from_name: Heiko Evermann

body:
Hi Servien,

> The reason why I don't post is because that Wiki doesn't "support" my
> dialect... You are very wrong in saying (at least I think so) that in
> Germany are the most "important" dialects of Low Saxon... on the Nds
> Wiki you just ignore those Dutch dialects with about 1.8 million
> speakers...
That is a problem that several minority languages share all over the world.
Due to the lack of a common written language, the language has fragmented
into regional dialects long ago.

> The reason why Dutch speakers don't contribute is because
> the writing system is completely incomprehensible!
We are talking about a wikipedia, so I would like to remind you of the NPOV
policy: it is completely incomprehensible to *them*. It is perfectly readable
for people from this side of the border.

> I think you look a
> bit narrow minded at this subject... the guy who wrote the book was
> most likely German (at least I presume!) and he did not invent the
> spelling for international use, just as in Holland we didn't invent
> the spelling for international use.
In fact it was designed that way. The idea was to make it easy for people with
a High-German background to recognize the words as much as possible.
Therefore e.g. special characters like a with the little o above were not
used.

> If you want to use it for a
> international purpose than you have to adapt the writing system (as
> you mentioned it's spoking in every continent except the Antarctic).
Unfortunately there is no writing system for Low Saxon that is universally
accepted. There is one on this side of the border that you do not understand,
one on your side of the border that we do not understand. Plus a proposal for
a common spelling by R.F. Hahn that might be interesting, but unfortunately
it is incomprehensible on both sides of the border. So which way do you want
to go?

> If I post on Nds, they complain that they don't understand the writing
> and change it to German-based spelling... I'm not German so why would
> I have my messages in German-based spelling?!
Wikipedia articles tend to be written in a collaborate manner. Someone starts
a page, someone else adds something. Yet someone else corrects something etc.
Unfortunately your spelling and our spelling are mutually exclusive. And
frankly, I do not want to have an article that changes orthography each time
the paragraph changes. This might work for Portuguese and Brazilian
Portuguese, but not for writing systems that are way apart.
>
> "Johannes Sass" didn't invent a very good orthography to my opinion,
> he should have a least looked at both major-LS speaking countries and
> made a compromise of both writing systems, or better yet look at the
> Old LS writing system when it used to be a official language in 1500!
Whether or not it was a good orthography is not for us but for history to
decide. I think we are not the ones to fix it. Over time the Sass orthography
has gained more and more popularity in Germany. And we need such a unity to
protect what is left of Low Saxon in Germany, which oftentimes is very
little. For me wikipedia (and KDE op Platt) are a means to spread knowledge
about Plattd??tsch. My goal is to create a Low Saxon wikipedia that people
with little to none Low Saxon background can use to relearn an almost
forgotten language. Besides: that is precicely the reason why I am very much
opposed to any linguistic experiments like the allgemeyne schrievwies by
Hahn. We came to the same conclusion for KDE op Platt. Again: the Sass-based
spelling is a common ground on this side of the border.

> If Plattd??tsch is the name for the dialects in Germany then why is it
> called that, you're not the only LS speakers in the world as mentioned
> almost every continent! Why not make the ISO code PT than?
1) the common name for Low Saxon on German is not "Nedersaksisch", but
"Plattd??tsch". If you ask people about Plattd??tsch, they know what you are
talking about. If you ask them about Nieders?chsisch, they won't understand
what language you are talking about. Please have a look at
http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nedersaksisch:
"Het begrip
Het begrip "Nedersaksisch" werd tot in de jaren '90 van de 20e eeuw alleen
door historisch taalkundigen gehanteerd. Sprekers van de Nedersaksische
vari?teiten refereerden aan hun dialect met de naam van een plaats of streek
(Achterhoeks, Drents, Veluws, Elspeets enz.), of met de aanduiding Plat (ook
Plat, Platduits). Onder invloed van diverse streektaalbewegingen heeft de
politiek het begrip overgenomen en uiteindelijk als streektaal erkend. Een
uniforme cultuurtaal zit er nog lang niet in, mede doordat iedere poging van
uniformering (spelling en woordenschat) als wezensvreemd voor de grote
vari?teit aan voornamelijk mondelinge dialecten wordt afgewezen."


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Personal info

body:
Anthere wrote:

> Ray Saintonge a ?crit:
>
>> In a different direction, after your Algerian trip you mentioned that
>> you were showing your son how to use Wikipedia to help him with his
>> school work.  Has he been sufficiently infected ;-)  to want to
>> attend Wikimania?
>
> I have showed him how to use it. Here is the page of the article he
> wrote :
> http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:William/Le_Sahara_alg%C3%A9rien

Well done!

> Kids were set up in team (which I did not know at first). His team
> mate was a brazilian girl (which allowed me to make new brazilian
> friends) with who he prepared a big poster where they pasted several
> pictures. Though initially planned in february, they presented their
> work in june :-)
> It was extremely well appreciated and he got a 20/20:-)

Learning to work in teams is an important part of education.

> I also noticed the interface was too complicated for him and he had
> pain to remember where to access what. So, even after a while, he was
> very far from independant. If we ever do a wiki for kids, we'll have
> to improve the interface I fear.

There's much to be learned from this experience in the Wikis for
adults.  If I, as an experienced person here, can find navigating
throuugh templates difficult, it must be extremely discouraging for kids
and newbies.

> Currently, he is giving most of his computer time playing Alpha
> Centauri :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri

My son played this a couple years ago, after having gone through "Sid
Meier's Civilization".  These are very challenging role-playing games
that require a very big attention span.  It's great to see someone so
young take an interest in that kind of game.

> As for Wikimania, I have considered bringing the family along, but
> considered at least 3 would be very bored, not knowing anyone, with
> only conferences to have fun. So, no, they will not come.....

I'm sure my son would find it boring too. :-)

Ec


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Personal info


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Jochen Dolze

subject: [Wikitech-l] Image.php: passthru instead of shell_exec (1.5b2)

body:
Hi,

why we don't use passthru in Image.php? shell_exec won't run in
safemode, but passthru (with safe_mode_exec_dir) works great!

Jochen

--- Image_orig.php      2005-07-04 01:08:16.000000000 +0200
+++ Image.php   2005-07-11 00:29:32.000000000 +0200
@@ -991,7 +991,7 @@
                                                    wfEscapeShellArg(
$this->imagePath ),
                                                    wfEscapeShellArg(
$thumbPath ) ),

$wgSVGConverters[$wgSVGConverter] );
-                               $conv = shell_exec( $cmd );
+                               $conv = passthru( $cmd );
                         } else {
                                 $conv = false;
                         }
@@ -1004,7 +1004,7 @@
                                 wfEscapeShellArg($this->imagePath) . " " .
                                 wfEscapeShellArg($thumbPath);
                         wfDebug("reallyRenderThumb: running
ImageMagick: $cmd");
-                       $conv = shell_exec( $cmd );
+                       $conv = passthru( $cmd );
                 } else {
                         # Use PHP's builtin GD library functions.
                         #


list: wikien-l

from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Game-playing on Wikipedia

body:
James Gibbon (wikipedia at jamesgibbon.com) [050711 00:31]:
> On Sat, 2 Jul 2005 13:27:01 +0100
> "David 'DJ' Hedley" <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:

> > Even though I participated in (and sorely lost in) the Chess
> > Championship, I agree that games may be going too far. We had
> > Mornington Crescent Championship or something recently too.

> I'd be delighted to take part in a few rounds of Mornington
> Crescent, provided we aren't playing the Livingstone Integrated
> Transport rules of 2002 - but not on Wikipedia. I tend to agree
> with Danny.

I look forward to Synchronised Mornington Crescent as a 2012 Olympic sport.

- d.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>As it so happens, it appears Heiko sends all communication in
>Hochdeutsch, occasionally proceeded by "moin moin" to make it sound
>more Platt-ish. Slomox, the other most active current admin, is also
>not a native speaker of Low Saxon (but rather Hochdeutsch),
>
>With these people running this nokieksel op 't patentplatt, it's no
>wonder it's... in patentplatt.
>
>I'm sure they're also the ones deciding orthographic policy...
>
>Also, the nds.wiki mainpage says it's in Plattd??tsch (ie, flat
>german)... and in parenthesis after it says "Plattd??tsch", it says
>"neddersassisch un oostnedderd??tsch" (Low Saxon and East Low German).
>
>Hmm... according to the ISO, "nds" does not include East Low German.
>Only Low Saxon. Seems this Wikipedia is not in accordance...
>
>
>
Yes offcourse Mark oh languagegod we all bow to your infinite knowledge

Waerth


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Demonstrable Abuse of Admin powers

body:
> Can I ask that those people take a look at the ongoing situation,
> summarised below.

I'm sorry but my eyes just glaze over when I try
to approach this. In order to give an impartial
judgment I'd have to at least:

1. Educate myself on this relatively obscure
Australian technical question, preferably from
good sources outside of Wikipedia.

2. Carefully study the editing history of the
article.

3. Wade through a talk page which is currently
archived in 8 volumes.

4. Chase down any relevant comments made on talk
pages of users involved.

This is just more effort than I'm willing to spend
on this matter.

I'm sorry and I'm writing this to explain since I'm
sure your request is made in good faith.

Regards,
Haukur


subject: [WikiEN-l] Writing with our readers in mind

body:
Dan Grey (dangrey at gmail.com) [050711 01:13]:

> Take, for example, paracetamol:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Mechanism_of_Toxicity
> What the hell does that mean?! It is, frankly, total garbage.
> Completely correct, no doubt, but meaningless to the vast amjority of
> people - and a lot of people want to know why paracetamol can kill
> them so easily.
> What to do? I have no idea.

The article validation topics include "clarity" for this reason. This can
be used to flag articles for rewriting better.

(now all we need is the feature ;-)

> Info like that can't be binned, of course. Maybe we could have
> sub-sections for it - "In depth" or something.

That can work very well indeed.  All this is, after all, an editorial
decision.

> But we need human-readable explanations too. Unfortunetly, I can't
> even begin to convert that into something that's actually
> understandable to, say, my mum, because I barely understand it myself
> :-).

This is a very real and wide-ranging issue Jguk raises - and it would IMO
be as ridiculous to assert that BC/AD is required for "clarity" as to
assert that BCE/CE is required for "NPOV". But that's not at all what I
read in the original statement.

- d.


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: Natural languages and new Wikipedias;
	Chinook   Jargon?

body:
Gerard Meijssen wrote:
> Tim has a completely different outlook from the one I have; if anything
> I should be your friend because I care about languages. Tim cares about
> wikipedia that is, the en.wikipedia.

Don't put words into my mouth. I've repeatedly made my position clear,
here and elsewhere. My interest is in distributing general knowledge to
the people of the world. Language is the medium; having a Wikipedia in
many languages assists in this goal. Language preservation may well be a
valid endeavour, but I don't think it should be part of Wikipedia's mission.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [WikiEN-l] CheckUser working again

body:
[[Special:CheckUser]], the IP-to-name checker, is up and working again.
This is so that the Arbitration Committee can do quick sockpuppet checks
without having to bug the devs.  For more info, see [[m:CheckUser]].

Note that I get a bucketload of requests, so in general I will only look
into the ones that are at least plausibly related to AC cases past or
present.  Also note that it can presently only check what's in the
recentchanges DB, which typically is set to one week.

All your base are belong to us. PW03R!! PW03R!!11!!

- d.


from_name: Marcus Buck

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Dutch-Low Saxon test-mainpage

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Hmm... according to the ISO, "nds" does not include East Low German.
>Only Low Saxon. Seems this Wikipedia is not in accordance...

Plattd??tsch covers the non-frankish parts of Low German, but there is no ISO
code for this portion. I don't know the discussion held when creating
nds.wikipedia, but I think it was intended to cover this portion, but the code
nds was chosen, because he was the best-matching code therefore. It would be
silly to separate East Low German and Low Saxon, because they are closely
related.

Servien Ilaino wrote:

>You are very wrong in saying (at least I think so) that in
>Germany are the most "important" dialects of Low Saxon...

Important is not the right word, yes (sometimes the correct English words are
lacking).

>The reason why Dutch speakers don't contribute is because
>the writing system is completely incomprehensible!

Long time no writing system was given and nevertheless any Dutch contributed.

It is not possible to write an Low Saxon/Plattd??tsch/Low German whatever
wikipedia understandable to all speakers in all parts of the Netherlands and
Germany without inventing a common writing and a common standard for the use of
words not common. But this invention can't be task of a wikipedia, but must be
based on a broad consensus in language community. Therefore we need two
projects for the main varieties Dutch-influenced and German-influenced Low
Saxon. (coming back to the original issue)

I hope nobody will think anymore, nds.wikipedia is mainly written in a corrupted
form of Low Saxon, this is not true.

Slomox (Marcus Buck)


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Policy clarification: separate Wikipedias for
	cultures, peoples, and countries, or for languages?

body:
I have now been blocked by Robin Patterson for removing
English-language content.

I had left him a message a few days ago, and he never answered it.

One of the diffs where he added back English-language content:
http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hau_K%C4%81inga&diff=7198&oldid=7192

I do not think that somebody like this should be trusted with admin
privelages, especially since according to him his fluency level is
only mi-1.

I request immediate unbanning of myself, and immediate removal of his
sysop privelages due to abuse (present and past).

Mark

On 09/07/05, Boris Lohnzweiger <BorisLohnzweiger at web.de> wrote:
>
> > Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different
> cultures and peoples rather than languages?
>
> No.
>
> > Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in
> the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people,
> and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good,
> since only 5% of Maori people are fluent in Maori.
>
> Wrong. Maori means Maori language, not Maori people. "English Wikipedia" doesn't mean "Wikipedia for people living in England" but rather "Wikipedia written in English language".
>
> > Similarly, he wanted to add English content to the Samoan Wikipedia
> because "tens of thousands" of Samoans speak English fluently.
>
> Can somebody please explain to him how Wikipedia works? Or could I please add German content to the Chinese Wikipedia because I don't know Chinese and "tens of thousands" of Chinese speak German?
>
> P.S. If there are no competent Maori or Samoan editors we'd better lock those Wikipedia before further damage is done.
>
> Boris
>
>
> Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org schrieb am 08.07.05 02:57:11:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I would like to ask for some clarification of Wikimedia policy.
>
> Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different
> cultures and peoples rather than languages? Are any existing
> Wikipedias considered in this capacity?
>
> Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in
> the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people,
> and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good,
> since only 5% of Maori people are fluent in Maori.
>
> Similarly, he wanted to add English content to the Samoan Wikipedia
> because "tens of thousands" of Samoans speak English fluently. It
> should be noted that neither of these languages are his native
> languages. Maori, he lists as a Babel template level of 1 (his French
> and German are better), yet he is the sole administrator at the Maori
> Wikipedia. He noted on his Samoan userpage that he knows only a
> handful of Samoan words, yet he tried to apply there for sysop
> anyways.
>
> Mark
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________________
> Mit der Gruppen-SMS von WEB.DE FreeMail k?nnen Sie eine SMS an alle
> Freunde gleichzeitig schicken: http://freemail.web.de/features/?mc=021179
>
>
>
>

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: CheckUser working again

body:
James Gibbon (wikipedia at jamesgibbon.com) [050711 02:23]:
> On Mon, 11 Jul 2005 01:53:18 +1000
> fun at thingy.apana.org.au (David Gerard) wrote:

> > [[Special:CheckUser]], the IP-to-name checker, is up and working
> > again. This is so that the Arbitration Committee can do quick
> > sockpuppet checks without having to bug the devs.

> If I may present a hypothetical situation: let's say two adults
> living in the same house both have Wikipedia accounts, and both
> are regular users in their own right. If they share the same
> Internet connection, as they probably would, they will have the
> same IP address.
> It's quite likely that, if they have a personal relationship of
> some kind, which again they probably would - one will tend to
> support the other occasionally, if only because one reason they
> share a home is that they have a similar world view.
> Should either be considered a sockpuppet of the other?
> This is a situation that doesn't apply to me at all, but I think
> it's worth remembering that an IP-to-name checker should be
> used with caution.

Well, yes. This is why sock checking is an art and not a science :-)

[[m:CheckUser]] discusses these concerns in detail. You need someone who
can not only be trusted to do the right thing, but who knows the little
detailed quirks of net abuse tracing. I got my experience tracking down
Usenet and email spammers, for example. So I'm wary of doing a check just
because I can, because I don't want to set a bad precedent for whoever
follows.

Mostly, you'll have cases like me and [[User:Redcountess]], who will resolve
to the same IP but write in a completely different style on different
topics. Sockpuppetry is only *suspected* on the basis of notable similarity
in edit style and topic interest; an IP match is just the cherry on top.

- d.


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: On parents banning their children from Wikipedia

body:
On 7/11/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> It may be that I am a minority *here*, but I also think parents are a
> minority amongst involved editors. I do not see it as detrimental to the
> encyclopedia; simply, Wikipedia as is is for adults, not for children.

You mean for using, rather than editing? 8^)

But yes, fully concur. Perhaps this ties in with the "writing for the
audience" approach, and WP is very rarely written with children in
mind. Start typing "rude words" into WP and you will definitely see
material that is not "school-safe". Images or articles about violence
and violent events can also pop up without a real lot of warning.

--
Peter in Canberra


body:
On 7/11/05, David 'DJ' Hedley <spyders at btinternet.com> wrote:
> A feature in Mediawiki to allow a preference for logged-in users to "Disable
> editing" could be useful. A password could be set for the preference, so it
> would be needed to re-enable editing. Schools could benefit from this, if
> they could set-up one account for the network.

Something like this would be very handy. Any number of times I've
looked through RC and found edit sequences that make me think a bunch
of twelve year olds are sitting around library computers making rude
comments about each other, just for the fun of having "Billy-Joe
smells weird" appear on "thuh Internet".

But I'm not sure that this sort of thing can be stopped. You don't
need to be logged in to make edits.

--
Peter in Canberra


body:
On 7/11/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Finally, if there many great editors (and absolutely all were very very
> very nice to my son), there are also jerks running free. Kids have a lot
> of confidence and trust in adults, I do not think it is a good idea to
> let anyone free to influence them without any control. It is just not safe.

Hear hear!

Of course, this goes for the Internet as a whole - it's not just WP.

Obviously parental (or ILP) control is the way to go for children
using WP. Short of having some sort of volunteer assistant program to
help out identified child users, which would open any number of cans
of worms.

Parents (or teachers etc.) are best placed to assist, instruct, guide
and explain.

And what better Wiki-teacher than an editor? In fact, for some
non-editor parents, I suspect that it might be the kids telling the
parents how to use the technology!

--
Pete, who is beginning to think that his mobile phone is smarter than he is


body:
>
>Besides you got your 5 signatures that you wanted to have. So why don't you
>just start nds-nl.wikipedia.org.
>
>Kind regards,
>
>Heiko Evermann
>
>
>
Because there is somebody called Mark Williamson on a lone crusade!
Obstructing this with every fibre of his being.

Walter van Kalken / Waerth


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: Fwd: [Foundation-l] Fair Use and Registered Trademarks

body:
Lars Aronsson wrote:

>Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>>There must be more to the story than what Michael Hart is
>>suggesting here.
>>
>Why do you think that "must be"?  Project Gutenberg is run by
>Michael Hart.  Who else should answer your questions?  A strong
>disclaimer doesn't always have a strong reason.
>
>When we digitize old (Scandinavian) encyclopedias, magazines, and
>other printed works in Project Runeberg, we never had to alter the
>title, but always reproduced the title as it was printed.  There
>seems to be no risk that readers should confuse the old issues
>with the current product.
>
>
It just seems as though the natural route would have been to simply
leave it alone and not call it something special like Project Gutenberg
Encyclopedia, but instead call it by its original name, such as exactly
what you just described, and about 99% of all items found in Project
Gutenberg.  A disclaimer like what is put on that particular e-text is
furthermore unusual, even for a PG text because it is in addtion to the
usual disclaimer found on most other PG texts.

What is more, there is another Encyclopaedia Britannica text in the PG
archive that does not have this disclaimer, although that text (e-text
#13600) does not appear to have the same scruitiny that previous e-texts
went through at the beginning of the PG archive.  It will be interesting
to see what happens when several more volumes are released for this
edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica, as they are currently in the final
stages of proofreading/assembly right now.

--
Robert Scott Horning
218 Sunstone Circle
Logan, UT 84321
(435) 753-3330
robert_horning at netzero.net


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal

body:
I think these are good comments. One way around this might be to make
fair use tags require article names, i.e., {{fairuse|Article}}, which
would then start off by saying, "This page is copyrighted etc. but
thought to be fair use on the article {{article}}..."

FF

On 7/10/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/07/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Postscript:
> >
> > I also think it would be a good idea to create a template along the
> > lines of {{fairuse-reviewed}} which would contain the normal fair use
> > notice, as well as something like "The fair use criteria of this item
> > has been reviewed and found satisfactory by at least one other user."
> > or something like that. The process of reviewing fair use images would
> > then be one of converting {{fairuse}} tags to {{fairuse-reviewed}}
> > (after they had been reviewed). Perhaps a Wikiproject of some form
> > would be good for this? Anyway, it would allow us to keep track of
> > things. Just a thought.
>
> I like this idea; might need a lot of manpower, though, and people do
> tend to have rather wide-ranging differences in how stringently they
> accept copyright restrictions. (I've more than once heard "well, it
> *should* be free" used to defend copyvios, and in one delightful case
> encountered someone who thought "in the public domain" meant *both*
> "this information is not secret" and "this information is free to
> copy"...). But I'd certainly be interested in seeing it work.
>
> One fair-use problem, that I've been mulling over of late (I've been
> incommunicado for a few days), is that of context.
>
> With something like a publicity photo of $celebrity, "fair use" is
> fairly incontrovertible. But... let's say we're dealing with the
> Lindisfarne Gospels, and the much-discussed photo thereof; assume it's
> tagged as fair use.
>
> Even if would be fair use to use this to illustrate an article on the
> [[Lindisfarne Gospels]] (rare item, not much photographed, &c.)
> despite it being copyrighted... would it be fair use to use it to
> illustrate an article on, say, [[Rare-book photography]]? Sure, it's
> an example of such an image, but there's certainly thousands more of
> equal usability. How about using it to illustrate an article on
> [[Books]], or the [[Bible]]? Again, some relevance, but other images
> are just as good or better.
>
> As I understand fair use - I don't claim to, one set of copyright law
> is confusing enough - it is quite dependent on the claim being a
> reasonable one in context.
>
> But we'd have the one image, tagged as {{fairuse}} without that
> context; anyone wondering about using it in another article would
> simply see that we had it, it was under a legitimate-use license of
> some form, and slap it in their article, unless they were the
> introspective type given to considering license details.
>
> This may, potentially, be a problem with the way we tag things - fair
> use inherently seems to imply "in the context of the article for which
> it was originally used". It may be fair use the second time (and
> probably is), but may not... I don't know what, if anything, to do
> about this, but thought I'd kick it out.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
>


list: textbook-l

from_name: kelvSYC

subject: [Textbook-l] Forking of Wikipedia content on Wikibooks

body:
> The general gist of what I'm trying to propose is under what
> circumstances can content from a Wikipedia article be used as a
> seed to start an expanded Wikibook.  A Wikibook about Nikola Tesla
> was started, in part, due to an edit war on Wikipedia where some
> Wikipedia editors wanted to add content, but it keeps getting cut
> due to the fact that the article already is quite large.

It's a sad thing if Wikipedians say it doesn't belong there as it is
not encyclopedic and Wikibookians say it doesn't belong as it is not
instructional material.

>
> The Wikibook, titled "The Biography of Nikola Tesla", was IMHO a
> rather well put together Wikibook with title page, about 7
> "chapters", and a couple of appendices.  Indeed, other than the
> fact that it was the subject of an edit war at Wikipedia I thought
> it was a very well organized Wikibook, particular in comparison to
> most of the rest of the content on Wikibooks.  It was a little
> sparse on content for Wikibooks, but that should be something that
> happens over time to expand and is precisely the purpose of
> Wikibooks.  This Wikibook was ungraciously deleted over my
> objections because of a simple majority vote of those on the delete
> page.
>

WB:WIN - Wikibooks is not Wikipedia.  The majority of Wikibookians,
seeing that the book is deleted, see that a biography is not in
itself an instructional resource.  It may have fit in if it was part
of a history of physics Wikibook, but by itself it seems that it
wouldn't do (and even then, an "edit for time" would have been
necesary).

> I guess that I'm trying to modify the deletion policy somewhat to
> allow *some* forking of Wikipedia content, provided that the
> content on Wikibooks really is an expansion of the Wikipedia
> article and not just some POV fight or fork of Wikipedia content.
> The nature of Wikibooks certainly allows almost any article on
> Wikipedia to be turned into a book, provided there are interested
> parties willing to write the content.  Forbidding any fork would,
> in effect, kill almost any Wikibook stub right now.

We do not allow any content that isn't considered to be instructional
material.  The spirit of WB:WIN is that if you want to expand a WP
article, then do it on WP.  Personally, I am opposed to any Wikipedia
forking in general because of the fact that I consider encyclopedia
articles are not by itself instructional material.  Based on your
post, [[The Biography of Nikola Tesla]] would have been deleted
whether we have the changed policy or not, due to it originating from
an edit war.

I have to say that, to some real extent, the "books" part of
Wikibooks is really a misnomer: it's not clearly intuitive that we
are writing textbooks of instructional material on this wiki.


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Personal info

body:
Thanks for all the hopeful notes I received privately and publicly this
week end :-)
I now have to tell my boss. Ouch.

Ray Saintonge a ?crit:

> In a different direction, after your Algerian trip you mentioned that
> you were showing your son how to use Wikipedia to help him with his
> school work.  Has he been sufficiently infected ;-)  to want to attend
> Wikimania?
>
> Ec

I have showed him how to use it. Here is the page of the article he
wrote :
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilisateur:William/Le_Sahara_alg%C3%A9rien

Kids were set up in team (which I did not know at first). His team mate
was a brazilian girl (which allowed me to make new brazilian friends)
with who he prepared a big poster where they pasted several pictures.
Though initially planned in february, they presented their work in june :-)
It was extremely well appreciated and he got a 20/20:-)

However, I stopped the experiment of him editing for several reasons.
First, my husband was not happy *at all* with it. Second, wikipedia was
too slow in spring, which was upsetting. Adults easily switch from one
page to another during loading time, not kids; so it is quite boring.
I also noticed the interface was too complicated for him and he had pain
to remember where to access what. So, even after a while, he was very
far from independant. If we ever do a wiki for kids, we'll have to
improve the interface I fear.
Currently, he is giving most of his computer time playing Alpha Centauri
:-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sid_Meier%27s_Alpha_Centauri

As for Wikimania, I have considered bringing the family along, but
considered at least 3 would be very bored, not knowing anyone, with only
conferences to have fun. So, no, they will not come.....

ant


subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Personal info


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: [WikiFR-l] Personal info

body:
"SJ" <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote in message
news:742dfd0605070903177b79e2ee at mail.gmail.com...
[snip]
> Exciting!  And leads to other excitement.  I am watching early birds
> out my window as I read this, hunting for their chicks...

Note to SJ: your cat is posting again...;-)

PS congrats to Anthere...hope everything turns out OK for you...
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: Jean-Baptiste Soufron

subject: [Foundation-l] Fair Use and Registered Trademarks

body:
Well let's publish it and let's see the way they will argue. I am
pretty much confident that there won't be any copyright or trademark
problem.

Le 11 juil. 05 ? 03:44, Ray Saintonge a ?crit :

> Robert Scott Horning wrote:
>
>
>> Jean-Baptiste Soufron wrote:
>>
>>
>>>> We never had to make any settlement with Britannica, or with
>>>> Oxford,
>>>> when they complained about "The Oxford Book Of English Verse,"
>>>> as they
>>>> never asked us to.  Oxford *did* blow some smoke about the OED,
>>>> but it
>>>> was just that, and a decade ago, as I recall.
>>>>
>>>> I think we will post the first page of the original OED, to
>>>> test  the winds,
>>>> esp. since I own a first edition, and can thus prove it is from
>>>> 1888.
>>>>
>>>> We should be able to publish nearly all of the first edition,
>>>> except those
>>>> few volumes published after 1922. . .I can send a list, if you
>>>> like.
>>>>
>>>> I should add that PG has TWO different teams working on the
>>>> Britannica,
>>>> and the other one mentions the name much more.
>>>>
>>>> I got one message from the ex-CEO of Britannica, whom I know
>>>> through
>>>> other means, and explained that I had had nothing to do with
>>>> the  second one.
>>>>
>>>> mh
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>> I am curious what prompted the inclusion of the previously
>> mentioned legal disclaimer in with PG texts for Encyclopedia
>> Britannica then?  I know a good CYA is always in order, but it
>> seemed a little extreme in this case, particularly because content
>> was removed.  There must be more to the story than what Michael
>> Hart is suggesting here.
>>
>
> You're welcome to explore the background yourself.  CYA could very
> well have been a motivating factor, but the ground that PG gave up
> was not that big.  When it comes to a 250 year old institution
> whose ability to survive much longer is questionable, granting them
> the opportunity to save face is a gracious act..
>
> As for the OED, even some volumes published after 1922 are now in
> the public domain by the 70 year rule.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


list: wiktionary-l

from_name: cookfire

subject:
[Wiktionary-l] setting up a multilanguage dictionary using
	MediaWiki

body:
edward molasses wrote:

>Hello,
>
>I'm planning to setup a dictionary of terms related to the field of plant
>genetic resources, using MediaWiki. I want it to have all definitions in 5
>different languages and there is a possibility of adding more.
>
>I was wondering if the usual/recommended case of setting up a site like this
>would be to follow the model of Wiktionary and have separate installations
>for each language of the dictionary, using interwiki links between them (I
>would have all installations on the same server and use interwiki links,
>which I think amounts to the same structure of links as what we see in
>Wikitionary).
>
>I'm not sure if this is the best idea for my case since perhaps for Wiktionary
>this installation fits the situation in regards to maintenance/curation and
>server load and in my case there would less server load and centralized
>maintenance/curation would be preferred.
>
>So I suppose my main question is, are there more advantages to having
>everything on one MediaWiki installation or on separate installations? Also,
>what would the advantages/disadvantages be for each situation?
>
>Any of your suggestions would be very much appreciated.
>Thanks,
>Andrew.
>
>
The reason why Wiktionary and Wikipedia have a wiki per language is
because there are different teams with knowledge of those particular
languages working on them. If you create a wiki for one specific purpose
you better start off with only one wiki. It's always possible to set up
multiple ones later if the need arises.

Polyglot


from_name: Chip Berlet

body:
At Political Research Associates, we are a U.S. non-profit that guards our copyrighted material for a variety of reasons not worth debating on this list.  We have come up with a way we think protects Wikipedia as a "Fair-Use" user of some of our material that remains copyrighted, but for which we give explicit permission to Wikipedia for use AND state in a public online file that PRA considers the use by Wikipedia to be "Fair Use" because of its value as research and in the public interest.

I would very much not want the "online cult of everything should be free" to force the removal of our material from Wiki on the odd chance that some downstream user might not read the permission/copyright blurb and just use the material for commercial purposes, which is one of the uses to which we would object.

For examples:

See the picture (yes...of me...an editor asked for a better photo) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Berlet, and mouse hover and click on the picture and click on the permission/copyright notice.

Look for the chart down the page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots_of_anti-Semitism and do the same.

I offer these a possible alternative, and hope that folks can see why this might be one way to obtain permission in a way that protects Wikipedia and real non-profit or research/scholarly use that benefits the public.

Chip Berlet
senior analyst
Political Research Associates
and Wiki editor  [User:Cberlet]

________________________________

From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org on behalf of Fastfission
Sent: Mon 7/11/2005 7:24 AM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal

I think these are good comments. One way around this might be to make
fair use tags require article names, i.e., {{fairuse|Article}}, which
would then start off by saying, "This page is copyrighted etc. but
thought to be fair use on the article {{article}}..."

<<SNIP>>


from_name: Kate

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Re: Re: statistics now available

body:
Delirium wrote in gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical:

> According to numerous articles and press releases, the current
> generation of ip-to-country mappers handle AOL users correctly.

if you can find the data, anything can be done.  do you know where it is? :)

> -Mark

kate.


body:
19 hours ago, according to GMail, I sent identical emails to several
different regulars here, asking them to keep "a careful pair of eyes"
on the situation in [[Government of Australia]] where an editor with
no connection to me whatsoever had highlighted the same error that I
had six months previously. I must stress this point. Zero connection.
Zero communication. Not a sockpuppet, not a friend, not anything at
all.

Can I ask that those people take a look at the ongoing situation,
summarised below. If they have access to "sockpuppet-detection" tools,
I ask that they use them. I would like to know what is going on,
because it looks to me like an editor in good faith has been treated
very poorly indeed, and that both he and I deserve apologies,
especially from the admin who blocked him.

I make the point that my last edit to the GofA article was 17:08, 24
May 2005, when I corrected a typo, and to the discussion page on 31
May 2005, shortly before the ArbCom case began at which time I
voluntarily ceased making edits to either page.

Peter

==Summary==

23:39, 9 July 2005
User:Pwqn edits [[Government of Australia]]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Government_of_Australia&diff=18462085&oldid=18243028

23:50, 9 July 2005
User:cyberjunkie reverts User:Pwqn and makes a note on the talk page
to this effect, mentioning "the same ridiculousness" and stating that
the editor "has a long edit history so I don't think s/he is a
sockpuppet"
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AGovernment_of_Australia&diff=18462460&oldid=16971907

00:08, 10 July 2005
User:cyberjunkie says: "I don't want to see a return to the
frustrations and viciousness that this issue has caused". I can
heartily echo this, having been on the receiving end of most of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=18462460

04:17, 10 July 2005
User:Pwqn makes a statement, concisely summarising his case and
presenting a list of sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=18471827

20:49, 10 July 2005
Adam Carr states (inter alia): "I will assume for the moment that Pwqn
is a good-faith editor" but "there is '''absolutely no way''' this
question can be re-opened and re-debated because a new editor has come
along and wants to reopen the whole process".
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=18519767

20:53, 10 July 2005
Adam Carr moves a lot of the discussion (including ongoing material)
to archives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=18520525

08:07, 11 July 2005
User:Kangaroopedia (who looks very much like a sockpuppet of
someone's) makes an edit entitled "Showcasing Adam Carr's
Doublethink".
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=18520654

09:08, 11 July 2005
User:Lacrimosus makes a comment entitled: "showcasing the Skyringers' stupidity"
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=18553262

Current revision (as at 10:08 11 July 2005)
User:jtdirl states: "You can usually tell Skyring's clones by their
ignorance of constitutional law and legal principles" and "He really
must think we are a shower of fools not to spot his little games."
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=18556618

04:52, 10 July 2005, Jtdirl blocked Pwqn (expires 04:52, 10 August
2005) (contribs) (sockpuppet of suspended Skyring, or one of the
'people' he threatened to unlease to continue doctoring articles if he
was banned.)
08:20, 11 July 2005, Jtdirl blocked Kangaroopedia (expires 08:20, 11
August 2005) (contribs) (sockpuppet of Skyring or one of those he
promised to unleash to push his agenda when banned from certain pages)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist

User:jtdirl is an admin whose contributions to the article and
discussion page are many and lengthy, extending to many thousands of
words. He is directly involved in this discussion, and at the very
least, I see his intemperate and abusive blocking of a good faith
editor as something warranting discussion.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: edward molasses

body:
On Monday 11 July 2005 12:01 am, cookfire wrote:
> edward molasses wrote:
> >Hello,
> >
> >I'm planning to setup a dictionary of terms related to the field of plant
> >genetic resources, using MediaWiki. I want it to have all definitions in 5
> >different languages and there is a possibility of adding more.
> >
> >I was wondering if the usual/recommended case of setting up a site like
> > this would be to follow the model of Wiktionary and have separate
> > installations for each language of the dictionary, using interwiki links
> > between them (I would have all installations on the same server and use
> > interwiki links, which I think amounts to the same structure of links as
> > what we see in Wikitionary).
> >
> >I'm not sure if this is the best idea for my case since perhaps for
> > Wiktionary this installation fits the situation in regards to
> > maintenance/curation and server load and in my case there would less
> > server load and centralized maintenance/curation would be preferred.
> >
> >So I suppose my main question is, are there more advantages to having
> >everything on one MediaWiki installation or on separate installations?
> > Also, what would the advantages/disadvantages be for each situation?
> >
> >Any of your suggestions would be very much appreciated.
> >Thanks,
> >Andrew.
>
> The reason why Wiktionary and Wikipedia have a wiki per language is
> because there are different teams with knowledge of those particular
> languages working on them. If you create a wiki for one specific purpose
> you better start off with only one wiki. It's always possible to set up
> multiple ones later if the need arises.
>
> Polyglot
> _______________________________________________
> Wiktionary-l mailing list
> Wiktionary-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiktionary-l

Thanks for the help Polyglot. I suppose the reason I was thinking the multiple
install would be a good idea was that it would separate the languages and
make it simpler for some other functionality I would like to add such as
dumping the content of one language to an sql file or pdf document. I don't
know if the advantages for implementing this type of functionality would
outweigh disadvantages.

Andrew.


from_name: Gdr

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Writing with our readers in mind

body:
Jon wrote:
> A good example of the difficulties is outlined in today's featured
> article on the Island Fox. The bit on the main page includes the
> sentence "Its small size is a result of [[island dwarfing]], a kind of
> [[allopatric speciation]]". Come again! To find out what that means
> you have to wade through the technical article [[island dwarfing]] and
> [[allopatric speciation]] - and to begin to understand the latter, you
> also have to try to understand [[speciation]]. I think it means - "It
> is small because it is on a small island", but why not just say that?

It means, "it is small because it is on a small island and because it
can't breed with its larger relatives on the mainland".

I see that the article was rewritten to avoid the term "allopatric
speciation". That's not a good change. Yes, unfamiliar technical terms
need to be glossed. But they should be kept in the article where
possible. Here is an excellent opportunity to mention an important
scientific term and explain briefly what it means, while providing a
link to an article that explains the term in more detail.


from_name: Joseph Ballesteros

subject: [Wikitech-l] Tagalog Wikipedia logo

body:
Hi,

We have created a logo for the Tagalog Wikipedia.  It is uploaded,
protected and ready to switch.

I hope that this is the right venue to request it. My apologies if it is not.

One of the administrators of the Tagalog Wikipedia project had posted
a request here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_logos

Regards,
Jojit


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using Extensions within Templates

body:
Stephen Betts wrote:
> <myFirstExt>{{{1}}}</myFirstExt>
>
> but the problem is that I get the string '{{{1}}}' passed in to the
> extension, rather that the value entered in the template call,
> 'argument1' in the exampel.
>
> Sooo, my question is as follows: is there any way to get the value of
> the argument into the extension?

You might be able to call back into the parser to get it, but I'm not
really sure. Extensions are taken out as one of the first stages of wiki
processing, then their HTML output is inserted as one of the later stages.

> To give a little bit of background, basically I want to define a few
> extensions, but, to get the formatting that I want, each extension
> needs to be aware of what extensions have already been used.

Parser hook extensions are assumed to follow these rules:

1) An extension should always return the same output for the same input.

2) The input consists entirely of the text inside the tag, and the
attribute parameters on the tag.

Thus it should not matter:
* which page the extension is used in
* what other content is on that page
* which order hooks are run in
* how output is cached
etc

If you stray outside that design you're heading into uncharted territory
and surprises should not be... surprising. ;)

Some limited exceptions to using outside info (user preferences, state
of other pages' category memberships) may be made if you're careful
about cache management. You should never, however, make assumptions
about order of execution or other content on the page. No guarantees are
made there and changes to the parser probably will change that in the
future.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Stephen Betts

body:
Hello,

I'm attempting to set up an instance of MediaWiki (version 1.4.x) for
a community site, and I was trying to implement some custom
formatting.  I will describe a little more of what I tried further
down the mail, but I have one particular question, so I'll get that
out of the way first:

I want to use an Extension within a template (details of why
below...), and, in particular, to pass in template parameters to the
extension.  So the template call is

{{myTemplate|argument1}}

with the code within the template looking something like

<myFirstExt>{{{1}}}</myFirstExt>

but the problem is that I get the string '{{{1}}}' passed in to the
extension, rather that the value entered in the template call,
'argument1' in the exampel.

Sooo, my question is as follows: is there any way to get the value of
the argument into the extension?

To give a little bit of background, basically I want to define a few
extensions, but, to get the formatting that I want, each extension
needs to be aware of what extensions have already been used.  I had
kinda assumed that each extension would be invoked in the order in
which they were used in the body of the entry, but it appears that all
instances of each type of extension is processed in turn (I assume
because it uses preg_replace_callback, but I haven't checked that).
So for example, in the following code

== My first heading ==
Introductory text Introductory text Introductory text Introductory text

<myFirstExt>first lot of stuff</myFirstExt>

<mySecondExt>more stuff</mySecondExt>

=== sub-heading ===

<myFirstExt>some sub-stuff</myFirstExt>

the code processing the second <myFirstExt> block is invoked before
the code processing the <mySecondExt> block.  So an alternative
question could be, is there any way of getting extensions within a
document processed in order?  But I guessed that that was harder.

To get around this, I wanted to try putting Template aliases in the
actual document, with the custom extension code invoked in the
Template definitions.  This seemed to get round the ordering, but then
I couldn't do anything with the input parameters, which led to my
first question.

If it's not straight-forward to pass in template parameters to the
extension, would anyone be able to give me some pointers on where I
could try modifying the underlying code to get it to do so?   It seems
to me that this could be a useful thing for people to be able to do,
but that may just be because of my relative inexperience in this
stuff, so all feedback would be appreciated.

As a matter of interest, and from a novice's point of view, I found
both of these behaviours counter-intuitive, but I don't know whether
that's just inexperience with PHP and MediaWiki.

Thanks very much in advance for your help.  Yours,

Stephen.


body:
An intrepid (anonymous) reader of this e-mailed me to say that tehre
was such a template, {{fairusein}}.

I think perhaps though that this should be required for ANY fair use
tag -- every use must be judged fair on different grounds.

Example:

[[Image:Carrie_Buck.jpg]] is used in two articles: [[Carrie Buck]] and
[[Buck v. Bell]]. I think it is fair use in both contexts, though they
have separate purpose (in one it illustrates the main subject of a
biographical article, in another it is illustrating a plaintiff in a
court case. Such dual-fair use should be made explicit; it would not
be necessarily fair use on any other page. Under my proposal, it would
contain two separate fair use notices, one for each page it was used
on.

At the moment I'm seriously thinking of endeavoring on an larger
project of fair use reform -- really getting serious about explicit
fair use tagging and reviewing and things like that, making things a
bit easier to understand for the many users who want to upload content
but don't really want to take the time to learn U.S. intellectual
property law (the basics of which are much simpler than they have a
reputation for being, but as such is still not very interesting to
most) . Anybody interested? Good idea, bad idea, waste of time?

FF

On 7/11/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think these are good comments. One way around this might be to make
> fair use tags require article names, i.e., {{fairuse|Article}}, which
> would then start off by saying, "This page is copyrighted etc. but
> thought to be fair use on the article {{article}}..."
>
> FF
>
> On 7/10/05, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 10/07/05, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Postscript:
> > >
> > > I also think it would be a good idea to create a template along the
> > > lines of {{fairuse-reviewed}} which would contain the normal fair use
> > > notice, as well as something like "The fair use criteria of this item
> > > has been reviewed and found satisfactory by at least one other user."
> > > or something like that. The process of reviewing fair use images would
> > > then be one of converting {{fairuse}} tags to {{fairuse-reviewed}}
> > > (after they had been reviewed). Perhaps a Wikiproject of some form
> > > would be good for this? Anyway, it would allow us to keep track of
> > > things. Just a thought.
> >
> > I like this idea; might need a lot of manpower, though, and people do
> > tend to have rather wide-ranging differences in how stringently they
> > accept copyright restrictions. (I've more than once heard "well, it
> > *should* be free" used to defend copyvios, and in one delightful case
> > encountered someone who thought "in the public domain" meant *both*
> > "this information is not secret" and "this information is free to
> > copy"...). But I'd certainly be interested in seeing it work.
> >
> > One fair-use problem, that I've been mulling over of late (I've been
> > incommunicado for a few days), is that of context.
> >
> > With something like a publicity photo of $celebrity, "fair use" is
> > fairly incontrovertible. But... let's say we're dealing with the
> > Lindisfarne Gospels, and the much-discussed photo thereof; assume it's
> > tagged as fair use.
> >
> > Even if would be fair use to use this to illustrate an article on the
> > [[Lindisfarne Gospels]] (rare item, not much photographed, &c.)
> > despite it being copyrighted... would it be fair use to use it to
> > illustrate an article on, say, [[Rare-book photography]]? Sure, it's
> > an example of such an image, but there's certainly thousands more of
> > equal usability. How about using it to illustrate an article on
> > [[Books]], or the [[Bible]]? Again, some relevance, but other images
> > are just as good or better.
> >
> > As I understand fair use - I don't claim to, one set of copyright law
> > is confusing enough - it is quite dependent on the claim being a
> > reasonable one in context.
> >
> > But we'd have the one image, tagged as {{fairuse}} without that
> > context; anyone wondering about using it in another article would
> > simply see that we had it, it was under a legitimate-use license of
> > some form, and slap it in their article, unless they were the
> > introspective type given to considering license details.
> >
> > This may, potentially, be a problem with the way we tag things - fair
> > use inherently seems to imply "in the context of the article for which
> > it was originally used". It may be fair use the second time (and
> > probably is), but may not... I don't know what, if anything, to do
> > about this, but thought I'd kick it out.
> >
> > --
> > - Andrew Gray
> >   andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk
> >
>


from_name: Lars Aronsson

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:

> There must be more to the story than what Michael Hart is
> suggesting here.

Why do you think that "must be"?  Project Gutenberg is run by
Michael Hart.  Who else should answer your questions?  A strong
disclaimer doesn't always have a strong reason.

When we digitize old (Scandinavian) encyclopedias, magazines, and
other printed works in Project Runeberg, we never had to alter the
title, but always reproduced the title as it was printed.  There
seems to be no risk that readers should confuse the old issues
with the current product.

E.g.:
Old http://runeberg.org/svlartid/1891/0005.html
new http://www.lararnastidning.net/

Old http://runeberg.org/tekuke/1883/0007.html
new http://tu.no/

Old http://runeberg.org/tektid/1871/0005.html
new http://nyteknik.se/

Old http://runeberg.org/ab/0001.html
new http://aftonbladet.se/

Old http://runeberg.org/corren/0001.html
new http://corren.se/

Old http://runeberg.org/saol/8/0009.html
new http://spraakdata.gu.se/saol/saol.html

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Project Runeberg - free Nordic literature - http://runeberg.org/


body:
The problem here is that you can't "give" fair use privileges. Fair
use is a defense, not a form of permission. When we post a fair use
tag, it is really a pre-emptive statement that says, "If you sue us,
this is what we'll say in court, and we think we'll win."

Now, if you say ahead of time, "Well, we're not going to sue you" --
does that change anything? Not really. What if you changed your mind?
You're not bound *not* to sue us (or, put in a less accusatory way:
what if your group was suddenly acquired by someone else who did not
want to honor your previous informal agreement?).

So whether or not the usage of the materials is "fair use" is totally
unrelated to whether or not your group approves. The transference of
privileges you are talking about is really just a form of licensing,
which is *not* what fair use is about.

Whether that means we can or can't use your content depends on its
use. I suspect it would still be mostly fair -- a picture of you and a
simple table don't sound like things which are going to defraud
anybody. And if we trust you not to sue, that would probably bend the
"is it fair?"-ometer towards the "not going to sue us" section of
things, so it probably isn't a problem. But it isn't so simple as just
"granting" fair use -- it is not a license, it is a defense against
allegations of violating a license. That's an important difference!

FF

On 7/11/05, Chip Berlet <c.berlet at publiceye.org> wrote:
> At Political Research Associates, we are a U.S. non-profit that guards our copyrighted material for a variety of reasons not worth debating on this list.  We have come up with a way we think protects Wikipedia as a "Fair-Use" user of some of our material that remains copyrighted, but for which we give explicit permission to Wikipedia for use AND state in a public online file that PRA considers the use by Wikipedia to be "Fair Use" because of its value as research and in the public interest.
>
> I would very much not want the "online cult of everything should be free" to force the removal of our material from Wiki on the odd chance that some downstream user might not read the permission/copyright blurb and just use the material for commercial purposes, which is one of the uses to which we would object.
>
> For examples:
>
> See the picture (yes...of me...an editor asked for a better photo) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Berlet, and mouse hover and click on the picture and click on the permission/copyright notice.
>
> Look for the chart down the page at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roots_of_anti-Semitism and do the same.
>
> I offer these a possible alternative, and hope that folks can see why this might be one way to obtain permission in a way that protects Wikipedia and real non-profit or research/scholarly use that benefits the public.
>
> Chip Berlet
> senior analyst
> Political Research Associates
> and Wiki editor  [User:Cberlet]
>
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org on behalf of Fastfission
> Sent: Mon 7/11/2005 7:24 AM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal
>
>
>
> I think these are good comments. One way around this might be to make
> fair use tags require article names, i.e., {{fairuse|Article}}, which
> would then start off by saying, "This page is copyrighted etc. but
> thought to be fair use on the article {{article}}..."
>
> <<SNIP>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Dan Grey

body:
On 11/07/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
> Current revision (as at 10:08 11 July 2005)
> User:jtdirl states: "You can usually tell Skyring's clones by their
> ignorance of constitutional law and legal principles" and "He really
> must think we are a shower of fools not to spot his little games."
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&diff=next&oldid=18556618
>
> 04:52, 10 July 2005, Jtdirl blocked Pwqn (expires 04:52, 10 August
> 2005) (contribs) (sockpuppet of suspended Skyring, or one of the
> 'people' he threatened to unlease to continue doctoring articles if he
> was banned.)
>
>
> Peter in Canberra

As Peter provided links, the least I could do was go through them, and
yes, this does appear to be a case where an admin got it wrong. Jtdirl
should have asked an admin who is unconnected with the article to
investigate, rather than act himself.

Shouldn't be too difficult for another admin to unblock Pwqn.

Dan


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Improving ArbCom's lot medium-term

body:
--- Jon <thagudearbh at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> 1. ArbCom to have 24 members (ie enough to cope with absences, resignations,
> etc)

Having more people will likely make it harder to reach consensus on any one
case and increase the number of votes needed to enact anything. Thus this could
cause more harm than good. Adding one or two extra seats per yearly election
along with finding ways to minimize the effect I just mentioned would likely be
a more practical course of action. There are also a limited number of people
who have both the trust of the community and want to serve. During the last
election, for example, I think it would have been a disaster to add more than a
few seats since that would have resulted in some fairly controversial people
getting elected.

> 2. 7 Arbitrators to hear each case - the arbitrators to hear each case being
> decided on a taxi rank system (amongst those making themselves available in
> any given week or fortnight)

This could be workable for a slowly-growing ArbCom but would limit the
potential pool of people who could move a case along. The way things work now
works well so long as we have enough active members around.

> 3. The first Arbitrator in the queue will be responsible for writing up the
> initial findings of fact and proposed decisions (this is both to share the
> workload, plus to ensure that one arbitrator does not gain undue influence by
> writing them all - this is not a criticism of Fred, who tends to be the first
> arbitrator at present to write these - more an acknowledgment that it would
> be better to get a variety of opinions - clearly if the other arbitrators
> disagree with the findings and proposed decision, it will be rejected anyway,
> as is the case now).

This would not be workable due to the fact that some people really are better
at proposing items while others rarely if ever do so either for time-constraint
issues or a lack of ability. Checking the logic of already-proposed items and
voting is always much easier than proposing items in the first place.

-- mav

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


from_name: Servien Ilaino

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Dutch- and German-Low Saxon discussion

body:
Hi everyone,

First of all Mark: As I said: "what is a native speaker" if you dream
and speak it... well then I am a native speaker... or at least
bilingual, besides, ALL LS people are bilingual, and as said, both
versions are not mutually comprehensible (for the millionth time!)

Heiko, Slomox etc.: I don't mind if you continue on nds. besides it
was never my goal to get you to go to nds-de. I just like to create a
Dutch-LS Wiki, and confincing Mark that it's almost impossible to
cooperate on one Wiki if both speakers don't understand each other. If
nds-nl. gets created and you want a common portal that's fine with me,
or we could just put a link on the homepage as I've done on my
testpage.

(I won't vote to remove Heiko, that's just pure "evilness-ness" and
"jealousy-ness-ness"!)

Now lets wait if it ever gets created... BTW I changed the title, was
kind of necessary as the subject doesn't match the content!

Servien

2005/7/11, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>:
> I've just dug up earlier discussions about the Platt Wikipedia, and
> about Patentplatt/Fernsehplatt in general.
>
> See:
>
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0505D&L=lowlands-l&P=R455
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0506A&L=lowlands-l&P=R3044
> http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?S2=lowlands-l&q=patentplatt&s=&f=&a=&b=
>
> Mark
>
> PS: If Ron Hahn says that nds.wikipedia is in Patentplatt, are you
> telling us that Ron Hahn is wrong? After all, he's a native speaker
> and you're not.
>
> On 10/07/05, wiki at marcusbuck.org <wiki at marcusbuck.org> wrote:
> > Hello.
> >
> > I find it a bit weird, that you discuss about nds.wikipedia on the mailing list
> > and not even post a message on nds.wikipedia. I found this discussion by chance
> > after some people came into the wiki making changes without knowing really what
> > they do.
> >
> > Some people here are running down admin and other users of nds.wikipedia, which
> > are the only people really active on that wiki for long time. They are engaged
> > on making it a better usable resource in Low Saxon language and we introduced a
> > common orthography based on the wordbook by Johannes Sass to make it consistent
> > so you don't have to know all the regional variants of the language, which are
> > for some cases mutually unintelligible. The orthography by Sass is based on the
> > most widely used dialect, that is also mostly used when spoken in supra-regional
> > media.
> >
> > I think some people discussing here are speaking out of their ivory tower and
> > don't know what is really going on at the "base". I see some Dutch engaged
> > here. Let me say: Dutch variant of Low Saxon is not understandable for most of
> > German Low Saxon speakers (Sure, they are understandable near the border). Some
> > state the wiki is in Plattd??tsch rather than Low Saxon. This is so true as it
> > is not true. Plattd??tsch is the most important variant of Low Saxon (Low Saxon
> > is an academic classification) and the common name of the language in Germany.
> > If no Dutch contribute it is no wonder, when the wikipedia is more and more
> > germanized (or shall the German learn Dutch and Nedersaksisch to balance the
> > Dutch contribution deficits?)
> >
> > You don't need all your fingers to count all regular contributors to the wiki.
> > Why do so much people argue here about the content of the wiki and nobody of
> > the people, who obviously know so much about the language, contributes?
> >
> > I'm a little bit angry because of the behaviour of some.
> >
> > --~~~~
> > Greets, Slomox
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
>
>
> --
> SI HOC LEGERE SCIS NIMIVM ERVDITIONIS HABES
> QVANTVM MATERIAE MATERIETVR MARMOTA MONAX SI MARMOTA MONAX MATERIAM
> POSSIT MATERIARI
> ESTNE VOLVMEN IN TOGA AN SOLVM TIBI LIBET ME VIDERE
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
On 7/10/05, Dan Grey <dangrey at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/07/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> Take, for example, paracetamol:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Mechanism_of_Toxicity
>
> What the hell does that mean?! It is, frankly, total garbage.
> Completely correct, no doubt, but meaningless to the vast amjority of
> people - and a lot of people want to know why paracetamol can kill
> them so easily.
>
Now that's a good example of overusing scientific terms. If someone
had described the role of the pathways and what they actually were in
the article (did they?) a simply explaining what oversaturation is
would do the trick.


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Tagalog Wikipedia logo

references:
<9d08dd2b050710214030fd64ca@mail.gmail.com>
	<849f98ed050710222936e76cd6@mail.gmail.com>
	<daua3o$dtl$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Wow... thanks Ashar :)

Mark

On 11/07/05, Ashar Voultoiz <hashar at altern.org> wrote:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > As I've also noted elsewhere, the logos on quite a few other
> > Wikipedias are ready to switch, among them:
> >
> > am.wiki
> > ba.wiki
> > bo.wiki
> > co.wiki
> > cv.wiki
> > ff.wiki
> > gv.wiki
> > ht.wiki
> > iu.wiki
> > kk.wiki
> > kl.wiki
> > kw.wiki
> > ky.wiki
> > ps.wiki
> > sc.wiki
> > tg.wiki
> > ug.wiki
> >
> > there may be a few more that I've forgotten, but I'd be very grateful
> > if somebody could activate these logos.
>
> Done, all those wiki logos are now poiting to [[Image:Wiki.png]].
>
> --
> Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
> http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
> IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

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


body:
Actually, Robin isn't a speaker of Maori.

At least, he claims his Maori is mi-1 -- lower than your claim for
French (fr-2) or Esperanto (eo-2).

In fact, I would dare to say that my German is de-1... and you've seen
my Hochdeutsch... how would you feel about me being responsible for
writing most of the Hochdeutsch Wikipedia, if it were in the same
situation?

My command of Navajo is nv-1. I am an admin at the Navajo Wikipedia.
Yet, instead of creating heaps of content in English and poor Navajo,
I created only about 56 pages, did my best to translate parts of the
interface, and left the rest to somebody more capable.

Mark

On 11/07/05, Heiko Evermann <heiko.evermann at gmx.de> wrote:
> Hi everyone, hi Mark,
>
> On Monday, 11. July 2005 11:06, Mark Williamson wrote:
> > I have now been blocked by Robin Patterson for removing
> > English-language content.
> Now this is interesting. A few days ago mi.wikipedia.org and nds.wikipedia.org
> were going on fine. Now Mark comes along, doing as he pleases, not caring
> about existing communities and their rules, changing things the way he thinks
> best, in the case of Maori without even knowing the language. His changes get
> reverted. He does not care, his changes get revertet again, he does the same
> thing again and gets a one-week ban in mi, and he is close to getting one in
> nds, too.
>
> If such things happen in two unrelated wikipedias, whose fault might this be?
> Marks or mi/nds's?
> >
> > I had left him a message a few days ago, and he never answered it.
> >
> > One of the diffs where he added back English-language content:
> > http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hau_K%C4%81inga&diff=7198&oldid=7
> >192
> This is not correct. It is an explanation in English to point users who know
> English better than Maori (which is a basic problem for Maori people!) to a
> good place to start.
> >
> > I do not think that somebody like this should be trusted with admin
> > privelages, especially since according to him his fluency level is
> > only mi-1.
> I have had a look at Robin's edits. I think that he is doing a great job. I
> see that he is careful which sentences he translate (when he is confident
> about his language skills) and which he so far does not (because at the
> moment it is beyond his language skills). I like that. It is not up to you,
> Mark (you are not a Maori speaker) to decide that. If other people from
> within the Maori community come and elect other Admins, it is fine, but it is
> none of your business. Within 24 hours you have demanded the removal of two
> admins (Robin in mi and me in nds). That, I find, is highly unusual and tells
> a lot more about you than about us.
>
> > I request immediate unbanning of myself, and immediate removal of his
> > sysop privelages due to abuse (present and past).
> You got banned in mi, because you just went on with your changes, even though
> you were explicitly asked not to do that. You just came out of nowhere,
> decided that you had a licence to kill all English content in [:mi] and went
> on. The main point about this is that you did not check this with the mi
> community. I think that some of these English passages were there on purpose
> as a preparation to be translated into English later. The mi wikipedia
> explicitly states on http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal
> "This is intended to be an encyclopedia (m?t?punenga) in which every article
> is written entirely in the M?ori language", so you should not worry, over
> time those English passages will be translated, and it is *none of your
> business* to interfere with a community that does not want your "help".
>
> Again, as you seem to be slow to understand:
> > > > Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in
> > >
> > > the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people,
> > > and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good,
> > > since only 5% of Maori people are fluent in Maori.
> > >
> > > Wrong. Maori means Maori language, not Maori people. "English Wikipedia"
> > > doesn't mean "Wikipedia for people living in England" but rather
> > > "Wikipedia written in English language".
> Most of the Maori people are fluent in English, but only some of them are
> fluent in Maori. For a certain time English aids in this wikipedia might be
> important as stepping stones towards an all-Maori encyclopedia, and it is up
> to the community to decide when to do that, and not yours.
>
> Mark, please have a closer look at one of your edits:
> http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hau_K%C4%81inga&diff=prev&oldid=7192
>
> 1) you deleted an explanation for English-language users, where to go within
> this wikipedia in order to participate
> 2) you deleted content in Maori.
> You did that three times. And the irony is that you got your blocking for
> removal of this *Maori*content.
>
> I think, Mark, that it might be a good idea for you to mediate about your
> share of the blame and I think that a writing ban in mi might provide you
> with some time that you should use for this meditation.
>
> In summary: I fully support Robin's decision.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Heiko Evermann
> (Admin in nds.wikipedia.org)
>

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


body:
> Hi everyone,
>
> just for the record and for the slow in hearing,
>
> > I find it interesting that you refer to the Sass orthography, when
> > Heiko recently reverted changes by Reinhart Hahn to attempt to bring a
> > page into accordance with the Sass orthography.
> This is not correct. Sass states different in all changes in question.
> >
> > "Der neue Sass" makes a few important phonetic distinctions that you
> > guys don't make. When Ron added them, as well as fixing you guys' poor
> > grammar, his changes were reverted by HeikoEvermann.
> No, it does not make these distinctions. The interesting feature about the new
> Sass is that it lists variants of the main entries in the dictionary, and the
> "important phonetic destinction" can only be *inferred* from whether or not
> certain variants are given, or not. We have decided as nds.wikipedia.org
> community to write according to Sass and in the case of variants this means
> to go by the first one.
>
> Just one example:
> *  engl: "many" => "veel (v??l)". So Sass favours "veel" ?ver "v??l" and
> states that veel is to pronounce "eintonig" and not as a diphtong like
> "veyl".
>
> Nevertheless Mark changed "veel" into "v??l". I then reverted it. In general
> Sass favours "e" ?ver "?". Mark does otherwise. He changed a lot of "e"s into
> "?"s. I do not consider that an improvement.

I've said before and I'll say again, those changes were originally
made by Ron Hahn. You reverted them, and then I reverted you. So they
do not originate from me.

> > Re running down admins... Slomox, both you and HeikoEvermann state
> > very clearly that your native language is Hochdeutsch, not Platt.
> > Important decisions such as orthography shouldn't be made by
> > second-language speakers only, and neither should the entire interface
> > be translated and thousands of articles created mostly by
> > second-language speakers (look at na: for a worst-case scenario; ga:
> > still has problems because much of its initial content, and the user
> > interface, was written in poor Irish by a second-language speaker).
> We have decided to go according to the main Low Saxon orthography that is in
> use in Germany, and such a decision is certainly within our language
> competence.
>
> > The solution to this problem as I see it: Fix the grammatical problems
> > with nds.wiki which are the result of contributor incompetency. Add
> > nessecary orthographic distinctions. Introduce orthographic converter
> > based on the model I constructed.
> 1) We have been tidying up a lot recently, but Mark fails to notice. He just
> comes along, has an idea, does not ask the community about its customs and
> just does whatever he has in mind. He gets reverted, does it again and gets
> into trouble. This is egotism. Wikipedia however is supposed to be a
> community project.

If it's supposed to be a community project, then why are you excluding
opinions such as Servien's and Ron's as if they were from outside,
even though these people tried to contribute?

> 2) Whether or not these phonetic distinctions are neccessary or not is not
> just for me or for Mark to decide. The main orthography (according to Sass)
> thinks otherwise. And therefore it is fine not to make that distinction.
> 3) That also means that his orthographic converter will not be needed. Unless,
> of course, a community process over time comes to a different conclusion.

How is the conclusion about an orthographic converter even RELATED to
your other conclusion??

> > And then, after this, there needs to be a recognition that nds.wiki at
> > the current time can only be for Northern and Western Low Saxon, ie
> > excluding Plautdietsch, Westphaelsch, Eastphaelsch... otherwise we
> > open the Pandora's box of incomprehensibility.
> Yes, this is indeed the case. But these variants of Low Saxon are different no
> matter what orthography you use. Nordneddersassisch is one of the variants
> within Low Saxon that developed into a standard. (BTW: Harry Potter vol 1+2
> were translated into Low Saxon, guess into which version... Right:
> Nordneddersassisch)

What is your point here? That's basically what I said.

Mark


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: 8th Duke of Wellington image crisis

body:
> bump
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)

This is certainly every bit as compelling
and exciting as the ongoing Australian
head-of-state crisis ;)

Yes, it is silly to try to enforce the
caption one wants by incorporating it
into the image and claiming copyright.

Other than that I'm not sure what we
should do. Try not to bite the newbie,
I suppose.

Regards,
Haukur


body:
Actually, as a publisher, PRA gets people who ask us if we think a
particular use of our copyrighted material is "Fair Use" all the time.
If Wikipedia asserts a "Fair Use" and PRA recognizes this claim and
agrees with it, there is no copyright violation. If PRA later changes
its mind and asks that something be removed, it could not effectively
argue that the prior use was not appropriate, because it had agreed to
it. All archived pages would be covered by that prior use authorization.

Chip

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Fastfission
> Sent: Monday, July 11, 2005 1:37 PM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: New fair use tag proposal
>
>
> The problem here is that you can't "give" fair use
> privileges. Fair use is a defense, not a form of permission.
> When we post a fair use tag, it is really a pre-emptive
> statement that says, "If you sue us, this is what we'll say
> in court, and we think we'll win."
>
> Now, if you say ahead of time, "Well, we're not going to sue
> you" -- does that change anything? Not really. What if you
> changed your mind? You're not bound *not* to sue us (or, put
> in a less accusatory way: what if your group was suddenly
> acquired by someone else who did not want to honor your
> previous informal agreement?).
>
> So whether or not the usage of the materials is "fair use" is
> totally unrelated to whether or not your group approves. The
> transference of privileges you are talking about is really
> just a form of licensing, which is *not* what fair use is about.
>
> Whether that means we can or can't use your content depends
> on its use. I suspect it would still be mostly fair -- a
> picture of you and a simple table don't sound like things
> which are going to defraud anybody. And if we trust you not
> to sue, that would probably bend the "is it fair?"-ometer
> towards the "not going to sue us" section of things, so it
> probably isn't a problem. But it isn't so simple as just
> "granting" fair use -- it is not a license, it is a defense
> against allegations of violating a license. That's an
> important difference!
>
> FF


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Single login, et al

body:
I think that initially, name conflicts should be given separate
acc'ts, on the base of Node_ue.de vs Node_ue.en, etc.

People can apply to merge their accounts (as I would do with mine), or
possibly there would be a system whereby if the e-mail and password
were the same then they would be merged.

I do NOT think it's a good idea to just force people to get new names.

Mark

On 11/07/05, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
> There have been some great efforts to discuss and specify what a
> single-login implementatoin will look like in recent months.  However,
> the major disagreements form the last bout of specifications -- how to
> deal with name conflicts -- have not yet been addressed.
>
> See http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Single_login_specifications
> and the article page itself for some of the current discussion.
>
> The current proposal suggests that "the user under a given name with
> the highest edit-count" will "Win" that name, and all other users with
> that name will have a fixed period of time to find a new username.
> The idea of arbitrarily forcing one user to change names seems bad and
> anti-consensus to me -- if two active users have the same name, I
> think they should work out something among themselves -- or be allowed
> to forego the privileges of unified login.  And the idea of using edit
> counts to determine "winners" is particularly unappealing to me (how
> about seniority?  usefulness of edits?  current activity?).
>
> Please check out the current specification and comment.  There will be
> a lot of detailed discussion about this implementatoin at Wikimania in
> August.
>
> --
> ++SJ
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Request to mailing list WikiEN-l rejected

body:
You were answered in:

http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/025931.html
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/025938.html
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/025944.html
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/025984.html
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/026013.html
http://mail.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2005-July/026021.html

If you didn't like the answers, that's not our problem. My aim at
present is to keep the list readable by the few remaining users of it
interested primarily in writing an encyclopedia who haven't quit in
disgust. This correspondence is declared closed.

- d.

On 7/11/05, Norath Norath <norath2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Would you please do me the courtesy of pointing out
> where David answered the question of which piece of
> policy justifies his answer?
> I appear to have missed it.


body:
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > Is it considered acceptable to have spearate Wikipedias for different
> > cultures and peoples rather than languages?
>
> No it isn't. I agree with what Jimmy, Anthere, and others have already
> written in reply to this.
>
> > Robin Patterson has asserted on mi: that rather than a Wikipedia in
> > the Maori language, it's intended as a Wikipedia for the Maori people,
> > and thus extensive usage of the English language is OK or even good
>
> Where has he said this? The top of
> http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Community_Portal states very
> clearly that every article should be written in M?ori.

Yes, yet he states at
http://mi.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:24.251.198.251 (and various
places on sm:) that since "English is the first language of at least
80% of people of Maori descent", that English content should and will
be kept.

> Guaka wrote:
> > When applying for Bambara Wikipedia administratorship I explicitely
> > mentioned that I'll drop my administratorship as soon as there are some
> > native speaking folks active as administrator. I think that should be a
> > general policy for administrators who have only a very small knowledge
> > of a language.
>
> I think that's fine. I see no need to prevent people from being admins
> because they don't speak the language when there are no active users
> that do speak the language.
>
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > I have now been blocked by Robin Patterson for removing
> > English-language content.
>
> Really? The block log claims he blocked you for removing M?ori content.

Obviously, all block reasons are always truthful and make complete
sense... The first time he threatened to ban me was at
http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%C5%8Ctepoti&diff=7200&oldid=7197,
where I removed the single link "Whakanui!" because the image can
already be enlarged by clicking on it and thus an external image link
to en.wikipedia is not nessecary. He labelled this as "removing
maori-language content", and rather than assuming good faith, told me
that I would be banned if I did it again.

The diff for which I was banned is
http://mi.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hau_K%C4%81inga&diff=7217&oldid=7206
.

You can see that primarily what I removed was the "If your first
language is English...", being at the top of the page.

I did also remove the list of "sample articles", but gave a good
reason in an earlier edit summary: They take up space, and many (even
most) of them can already be accessed by using the table of contents
below.

> > I had left him a message a few days ago, and he never answered it.
>
> Perhaps you could have waited a bit longer for a reply before
> contining to revert the main page.

I left him a message on the 9th, the revert for which he banned me was
on the 11th. Since he had to be logged in to block me, he had to have
seen the orange "new messages" notice.

> > I do not think that somebody like this should be trusted with admin
> > privelages, especially since according to him his fluency level is
> > only mi-1.
>
> I disagree. Since this is the only case I am aware of where there has
> been any suggestion of a problem, desysopping seems too extreme a
> reaction.

1) His fluency level is mi-1.
2) His behaviour at sm: indicates that his attitudes re use of English
on non-English Wikipedias are not in line with what the local
population is likely to think (many Maori speakers would be upset or
at least disgusted that an encyclopedia that is supposed to be in
Maori is largely in English)
3) In the past, and even in the present, he has used mi.wiki to
promote a site he is affiliated with, "Zeal". Most recently it was as
an external link from [[Aotearoa]]. His site is 1) in English, and 2)
basically just like DMOZ, except less widely known and with less
links.
4) I have a Maori friend (native speaker) whom I encouraged to edit
the Maori Wikipedia a while back. He made a couple of changes but said
that he didn't really want to edit because it seemed more like a mix
of Maori and English. When I told this to Robin Patterson, he just
told me that he was removing English content (the site notice still
features very prominent English text, in fact it is larger than the
Maori parts of the site notice) to make it more inviting, yet I can't
find any evidence of that. The mi.wikipedia page on the 20th century
was once at "20th century". I moved it, if I recall correctly, to the
proper Maori title. Many of the other pages he creates are fully or
partially in English.

> Heiko Evermann wrote:
> > I have had a look at Robin's edits. I think that he is doing a great job.
>
> I agree. He has also made efforts to attract a wider community of
> M?ori speakers to the wiki.

Yes, but the reason none of them have contributed, despite his
numerous efforts (even placing an ad in a newspaper), is the high
volume of English-language content. He knows this very well yet he is
not willing to do anything about it.

Similarly, he tried to add English-language content to the Samoan Wikipedia.

Mark


subject: [Wikitech-l] Mysterious locked records

body:
Recently somebody dumped a huge amount of text into Template:POTD on
enwiki, and people were unable to revert it as the edits failed (timing
out and showing squid error pages).

As a temporary measure I cleared its outgoing pagelinks and reverted the
page_latest manually to an earlier revision. However it remained uneditable.

I found that the edit updates were hanging while trying to touch the
page_touched timestamp on the pages linking to the template. By changing
it from a single multiple-target UPDATE statement to separate per-record
UPDATEs I found that it was hanging on a particular record:

mysql> UPDATE `page` SET page_touched='20050711222253' WHERE
page_id=2152287 limit 1;

Updating this record, referenced either by title or by id, just hangs
for a couple minutes until it times out trying to get a lock. But
there's no competing query that I can see, and no reason for an open lock.

I've got James poking at it, hopefully we can figure it out...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] RE: Using Extensions within Templates

body:
Stephen Betts said:
"... each extension needs to be aware of what extensions have already been used..."

Instead of what you're doing with putting variables in templates, now about making your extensions themselves more intelligent by using a static variable to log which extensions have been used?

I am currently doing something like this to prevent an extension being used more than once.

Best Regards,
Aerik


from_name: Jack Lynch

body:
bump

Jack (Sam Spade)

On 7/10/05, Jack Lynch <jack.i.lynch at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please have a look @
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_arbitration#Image_use
>
> we have a rather difficult situation, spanning several pages and a
> number of policies, which I would like to see handled promptly and
> effectually.
>
> Jack (Sam Spade)
>


body:
And if the community is composed basically of just one person who
doesn't really speak the language...?

On 11/07/05, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark, the details are not even important.
>
> Just remember three words - respect the community.
>
> -User:Fuzheado
>

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


subject: [WikiEN-l] Image permissions, a case study

body:
Dear colleagues,

One of my primary interests on Wikipedia is
to increase and improve coverage of matters
related to Iceland, my native country. Recently
I've become interested in the fauna of this
barren land - which consists mostly of birds.

I came upon a webpage by a countryman of mine
which has a number of good bird pictures in
high resolution. I thought it would be nice
to include some of them in Wikipedia since
some of the species are currently not illustrated
and many only have a low resolution picture.

The web page in question is here:

http://www.simnet.is/jakobs/birds/birds.html

I contacted the photographer and asked him if
he was willing to license the pictures under
the GFDL or CC-BY so they could be used on
Wikipedia. He took the matter under consideration
and told me that he felt those licenses were
too broad, but he was willing to license the
pictures for use on Wikipedia.

I told him that Wikipedia doesn't currently
accept exclusive licenses and added a squirt
of ideology. As a last resort I asked him if
he'd be willing to license his pictures with
the following notice:

"? 2005 Jakob Sigur?sson. Anyone can use this image
for encyclopedia articles and other educational
purposes as long as it is attributed to me."

He agreed.

Is this "free enough" for Wikipedia or will any
images I upload with such a notice be deleted?

Regards,
Haukur


subject: [Wikitech-l] Mysterious locked records

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> mysql> UPDATE `page` SET page_touched='20050711222253' WHERE
> page_id=2152287 limit 1;
>
> Updating this record, referenced either by title or by id, just hangs
> for a couple minutes until it times out trying to get a lock. But
> there's no competing query that I can see, and no reason for an open lock.
>
> I've got James poking at it, hopefully we can figure it out...

On James's advice I've restarted the master server with the
innodb_status_file=1 option. Restarting had the happy side effect of
removing whatever locks were open. ;)

But if it happens again, hopefully we'll have a better idea what's going
on with some more debugging...

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Single login, et al

body:
S?rgio Ribeiro wrote:
> ** OFFTOPIC **
> Since this is a little off-topic I don't want to post it one the discussion.
> With this new single login system, will be there new changes on the
> characters allowed on a username ? Like accepting underscores (_) on the
> username ?
>
> That may be the chance for me to change my nick from Get It to Get_It

Usernames must be valid page titles (so that for instance user and user
talk pages can exist). Since underscores are always normalized to spaces
in titles, the same goes for usernames.

That won't change.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Foundation-l] Single login, et al

body:
S?rgio Ribeiro wrote:
> ** OFFTOPIC **
> Since this is a little off-topic I don't want to post it one the discussion.
> With this new single login system, will be there new changes on the
> characters allowed on a username ? Like accepting underscores (_) on the
> username ?
>
> That may be the chance for me to change my nick from Get It to Get_It

Usernames must be valid page titles (so that for instance user and user
talk pages can exist). Since underscores are always normalized to spaces
in titles, the same goes for usernames.

That won't change.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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