body:
Marco Chiesa wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>I think the main issue is rather this one. People are writing to otrs
>>about issues on some projects with a language no one at otrs knows
>>enough to even look at the article or conflict or whatever.
>>
>>David could forward the email to your mailing list (presumably wikiar-l
>>exists) or post it on your pump (though it is really really hard when
>>you really do not know the language). However, there is a policy at
>>otrs: messages received are considered private. We can not post them
>>publicly.
>>
>>So, David, or others, just do not know what to do with these emails and
>>those requests.
>>
>>Cheers
>>
>>Anthere
>>
>>
>>
>
> So, what about having a couple of trusted people from ar.wikipedia
> dealing with otrs?
>
> Marco/Cruccone

Yes :-)
Volunteers ?

Meanwhile, I take it that the wikiar-l is probably the best option by
far to contact ar editors.

ant


list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] problem page on the ar: wikipedia


list: wikien-l

from_name: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/21/06, niht-hr?fn <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Nov 21, 2006, at 19:08, Fred Bauder wrote:
>
> >
> > On Nov 21, 2006, at 4:28 PM, niht-hr?fn wrote:
> >
> >> The recent thread on the low numbers of women applying for ArbCom and
> >> subsequent discussion about systemic bias and under-representation of
> >> women has led me to wonder about the nature of gender-related
> >> systemic bias on the English Wikipedia.
> >
> > I suspect the cause is simply that women have something else to do
> > with their time that they enjoy more. However, I also suspect enough
> > women will edit, that "women's subjects" will eventually be
> > adequately handled.
> >
> > Fred
> >
> Indeed, I'm not terribly worried about article coverage, but merely
> wondering if the difference is affecting other areas, such as policy.
>
> --Keitei

Do you have specific examples which come to mind, or is this a generic
concern?

I have seen such things happen in the past in smaller groups, but larger
sets of people tend to have less such problems.  WP policy has seemed pretty
neutral to me, but I'm open to the possibility that I'm not seeing something
that's there.

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


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

references:
<84a69b0e0611151641n1bfcc165qf72d99386b08d3c9@mail.gmail.com>
	<b8ceeef70611190645o5f6a3262vb4adebed8eedcc45@mail.gmail.com>
	<ejqsfm$5mr$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b8ceeef70611191736m50d132c5o27c500b3f9fc04fb@mail.gmail.com>
	<ejr1if$ge1$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b8ceeef70611192000v20f0cce8p8fd45e979cc06b99@mail.gmail.com>
	<45612BEB.7020807@gmail.com>
	<b8ceeef70611192052l2f88cd69u775dddc76b0a4066@mail.gmail.com>
	<ejt6t1$caj$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b8ceeef70611210351n4e77b5bahb808f92e60b3ecc7@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On 11/21/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> For my own curiosity, why *is* it so DB-intensive to count the number
> of edits for a user? Is there no view/table that marries users up to
> their edits?

It's just that there's no edit count stored directly in the database
at present (at least not that I can see in a quick glance at the
schema).  You have to do a count, which is O(N).  An edit count could
be added, presumably, if it were deemed useful, but I'm not the person
to ask about whether that would slow things down or not, or otherwise
be deemed undesirable.


list: foundation-l

from_name: David Monniaux

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] contents
 under	education/information licenses

body:
I wanted to comment publicly, however, that I think it is very unfair
of you to respond twice to me... One, your public reply, is more
friendly and the second your private reply far more aggressive.

Ok, just so that everyone is informed. I wrote to Greg, after his answer to my first message, which I considered insulted my intelligence :

< Apart from that, I would be glad if you would not use formulas such as
"your argument is seriously lacking in consistency". Given that you
have attacked essentially a straw man throughout your message (from
lack of knowledge of the issues), this sounded like a rather
pretentious judgment. Richard Stallman can get away with that kind of
things because he's Richard Stallman, but you're not. >

I may have been excessive here, but let me tell you an anecdote.

I've done political... let's say, lobbying, for lack of better words, on questions of copyright and computing. I've had to deal with people in my own camp (those supporting free software and the like) whose intellectual rigidity, in my view, really hampered our final goals.

I remember for instance a guy (whom I'll leave unnamed) that interrupted me when I was talking with a member of the board of administrators of [[SACEM]] (the French society of authors and composers) and proposed to the guy that artists, authors etc. should be funded by worldwide sponsoring and that copyright should be abolished. He then went on to quote Richard M. Stallman.

Regardless of whether abolishing copyright is a good idea, this means of action was stupid:
* Very few artists know RMS. Citing him won't help one bit, or, rather, it conveys the idea that he is some kind of guru of a cult.
* Proposing radically different things to people just frightens them and then shuts their mind to some intermediate proposals going in the right direction.

End of the anecdote, which I think makes for an interesting parallel:

Most people we're dealing with in the "real world" don't know what "free" as in "free software means".
What we propose to them is radically outside their frame of mind.

Some of these people are willing to take steps in our direction (we may even get help... er.. prodding them in the right direction). If we rigidly refuse to take some steps on our own, I think everything will fail : we will not get free content, and we won't even get nearly free content.

-- DM


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] contents
 under	education/information licenses


from_name: Artur Fijałkowski

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] [Foundation-l] contents under
	education/information licenses

body:
Allowing ''educational purposes only'' licenses?

I can say only one thing:

Liberum veto!

Why? Couse it's simple cheating thousands of authors, who has already
published their work on CC-BY-SA or GFDL. I have made some images
(schemes) and I released them as free content and now you try to say,
that some time in the future I will be allowed to publish it as fully
copyrighted except of free educational use ? No way!

If someone doesn't like our licenses he doesn't have to publish anything!!

Don't dig grave to OUR IDEAS in the name of collecting more materials!

AJF/WarX


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
Sarah wrote:
> Seriously, it's kind of disturbing to see that women should be editing
> [[Blowdryer]] while the men get to grips with [[Arab-Israeli
> conflict]].
>
Anyway, COI policy now strongly recommends that only baldies (which may
be of either gender) edit [[Blowdryer]], right?

:-)

But to be serious again, it's not necessarily the *users* of a tool who
are the most interested in it - a better contributor is likely to be the
ultra-nerd whose library includes all the books ever published on small
personal appliances, and a nearly-complete collection of historically
significant blowdryers.

There are plenty of women on this list; perhaps they could opine on
whether there is significant systemic bias genderwise?

Stan


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 21/11/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:

> I also think WP could do more to cynically play on European chauvinism
> than it has so far. 1/2 :-) A public statement by Jimbo, saying
> something like "we will not accept unfree ESA images in WP, and while we
> don't want WP to present a US-only view of space exploration, it's up to
> the Europeans to fix this", would likely get reported widely, and
> hopefully put some pressure on ESA to change what is at best a sloppy
> practice.

Yes. The reason Wikipedia is full of NASA and CIA World Factbook
images is because those resources are public domain. That's not
US-centrism - it's using images because they are free content. If
there's a problem with not enough ESA images, it's up to the ESA to
fix that; somehow NASA has survived.

I understand this is pretty much what Anthere said to a group of
French government figures - if you want to compete with the flood of
US imagery, make it just as available.

- d.


body:
Artur Fija?kowski a ?crit :
> copyrighted except of free educational use ?
Er... Free or commercial, I said.

Also, then, again, why not prohibit "fair use" content?


from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On Nov 21, 2006, at 4:28 PM, niht-hr?fn wrote:

> The recent thread on the low numbers of women applying for ArbCom and
> subsequent discussion about systemic bias and under-representation of
> women has led me to wonder about the nature of gender-related
> systemic bias on the English Wikipedia.

I suspect the cause is simply that women have something else to do
with their time that they enjoy more. However, I also suspect enough
women will edit, that "women's subjects" will eventually be
adequately handled.

Fred


body:
Gregory Maxwell a ?crit :
> When I pointed out that material related to the ESA should be Free I
> wasn't attempting to make some grand argument about freedom, but
> rather a more pragmatic reflection on the nature of space programs:
> They aren't in business to generate pretty pictures,
That's exactly one of the problems. Since their line of work is building
launchers and the like,
they've largely off-loaded the tasks of taking pictures and maintaining
pictures databases to
external contractors. Also, since their job is not to provide a database
of pictures free for
advertisers to use, they buy the rights to these pictures from the
external contractors only for
information and education purposes. Buying them for all possible
commercial uses, even if
possible, would be more costly and wouldn't be in their scope of work.


from_name: Mohamed Ibrahim

body:
I can help with this.
Any questions or comments about Arabic Wikipedia are welcomed, either to me
directly (mail, talk page) or like Anthere said to the mailing list.

--
Mido

On 11/21/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Marco Chiesa wrote:
> > Anthere wrote:
> >
> >
> >>I think the main issue is rather this one. People are writing to otrs
> >>about issues on some projects with a language no one at otrs knows
> >>enough to even look at the article or conflict or whatever.
> >>
> >>David could forward the email to your mailing list (presumably wikiar-l
> >>exists) or post it on your pump (though it is really really hard when
> >>you really do not know the language). However, there is a policy at
> >>otrs: messages received are considered private. We can not post them
> >>publicly.
> >>
> >>So, David, or others, just do not know what to do with these emails and
> >>those requests.
> >>
> >>Cheers
> >>
> >>Anthere
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >
> > So, what about having a couple of trusted people from ar.wikipedia
> > dealing with otrs?
> >
> > Marco/Cruccone
>
> Yes :-)
> Volunteers ?
>
> Meanwhile, I take it that the wikiar-l is probably the best option by
> far to contact ar editors.
>
> ant
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject:
[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of the
	Wikimedia Foundation

body:
On 21/11/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/20/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Utterly and totally. I really don't see a case for having removed it at all.
> >
>
> Forces us to do original reseach in defineing what is a language and
> in some cases creating a written script.

"No original research" is a policy of the Wikimedia projects, not a
cast-iron operating procedure for the Wikimedia Foundation. WMF's goal
isn't to work on language preservation, but if we have a thriving oral
language we try to build a prooject from, and WMF's work happens to be
the impetus for providing an orthography for it... well, so be it.
There are worse things that could happen, and it isn't some kind of
betrayal of our core principles.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
On 21/11/06, Oldak Quill <oldakquill at gmail.com> wrote:

> If some Council were charged with creating filters for content, I am
> not in much doubt that it would be hijacked by those who wish to
> overly censor our content for "the sake of children". After all,
> surely the people most interested in creating filters are those who
> think Wikipedia is overly "liberal" (appalling word) in the content we
> serve and are overly lax about whom this content is served to?

A larger version of this is pretty much why I have qualms about this
idea: there's quite enough editors looking for some way to tell other
editors what to do, with the endpoint of driving them off the projects
if they don't go along with them; and creating such a council without
a clear reason appears to be an open invitation to such an attitude.
Bureacracy is inherently harmful and must have a clear positive reason
to exist.

- d.


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


body:
On 21/11/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/20/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> > Utterly and totally. I really don't see a case for having removed it at all.

> Forces us to do original reseach in defineing what is a language and
> in some cases creating a written script.

See, this sort of answer is why people think you're a troll. The
reasons "in their own language" is a good thing have been discussed on
this list ad nauseam in the past.

- d.


body:
On 21/11/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yes. The reason Wikipedia is full of NASA and CIA World Factbook
> images is because those resources are public domain. That's not
> US-centrism - it's using images because they are free content. If
> there's a problem with not enough ESA images, it's up to the ESA to
> fix that; somehow NASA has survived.
>
> I understand this is pretty much what Anthere said to a group of
> French government figures - if you want to compete with the flood of
> US imagery, make it just as available.

Mmm. You want a startling demonstration of the effect? Look at our
articles on major humanitarian relief operations. US medics, equipment
and supplies flown in by US helicopters from US carriers and US
airbases... a reader would be forgiven for wondering if France or
Germany ever goes anywhere. It's not a deliberate propaganda move -
it's just that there's a lot of good people with cameras alongside the
planes and helicopters and trucks, making photos of everything... and
releasing them with no conditions.

--
- Andrew Gray
  andrew.gray at dunelm.org.uk


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On Nov 21, 2006, at 5:31 PM, niht-hr?fn wrote:

> Indeed, I'm not terribly worried about article coverage, but merely
> wondering if the difference is affecting other areas, such as policy.

It is. Men engage in a lot more open conflict, often ineffectually.

Fred


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Oldak Quill wrote:

>On 20/11/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>>A chinese delicacy :-)
>>Okay, it is not a young suggestion
>>
>>Let's do an omelet with wikicouncil, single login, wikidata, children
>>filters, and other ancient concepts.
>>
>>
>I've not read the entire discussion so I've no idea whether we're
>seriously considering children filters. If this is purely a joke,
>forgive me for the humour failure.
>
>I don't think Wikimedia or any of its projects should filter content
>for children (see the Wikipedia guidelines on this). Different
>children--even within the same nation, society or culture--are raised
>with differing cultural values. In many Christian countries, for
>example, there is a tendency to vilify sex and sexual content. I was
>raised without a sense of "wrongness" relating to sex and would not
>have appreciated it being thrust upon me.
>
>If some Council were charged with creating filters for content, I am
>not in much doubt that it would be hijacked by those who wish to
>overly censor our content for "the sake of children". After all,
>surely the people most interested in creating filters are those who
>think Wikipedia is overly "liberal" (appalling word) in the content we
>serve and are overly lax about whom this content is served to?
>
>Parents, using ISP and software "nannies" (or even sitting in the room
>with the child), should have the power to control what their children
>see. To that level, we should be entirely free and unrestricted in
>what our users are able to see.
>
While I wouldn't want to guess how a Wikicouncil might deal with this
issue, there is a reasonable argument to say that it should at least
consider the matter.

I agree that we should not be doing the censoring, but a mechanism that
recognizes different sensitivities, and makes it easier for parents to
apply such software '''on their own computers''' to the degree that they
feel appropriate would not be out of the question.

Ec


subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil


subject: [Foundation-l] promotion of free licenses

body:
We have a problem getting people to accept free licenses. One of the
issues is that, at least in some countries, conditions stating that the
authors allows any usage of his image for any duration are ruled illegal
by courts (should the author complain), as abusive clauses. The idea is
to protect authors from abuse by greedy publishers. I've even heard some
lawyer from a photographers' society explaining to me that free licenses
(including Creative Commons etc.) where thus illegal.

Lately, in a private email, Greg Maxwell made a remark that I had made
in other circumstances, that is

For example, surely the 'share alike' nature of copyleft contracts
prevents the contracts from being considered unconscionable. Such
licenses would be acceptable for our purposes.

Indeed, that's one point that we may argue: with "sharealike" licenses,
the authors do not cede all rights with no compensation or insurance;
they rather have strong guarantees that uses of their work will not
stray from their intent of distribution of free content.

That's one argument one may want to pursue when contacting sources.

Regards,
DM


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] contents under
	education/information licenses

body:
On 11/21/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:

> What are the odds of getting interested Wikipedians in to take the
> pictures instead? Contractors cost money, getting pictures taken for
> free in exchange for free licensing seems like a better deal for ESA.
> Lest one is concerned about amateur-quality work, I suspect that if ESA
> were to publicly announce inside access for ten photographers, unpaid
> but credited by name, they would have more than enough applications to
> be able to accept only the best.

Right, I am not soooo sure that the ESA (or any other organisation,
NASA included, for that matter) will let any random Wikipedian hop on
the next satellite to take pictures of <insert name of planet here>.
I'd love too, but hey, I don't think this is going to happen any time
soon.

I believe you will also understand the importance of monitoring what
pictures get in and out concerning satellites, space shuttles and
other highly technological objects.

>
> I also think WP could do more to cynically play on European chauvinism
> than it has so far. 1/2 :-) A public statement by Jimbo, saying
> something like "we will not accept unfree ESA images in WP, and while we
> don't want WP to present a US-only view of space exploration, it's up to
> the Europeans to fix this", would likely get reported widely, and
> hopefully put some pressure on ESA to change what is at best a sloppy
> practice.

Let us not jump to conclusions too fast here. :-)
What you call "European chauvinism" I will rather call "lack of
means", "lack of human ressources to write the right contracts with
the n number of national laws involved in the launching of this or
that satellite and the building of this or that camera" etc. There are
reasons for the ESA and other organisations not being able to release
their pictures under a free license and they go far beyond a manichean
"good people who release in the public domain what they produce with
public money" vs "bad people who want to keep stuff for themselves". I
don't think "pressure" as you put it, is the way to go.

Let me also try to maybe tone down the questions that David was trying
to get through here and give a different angle.

The question is not that the ESA or these other organisations *do not*
want to release their pictures for a wider use. As a matter of fact,
it is the ESA who came to us (Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimedia
France) and asked us for advice on how to go about this, and how they
could make their pictures (more) freely available. However, they have
some conditions.

Some of our licenses (the one I use, for example) also add conditions
(CC-BY-SA - share alike is a pretty drastic condition, when you think
about it).

One of their condition is that those images can't be used for
political propaganda, for example.

Now let me try and shift the debate a little here. Let us consider
that the ESA, or whatever other organisation, comes up with a licence
of their own. Let us imagine they allow free use of their images (in
our free sense) *except* for political propaganda. Would that in any
way be an acceptable thing to go by? Or is that definitely something
we can't accept? It's a real question, I have no real opinion about
this.

To bounce on something David said, there is much work to do in the
evangelisation of those organisations, and a lot to explain about the
pros and the cons of "free material". Most of their objections need to
be understood in the light of what these organisations can do (with
the restrictions that apply to them) and what they want to do. My take
is that what they "want to do" can easily be changed, by patient,
pedagogic and comprehensive explanations. What they "can do" is then
another story altogether.

What I understand David was trying to say here is that maybe there is
a mid-term agreement that can be reached, somewhere along the path.
Are the Organisation X images worth us being just a tad less free (no
political use of the images), are they not? It's a difficult question,
but one that is worth debating.

One thing I am certain of is that saying "Organisation X must change
their ways" is definitely not the right answer. I'd much rather have a
stance that goes "How can we make organisation X change their way for
everyone's best interest?"

Delphine
--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.


subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikipedia-l] contents
	under	education/information licenses

body:
On 11/21/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:

> What are the odds of getting interested Wikipedians in to take the
> pictures instead? Contractors cost money, getting pictures taken for
> free in exchange for free licensing seems like a better deal for ESA.
> Lest one is concerned about amateur-quality work, I suspect that if ESA
> were to publicly announce inside access for ten photographers, unpaid
> but credited by name, they would have more than enough applications to
> be able to accept only the best.

Right, I am not soooo sure that the ESA (or any other organisation,
NASA included, for that matter) will let any random Wikipedian hop on
the next satellite to take pictures of <insert name of planet here>.
I'd love too, but hey, I don't think this is going to happen any time
soon.

I believe you will also understand the importance of monitoring what
pictures get in and out concerning satellites, space shuttles and
other highly technological objects.

>
> I also think WP could do more to cynically play on European chauvinism
> than it has so far. 1/2 :-) A public statement by Jimbo, saying
> something like "we will not accept unfree ESA images in WP, and while we
> don't want WP to present a US-only view of space exploration, it's up to
> the Europeans to fix this", would likely get reported widely, and
> hopefully put some pressure on ESA to change what is at best a sloppy
> practice.

Let us not jump to conclusions too fast here. :-)
What you call "European chauvinism" I will rather call "lack of
means", "lack of human ressources to write the right contracts with
the n number of national laws involved in the launching of this or
that satellite and the building of this or that camera" etc. There are
reasons for the ESA and other organisations not being able to release
their pictures under a free license and they go far beyond a manichean
"good people who release in the public domain what they produce with
public money" vs "bad people who want to keep stuff for themselves". I
don't think "pressure" as you put it, is the way to go.

Let me also try to maybe tone down the questions that David was trying
to get through here and give a different angle.

The question is not that the ESA or these other organisations *do not*
want to release their pictures for a wider use. As a matter of fact,
it is the ESA who came to us (Wikimedia Deutschland and Wikimedia
France) and asked us for advice on how to go about this, and how they
could make their pictures (more) freely available. However, they have
some conditions.

Some of our licenses (the one I use, for example) also add conditions
(CC-BY-SA - share alike is a pretty drastic condition, when you think
about it).

One of their condition is that those images can't be used for
political propaganda, for example.

Now let me try and shift the debate a little here. Let us consider
that the ESA, or whatever other organisation, comes up with a licence
of their own. Let us imagine they allow free use of their images (in
our free sense) *except* for political propaganda. Would that in any
way be an acceptable thing to go by? Or is that definitely something
we can't accept? It's a real question, I have no real opinion about
this.

To bounce on something David said, there is much work to do in the
evangelisation of those organisations, and a lot to explain about the
pros and the cons of "free material". Most of their objections need to
be understood in the light of what these organisations can do (with
the restrictions that apply to them) and what they want to do. My take
is that what they "want to do" can easily be changed, by patient,
pedagogic and comprehensive explanations. What they "can do" is then
another story altogether.

What I understand David was trying to say here is that maybe there is
a mid-term agreement that can be reached, somewhere along the path.
Are the Organisation X images worth us being just a tad less free (no
political use of the images), are they not? It's a difficult question,
but one that is worth debating.

One thing I am certain of is that saying "Organisation X must change
their ways" is definitely not the right answer. I'd much rather have a
stance that goes "How can we make organisation X change their way for
everyone's best interest?"

Delphine
--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


from_name: niht-hræfn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
The recent thread on the low numbers of women applying for ArbCom and
subsequent discussion about systemic bias and under-representation of
women has led me to wonder about the nature of gender-related
systemic bias on the English Wikipedia. As far as "gender is
irrelevant" goes, this is simply not true. Gender of editors really
does matter as far as coverage and quality thereof goes. Most of the
women I know spend one or two hours in the morning with a
straightening iron and a blow dryer. Wikipedia has http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowdryer and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Hair_iron . These two articles are considerably out of date and do
not begin to encompass the complexities of these appliances (and
there is not even separate articles for straightening irons and
curling irons!). Compare to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television , the two appliances I have
known men to use most. Or even to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Microwave_oven and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerator . Or to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razor . The bias is there.

My question is not "Does systemic bias exist?" but rather "Where is
systemic bias hurting us most?" From a coverage standpoint, we have
vast comprehensive articles on sports of all kinds, but our ballet
articles make me weep inside (I've just started a Ballet WikiProject
to address this, but had been too intimidated to do so since first
reading/editing until I met another female ballet dancer on wiki).
However, how does this compare to the way policy is formed and
implemented? Is an unequal ratio of men to women affecting the way we
run things? Is it negatively impacting the structure of the
encyclopedia? Is it proceeding in this way such that men find it
easier to join and women do not? What is suffering the most from this
bias, and are there ways to better receive the input of those who
would otherwise not be heard?

As far as women reading the mailing list, I know that there are
plenty who do (like myself), but do not discuss much. I know that I
also read more than I edit, perhaps this is the case with more
females than just myself?

Food for thought. :]
--Keitei
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keitei


from_name: geni

body:
On 11/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> See, this sort of answer is why people think you're a troll. The
> reasons "in their own language" is a good thing have been discussed on
> this list ad nauseam in the past.

Sure but it is still dissputed. Surely the mo: and the Montenegrin
issues are enough to show that when it comes to languages original
research is still a problem since the whole thing tends to be so
political. Unscripted languages are likely to have issues releated to
dialect and unless we get lucky personal issues between those creating
the script.

Idealism is nice but sometimes you need to look at the cost.
--
geni


from_name: Philip

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki 1.8.2 Installation

body:
MediaWiki 1.8.2 is not istalling for me.

I receive no php errors.

The install script reorts the following after I submit the form

MediaWiki 1.8.2 Installation
Don't forget security updates! Keep an eye on the low-traffic release
announcements mailing list.
Checking environment...
Please include all of the lines below when reporting installation problems.

PHP 5.1.6 installed
Found database drivers for: MySQL
PHP server API is apache2handler; ok, using pretty URLs
(index.php/Page_Title)
Have XML / Latin1-UTF-8 conversion support.
PHP is configured with no memory_limit.
Have zlib support; enabling output compression.
Couldn't find Turck MMCache, eAccelerator or APC. Object caching functions
cannot be used.
GNU diff3 not found.
Found GD graphics library built-in, image thumbnailing will be enabled if
you enable uploads.
Installation directory: C:\htdocs\wiki
Script URI path: /wiki
Environment checked. You can install MediaWiki.
Warning: $wgSecretKey key is insecure, generated with mt_rand(). Consider
changing it manually.
Generating configuration file...

Database type: MySQL
Loading class: DatabaseMysql
Attempting to connect to database server as root...success.
Connected to 5.0.26-community-nt
Database wikidb exists
Creating tables... using MySQL 4 table defs...Query "CREATE TABLE `user`
( user_id int(5) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment, user_name varchar(255)
binary NOT NULL default '', user_real_name varchar(255) binary NOT NULL
default '', user_password tinyblob NOT NULL default '', user_newpassword
tinyblob NOT NULL default '', user_email tinytext NOT NULL default '',
user_options blob NOT NULL default '', user_touched char(14) binary NOT
NULL default '', user_token char(32) binary NOT NULL default '',
user_email_authenticated char(14) binary, user_email_token char(32)
binary, user_email_token_expires char(14) binary, user_registration
char(14) binary, PRIMARY KEY user_id (user_id), UNIQUE INDEX user_name
(user_name), INDEX (user_email_token) ) TYPE=InnoDB " failed with error
code "BLOB/TEXT column 'user_password' can't have a default value
(localhost)".

I think it may be my install of mysql, but I am not shure what to do if it
is.

My server is running the following

Windows XP
Apache/2.0.59 (Win32)
PHP/5.1.6
MySql version: 5.0.26-community-nt

Sorry, if this is the wrong newsgroup


body:
On 21/11/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:

> What I suggest is drafting a license, CC-like, with very specific
> conditions. We would accept such kinds of licenses only in cases where
> there's a rationale for it (by mail to OTRS). This should prevent
> spurious use.

I'm still utterly, utterly unconvinced of the need for such
appeasement. In the case of space agencies that release everything as
PD, what harm has releasing everything as PD actually done them? Can
ESA answer that question?

- d.


from_name: Sarah

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/21/06, niht-hr?fn <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
> Most of the
> women I know spend one or two hours in the morning with a
> straightening iron and a blow dryer. Wikipedia has http://
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowdryer and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
> Hair_iron . These two articles are considerably out of date and do
> not begin to encompass the complexities of these appliances (and
> there is not even separate articles for straightening irons and
> curling irons!). Compare to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer and
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television , the two appliances I have
> known men to use most.

Keitel, your e-mail is itself a good example of bias. The women you
know who spend two hours every morning with a straightening iron and a
blowdryer need to find a good hairdresser. The cut is everything. :-)

Seriously, it's kind of disturbing to see that women should be editing
[[Blowdryer]] while the men get to grips with [[Arab-Israeli
conflict]].

Sarah


body:
2006/11/21, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com>:

> Now let me try and shift the debate a little here. Let us consider
> that the ESA, or whatever other organisation, comes up with a licence
> of their own. Let us imagine they allow free use of their images (in
> our free sense) *except* for political propaganda. Would that in any
> way be an acceptable thing to go by? Or is that definitely something
> we can't accept? It's a real question, I have no real opinion about
> this.

We are trying to forget (maybe even successfully)  that even our free
licenses have some exceptions:
* things like COAs which are in most countries PD, aren't 100% free -
eg. local government can make their own restrictions about their COA
on their territory which reduces freedom :)
* If I put someones photo on CC-BY-SA (and he has given me right to do
it) it doesn't mean that this image can be used eg. for advertising
anti conception pills, because this person has still rights to protect
his image..

So if ESA has only this problem, I think, that ''special'' license
compatible in every other aspect with PD, or CC-BY-SA is acceptable,
but if ESA wants as stated some posts earlier any special treatment
(educational use only, etc.) it's killing idea of freedom and I don't
know how about other wikimedians, but I will leave projects, because
I'm not worse than ESA so I want same treatment!

AJF/WarX


body:
On 21/11/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:

> It's just my general feeling that the smaller the community is on a
> Wiki, the larger the chances are that some articles will be written from
> a specific point of view (often some point of view dominant in the
> community). There's no critical mass to neutralize them.

Please tell me we're not going to have a Montenegrin Wikipedia to go
with the Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian ones.

- d.


body:
On 11/21/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Please tell me we're not going to have a Montenegrin Wikipedia to go
> with the Serbian, Bosnian and Croatian ones.
>
>
> - d.

Currently no but it got messy:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Requests_for_new_languages/cg

--
geni


body:
On 11/21/06, Artur Fija?kowski <wiki.warx at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2006/11/21, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com>:
>
> > Now let me try and shift the debate a little here. Let us consider
> > that the ESA, or whatever other organisation, comes up with a licence
> > of their own. Let us imagine they allow free use of their images (in
> > our free sense) *except* for political propaganda. Would that in any
> > way be an acceptable thing to go by? Or is that definitely something
> > we can't accept? It's a real question, I have no real opinion about
> > this.
>
> We are trying to forget (maybe even successfully)  that even our free
> licenses have some exceptions:
> * things like COAs which are in most countries PD, aren't 100% free -
> eg. local government can make their own restrictions about their COA
> on their territory which reduces freedom :)
> * If I put someones photo on CC-BY-SA (and he has given me right to do
> it) it doesn't mean that this image can be used eg. for advertising
> anti conception pills, because this person has still rights to protect
> his image..
>
> So if ESA has only this problem, I think, that ''special'' license
> compatible in every other aspect with PD, or CC-BY-SA is acceptable,
> but if ESA wants as stated some posts earlier any special treatment
> (educational use only, etc.) it's killing idea of freedom and I don't
> know how about other wikimedians, but I will leave projects, because
> I'm not worse than ESA so I want same treatment!

I think you're pointing out exactly what I tried to explain in David's
reasoning, which I believe he probably expressed the wrong way around.
Or which I am twisting to my way around ;-).

My take is that these organisations need to be taught that it's better
to make a licence with two exceptions (advertisement and political
purposes, for example) rather than try the broader and anyway, in my
opinion, non enforceable way of "educational and informational use
only". And I may be dreaming, but I am pretty sure that with time and
patience we can bring these organisations to something like that and
end up with free-er images and material than an "educational use only"
type thing.

Thanx also for bringing up the COA question, because I had that in
mind as I wrote my post, but don't know enough about it to use it as
an example.

Delphine
--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.


body:
On 21/11/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:

> We're talking of Mr Jean Dupont, member of Parliament from a pro-Europe
> party, waging a reelection campaign on a theme of "with Europe, we go
> beyond" using photos of ESA rockets, and ESA getting an angry complaint
> from Dupont's euroskeptic opponent and his party.
> (Apparently, this has happened, and of course they were at least able to
> say that this happened in violation of their policies. It would be more
> difficult for them to deal with people acting within their policies.)

So the problem here is that the euroskeptic opponent thinks this is
ESA's problem, and that ESA feels it has to go along with this idea.
That is: the problem you're describing is local politics rather than
that open content licences are problematic.

What ill effects have befallen NASA from its works being public
domain? I still eagerly await your and ESA's answers to this question.

Again, I fail to see what Wikipedia gains from appeasement on this
point. It won't stop politicians acting like politicians and will only
damage our own position.

- d.


body:
On 21/11/06, Delphine M?nard <notafishz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Again, screaming at them and saying "make all Public domain, you
> thieves!" is, in my opinion, a shortcut that simply shows a lack of
> understanding on our part.

I believe you are unfairly maligning the people you are describing
here. Would you care to rephrase this less obnoxiously?

- d.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On Nov 21, 2006, at 19:08, Fred Bauder wrote:

>
> On Nov 21, 2006, at 4:28 PM, niht-hr?fn wrote:
>
>> The recent thread on the low numbers of women applying for ArbCom and
>> subsequent discussion about systemic bias and under-representation of
>> women has led me to wonder about the nature of gender-related
>> systemic bias on the English Wikipedia.
>
> I suspect the cause is simply that women have something else to do
> with their time that they enjoy more. However, I also suspect enough
> women will edit, that "women's subjects" will eventually be
> adequately handled.
>
> Fred
>
Indeed, I'm not terribly worried about article coverage, but merely
wondering if the difference is affecting other areas, such as policy.

--Keitei


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

references:
<ejpvce$i6v$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b80736c80611200137q227b27bfid705ad67c11c0012@mail.gmail.com>
	<ejrtl1$h9u$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<b80736c80611200156h39bb1e7brc71829de86c262ee@mail.gmail.com>
	<ejrvqd$od4$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> On 11/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Thanks for not killing ideas in the egg.
>>
>> This particular egg is starting to smell funny, though ..
>
> A chinese delicacy :-)
> Okay, it is not a young suggestion
>
> Let's do an omelet with wikicouncil, single login, wikidata, children
> filters,
>

You filter children? How? By passing them through a fine wire mesh?

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> On 11/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Thanks for not killing ideas in the egg.
>>
>> This particular egg is starting to smell funny, though ..
>
> A chinese delicacy :-)
> Okay, it is not a young suggestion
>
> Let's do an omelet with wikicouncil, single login, wikidata, children
> filters,
>

You filter children? How? By passing them through a fine wire mesh?

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> On 11/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Thanks for not killing ideas in the egg.
>>
>> This particular egg is starting to smell funny, though ..
>
> A chinese delicacy :-)
> Okay, it is not a young suggestion
>
> Let's do an omelet with wikicouncil, single login, wikidata, children
> filters,
>

You filter children? How? By passing them through a fine wire mesh?

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

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subject: [Foundation-l] wikicouncil

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> On 11/20/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Thanks for not killing ideas in the egg.
>>
>> This particular egg is starting to smell funny, though ..
>
> A chinese delicacy :-)
> Okay, it is not a young suggestion
>
> Let's do an omelet with wikicouncil, single login, wikidata, children
> filters,
>

You filter children? How? By passing them through a fine wire mesh?

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

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body:
Stan Shebs a ?crit :
> But those external contractors aren't on the satellite either - I
> suppose there is an interesting legal question as to ownership of the
> raw bits coming from an onboard camera, vs the final processed image. My
There's also a question of the ownership of the raw bits from some
particularly complex instruments. The researcher or institute who made
the instrument may have rights.

> kind of a special license at some point. But the ESA really does risk
> their legacy vanishing in the same way that much copyrighted material
> from the 20th century is vanishing - would European taxpayers be OK with
> that if they knew it was going on?
>
European taxpayers have more urgent issues, like crime, unemployment and
the like.
Expect nothing grassroot.

>
> one or another agenda, so with an ESA limitation on political
> propaganda, satellite-produced maps of ocean temperature and such would
> have to come from NASA - and in these partisan days, would you want to
> trust them as a sole source?
>
It's not so much political propaganda that they don't want, but
political *advertisements*. Things like using images of Ariane rockets
during the campaign for the proposed European constitution.

This is very different from using photos in a biased article. The
difference is that in the article, at least they try to base themselves
on the fact, and that with the advertisement they want to use the *image*.

ESA and CNES simply don't want their image associated with partisan
politics, or with any brand name, because taxpayer-funded institutions
cannot appear to advertise in favor of brand names nor, worse, in a
partisan way in politics.

(We may have got an interesting case of false cognate here - in French,
"propagande ?lectorale" is the legal term for the leaflets and other
documents that are officially sent by all parties before elections.)
> I'm a little skeptical of the interim agreement idea, because that's
> exactly how we got so infested with bogus fair use images.
The problem, I think, is that fair use is very vaguely defined and that
use of fair use images doesn't require the agreement of the publishers
of the image, but only the legally creative mind of an uploader.

What I suggest is drafting a license, CC-like, with very specific
conditions. We would accept such kinds of licenses only in cases where
there's a rationale for it (by mail to OTRS). This should prevent
spurious use.

Regards,
-- DM


body:
Stan Shebs a ?crit :
> One thing I wonder - if US govt images are PD, then theoretically they
> could be misused for advertising or political purposes; but does that
> actually happen now? Are we talking about neo-Nazis using the "big blue
> marble" Apollo photos in their propaganda, or what?

No. Where did you fish this neo-Nazi idea? Reality is far more prosaic.

We're talking of Mr Jean Dupont, member of Parliament from a pro-Europe
party, waging a reelection campaign on a theme of "with Europe, we go
beyond" using photos of ESA rockets, and ESA getting an angry complaint
from Dupont's euroskeptic opponent and his party.
(Apparently, this has happened, and of course they were at least able to
say that this happened in violation of their policies. It would be more
difficult for them to deal with people acting within their policies.)

Similarly, if a supermarket chain uses photographs of a spacecraft, be
sure that there will be complaints that the agency favors such or such
company.

The big problem is that, as things are now, if A uses photos from B in
an advertisement, it is generally interpreted as B endorsing A.

(Again, I think that in the US, law outside of copyright law prohibits
using certain government symbols from being used in advertisements. As
far as I understand, it is illegal, for instance, to take a photo of an
astronaut with a NASA logo and stick it in an advertisement.)


body:
On 11/21/06, Stan Shebs <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Delphine M?nard wrote:
> > My take is that these organisations need to be taught that it's better
> > to make a licence with two exceptions (advertisement and political
> > purposes, for example) rather than try the broader and anyway, in my
> > opinion, non enforceable way of "educational and informational use
> > only". And I may be dreaming, but I am pretty sure that with time and
> > patience we can bring these organisations to something like that and
> > end up with free-er images and material than an "educational use only"
> > type thing.
> >
> One thing I wonder - if US govt images are PD, then theoretically they
> could be misused for advertising or political purposes; but does that
> actually happen now? Are we talking about neo-Nazis using the "big blue
> marble" Apollo photos in their propaganda, or what?

The fun part is that I totally agree with you. This is exactly where
the whole pedagogic(al?) bit comes into play. Ask for a few images,
make them free (as in, real free, our accepted licences) see how that
goes, and go on from here. Releasing material under a "Free" licence
is all about teaching people that it is not evil, that it will not
prevent them from selling them to whomever, that it will not
necessarily be used to nasty political ends. There are many ways to go
about this. The first one is making sure we talk to these
organisations in a civilized manner. Step by step. Go a bit in their
direction, to show them the light...

That is why I am always wary of radical speeches that say "tell them
to free their images". On the contrary to national libraries that are
keeping works effectively in the public domain as hostages in their
dark and dusty back chambers, these organisations, which are not
*only* state funded, but also partially privately funded, or funded by
countries with very different cultures/laws have a real "right" to
their copyright, if that makes sense. We just need to teach them about
making the better use of it.

Ya know, it's like telling Mr. S. to "go and edit his own article".
Doesn't work all that well. :-) You gotta take them through the
process.

Again, screaming at them and saying "make all Public domain, you
thieves!" is, in my opinion, a shortcut that simply shows a lack of
understanding on our part. And one which I personally find a very poor
move if we're going to <s>take over the world</s> (errr...) make all
of these things free and available to the greater number.

Delphine
--
~notafish
NB. This address is used for mailing lists. Personal emails sent to
this address will probably get lost.


subject: [Wikitech-l] respond to bug tracker via email

body:
Dan Jacobson wrote:
> BV> Please respond to bug issues on the bug tracker. We have a bug tracker
> BV> for a reason.
>
> RC> [7901] We *want* users to be able to discuss bugs in length (when
> RC> there are larger implications or the implementation needs
> RC> discussing) on wikitech-l.
>
> Well, I managed to hack a perl LWP script to post new bugs to the bug
> tracker, but adding comments to existing bugs proved too big a
> programming challenge. So I'll have to respond to bugs via mail here,
> (wikitech-l) with my batched Internet connection. No ADSL on my
> mountain top.
>

None on mine either, but I don't complain about it. I find it amusing
that you can afford a domain name for yourself but not an internet
connection...

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

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subject:
[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of
 the	Wikimedia Foundatio

body:
Anthere wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> On 11/17/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> OK... except that Erik specifically stated that these mission and
>>> vision statements would be the things cited in explaining why WMF
>>> would or would not support WikiFoo.
>>
>> Only in a very broad and general way. We want to be careful not to
>> exclude too much a priori. But I am personally very much in favor of
>> using the word "Knowledge" in the Mission & Vision statements, because
>> it is, depending on how we interpret it (and we can argue for an
>> interpretation based on the existing projects), already a fairly good
>> limitation of scope. Florence has now objected to this word in the
>> unstable Mission Statement and replaced it with "content". I still
>> haven't seen an adequate explanation why "knowledge" should not be
>> used.
>
> I answered here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mission/Unstable#knowledge_under_a_free_license
>
> I have not *now* objected to the use of the word knowledge in the
> mission statement. This objection has been raised during the board
> retreat, left unsolved at the end of it, and was actually listed as the
> things for which no agreement was reached. So, this objection is now
> nearly a month old.
>
> One of the arguments you used against the word "content" is that
> Stallman did not like the use of this word. I object to the word
> knowledge, because I do not think this is what we are doing. We seek to
> have all human being knowledgeable (that's definitly our vision), but
> knowledge is an unpalpable concept. And we are doing something very
> palpable. One of the relevant argument against the use of this word is
> that "knowledge" can not be copyrighted, so producing freely-licenced
> knowledge makes no sense. My most compelling argument is that
> "knowledge" is something personnal. Something different for each person.
>
<snip>

Agree with all of that. The problem is that when you talk about
"knowledge" you have to add the disclaimer "not in the biblical sense",
and that if it's "information" we've got, hello Wikistalk...

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

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body:
Anthere wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> On 11/17/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> OK... except that Erik specifically stated that these mission and
>>> vision statements would be the things cited in explaining why WMF
>>> would or would not support WikiFoo.
>>
>> Only in a very broad and general way. We want to be careful not to
>> exclude too much a priori. But I am personally very much in favor of
>> using the word "Knowledge" in the Mission & Vision statements, because
>> it is, depending on how we interpret it (and we can argue for an
>> interpretation based on the existing projects), already a fairly good
>> limitation of scope. Florence has now objected to this word in the
>> unstable Mission Statement and replaced it with "content". I still
>> haven't seen an adequate explanation why "knowledge" should not be
>> used.
>
> I answered here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mission/Unstable#knowledge_under_a_free_license
>
> I have not *now* objected to the use of the word knowledge in the
> mission statement. This objection has been raised during the board
> retreat, left unsolved at the end of it, and was actually listed as the
> things for which no agreement was reached. So, this objection is now
> nearly a month old.
>
> One of the arguments you used against the word "content" is that
> Stallman did not like the use of this word. I object to the word
> knowledge, because I do not think this is what we are doing. We seek to
> have all human being knowledgeable (that's definitly our vision), but
> knowledge is an unpalpable concept. And we are doing something very
> palpable. One of the relevant argument against the use of this word is
> that "knowledge" can not be copyrighted, so producing freely-licenced
> knowledge makes no sense. My most compelling argument is that
> "knowledge" is something personnal. Something different for each person.
>
<snip>

Agree with all of that. The problem is that when you talk about
"knowledge" you have to add the disclaimer "not in the biblical sense",
and that if it's "information" we've got, hello Wikistalk...

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

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body:
Anthere wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> On 11/17/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> OK... except that Erik specifically stated that these mission and
>>> vision statements would be the things cited in explaining why WMF
>>> would or would not support WikiFoo.
>>
>> Only in a very broad and general way. We want to be careful not to
>> exclude too much a priori. But I am personally very much in favor of
>> using the word "Knowledge" in the Mission & Vision statements, because
>> it is, depending on how we interpret it (and we can argue for an
>> interpretation based on the existing projects), already a fairly good
>> limitation of scope. Florence has now objected to this word in the
>> unstable Mission Statement and replaced it with "content". I still
>> haven't seen an adequate explanation why "knowledge" should not be
>> used.
>
> I answered here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mission/Unstable#knowledge_under_a_free_license
>
> I have not *now* objected to the use of the word knowledge in the
> mission statement. This objection has been raised during the board
> retreat, left unsolved at the end of it, and was actually listed as the
> things for which no agreement was reached. So, this objection is now
> nearly a month old.
>
> One of the arguments you used against the word "content" is that
> Stallman did not like the use of this word. I object to the word
> knowledge, because I do not think this is what we are doing. We seek to
> have all human being knowledgeable (that's definitly our vision), but
> knowledge is an unpalpable concept. And we are doing something very
> palpable. One of the relevant argument against the use of this word is
> that "knowledge" can not be copyrighted, so producing freely-licenced
> knowledge makes no sense. My most compelling argument is that
> "knowledge" is something personnal. Something different for each person.
>
<snip>

Agree with all of that. The problem is that when you talk about
"knowledge" you have to add the disclaimer "not in the biblical sense",
and that if it's "information" we've got, hello Wikistalk...

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

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body:
Anthere wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>> On 11/17/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> OK... except that Erik specifically stated that these mission and
>>> vision statements would be the things cited in explaining why WMF
>>> would or would not support WikiFoo.
>>
>> Only in a very broad and general way. We want to be careful not to
>> exclude too much a priori. But I am personally very much in favor of
>> using the word "Knowledge" in the Mission & Vision statements, because
>> it is, depending on how we interpret it (and we can argue for an
>> interpretation based on the existing projects), already a fairly good
>> limitation of scope. Florence has now objected to this word in the
>> unstable Mission Statement and replaced it with "content". I still
>> haven't seen an adequate explanation why "knowledge" should not be
>> used.
>
> I answered here:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Mission/Unstable#knowledge_under_a_free_license
>
> I have not *now* objected to the use of the word knowledge in the
> mission statement. This objection has been raised during the board
> retreat, left unsolved at the end of it, and was actually listed as the
> things for which no agreement was reached. So, this objection is now
> nearly a month old.
>
> One of the arguments you used against the word "content" is that
> Stallman did not like the use of this word. I object to the word
> knowledge, because I do not think this is what we are doing. We seek to
> have all human being knowledgeable (that's definitly our vision), but
> knowledge is an unpalpable concept. And we are doing something very
> palpable. One of the relevant argument against the use of this word is
> that "knowledge" can not be copyrighted, so producing freely-licenced
> knowledge makes no sense. My most compelling argument is that
> "knowledge" is something personnal. Something different for each person.
>
<snip>

Agree with all of that. The problem is that when you talk about
"knowledge" you have to add the disclaimer "not in the biblical sense",
and that if it's "information" we've got, hello Wikistalk...

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

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On Nov 21, 2006, at 19:39, Sarah wrote:

> On 11/21/06, niht-hr?fn <nihthraefn at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Most of the
>> women I know spend one or two hours in the morning with a
>> straightening iron and a blow dryer. Wikipedia has http://
>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowdryer and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
>> Hair_iron . These two articles are considerably out of date and do
>> not begin to encompass the complexities of these appliances (and
>> there is not even separate articles for straightening irons and
>> curling irons!). Compare to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer and
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television , the two appliances I have
>> known men to use most.
>
> Keitel, your e-mail is itself a good example of bias. The women you
> know who spend two hours every morning with a straightening iron and a
> blowdryer need to find a good hairdresser. The cut is everything. :-)
>
> Seriously, it's kind of disturbing to see that women should be editing
> [[Blowdryer]] while the men get to grips with [[Arab-Israeli
> conflict]].
>
> Sarah

Or some self-esteem. :] I don't think women /should/ be editing
[[Blowdryer]], just that even I who cares nothing for such products
could easily list a few manufacturers and the people I know who
actually use them could supply so much more information.
Additionally, those who have them could add pictures that aren't from
a few decades ago. :] It probably wasn't the best example ever, but I
remembered being pissed about [[Conair Corporation]] not existing
some time ago...

--Keitei


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject:
[Foundation-l] RfC: Mission & Vision Statements of
 the	Wikimedia Foundation

body:
David Gerard schreef:
> On 21/11/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 11/20/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>
>
>>> Utterly and totally. I really don't see a case for having removed it at all.
>>>
>
>
>> Forces us to do original reseach in defineing what is a language and
>> in some cases creating a written script.
>>
>
>
> See, this sort of answer is why people think you're a troll. The
> reasons "in their own language" is a good thing have been discussed on
> this list ad nauseam in the past.
>
>
> - d.
Hoi,
Defining what a language is, defining a script is a non trivial matter.
When you want to get into these kinds of thing there is a space for it.
There are people who dedicate their life to these kinds of thing. There
are two types of people (and many classifications), there are those that
do and there are those who don't.

Both for the defining what a language is and, for coming up for a
script, you are in the wrong place when you want to do it in the
Wikimedia Foundation. There are other organisations that deal with that.
There are people in those organisations that are "approachable" that do
not bite and who are happy when people show a "do and can" attitude.

When there is a need for doing original research to have a language or a
dialect or an orthography or a script recognised or dismissed by
Standard organisations, then the need for this within the Wikimedia
Foundation is to have it done outside of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Voting on "is this a language" is a bad idea. It just does not work.
Demonstrating that there is a big corpus in what is supposed to be a
language does work. This however has to be shown to relevant Standard
organisations because that is what they are there for.\

The question is, do you want to go that extra mile ..

Thanks,
    GerardM


body:
On Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:53:17 -0600, Nick Jenkins <nickpj at gmail.com> wrote:

>> failed with error
>> code "BLOB/TEXT column 'user_password' can't have a default value
>> (localhost)".
>>
>> I think it may be my install of mysql, but I am not sure what to do if
>> it
>> is.
>>
>> My server is running the following
>>
>> Windows XP
>> Apache/2.0.59 (Win32)
>> PHP/5.1.6
>> MySql version: 5.0.26-community-nt
>
....
>
> I tried enabling strict mode on my MySQL Linux install and restarting
> and retesting the table creation, but I couldn't get it to
> give the error you saw; however, try this first: edit your my.cnf file
> and see if you can see a sql-mode line like this:
> sql-mode="ANSI,TRADITIONAL"
> ... or something like this ...
> sql-mode="STRICT_TRANS_TABLES,NO_AUTO_CREATE_USER,NO_ENGINE_SUBSTITUTION,STRICT_ALL_TABLES"
>
> If it's there, try commenting out that line (with a "#" character),
> restarting MySQL (or rebooting), and retrying the install.

Commenting out that line fixed it.

On windows the file is my.ini

Thank You


body:
David Gerard a ?crit :
> So the problem here is that the euroskeptic opponent thinks this is
> ESA's problem, and that ESA feels it has to go along with this idea.
> That is: the problem you're describing is local politics rather than
> that open content licences are problematic.
>
> What ill effects have befallen NASA from its works being public
> domain? I still eagerly await your and ESA's answers to this question.
NASA and ESA operate in different political and legal climates. That's a
fact of life. Telling people that in order to do business with you
they'd have to transform their legal and institutional framework,
straight up front, is a sure road to disaster.

Bah. I'm proposing them CC-BY-SA as a solution. Though the license is
deemed "free", the -SA clause probably precludes most uses in
advertisement. (If it's not sufficient, I'll propose GFDL, which we
consider "free" even though it de facto prohibits many uses, e.g.
postcards.)


from_name: Fastfission

subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/21/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
> I suspect the cause is simply that women have something else to do
> with their time that they enjoy more. However, I also suspect enough
> women will edit, that "women's subjects" will eventually be
> adequately handled.

Without meaning it to be a big point in this issue, I just want to
point out that "Oh, women probably have better things to do!" has been
a rationale to dismiss evidence of non-equal participation for a long,
long time. Like, "Oh, but women get to know the joy of motherhood,
which is far more exciting than politics or a good career," it sounds
like a compliment on the surface of it but it usually masks explicit
or implicit acceptance of a limiting status quo.

I'm not trying to imply anything about Fred's personal views on this,
but I just want to point out that I'm not sure this a fruitful
approach and it is one with pretty bad precedents.

I think it is probably very likely that most of Wikipedia's editing is
done by males, and I find it inconceivable that this wouldn't effect a
slant in the editing. That being said, I am not sure I know where the
"problem" lies, if we decide that it is a problem, and I am not sure
there is any sort of easy fix. I suspect that editing regularly on
Wikipedia caters primarily to activities which are often branded as
"masculine" in U.S. culture (aggressiveness, boldness, assertiveness,
argumentitiveness), and that would be something without an easy fix
(and its possible that any fixes would go directly against the
unplanned, unmanaged wiki spirit). But I don't know.

FF


from_name: Mr Adequate

subject:
[WikiEN-l] (semi-OT) What to do with old but not old enough
	encyclopedias?

body:
I recently discarded a mid-1980s set of Encyclopedia Britannica,
because I never look at them anymore. I rang a local craft shop and
asked if anyone was into altered books. A staff member came over very
promptly and took them away. Those volumes will be treasured in the
future, but as nice big leather bound artforms rather than as
encyclopedias.

On 11/17/06, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> On Nov 16, 2006, at 2:38 PM, David Gerard wrote:
>
> > I have bought several books with the intention of using them as
> > Wikipedia source material. Of course, I haven't got around to it at
> > all ...
>
> Familiar.
>
> Fred
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: J.L.W.S. The Special One

body:
I would support this proposal if there is a lot of content which would
fall under the new category.

Despite being hosted in the US, Wikipedia is one of the most
international sites, and its policies should not be US-centric.

On 11/21/06, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 11/21/06, David Monniaux <David.Monniaux at free.fr> wrote:
> > Note that, in the US, NASA, whose photographs are in the public domain,
> > is protected from abusive by specific US laws prohibiting misuse of some
> > symbols of the US government, including the NASA logo (the same applies
> [snip]
> > Note also that the Wikimedia Foundation also copyrights its logos in
> > order to prevent abuse. We should not be hypocrites and deny to others
> > what we do for the same purpose (especially since the Foundation grants
> [snip]
>
>
> As far as I can tell your argument is seriously lacking in internal consistency.
>
> There are two primary areas where I find your argument completely
> unconvincing at first glance:
>
> You make an argument that we should permit logos which are encumbered
> by copyright related restrictions, because non-copyright methods are
> insufficient to protect the logos in some jurisdictions outside of the
> US.   However, you fail to describe the nature of this failure and the
> jurisdictions where it is material.  Although the law differs from
> place to place, trademark is a powerful and well established concept
> in most of the places I suspect matter to you.  Without a specific
> argument related to the insufficiency of trademark protection outside
> of the United States, I can not measure the importance of your
> concerns.
>
>
> > * This would enable us to counter systemic bias ; that is, allow content
> > from some providers from countries where "fair use" does not apply (we
> > for instance currently totally unbalance the portrayal of space programs
> > by having 7000 photos from NASA and hardly any from ESA/CNES).
> [snip]
>
> More importantly, in my mind, is that while you might have an argument
> related to the protection of logos and identifying marks for the
> purpose of avoiding confusion and false associations,  you then take
> the unexplained leap to non-identifying images.. Things like
> scientific phenomena, rather than logos.
>
> Images of research are best held in the public domain, they are things
> which should be "free", as they are the result of the culmination of
> work from generations of people.  It would be fundamentally
> inconsistent for us to profess a commitment to Free Knowledge and then
> endorse discriminatory restrictions on that knowledge.
>
> "You may use this for educational purposes" is a false offer: for what
> use is material that you may learn from, but may only put to use so
> long as you can sufficiently hide the origins of your knowledge?
>
>
> So argue to me that we should allow unfreely copyrighted images of
> trademarked logos, and I will agree with you, for I support that
> policy on the English Wikipedia (where such logos are used as 'fair
> use' consistent with both US code and with established public
> practices).   But I can not see how you can paint informative content
> with the same broad brush.
>
> If the European Space agency is so paranoid and so afraid to share,
> that they will adopt a copyright policy which keeps their work from
> the public eye then it is by their own choice.   The historical memory
> of man is not always kind to those who wish to shroud their work in
> secrecy, and no policy of Wikimedias will change that.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


subject: [Wikipedia-l] gagauz language

body:
Why not a Singlish Wikipedia then?

On 11/21/06, Faxri T.Karimli <qarapapaq at yahoo.fr> wrote:
>
> I would start to create gagauz version of Wikipedia,  but I need some recommendation. What I have to do?
>
>
> Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>   Hoi,
> The Gagauz language (ISO-639-3 code gag) has already been proposed as a
> new language. The only reasonable argument why not to grant it a
> Wikipedia is because there seem to be no native people willing to
> support this project. In the mean time there is nothing stopping you
> starting creating content on the incubator under the gag code.
>
> There is also little stopping you from working on the localisation of
> the Gagauz language User Interface on Betawiki. On BetaWiki you will
> have to find one of the developers willing to set up the necessary
> infrastructure. I would recommend them to do just that.
>
> I do welcome you to create the Babel templates on WiktionaryZ. We have
> portal pages for more than half of the 7602 languages that have been
> recognised under the ISO-639-3 standard. We are working on the rest and,
> we welcome anybody to check out if the Babel templates in his/her
> language are already there.
>
> Consequently, there is already a lot that can be done. It just needs doing.
>
> Thanks,
> GerardM
>
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Gagauz
> http://incubator.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
> http://nike.users.idler.fi/dev/index.php?title=ISO-639-3/gag&redirect=no
> http://wiktionaryz.org/Portal:gag
>
>
> Faxri T.Karimli wrote:
> > in your language list dont exists gagauz language, i think it is trouble problem. in this language of Moldova speak about 200 000 population, mostly form Gagauzia Autonomous Region
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Sponsored Link
>
> Rates near 39yr lows. $510,000 Loan for $1698/mo -   Calculate new house payment
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Written with passion,
J.L.W.S. The Special One


from_name: Neil Harris

subject: [Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia

body:
Marco Chiesa wrote:
> Neil Harris wrote:
>
>
>> As an outsider to this argument, I know little other than what I have
>> read on the mailing list and in articles, so I apologise in advance for
>> any inaccuracies, but I think it goes something like this:
>>
>> To a close approximation, Moldovan == Romanian, but written in Cyrillic,
>> and is used in Moldova and Transnistria, which border Romania, and are
>> closely historically and culturally related.  There are considerably
>> fewer mo: speakers (3.4 M in Rep. Moldova, 0.5M in Transnistria) than
>> ro: speakers (24 M).
>>
>> See [[Moldovan language]] for details.
>>
>>
>>
>
> As far I understand: Moldovan is written in Cyrillic only in
> Transnistria, while the rest of Moldova switched to the Latin script
> after gaining independence from the USSR; the Moldovan government states
> that the official language is called Moldovan, and it's the same
> language both in Moldova and Transnistria. Therefore, most of  the
> Moldovan-speaking people have used Latin script for at least 15 years.
> For this reason, they don't think it is correct that the wikipedia
> called Moldovan uses Cyrillic. I understand they are ok to say Moldovan
> and Rumanian are the same language.
>
>
>

Yes, I'd forgotten that the Moldovans shifted back to the Latin
alphabet. In which case, I can refine the suggestion a bit:

ro: and mo: should then share databases, and an auto-transliterating
dual-script front end as in zh:, but the Cyrillic part of the interface
should be disabled completely whenever accessed via the ro: domain name.
Even when accessed via mo:, it should always default to the Latin
alphabet (thus making the 27M Latin-script-using Moldovans and Romanians
happier), at the cost of making the 0.5M Transnistrians, and a small
minority of older Cyrillic-script-using Moldovans, slightly less happy
than they would have been otherwise.

A possible spin on this approach: by getting the Transnistrians to share
the same back-end DB, you could argue to nationalist Romanians that the
Transnistrians are thus being drawn into the wider Romanian-language
cultural sphere, whilst at the same time you could argue to nationalist
Transnistrians that their own language/writing system combination is
being given first-class support, without having the Latin script forced
on them... so everybody's happy. Or am I being hopelessly unrealistic?
(Yes. Of course I am.)

Do we have any actual Romanians, Moldovans or Transnistrians on this
list who can give an opinion on this?

-- Neil


subject: [Foundation-l] mo.wikipedia


from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] A great ruling for the community

body:
The California Supreme Court issued its ruling yesterday in the Barrett
v. Rosenthal case, one of the most closely watched cases involving the
Communications Decency Act section 230.  The Court came down strongly in
favor of internet freedom and immunity from liability for those within
the protection of Section 230.  This has significant implications for
"distributor" and "user" theories of liability/immunity.  Overall, this
decision is very good for Wikimedia Foundation projects, and our users.

I encourage anyone interested to see the opinion at
http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S122953.PDF.

-Brad


subject: [WikiEN-l] Systemic bias wrt gender

body:
On 11/21/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> I think it is probably very likely that most of Wikipedia's editing is
> done by males, and I find it inconceivable that this wouldn't effect a
> slant in the editing. That being said, I am not sure I know where the
> "problem" lies, if we decide that it is a problem, and I am not sure
> there is any sort of easy fix. I suspect that editing regularly on
> Wikipedia caters primarily to activities which are often branded as
> "masculine" in U.S. culture (aggressiveness, boldness, assertiveness,
> argumentitiveness), and that would be something without an easy fix
> (and its possible that any fixes would go directly against the
> unplanned, unmanaged wiki spirit). But I don't know.
>
I think female editors have a tendency to be demonized more readily
than men if they assert themselves. A certain attack site is very keen
on attacking women admins, and while that's partly to do with the
personalities of the people who post there, I think there may also be
a strain of sexism in it -- women admins getting above themselves,
being viewed as aggressive rather than assertive. But I haven't
noticed any serious bias in terms of editing.

Sarah


from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Making it easier for the public to help out

body:
On 11/20/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mmmh. I'm much more in favour of a solution that *isn't* {{sofixit}} -
> this is not just for people who don't realise they can edit, it's also
> for the substantial number of people who don't *want* to, but would
> vaguely like to help in some way*.

Well put.
> a) Click here to flag the article for attention [submit button]
>
> -or- (preferred)
>
> b) Leave us a message describing the problem, which will help us fix
> it [textbox and submit button]

Nice. This is a good solution to the "I'm willing to spare precisely 5
seconds of my time fixing your article" passerby.

> a) We make this an email-form. It gets routed straight to some kind of
> OTRS-like ticket system, which has fairly liberal access given to it -
> the point here isn't to make it "private", it's to make it easy to see
> what's been handled and when a backlog builds up.

Every second time I hear the word OTRS it's "OTRS is totally
overloaded, is there some way of taking the pressure off?" My
preferred solution (I think I mentioned it earlier) would be to place
a message on the talk page, and to link to it from some centralised
page. If done carefully, that centralised page could show which items
still need to be addressed. Bearing in mind of course that if a talk
page message *doesn't* get addressed immediately, it's not the end of
the world, it happens frequently as it is.

> c) The same as b), except it makes some kind of "mask account" do it,
> rather than just the edit being treated as coming from the reader -
> who, after all, may be banned unknown to themselves. It also ensures
> anonymity of flaggin, which may be seen as desirable.

Is anonymity desirable here? Why?

> These may require some kind of not-quite-MediaWiki implementation, but
> that would in some ways be good - we want this to be free of some of
> the mediawiki constraints, like IP-blocking and so forth.

What if someone uses this new mechanism to avoid their IP block and be
a pain? How would we stop them?

> I'm personally quite taken by a), since it would seem to scale better
> than a single page, but it has the detriment fewer people would handle
> it. On the other hand, it would ensure some level of privacy if, eg,

If someone is flagging a specific problem with article X, it doesn't
seem to make sense to me to send it only to a central repository.
Talk:X very much seems the right place, if not the only place.

> people started leaving personal info in their messages.

Yeah, that would be a problem. A sufficiently loud warning "Please do
*not* leave any contact information here - your message will be made
public." should be able to cover that.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels

body:
On 11/21/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> As the MediaWiki developers have previously decided when implementing
> the semi-protection feature, doing this sort of throttling based on edit
> counts is not feasible performance-wise. Anything would have to be done
> by how old the account is.

Oh yeah. Um. Is that the *only* way? Any alternatives whereby we
assign all vaguely trustworthy users to some "vaguely trustworthy"
account group? Based on...I don't know.

For my own curiosity, why *is* it so DB-intensive to count the number
of edits for a user? Is there no view/table that marries users up to
their edits?

For the sake of this discussion, edits would definitely be a more
desirable trust metric than age, as creating a sleeper account that
sits dormant for 3 months is a lot less effort than creating an
account then making some large number of (even trivial) edits with is.

Steve


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [Foundation-l] contents under education/information licenses

body:
I'll try to avoid the finer details here and get to the substance of the
problem. Some organizations want to apply licensing terms that allow
"educational" and "informational" use of their content. They profess to
allow "commercial" use. However, they also want to prevent
"advertisement" and "political" use.

Framing the issue this way assumes that these categories are distinct.
That assumption is misleading and, especially in the context of our
philosophical commitments on licensing issues, not one we can operate
with. Their concession to commercial use recognizes that education and
information can be commercial products. But what about, for example,
using this material to advertise an educational product? This is
territory where it isn't feasible to bless some approaches and cordon
off others, at least not without detailed agreements spelling out what
is and isn't permissible. Such things quickly become too complicated for
our own contributors, to say nothing of anyone downstream who wants to
reuse it.

And that's only the first stage of blurring the attempted distinction.
As any political operative would say, at least for public consumption,
everything they put out *is* informational. They claim to believe that
if voters had all the facts, they would all reach the same conclusion
and support this position or that candidate. It's not negative
campaigning, it's making sure people have all the information they need
about your opponent.

As for the differences between information and advertising, it's much
the same thing. Most marketing (think of the worst corporate article on
Wikipedia you've ever wanted to delete) still aims to be informational,
even though it's coming at you from a slanted and perhaps distorted
perspective. Perhaps some of you may not be familiar with the term
"infomercial", which is I guess rather American, but that phenomenon
illustrates the problem quite well. Considering that the second half is
from commercial, with a meaning equivalent to advertisement, according
to this philosophy such use should be allowed and not allowed at the
same time.

I think much of the problem is a sense that dedicating something to the
public domain means abandoning the ability to defend it against abuse.
But the kind of abuse contemplated is less a matter for copyright and
licensing. Trademark law has been mentioned, and that might work in some
situations. But really these kinds of problems are, or ought to be,
covered by moral rights. Fundamentally, the situation these
organizations want to prevent is use to imply endorsement against their
wishes, whether that be commercial or political. To me, that's a moral
rights issue, and shouldn't need to involve licensing. To deal with the
problem, they should focus on the endorsement, not resort to other
categories instead that are poor proxies.

Regardless of how somebody licenses or releases their content, they
aren't supposed to lose their moral rights, as I understand it. Probably
some of the difficulty understanding each other here is because the US,
which has the strongest tradition of releasing content to the public
domain, has also been among the most resistant to the moral rights
concept. I could certainly support some changes and clarifications to
the law in this regard, preferably at a level of international
coordination. Perhaps that would make agencies in other countries
comfortable with releasing their material more freely. But for our
purposes in the meantime, I don't think accepting content with
additional restrictions like these gets us closer to our goals.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikitech-l] Implementing a licensing quiz on Commons

body:
On 11/20/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't want to force (or even suggest for) everyone to go through the
> quiz every single time they want to upload. I want to force all new
> users [or all users... I don't really care] to go through the quiz
> once before they start (or continue) uploading.
> Is it possible to do this without modifying MediaWiki?

The no-brainer solution in my approach is for the user to bookmark the
actual upload page (that is, the page pointed to by the final correct
answer), and to use that in future. You could probably come up with
much smarter solutions.

Steve


from_name: Jeffrey V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l] out of your mind....

body:
Anthere wrote:

>If you had to cite organisations which share a lot with our, which
>organisations would you cite ?
>
>Key words here being
>* rather young and still little organised
>* very largely based on volunteer work
>* with little money (not the pouring barrels some non profits get...)
>
>We'd like to contact some "similar-like" organisations to share best
>practices.
>
>Do you have names to suggest (not necessarily limited to open source or
>free software)
>
>Ant
>
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
OSDL. LKML/kernel.org (0 $$$ coming in)

Jeff


subject: [Foundation-l] out of your mind....


body:
Brad Patrick wrote:

>The California Supreme Court issued its ruling yesterday in the Barrett
>v. Rosenthal case, one of the most closely watched cases involving the
>Communications Decency Act section 230.  The Court came down strongly in
>favor of internet freedom and immunity from liability for those within
>the protection of Section 230.  This has significant implications for
>"distributor" and "user" theories of liability/immunity.  Overall, this
>decision is very good for Wikimedia Foundation projects, and our users.
>
>I encourage anyone interested to see the opinion at
>http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/opinions/documents/S122953.PDF.
>
>
>-Brad
>_______________________________________________
>foundation-l mailing list
>foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
No help in Federal Court though, where most interstate litigations
occur, just California, and their long arm
statutes are very restrictive. In a state that already has SLAPP
precedents, seems a natural next step for their
supreme court. The dormant commerce clause will undoubtably govern those
cases however for CDA 230.

Jeff


from_name: Luna

subject: [Foundation-l] About web streaming in Wikimania

body:
I very highly doubt I'd be attending this Wikimania, personally (too big a
trip for me), but for what it's worth, I imagine remote participation and
community awareness of the availability would be the deciding factors, as SJ
said. It might be interesting to set up IRC channel(s) to run along with the
various lectures; with that done, questions could be submitted both by those
attending the sessions, and by those all over the world.

Barring remote participation of some sort, I doubt I'm the only person who's
more inclined to download whatever's available at some later date, and
listen to them all at my own leisure.

-Luna

On 11/21/06, SJ <2.718281828 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi Littlebtc,
>
> We don't have good numbers for this, unfortunately.  I also don't
> think they would be very telling, as streaming was not widely promoted
> either of the past two years.  The right answer will depend largely on
> how many people know it is available.
>
> Perhaps you can do a poll of people who expect they would use it; I
> would guess that at least 200 streams would be used if available and
> well-promoted.  If you make remote participation a core element of the
> conference, you could attract more interest than that.
>
> --SJ
>
>
> On 11/21/06, ?? <sst.dreams at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hello everyone, I am Littlebtc, a member of Wikimania 2007 planning
> team.
> >
> > When we talk to sponsors about web streaming sponsorship,  they want
> > to know how many people will use web streaming to watch the conference
> > so that they can help us.
> >
> > So we'd like to know the amount of web streaming listener, or
> > bandwidth of the streaming website during Wikimania 2006.
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> --
> ++SJ
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Faxri T.Karimli

subject: [Wikipedia-l] gagauz language

body:
sorry, I couldnt understand:(

"J.L.W.S. The Special One" <hildanknight at gmail.com> wrote:
  Why not a Singlish Wikipedia then?

On 11/21/06, Faxri T.Karimli wrote:
>
> I would start to create gagauz version of Wikipedia, but I need some recommendation. What I have to do?
>

---------------------------------
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from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-11-22

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

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Don't fall for the self-closing div... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Always escape literal '>' in output, not just after '<'... FAILED!

Reading tests from "/home/brion/src/wiki/phase3/extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...

Passed 449 of 469 tests (95.74%)... FAILED!


from_name: Mark Clements

subject: [Wikitech-l] Different sysop levels (Attn: Brion)

body:
"Steve Bennett" <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:b8ceeef70611211644k52843731vf4ac8626bf1c486 at mail.gmail.com...
> On 11/22/06, Simetrical
<Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It's just that there's no edit count stored directly in the database
> > at present (at least not that I can see in a quick glance at the
> > schema).  You have to do a count, which is O(N).  An edit count could
> > be added, presumably, if it were deemed useful, but I'm not the person
> > to ask about whether that would slow things down or not, or otherwise
> > be deemed undesirable.
>
> Yeah. It would apparently have some use, if people keep making
> requests for things which rely on it. Well, let's do this officially,
> anyway:
>
> Brion, may we please have an edit count field?
>
> Steve

...and if that 'official method' doesn't work, you could always try logging
it on Bugzilla....

:-)

- Mark Clements (HappyDog)