-optional
> suggestions resulting from Wikimedia Foundation activity", but that
> seems a bit silly.  Do you have a better term you'd prefer?

To my reading, "directive from the Wikimedia Foundation" seems to
capture the entirety of that phrase. Again, calling it "top-down" is
pure rhetoric.

--Michael Snow


from_name: W. Guy Finley

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images

body:
On 3/13/06 1:56 AM, "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>> You put the blatant copyvio image up for
>> IFD and the uploader objects, no one else votes (because IFD is already full
>> of scores of copyvio images already, who wants to go and review them all
>> every day to vote on IFD) and the thing gets kept.
>>
> Why should it be a voting matter?  My argument was to provide adequate
> time for uploaders to respond, not to make a presumption that their
> efforts  are correct.  If within that adequate time they can do not
> bettter than a lame "It's cool" kind of argument they shouldn't depend
> on a vote to save them.
>

Nope, I agree totally but that's the procedure now.  When I deviated from
that I endured an assault from several editors and even an admin for
deleting images "out of process".

>> Even better, there are many editors who think that citing a website that is
>> a repository of copyvio and unlicensed images qualifies as the image's
>> source, it does not.
>>
> Agreed.
>
>> Asserting "fair use" of an image is a nuanced legal concept that many
>> editors cannot grasp so I feel something is needed to help rectify the
>> situation.
>>
> The nuances are not always easy to grasp, and there is no consistency in
> legal interpretations by the courts.  I'm very much in favour of using
> fair use material, but it must be real fair use.
>
> Ec

Totally agree again -- it's a tough issue even for lawyers.  I was thinking
the best solution is to come up with a Fair Use review panel, made up of a
lawyer or two if we can get one, a couple of well respected editors and
maybe even someone to represent the Foundation since it's protecting the
Foundation from exposure to liability that is the heart of all of this.
This panel would regularly review Fair Use policy and disputes in an effort
to maintain a coherent position on them.  Just my initial thought on it.

--Guy  (EN User:Wgfinley)


subject: [Foundation-l] Fair use images


from_name: Heinz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Writing a Forum Extension

body:
Nathan Spaeth schrieb:
> I am planning on adding forum functionality to my wiki via extension. I'dd
> first like to get comments from those of you more knowledgeable in regards
> to php and MediaWiki. I would appreciate suggested modifications, ...

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Zem/Forum_extension

Implementations:

http://wiki.wagendorf.de/index.php/Spezial:Forum
http://www.giswiki.de/index.php/Spezial:Forum


subject:
[Wikitech-l] extending SpecialListUsers.php / listing
 email-adresses for sysops

body:
EricJonah schrieb:
> http://www.allwiki.com/wiki/Special:ListPoint
>
> 2006/3/10, Heinz <h-j.luecking at t-online.de>:
>> I would like to extend SpecialListUsers.php.
>>
>> (Only) SysOps shall also see the emailadresses of users.
>>
>> Ideas or ready solutions are welcome.
>>
>> thx. Heinz
>>
>> http://en.giswiki.de
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>

That looks interesting. Could you send me more informations?

thx. Heinz


body:
On 3/12/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/12/06, The Cunctator <cunctator at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Forgot to add the connection between the above points and the "some
> > articles having different policies" -- it's because appealing to the
> > Foundation is not official policy, but is an unwritten and semi-secret
> > method for getting changes to happen, only those who know about that
> > avenue (or figure it out) get to use it -- creating the effective
> > policy difference.
>
> Yep, only those who know the secret back passage can get the number of
> grandchildren in their article changed to its correct date. It seems
> to me from what I've read that most of the changes that get made in
> these cases are made as normal edits by Danny or someone. Only a very
> small number of articles get the "office" treatment, and those are
> publicly signposted.
>
> No one has yet pointed out a case where this avenue has been abused,
> either. That is, where an NPOV article become SymPOV due to threats by
> lawyers etc.
>
> So you're probably taking it a little too seriously.
>
If you follow this thread, I'm trying to understand why Jimbo called
Delirium's understanding of the situation "false". Do you agree with
Jimbo?


body:
On 3/12/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> Sean Barrett wrote:
> > Please permit me to call attention to
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Natural_circulation
> >
> >
> > Full disclosure: I am the article's originator, and apparently a mortal
> > threat to national security.
>
> I blocked the person who nominated this article for deletion for 24
> hours for being stupid.

Don't do that. That's abusive of your authority.


from_name: Ole Andersen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Hobby wikipedia policy

body:
On 12/03/06, Caroline Ford <caroline at secretlondon.me.uk> wrote:
> There seems to be no way that Romanians will tolerate cyrillic language
> (even via a software setting) on their wikipedia.

In that case, the obvious solution is to have it elsewhere (if it is
wanted by anyone, of course). Why anybody would object to any language
being written by somebody else in a particular alphabet, is beyond my
understanding. Nobody is being forced to use it.

All in all - if someone wants to recreate dawiki in Devanagari or
enwiki in the Hebrew alphabet, why should I care? It may be a waste of
resources, but not ground for hissyfits as we have seen here.

Ole
(User:Palnatoke on several WPs)

--
http://palnatoke.org * Ole Andersen, Copenhagen, DK
* CV: http://palnatoke.org/CV.doc *
h:+45 36 47 31 59 w: +45 35 45 44 29
Triskelion 2. april: http://palnatoke.org/Triskelion.htm


from_name: Ilya N.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Phone calls in office

body:
That's interesting.

Problem is, as Danny says, he spends 1/3rd of his time answering English
phone calls alone. Most of which can be referred to some editor or other to
be fixed.

BTW, How big is the FL office?

On 3/13/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Ilya N. wrote:
> > Don't we have some sort of office for such things? I mean I'd hate to
> put
> > individuals like you who are probably quite busy on the spot for such
> > things.
> >
> > --
> > ~Ilya N.
>
> No. We do not.
> We do not have an office for such things.
> The only office we have answers in English. So can not handle all those
> requests. And the only office we have is in Florida, so not so suitable
> for someone who want to complaint about something written on a non
> english-speaking project.
>
> We do not because Danny's talking english only. And we will need people
> to answer the phone in dozen of languages. The Florida office could
> possibly hire one person to answer the phone in
> english/french/german/spanish/japanese. But I somehow doubt so.
>
> Or we could have a collection of different people all over the world to
> answer in a reasonable enough number of languages. From their home, or
> from an office. The germans already have an office in Germany. I do not
> know how they handle phone call, but they are currently looking for a
> (paid) CEO. I presume we will need soon an office in France as well. Or
> at least a system of answering machines and people to take turn to call
> back only the relevant people. I suppose that this could be handled by
> local associations. If they are available.
>
> Right now, it appears a pretty weird idea I suspect. And probably not
> one the board will be motivated to spend any kind of money on. Still, I
> think in 6 months, this will have become a requirement.
>
> Ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


subject: [WikiEN-l] I am Danny

body:
You should have made the subject line 'Danny is me' ;)

--
~Ilya N.
http://w3stuff.com/ilya/ (My website; DarkLordFoxx Media)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ilyanep (on Wikipedia)
http://www.wheresgeorge.com - Track your money's travels.


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Few questions...

body:
On 3/13/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all, I've got a few questions. I floated the idea of adding a new CSD
> criteria in the admin channel yesterday to deal with April Fools hoax
> articles, but was told CSD G1 (patent nonsense) would take care of them. Is
> that necessarily right, as I seem to recall reading somewhere that some of
> last year's hoaxes had to go through (V/A?)FD?
>

Maybe but we can always kick stuff over to the wikipedia namespace.

> Secondly, I'd like to point people to this post from the Wikipedia Review:
> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=204&view=findpost&p=1214
> Should we tighten things up a bit at R/D fAdmin? Sure, it isn't wt it's all
> made out to be, but with admin powers in the wrong hands it, hypotheticaly
> speaking, could go pear-shaped.
>
> --NSLE

Pretty much every worse case senario when it comes to admin abuse has
happened (normly by acident) we have ways of dealing with it.

--
geni


from_name: EricJonah

subject:
[Wikitech-l] extending SpecialListUsers.php / listing
	email-adresses for sysops

body:
http://www.allwiki.com/wiki/Special:ListPoint

2006/3/10, Heinz <h-j.luecking at t-online.de>:
>
> I would like to extend SpecialListUsers.php.
>
> (Only) SysOps shall also see the emailadresses of users.
>
> Ideas or ready solutions are welcome.
>
> thx. Heinz
>
> http://en.giswiki.de
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am Danny

body:
<daniwo59 at aol.com> wrote in message
news:27f.703e3e1.3144c91d at aol.com...
> Hi
>
> Having read through these long posts, I thought I would introduce myself
> for
> those who do not know me, and tell you a little bit about what I do.

[detailed and extremely helpful description snipped]

Would it be a silly idea to suggest that this be posted on Wikipedia,
possibly as something like [[wikipedia:How the Foundation Office works]] ??

I am also wrestling with the temptaion to design a special {{user
wikipedia/office}} userbox just for Danny and Jimbo...would this be likely
to be summarily deleted?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 3/13/06, Chris Jenkinson <chris at starglade.org> wrote:
> The Cunctator wrote:
> > Don't do that. That's abusive of your authority.
>
> Well, the person in question has been unblocked now and has admitted his
> mistake, so the point is moot.
>
We all make mistakes...


subject: [WikiEN-l] Phone calls

body:
On 3/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Mar 2006 06:44:12 -0500, you wrote:
>
> >That doesn't seem like a particularly scalable policy.
>
> Do you have evidence that it needs to be?
> Guy (JzG)

My understanding (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that we don't plan
the Foundation staff size to scale directly with the userbase of
Wikipedia.

Furthermore this could all get wildly out of control if calling the
Foundation to report errors in Wikipedia becomes an official route of
action. So far as I can tell, though I've heard different versions
from non-Foundation members, it's not an official route.

And if it's not, it probably shouldn't happen.

And if it needs to happen, then official policy should be set.

IMHO.


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] Few questions...

body:
On 3/13/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:
> > On 3/13/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >>NSLE (Wikipedia) wrote:
> >><snip>
> >>
> >>>Secondly, I'd like to point people to this post from the Wikipedia
> Review:
> >>>
> http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?s=&showtopic=204&view=findpost&p=1214
> >>>Should we tighten things up a bit at R/D fAdmin? Sure, it isn't wt it's
> all
> >>>made out to be, but with admin powers in the wrong hands it,
> hypotheticaly
> >>>speaking, could go pear-shaped.
> >
> >
> > What a fascinating, skeptical but probably justified look at the admin
> > creation process. Is it true that people who actually get involved in
> > debate and dialogue are accused of "conflict" and voted down?
> >
>
> Yes. Reasons for opposing me on my current RFA include posting to this
> list. I've also been accused of userbox warriorism based on the fact
> that I've opposed people for "having too many userboxes" (I think they
> look silly), which I find quite amusing. Sad, but amusing.

While, granted, my RFA was a lifetime ago (last summer), it came right on
the heels of very deep involvement in a major debate (BCE/CE debate).  The
debate was split roughly 50-50, and I was one of the major players arguing
for one position.  While this was mentioned on my RFA, it only earned me one
oppose vote.

On the other hand, anyone at all interested in a successful RFA should avoid
(should have avoided) the userbox issue because it was so acrimonious.  This
is the most unpleasant and divisive issue I have come across here.
Supporting one side (or opposing it) earns you automatic oppose votes from
people who feel strongly about the other side.  But I don't think this is
typical of "debate and dialogue" on Wikipedia.  As JzG mentioned, engagement
in this issues can help get you known.  And, while, granted, active vandal
fighting can earn you adminship, intelligent and reasonable participation in
debates can earn you people's respect.  If you can get people to value your
opinion even while disagreeing with you, you have a good chance of sailing
through an RFA.

What made matters worse in this case, I suspect, is the issue of voting on
the basis of userboxes.  This suggests inflexibility.  People who are
inflexible on issues are more likely to end up getting into wheel wars and
the like.  So it's reasonable to oppose someone who opposed someone else on
the basis of their userbox position.

Ian


from_name: Servien Ilaino

subject: [Wikipedia-l] nameservers for wikipedia

body:
It seems to be accessable again... :) or someone from you guys has fixed it
there was a problem at "Telkom", still have some minor problems outside of
Wikipedia but I guess there's busy with that.

Serv

2006/3/12, Andy Rabagliati <andyr at wizzy.com>:
>
> ;en.wikipedia.org.              IN      A
>
> ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
> wikipedia.org.          86400   IN      NS      ns2.wikimedia.org.
> wikipedia.org.          86400   IN      NS      ns1.wikimedia.org.
> wikipedia.org.          86400   IN      NS      ns0.wikimedia.org.
>
> ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
> ns2.wikimedia.org.      86400   IN      A       145.97.39.158
> ns1.wikimedia.org.      86400   IN      A       207.142.131.208
> ns0.wikimedia.org.      86400   IN      A       207.142.131.207
>
> % dig @207.142.131.207 en.wikipedia.org
>
> ; <<>> DiG 9.3.2 <<>> @207.142.131.207 en.wikipedia.org
> ; (1 server found)
> ;; global options:  printcmd
> ;; connection timed out; no servers could be reached
>
> Folks,
>
> wikipedia has been inaccessible from South Africa since Friday.
>
> None of the listed nameservers will respond for en.wikipedia.org.
>
> Can someone check what is up ?
>
> Cheers,    Andy!
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] I am Danny

body:
"Anthere" <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote in
message news:dv3jgf$666$1 at sea.gmane.org...
> Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
>> On 11 Mar 2006 at 19:45, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
[snip]
> Danny has several working email addresses.
> The one you mention is his home address.
> As a Wikimedia staff, he is dwool at wikimedia.org

Sorry, gmane munged that one: is there some way of writing it so that the
rest of us can read it without the wretched machine butting in?

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Paul Almond

subject: [WikiEN-l] anonymous blocking my editing - 63.205.151.6 - dirrigible

body: Hi, my editing have been blocked by an anonymous editor (who hasn't the courtesy or courage to provide an email address or actual name).  He claims I vandalized, that is entirely untrue, he provided an anti western anti christian bias to a page (Islam and other religions) which I tried to correct, he reedited and then blocked me.  Is that how Wikimedia is suppose to operate - an anonymous editor games the system by blocking those who would provide valid information which his pov disagrees with?  Look forward to some help on this.  Dirrigible


from_name: Evan Martin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using unicode in URLs

body:
On 3/11/06, ????????? ??????? <alexander.sigachov at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/3/10, Brion Vibber <brion at pobox.com>:
> > Unencoded URLs aren't reliable, as various browsers treat things in various
> > exciting ways.
>
> If URL is in UTF8 then IE5, IE6, Opera and Firefox works fine. And, I
> think, it's useful at least for non-Wikimedia projects in cyrillic
> languages.

To elaborate on Brion's comment:
 - I believe the "Always send URLs as UTF-8" option is off by default
in IE5, and on in IE6.
 - In Firefox, the default was flipped as recently as a year ago:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=261929


body:
"geni" <geniice at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:f80608430603111428p74b30b71ve7e5f645f7a828c7 at mail.gmail.com...
On 3/11/06, Carl F?rstenberg
<azatoth at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It's a serious question, I'm just interested to know how the foundation
> > could handle the worst case scenario (it could happen sooner or later,
> > so I
> > think it's better to be prepared)
> It's not a likely scenario. A more likely one is that a large number of
> mid level politicians (i.e. the ones for whom wikipedia is the top hit
> on Google) figure out they can have anything embarrassing knocked out of
> wikipedia for say the week before the election.

At which point *our* article on said politician moves lower down the ranks
at Google having been overtaken by the huge number of other web-pages
commenting on their rank stupidity at trying to censor one of the most
visible sites on the Internet :-)

HTH HAND
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Anthere

subject: [WikiEN-l] I am Danny

body:
Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
> On 11 Mar 2006 at 19:45, daniwo59 at aol.com wrote:
>
>
>>My name is Danny Wool. I am 42 years old. I am one of two and a half
>>employees of the Foundation--the others are Brion, who deals with hardware and
>>software issues, and Monica, an intern, who assists me in the
>>office.
>
>
> Her last name isn't Lewinsky, by any chance?  :-)
>
> Doesn't the foundation give you a professional e-mail address on
> their server, so you can post without disclosing that you're a (gag,
> vomit, retch) AOLer?
>

Danny has several working email addresses.
The one you mention is his home address.
As a Wikimedia staff, he is dwool at wikimedia.org

anthere