body:
On 10/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> >From: Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org>
> >
> >I seriously doubt requiring someone to create a throwaway email account
> in
> >order to sign up for Wikipedia would change anything. By this, I mean I
> >doubt it'd stop any vandals, and I doubt it'd drive away any users
> >(although
> >it might discourage casual users from creating an account, which could be
> >argued as a good or a bad thing).
>
> It would mean it would generally take up to 10 minutes to create a new
> account, as opposed to just seconds to edit anonymously from a new IP. For
> pure vandals/blocked users it would get tiring after a while, if they were
> all blocked in seconds.
>

Jay.

Eh, if you just want to delay account creation, delay the account creation
for 10 minutes.

I don't think this would stop many pure vandals/blocked users, and don't
forget they could still create 500 accounts during those 10 minutes. It
would stop casual editors though, and it'd even stop some regulars who just
don't feel like logging in from another location (or maybe don't want to log
in from work or from an untrusted computer).

If you're going to stop allowing anonymous editing, might as well go all the
way and require some better authentication than just a throwaway email
account. Do a six-degrees thing like Google does with gmail, for instance.
Want edit Wikipedia? Send in your application here.

And you know what, Wikipedia would probably still succeed. In some ways it'd
be better, and in some ways it'd be worse. But the real problem is that
you'd lose a lot of users. There'd almost certainly be a fork.

Maybe there will be a fork anyway. If so, maybe a better solution would be
for Wikimedia to run both versions - one collaborative encyclopedia for the
elitists to edit and another one for everyone to edit. Of course, I seem to
recall that Bomis already tried that.

Anthony


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Michael Keppler

subject: [Wikitech-l] Category Browser/Editor and Search Widgets

body:
Jonah Bossewitch schrieb:
> I just wanted to announce the release of two new widgets which make our
> wikis run much smoother.

I had a quick look at the category editor because that's a feature my
users have requested too. I see some major problems with your
implementation which lead to me not installing them in my live wikis.
* I see that code from MediaWiki classes is duplicated, which makes
maintenance hard for you as well as for the people using your extension.
* MediaWiki extensions should use MediaWiki CSS for continuity. Your
extension looks really bad in a non standard skin because it doesn't
respect the "standard" MediaWiki CSS classes. Have a look at other
special pages.
* You don't use the MediaWiki message system, so your output is always
English.
* Patching is always a harder pain than just copying files. Is it
somehow possible to remove the necessity for patching index.php?

Do you see chances for improving that in future versions?

Ciao, Michael.

BTW: The install.txt doesn't match the necessary installation steps.


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Sabine Cretella

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Old translations of the week - pages for conference
	in Cracow

body:
Hi, I was invited to speak about "Wiki-projects" on a translator's
conference in Cracow. Well, really my translator colleagues know me for
the one that works on the Wikimedia projects and of course also on
Ultimate Wiktionary. This means that I will tell about how things on a
wiki work, about GFDL, about Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Ultimate Wiktionary
and if time permits also about Wikibooks, Wikisource, Wikiquote,
Wikinews and whatever - I would at least like to add all these
informations on a CD to give to the participants (there should be
descriptions in many languages around, right?).

Now I don't have problems to burn approx. 120 CDs - I could also ask for
help to a friend of mine here, where I live, but I need contents -
enough to show the potentials but not too much in order to have people
then go to the projects itself for further reference.

I just talked with Frieda from the Italian chapter - she will help me to
create the entrance pages that have to be done manually.

Now what I would like to have are the downloaded pages of the
translations of the week from the last year because I suppose these are
articles that are very complete. I suppose, being these translations
they will also create a very particular mood for translators and maybe
some of them will decide to dedicate some time to their local projects.
People going to this conference come from anywhere and it is very likely
that they will give copies of the CD to friends and others if we have
some useful stuff on it. I'll also try to add some glossaries that I
have myself and that are under GFDL.

So please help us to create this CD by downloading these pages and
sending them to me. Maybe it would also be a good idea to tell us
briefly on the list what/on which wikipedia you are going to do the
downloads of the pages.

Or would it make sense to use HTTrack (well I should learn how to use it
properly) in order to have the links working? Martin gave me this idea
for another project some days ago and there I saw that all the links
access directly the website where the page was downloaded from on the
Internet.

Well, thank you for any help!

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Mail: gratis 1GB per i messaggi e allegati da 10MB
http://mail.yahoo.it


list: wikien-l

from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The whole point of wikipedia

body:
On 10/20/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/21/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Because the blocked user can no longer edit under the same username
> and/or
> > IP address. It's much harder to find vandalism when you don't know what
> > accounts to look under. Just look at what happened when Wik was blocked.
> It
> > made it harder to find and revert his/her bad edits, not easier.
> >
> > Anthony
>
> However the vast majority on anoying teens stop when blocked (most
> stop when warned).
>
> --
> geni

I'm not sure it's the vast majority, but yeah, there are certainly some who
will stop after they get blocked.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Angela

subject:
[Foundation-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New
	Partnership

body:
In a press release today
(<http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/051020/ukth030.html?.v=1>), The
Wikimedia Foundation announced a new partnership with Answers.com.

A proposal was made by Answers Corporation to add a link in the
sidebar of the English Wikipedia to the Wikipedia:Tools page
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tools>).

That page will highlight the "1-Click Answers, Wikipedia Edition"
software. Revenues from this toolbar will be split with the Wikimedia
Foundation. The Board have signed up to a 60-day trial of this
proposal.

I would like to welcome comments on this, both before the launch early
next year, and during the trial period. The talk page at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Tools/1-Click_Answers>
should be used so that comments can be kept in one place.

Angela.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Answers.com and Wikimedia Foundation to Form New
	Partnership


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Axel

subject: [Wikitech-l] latex2wiki, html2wiki, no online

body:
On 10/20/05, Uwe Brauer <oub at mat.ucm.es> wrote:
> Hello
>
> I am looking for a simple, no online, converter either
>
>     -  latex2wiki
>
>     -  html2wiki
>
>  I have seen some converters for producing math formulas, music etc.
> For me a simple html2wiki converter would be fine.

I just released a new version of the Eclipse Wikipedia Editor for Eclipse 3.1:
http://sourceforge.net/project/admin/editpackages.php?group_id=128886

Main description and installation:
http://www.plog4u.org/index.php/Using_Eclipse_Wikipedia_Editor

In the editorarea you can insert HTML texts converted to Wiki texts
from the Clipboard:
http://www.plog4u.org/index.php/Using_Eclipse_Wikipedia_Editor:Working_with_the_Editor#The_Editor_Context_Menu

The same HTML to Wiki converter is online available here:
http://www.jtidy.de


from_name: Michael Antwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re article on Earthquakes

body:
Hi,
I would like it brought to your attention that Chapter 2 of the
Earthquake article appears to have been tampered with to include some
juvenile jokes about butts.

regards

michael


from_name: Justin Cormack

subject: [WikiEN-l] Questionable fair use claims: a case study

body:
On 20 Oct 2005, at 21:23, Matt Brown wrote:

> On 10/20/05, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> Fewer people seem to have cameras than I would have imagined. It took
>> me all of two minutes to roll my [[lawn mower]] out and make original
>> images for the article, but we still have all these people uploading
>> the first poor thumbnail of a commonplace object that Google finds
>> for them.
>>
>>
>
> The problem is worst on such generic articles, as you say. If one's
> writing
> a specific article on a specific lawnmower, say the [[GrassMaster Lawn
> Master 2000]], then one needs a specific picture of that specific
> model. It
> might have been out of production for 20 years and examples are
> hard to
> find. In that case, I believe it's quite acceptable to go to the
> GrassMaster
> corporate website to see if they have a picture we could use under
> fair use,
> or scan an image out of a period GrassMaster catalog. We're using a
> company's own promotional image to illustrate (and thus, in a sense,
> promote) their own product - a fairly slam-dunk fair use case, and
> likely
> counting as use with permission as well (so zero chance we'll get
> sued). Of
> course, should some fellow Wikipedian be a lawnmower collector who
> has one,
> it's preferable if we get their free-licensed photos to replace it.

No, thats not reasonable. Just because you cant find a picture doesnt
make it
copyright free. Hardly anything has a justification that we cannot
ever find
a free one. I have recently been tagging all cars as fairusereplace
as there
are so few that there is no specimen surviving.

> Using such a photo on a more generic page, such as [[lawn mower]],
> is not a
> good fair use. Such is a large proportion of the bogus fair use
> claims we
> get.
>

I have found 2 pictures (in  the wole of wikipedia) that I think are
fair use,
there are easy replacements for everything else.

> The other category is people who, wanting to illustrate the
> [[GrassMaster
> Lawn Master 2000]] article, will rummage through their well-thumbed
> stack of
> "Lawnmower Monthly" until they find one on the cover, scan that
> cover, and
> use the magazine cover to illustrate the article. After all, "aren't
> magazine covers always fair use"?

No they arent. The bogus fair use for specific categories should go.
There is
no fair use without justification.

Justinc


from_name: Alphax

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256

Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> It'd be nice if we could get the regular anons to log in, but still let the
> casual anons edit anonymously, but I'm not really sure how to do this.
>

A username is more anonymous than an IP, and provides a greater sense of
identity. It's impossible to tell which of an IP's edits are good and
bad, because good and bad users could be using it.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
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body:
On 10/20/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/21/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > I'm not sure it's the vast majority, but yeah, there are certainly some
> who
> > will stop after they get blocked.
>
> Most don't know how to use proxies so they don't much choice.
>
> --
> geni

Most people know how to log off and log back on, though.


body:
On 20 Oct 2005, at 20:35, uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:

> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>
>> This is the kind of situation where you might want to throw around
>> some of your personal authority; there are a lot of editors not
>> getting the message (or not wishing to accept it)
>>
>
> I have a collection of howls of protest on my talk page placed
> there by
> people who are upset that I deleted an image they uploaded.
>
> People just don't get it.

Thats true. I tried that too.

I think we should transwiki all non free images to nonfree.wikimedia.org
remove upload rights to there, only allow new images to commons,  and
er make a free encyclopaedia...

Justinc


subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Being Prepared in the face of Hurricane Wilma as
	far as communications.]

body:
On 10/20/05, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
> Alphax wrote:
>
> >* Once we have the infrastructure, have entire database backups (or at
> >least parts of them) scattered around the place so that should Florida
> >go down for an extended period (or be destroyed completely), everything
> >would still be safe. I forget what the estimated worth of all the
> >Wikimedia content is, but I believe it's in the millions of dollars.
> >
> >
> >
> Well, as of July 2005, all of the different language editions of
> Wikipedia came to 491 M words: it must be _considerably_ greater than
> that now. At a journalist's rate of $1/word, that would make Wikipedia
> worth in excess of $500,000,000.
>
> -- Neil

They get about 50 billion hits a year, right? So at $2 CPM that's $100
million a year, and at a P/E of 20 that's $2 billion. Of course, that's more
than just the value of the content, and it ignores the expenses to run the
site, which isn't much compared to $100 million a year.

It's too bad non-profits can't IPO. :)


body:
On 10/21/05, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/21/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > Most people know how to log off and log back on, though.
>
>
> Fortunetly not everyone is on a dynamic ip
>
> --
> geni

Somewhere between "someone" and "the vast majority" is about what I'd
estimate.


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Level3 upstream network outage

body:
Some sort of massive network outage at Level3 has thrown the net into a
bit of chaos and generally broken Wikipedia for the last couple hours.

We're at this point at least mostly accessible, but still have
connectivity problems between Florida and Amsterdam which is breaking
the European squid service.

Hopefully this will get resolved soon.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Importing XML database dumps - what actually works?

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> Are other people having grief importing the new XML format database-dumps?
>
> Today, I've just tried 3 different methods of importing the EN
> 20051009_pages_articles.xml.bz2 dump, and not one of them seems to
> work properly.

Please check with the 20051020 dump and mwdumper. If it stops, please
check what the error was (eg, key conflicts) and report that.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
Hi,

What do you think of a Yanito WP?

Mark

On 21/10/05, A Gibraltarian <a_gibraltarian at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Re: creation of other language WP's as far as I am concerned if somebody
> want to take the trouble why should anyone object?
>
> If someone wants to create one in Klingon, Ancient Greek or Aramaic let them
> get on with it. If you don't know the language or object for political
> reasons then stick to other language WP's.
>
> Gibraltarian
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE!
> http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: geni

body:
On 10/21/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> Because the blocked user can no longer edit under the same username and/or
> IP address. It's much harder to find vandalism when you don't know what
> accounts to look under. Just look at what happened when Wik was blocked. It
> made it harder to find and revert his/her bad edits, not easier.
>
> Anthony

However the vast majority on anoying teens stop when blocked (most
stop when warned).

--
geni


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mark Williamson's fonts

body:
Unfortunately, my host is down for unknown reasons.

Seeing as I don't pay for my webspace, I can't well demand an
explanation, so the best I can do is hope that the issue will be
resolved sooner rather than later. If it goes on for long enough, I
may inquire for a second time as to the nature of the problem.

http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/ttf-mph-2b-damase
Please note, however, that this is not of the most recent version of
the font, which fixes an issue with the coptic ranges.

I also hope that at some point in the distant future, I may be able to
finish the Linear B Ideograms, and add more scripts as well.

Another outstanding issue is the majescule q. I modified it to be an
"open" Q (rather than an "O-with-a-strike") as this is what I prefer
in my handwriting, however I didn't do a very clean job and at some
point I would like to fix that. The Latin characters are also a little
bit misaligned, so it gives texts in the Roman alphabet a sort of
badly typewritten feel.

DaMaSe is certainly usable for Gothic, Tifinagh, hPhags-pa, Linear B
(syllabary 100% supported, ideograms only partially supported),
Cypriot, Glagolitic... It is perhaps a superior font for Glagolitic
because it attempts to blend the quite distinct traditions of
Glagolitic writing (Triangular, Square, and Round). It also works for
Persian and Ugaritic cuneiform, and many many many other scripts.

Mark

On 21/10/05, Phil Boswell <phil.boswell at gmail.com> wrote:
> I keep seeing references to fonts provided by our very own node_ue, and they
> seem to have been well received all over the place. However the site
> provided seems to be down:
> http://fixedsys.org/~node_ue/fonts/
>
> I'm asking here because it seems to be a fairly easy place to get hold of
> Mark, and I thought it would be of general interest.
>
> Is there any other place to get these fonts? I would like to see if they
> would be useful for further special font designations like {{polytonic}} and
> {{IPA}}: {{gothic}} maybe?
> --
> Phil
> [[en:User:Phil Boswell]]
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

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


from_name: Neil Harris

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Being Prepared in the face of Hurricane Wilma
	as	far as communications.]

body:
Alphax wrote:

>* Once we have the infrastructure, have entire database backups (or at
>least parts of them) scattered around the place so that should Florida
>go down for an extended period (or be destroyed completely), everything
>would still be safe. I forget what the estimated worth of all the
>Wikimedia content is, but I believe it's in the millions of dollars.
>
>
>
Well, as of July 2005, all of the different language editions of
Wikipedia came to 491 M words: it must be _considerably_ greater than
that now. At a journalist's rate of $1/word, that would make Wikipedia
worth in excess of $500,000,000.

-- Neil


body:
On 10/21/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> I'm not sure it's the vast majority, but yeah, there are certainly some who
> will stop after they get blocked.

Most don't know how to use proxies so they don't much choice.

--
geni


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 10/20/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>
> No, thats not reasonable. Just because you cant find a picture doesnt
> make it copyright free. Hardly anything has a justification that we cannot
> ever find a free one. I have recently been tagging all cars as
> fairusereplace
> as there are so few that there is no specimen surviving.

The legal doctrine of Fair Use does not require that we are unable to find a
replacement under any circumstances. It is the general policy of Wikipedia -
not the law - that we should attempt to replace Fair Use images with a
wholly free one whenever we can, which I agree with.

I have found 2 pictures (in the wole of wikipedia) that I think are
> fair use, there are easy replacements for everything else.

It sounds to me that you simply are working on a different definition of
legal Fair Use than everyone else ...

> The other category is people who, wanting to illustrate the
> > [[GrassMaster Lawn Master 2000]] article, will rummage through their
> well-thumbed
> > stack of "Lawnmower Monthly" until they find one on the cover, scan that
> > cover, and use the magazine cover to illustrate the article. After all,
> "aren't
> > magazine covers always fair use"?
>
> No they arent. The bogus fair use for specific categories should go.
> There is no fair use without justification.
>

You missed the sarcasm indicated by the quotes.

-Matt


subject:
Anthony,
	could you stop reproducing people's signatures without quoting? Was
	Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: The whole point of wikipedia

body:
On 10/20/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> Jay.
>
>
> Anthony
>
>
Anthony, could you possibly stop this practice of including the other
person's signature at the end of your replies unquoted? This is an example,
where you included Jay's "Jay." on a line by itself before your signature
below, without quoting it at the right level.

Please don't do this, as what you're effectively doing is attributing your
words to someone else. I don't see that you need to include it, since you
include a standard citation leader ("On 10/20/05, JAY JG <jayjg at hotmail.com>
wrote:"). If you do feel the need, please indent it with your standard
quotation indent ("> " or whatever) to make it obvious that it's part of the
quoted text and NOT your reply?

Sent to WikiEN-L because your apparent mailing address is clearly
spamtrapped.

Thanks in advance,

-Matt


body:
On 10/21/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> Most people know how to log off and log back on, though.

Fortunetly not everyone is on a dynamic ip

--
geni


body:
On 10/21/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 21 Oct 2005, at 12:24, Matt Brown wrote:
> The argument used is the converse - as we dont have a free picture we
> can tag anything fair use. Which is of course completely bogus.

Personally, if I cannot obtain a free picture, I do not consider "anything"
usable as Fair Use, although I know that puts me in the minority! I do
consider promotional pictures freely distributed to be usable under that
doctrine, though, when used to illustrate the thing or person the
promotional picture shows. Plus, in practice, we can consider promotional
images to be used with permission - the Fair Use claim is only required by
Wikipedia's policies.

-Matt


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Dollar Value of Wikipedia articles (was: Being Prepared
	in the face of Hurricane Wilma asfar as communications)

body:
> > Alphax wrote:
> >
> > Well, as of July 2005, all of the different language editions of
> > Wikipedia came to 491 M words: it must be _considerably_
> greater than
> > that now. At a journalist's rate of $1/word, that would
> make Wikipedia
> > worth in excess of $500,000,000.
> >
> > -- Neil
>
>
> They get about 50 billion hits a year, right? So at $2 CPM
> that's $100 million a year, and at a P/E of 20 that's $2
> billion. Of course, that's more than just the value of the
> content, and it ignores the expenses to run the site, which
> isn't much compared to $100 million a year.
>
> It's too bad non-profits can't IPO. :)

I think you've over-rated the value of Wikipedia articles. Our
article on the [[Atom]] (you know, what chemical elements are
made of?) is a case in point.

I would pay a writer $1.00 per word for Britannica's 60-word
intro ($60) sooner than I'd pay the same rate for Wikipedia's
2,000 word article. Ours is not worth $2,000.

If I had to hire a professional writer to fix up [[atom]], I
would have to pay between $100 and $200. That would amount to
5 cents to 10 cents per word.

We like to boast of our quality, but in this case our boast
would be false.

Uncle Ed Poor
Self-proclaimed Quality Czar
Wikipedia Research Team


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikitech-l] wikiquote logo missing

body:
EIRIK reported that
http://nn.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hovudside has no logo.

Can someone fix that ?

~~~~

__________________________________
Yahoo! FareChase: Search multiple travel sites in one click.
http://farechase.yahoo.com


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Questionable fair use claims: a case study

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:

>The single most important factor for a fair use analysis is the
>impact of the use on the market for the original
>
If you're relying on Harper & Row for this proposition, you need to
recognize that Campbell v. Acuff-Rose effectively undermines it, both on
the facts and in the language of the decision. Its analysis is much
closer to weighing the factors equally.

>In
>my opinion even images on user pages should be given a little bit of leeway
>for this reason. An image which isn't included in any of the articles isn't
>really in the encyclopedia itself, it's in a temporary workspace which we
>use to create an encyclopedia.
>
>
It's in a workspace that we publish to the entire world over the
internet. And don't kid yourself about the temporary here; try removing
an inappropriate image from somebody's user page and see how temporary
they thought it should be. While I am perfectly happy to be flexible
about more restrictive licensing for user page images (no-derivatives or
Wikipedia-specific permission), I have yet to see anyone articulate a
reasonable argument as to why a copyrighted image would be fair use on a
user page.

--Michael Snow


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: local bots

references:
<dj4msp$os8$1@sea.gmane.org>	<51dd1af80510190453x45c9631dv27bf41816ada0cdf@mail.gmail.com>
	<dj5s5k$h81$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Tim Starling wrote:

> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
>
>>On 10/19/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Pakaran made a comment on irc which really makes a lot of sense to me
>>>
>>>Why could not be bureaucrat be allowed to give bots on their local
>>>projects ? They are more likely to know the peoople as well as the rules.
>>
>>
>>This is a deliberate constraint put in place for reasons unknown to
>>me, I can't see why local bureaucrats can't be trusted with the full
>>Makesysop interface, which would allow them advanced control over user
>>rights such as granting/revoking any right on the wiki. I can't see
>>this becoming a problem, as it would cut down on the overhead of
>>getting a steward to grant bot rights and in case some bureaucrat goes
>>AWOL we can always quickly clean up the mess (which I don't see
>>happening in the first place since these are trusted individuals).
>
>
> The current power structure reflects the outcome numerous discussions I
> had on the subject, with developers, users and probably most
> influentially, Sunir Shah. My personal preference was for an IRC-style
> model, a two-level system where sysops could sysop or desysop anyone.
> But I was talked out of it by IRC and wiki experts alike.
>
> The bureaucrat model was pioneered by Brion and Snok, and I introduced
> stewards as a way to completely displace the power of developers within
> the wiki power structure. The current model has a population of people
> holding various rights proportional to the quantity of demand for use of
> those rights. The aim is to give away the minimum amount of power needed
> for oversight and a timely response, not to give the maximum amount of
> power allowable by considerations of trust. This seems to mirror
> sentiments in the general community. Desysopping is rare and potentially
> destructive, so the ability is only given to a small number of people.
>
> To answer Avar's objection directly, you can be a trusted individual and
> still be rash or arrogant. We minimise power to minimise the damage done
> when trusted individuals act in anger. I'm not talking about damage to
> articles, I'm talking about damage to egos, and there's no rollback
> button for that.
>
> It may be that there's not enough active stewards at the moment, and
> that may be leading to tensions. But I think the system we have has been
> quite effective in general, so if steward workload is a problem, we
> should just get more stewards.

I'd like to make a comment about this.
Some editors complain that they are not enough stewards because things
do not get done in a speedily enough fashion (ie, within one hour.

I do not agree with that approach.
There are mostly 4 situations
* request for being a sysop on a small project. Most of the time, it
takes at least two weeks because
**some editors asked the status without signing with their names (eh :-)
**we request that a "request for sysophood" be created and that editors
list their names here and that they get support. We will wait AT LEAST a
week then. If editors asking for sysop status were reading requirements
before asking, they would gain time for sure.

*request for desysoping someone. Except for urgent cases, I, at least,
wait on purpose before doing it. I know of many examples of people
asking and retracting afterwards. Besides, often, editors asking for the
desysophood fail to provide a link to justify the request. So, we wait.....

*request for having access to check user status. These are likely to
wait for a long time, because I think no user should be given that
access before a policy is set

* request for having bot status. And here, yes, there is a lONNNNNNNG
waiting time. Because when we get request, we get them for 50 different
projects sometimes. And mind you, this is *really* a boring task to do
them one by one. Additionnaly, each project may have different rules for
granting bot flag, so if we are serious, we must check each project
rules. Not adding that sometimes, the bot creator fails to created the
user name in the project, which is a loss of time for us.

All in all, the bot request is frankly the ***more*** painful by far.
And granting bot access is likely not controversial.
Which is why I support giving bureaucrat the ability of doing this.

> The fact that bot access can only be granted by stewards is not a
> deliberate constraint, and I would have no problem allowing bureaucrats
> to both grant and revoke it. The steward interface is general, so they
> can grant and revoke anything, but the bureaucrat interface has to be
> extended for each new ability. Rollback is another example of a right
> which could potentially be granted at the bureaucrat or sysop level. It
> certainly wouldn't be practical to require stewards to grant it.
>
> -- Tim Starling

Yes, I am aware it would require some technical changes. Rollback is
also a good example. Still, I think both should move to the realm of
bureaucrats... This is why I am asking for feedback. Till now, nobody
opposed the idea...


from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: [Wikizh-l] Re: Wikipedia banned in China,
	news from Taiwan (translated)

body:
ZH Wikipedia wrote:

>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>From: shi zhao <shizhao at gmail.com>
>Date: Oct 21, 2005 10:20 PM
>Subject: [Wikizh-l] Re: Wikipedia banned in China, news from Taiwan
>(translated)
>To: Zheng Xiaoyun <zhengxiaoyun at gmail.com>
>Cc: wikizh-l at wikipedia.org
>
>wikipedia?????????????????????????????,?????????????????
>
>???????????????,??????,1????????????
>
>????wikipedia,??????????wikimedia???????????:
>145.97.39.132:80 <http://145.97.39.132:80>
>
>
>? 05-10-21,Zheng Xiaoyun<zhengxiaoyun at gmail.com> ??:
>
>
>>??????????????,??????????????????????
>>
>>Zheng
>>
>>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>>From: Cathy Ma <cathyma at gmail.com>
>>Date: Oct 21, 2005 6:24 PM
>>Subject: Wikipedia banned in China, news from Taiwan (translated)
>>To: Andrew Lih <alih at hku.hk>, Ying Chan <yychan at hku.hk>, Lokman Tsui
>><lokman.tsui at gmail.com>, Andrea Leung <andrea.leung at gmail.com>,
>>"isaac.mao" <isaac.mao at gmail.com>, zhengxiaoyun at gmail.com, Kenneth
>>Farrall <kfarrall at asc.upenn.edu>, Titan Deng <theodoranian at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>>Thanks Titan for the source:
>>
>>???? ??????
>>
>>????????????
>>
>>?????????????????(wiki pedia)?????,19??????????????
>>,???????
>>
>>Wikipedia was banned without forewarnning on the 19th and shocked
>>internet users.
>>
>>
With the control over information that the Chinese government has, it
doesn't really surprise me or shock me in the least. The shocking thing
was that they premitted as much as they did. In some ways, having the
communist government ban Wikipedia may be the best thing that could have
happened. It will get international attention to the project,
particularly when the international press realizes that Wikipedia is
even in Chinese and many other languages as well. It will also stop the
cautious attitude that editors on the Chinese Wikipedia have had so far
to try and avoid pissing off the Chinese government, strongly affecting
POV issues. The only worry I would see now is that the zh.wikipedia
doesn't go too far the other way in becoming a forum for Chinese dissidents.

--
Robert Scott Horning


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proxies and blocking (was: The whole point of wikipedia)

body:
> > On 10/21/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> > > I'm not sure it's the vast majority, but yeah, there are
> certainly
> > > some
> > who
> > > will stop after they get blocked.
> >
> > Most don't know how to use proxies so they don't much choice.
> >
> > --
> > geni
>
>
> Most people know how to log off and log back on, though.

Don't forget to change the "Subject" header of your email:

* Proxies and blocking

Is more specific then

* The whole point of Wikipedia

Ed Poor
(One of several mailing list admins)


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Mark Williamson's fonts

body:
I keep seeing references to fonts provided by our very own node_ue, and they
seem to have been well received all over the place. However the site
provided seems to be down:
http://fixedsys.org/~node_ue/fonts/

I'm asking here because it seems to be a fairly easy place to get hold of
Mark, and I thought it would be of general interest.

Is there any other place to get these fonts? I would like to see if they
would be useful for further special font designations like {{polytonic}} and
{{IPA}}: {{gothic}} maybe?
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


from_name: A Gibraltarian

subject: [Wikipedia-l] I can't believe!

body:
Re: creation of other language WP's as far as I am concerned if somebody
want to take the trouble why should anyone object?

If someone wants to create one in Klingon, Ancient Greek or Aramaic let them
get on with it. If you don't know the language or object for political
reasons then stick to other language WP's.

Gibraltarian

_________________________________________________________________
Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today it's FREE!
http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

body:
On 10/21/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>
> On 21 Oct 2005, at 13:49, Matt Brown wrote:
>
> > On 10/21/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> On 21 Oct 2005, at 12:24, Matt Brown wrote:
> >> The argument used is the converse - as we dont have a free picture we
> >> can tag anything fair use. Which is of course completely bogus.
> >>
> >
> >
> > Personally, if I cannot obtain a free picture, I do not consider
> > "anything"
> > usable as Fair Use, although I know that puts me in the minority! I do
> > consider promotional pictures freely distributed to be usable under
> > that
> > doctrine, though, when used to illustrate the thing or person the
> > promotional picture shows. Plus, in practice, we can consider
> > promotional
> > images to be used with permission - the Fair Use claim is only
> > required by
> > Wikipedia's policies.
>
> Ah the can of worms that is promo photos. Almost none of them are promo
> photos at all. Its just another way that people can put non free
> pictures
> into wikipedia, as it is a blanket "fair use" category. As we no longer
> accept images with permission the whole category is very dubious. I
> listed
> one for ifd today, as the site it came from did forbid reproduction on
> the front page, and some will go when the other 8000 images with no
> source
> get deleted next week, but the category as a whole is very grim.
>
> Justinc

 Personally I think we should prefer images which are free to use without
modification (such as CC-ND) over fair use. Yes, the ability to modify the
image can be useful, but resolving the dubious nature of fair use is more
useful, in my opinion. Both should only be used in situations where there is
no other reasonable alternative, of course.
 I think we could convince a lot of people to release promotional photos
under CC-ND. That'd be better than use with permission only for Wikipedia,
and obviously better than using the same photo without any permission at
all.
 Anthony


body:
On 10/21/05, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
> >The single most important factor for a fair use analysis is the
> >impact of the use on the market for the original
> >
> If you're relying on Harper & Row for this proposition, you need to
> recognize that Campbell v. Acuff-Rose effectively undermines it, both on
> the facts and in the language of the decision. Its analysis is much
> closer to weighing the factors equally.

 That's useful information, though I still don't think it changes the fact
that less distribution is much more likely to be fair use than more
distribution.

>In
> >my opinion even images on user pages should be given a little bit of
> leeway
> >for this reason. An image which isn't included in any of the articles
> isn't
> >really in the encyclopedia itself, it's in a temporary workspace which we
> >use to create an encyclopedia.
> >
> >
> It's in a workspace that we publish to the entire world over the
> internet.

 I'd argue with your use of the word "publish" in this regard, but yes, we
are involved in distributing even the user pages quite broadly. That's why
copyright comes into play in the first place.

And don't kid yourself about the temporary here; try removing
> an inappropriate image from somebody's user page and see how temporary
> they thought it should be.

 I've had images of mine pulled right out from under me, and trust me, it
sucks. But it's still not the same as removing the image from the
encyclopedia itself.

While I am perfectly happy to be flexible
> about more restrictive licensing for user page images (no-derivatives or
> Wikipedia-specific permission), I have yet to see anyone articulate a
> reasonable argument as to why a copyrighted image would be fair use on a
> user page.

 Same reasons as any other page.
 For example, I had taken a photograph from the top of the [[Cape May Point
Lighthouse]]. I created a subpage of my userpage which compared that
photograph with the same image as output by Google Earth. Now that image was
a derivative of an aerial photo which the State of New Jersey claims
copyright on, but it's a clear case of fair use. It's highly transformative,
it doesn't affect the market for the underlying satellite photos at all,
it's being used for the purposes of commenting on Google Earth, and the
copyright on the work itself is rather dubious in light of the fact that
there is very little creativity involved in its production.
 I disagree that we should ever factor in Wikipedia-specific permission,
though. There's too much tempation to settle for Wikipedia-specific
permission when we could have just as easily gotten worldwide permission.

--Michael Snow

 Anthony


body:
On 10/21/05, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 10/20/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
> >
> > Jay.
> >
> >
> > Anthony
> >
> >
> Anthony, could you possibly stop this practice of including the other
> person's signature at the end of your replies unquoted? This is an
> example,
> where you included Jay's "Jay." on a line by itself before your signature
> below, without quoting it at the right level.
>
> Please don't do this, as what you're effectively doing is attributing your
> words to someone else. I don't see that you need to include it, since you
> include a standard citation leader ("On 10/20/05, JAY JG <
> jayjg at hotmail.com>
> wrote:"). If you do feel the need, please indent it with your standard
> quotation indent ("> " or whatever) to make it obvious that it's part of
> the
> quoted text and NOT your reply?

 That's what I usually try to do. If I didn't do it that particular time, it
was accidental. I'll have to look into what gmail is doing in this
situation.
 Anyway, I guess I can leave out the signature completely. You're right that
it's in the leader, it just seems weird when I sign my name but the other
person's name isn't there, like I'm trying to take away their signature or
something.

Sent to WikiEN-L because your apparent mailing address is clearly
> spamtrapped.

 Clearly? Actually, it's not spamtrapped at all. I'll spamtrap it if I start
getting a lot of spam.
 Anthony


body:
On 10/21/05, Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> The answer is clearly "no"; can't you get a server named after yourself
> though?

Donate enough and you can get your own project (see wikijunior).

--
geni


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Dollar Value of Wikipedia articles (was: Being
	Prepared in the face of Hurricane Wilma asfar as communications)

body:
On 10/21/05, Poor, Edmund W <Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com> wrote:
>
> > > Alphax wrote:
> > >
> > > Well, as of July 2005, all of the different language editions of
> > > Wikipedia came to 491 M words: it must be _considerably_
> > greater than
> > > that now. At a journalist's rate of $1/word, that would
> > make Wikipedia
> > > worth in excess of $500,000,000.
> > >
> > > -- Neil
> >
> >
> > They get about 50 billion hits a year, right? So at $2 CPM
> > that's $100 million a year, and at a P/E of 20 that's $2
> > billion. Of course, that's more than just the value of the
> > content, and it ignores the expenses to run the site, which
> > isn't much compared to $100 million a year.
> >
> > It's too bad non-profits can't IPO. :)
>
> I think you've over-rated the value of Wikipedia articles. Our
> article on the [[Atom]] (you know, what chemical elements are
> made of?) is a case in point.
>
> I would pay a writer $1.00 per word for Britannica's 60-word
> intro ($60) sooner than I'd pay the same rate for Wikipedia's
> 2,000 word article. Ours is not worth $2,000.

 Ed,
 Next time you want to respond to someone's post, respond to *their* post,
not to someone who was responding to them. It's confusing when you say "you"
and you're referring to someone other than the person you're replying to.
 Anthony
(not a list admin)


from_name: Geoff Burling

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The Power of Free Images (Was: Questionable fair use
 claims: a case study)

body:
On Thu, 20 Oct 2005, Stan Shebs wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
> >We have this strange social culture built up around images which I
> >believe is caused mostly by the fact that image deletion is instantly
> >permanent, rather than being something that can be reverted.  If we
> >could revert image deletions as easily (or nearly as easily) as we
> >revert deletions of random bits of unacceptable text, we would be much
> >better able to pick and choose images wisely.
> >
> Fewer people seem to have cameras than I would have imagined. It took
> me all of two minutes to roll my [[lawn mower]] out and make original
> images for the article, but we still have all these people uploading
> the first poor thumbnail of a commonplace object that Google finds
> for them.
>
This indicates to me a suprrising lack of imagination on Wikipedia. We
currently have countless content disputes, where people are attempting
to find a way to frame the topic so to present their own POV as the
"normal" one & all others as variants (& thus less credible), yet none
of them has considered that were they to submit their own free images
of their favorite subjects that they would succeed promoting their POVs
that way.

In other words, because it is a free image, available for anyone to use
for whatever reason, Stan's lawn mower has now become the de facto standard
image of what a normal lawn mower looks like. And if your lawn mower doesn't
look identical to his, then it could be assumed that yours is somehow wrong.

I assume that there are many people with sufficient self confidence in
themselves (if not in their lawn mowers) to find this line of thought
silly -- which it is in one way. But in another way, this becomes a powerful
selling tool in getting more free images, one that I have been attempting
to impliment, but haen't quite gotten to.

One's public image is important to many groups, for example incorporated
communities like towns or cities; & if trends on Wikipedia continue,
eventually every town or community will have a free image of it available
for reuse. Now these towns can either allow someone else to create this
image& hope that it presents them in a positive manner, or they can
take from their own publicity campaigns one or more images & make them
available to all free. I would assume that if these images were offered
under either a freeCC or a GFD license, Wikimedia would be more than
happy to host them at no cost. Everybody wins: there are more free images
available for reuse, & these communities are able to advocate a more
positive appearance than they might otherwise have. (As a counterexample ,
does anyone really think that Slough wants to be associated with "The
Office" for the rest of recorded history?)

As for worries that this might encourage a slanted view of some cities,
in the longer picture I doubt this would be a serious problem since
volunteers will always be contributing material, perhaps encouraged by
the lack of an alternative to the "official appearance". (As another
example, if someone was able to produce pictures of East St. Louis that
made the city look nice enough to make you want to live there, how long
do you expect it would take for someone to provide alternative images?)

Just an idea or two for someone to run with.

Geoff


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Mark Williamson's fonts

body:
"Mark Williamson" <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote in
message news:849f98ed0510210224m5f93cc14q at mail.gmail.com...
> Unfortunately, my host is down for unknown reasons.
> Seeing as I don't pay for my webspace, I can't well demand an
> explanation, so the best I can do is hope that the issue will be
> resolved sooner rather than later. If it goes on for long enough, I
> may inquire for a second time as to the nature of the problem.
> http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/ttf-mph-2b-damase
> Please note, however, that this is not of the most recent version of
> the font, which fixes an issue with the coptic ranges.

Do you happen to have that ZIPped? I'm working on Windows here, and I
wouldn't have a clue how to get into a Debian package even if it weren't
likely to get me ejected from here with maximal force :-)

> DaMaSe is certainly usable for Gothic, Tifinagh, hPhags-pa, Linear B
> (syllabary 100% supported, ideograms only partially supported),
> Cypriot, Glagolitic... It is perhaps a superior font for Glagolitic
> because it attempts to blend the quite distinct traditions of
> Glagolitic writing (Triangular, Square, and Round). It also works for
> Persian and Ugaritic cuneiform, and many many many other scripts.

It would be good to have this information somewhere on Wikipedia, to enable
cross-referencing to determine appropriate fonts to display various
langauges.

I envisage creating various templates, along the lines of {{unicode}} and
{{IPA}}, to display those languages which require particular fonts. Code2001
seems to do a good job, according to the various test pages I have found.
However I haven't been able to figure out a way to finesse [[en:Gothic
alphabet]] or [[en:Ugaritic alphabet]] into accepting the idea that I have
Code2001 installed; maybe it's a preview thing.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
On 21 Oct 2005, at 11:26, Alphax wrote:

>> No, thats not reasonable. Just because you cant find a picture doesnt
>> make it copyright free. Hardly anything has a justification that we
>> cannot  ever find a free one. I have recently been tagging all cars
>> as fairusereplace  as there are so few that there is no specimen
>> surviving.
>>
>>
>
> What about prototypes that were never put into production, but
> there are
> photos on the corporate website?
>

There are a few of these.

>
>>> Using such a photo on a more generic page, such as [[lawn mower]],
>>> is not a good fair use. Such is a large proportion of the bogus
>>> fair use claims we get.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> I have found 2 pictures (in  the wole of wikipedia) that I think are
>>  fair use, there are easy replacements for everything else.
>>
>>
>
> Including comics, TV shows, motion pictures, and computer and video
> games?

I think the position with respect to these is legally dubious. In all
the fair
use case law in cases where it is customary to license material from
the copyright
holder fair use has not been granted. Encyclopaedias and other books
always
license this sort of content (not sure what the fees are; they might
be free in
some or all cases; people pay IMDB to show some photos); if we choose
not to
license it but to just copy it without asking we are in a dubious
position.

The other issue is that while a newspaper printing a thumbnail of an
album next
to a review would probably be fair use, that newspaper will be binned
the next
day, and using it to collect thumbnails of album covers would be
stupidly
difficult. Wikipedia will soon have thumbnails of every album cover
ever released,
in a nice searchable database. When Amazon first started doing this
they were forced
by the record companies to stop bots trawling over their sites to
fill in the
pictures on peoples iTunes collections. Having a comprehensive
collection suddenly
is no longer fair use, even if one individual case might be.
Especially as illustrating
an album is not essential for critical commentary on the music, its
just an
identification use, and we dont link to somewhere where you can buy
it (the fair use
search engine illustration thumbnails case was linking to sites you
could buy the
item in question).

Justinc


from_name: Jimmy O'Regan

references:
<dja8g3$147$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<849f98ed0510210224m5f93cc14q@mail.gmail.com>
	<djai46$uua$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
Phil Boswell wrote:
> "Mark Williamson" <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote in
> message news:849f98ed0510210224m5f93cc14q at mail.gmail.com...
>
>>Unfortunately, my host is down for unknown reasons.
>>Seeing as I don't pay for my webspace, I can't well demand an
>>explanation, so the best I can do is hope that the issue will be
>>resolved sooner rather than later. If it goes on for long enough, I
>>may inquire for a second time as to the nature of the problem.
>>http://packages.debian.org/unstable/x11/ttf-mph-2b-damase
>>Please note, however, that this is not of the most recent version of
>>the font, which fixes an issue with the coptic ranges.
>
>
> Do you happen to have that ZIPped? I'm working on Windows here, and I
> wouldn't have a clue how to get into a Debian package even if it weren't
> likely to get me ejected from here with maximal force :-)

Have a look on the page for a filename ending with "orig.tar.gz". You
can open that with winzip/most Windows archive programs.

You could also use 7zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) to open the .deb, but
you're better off with the tarball.


from_name: steve v

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> And in my opinion, we should move to a policy
> situation where you would
> not have to go through the rigamarole you had to go
> through with this
> image.  You should have been able to delete it on
> sight as being
> tantamount to vandalism, which it essentially is.

As always, this is a question of who's authority and
who enforces it, and what checks can be in place to
remedy such. And because MW lacks any ability to do
revert an image deletion, there seems to be no degrees
of enforcement here. A template message could explain
the situation after the fact:

 On the authority vested in me by Jimbo, I hereby
 deem this [probably copyrighted] image of [a woman
 in a safari coat] as *vandalism dangerous to
 Wikipedia* and do hereby remedy the situation by
 deleting it with extreme prejudice and hence without
 any unnecessary and time-wasting debate about
 fair-use etc.

I would caution against empowering over 400 sysops
with any ability to enforce unenforceable
prejudiciality. I think its hard to find a meaningful
difference between "strange culture" and a operative
respect for Wikipedia:Civility.

SV

--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> uninvited at nerstrand.net wrote:
> > [[:Image:Pgsafjak3.JPG]]
> >
> > I offer this up as an example of some process
> problems we have in
> > dealing with invalid fair use claims.
>
> And in my opinion, we should move to a policy
> situation where you would
> not have to go through the rigamarole you had to go
> through with this
> image.  You should have been able to delete it on
> sight as being
> tantamount to vandalism, which it essentially is.
>
> We have this strange social culture built up around
> images which I
> believe is caused mostly by the fact that image
> deletion is instantly
> permanent, rather than being something that can be
> reverted.  If we
> could revert image deletions as easily (or nearly as
> easily) as we
> revert deletions of random bits of unacceptable
> text, we would be much
> better able to pick and choose images wisely.
>
> --Jimbo
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 21 Oct 2005, at 12:24, Matt Brown wrote:

> On 10/20/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> No, thats not reasonable. Just because you cant find a picture doesnt
>> make it copyright free. Hardly anything has a justification that
>> we cannot
>> ever find a free one. I have recently been tagging all cars as
>> fairusereplace
>> as there are so few that there is no specimen surviving.
>>
>
>
> The legal doctrine of Fair Use does not require that we are unable
> to find a
> replacement under any circumstances. It is the general policy of
> Wikipedia -
> not the law - that we should attempt to replace Fair Use images with a
> wholly free one whenever we can, which I agree with.
>

The argument used is the converse - as we dont have a free picture we
can tag
anything fair use. Which is of course completely bogus.

> I have found 2 pictures (in the wole of wikipedia) that I think are
>
>> fair use, there are easy replacements for everything else.
>>
>
>
> It sounds to me that you simply are working on a different
> definition of
> legal Fair Use than everyone else ...
>

I dont know. These are the ones I would pay a lawyer to defend. I
wouldnt
bother to defend it if Sony or Fox came and asked us to remove all their
copyrighted images for example - would you? I dont think we have a
watertight
case. This is a somewhat different definition than some other people
its true,
but then some people arent that bothered about wikipedia being a free
encyclopaedia apparently either.

The ones are those in [[Photo manipulation]] BTW.

Justinc


from_name: muhammad zaid zainuddin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Creating Buginese Wikipedia

body:
Dear wikitech's,

I'm not sure about the next procedures and I'm not sure whether I'm doing
the right thing. I ask some people at IRC wikimedia and they said that I
should email wikitech.

My proposal of buginese language receives consensus from the wikis and me
and my friends (wikimedia username:Riyanz) agreed to join and work on this
buginese wikipedia (both of us are native to the buginese.) This proposal
also receives enough support from other wikis. Therefore, I am asking
wikitech's help to set up a new wikipedia in buginese.

The wikipedia of buginese as discussed will be using lontara (buginese
script) and roman alphabet.

Below is the link to the proposal template

<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Requests_for_new_languages/Buginese>

And should I remove my proposal to the approved language site?

Thank you

Muhammad Zaid Zainuddin

p/s: If this is not the right procedure, can wikitech explain to me what
should I do now, whom the request should be forward to etc.


from_name: JAY JG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: So what do we do about this?

body:
>From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: SHA256
>
>JAY JG wrote:
> >> From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
> >>
> >> Delirium wrote:
> >> > Alphax wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> What about if the author has blogged about (some current event) that
> >> >> they witnessed or attended?
> >> >>
> >> >>
> >> > That still seems like a shaky source.  That's basically saying, "some
> >> > guy on the internet claims he saw this happen".  If I "blogged" about
> >> > witnessing an event on my Wikipedia User page, could we cite that as
>a
> >> > source?
> >> >
> >>
> >> What's the difference between a blog and any other page on the
>internet?
> >
> >
> > Blogs have no editorial standards, no way of verifying that anything on
> > them is correct, true, relevant, notable, reliable, sane.  Blogs are
> > only good as sources for articles about those specific blogs.
> >
>
>You still haven't answered my question: what's the difference between a
>blog and ANY OTHER WEBSITE?

There's little difference between a blog and any other *personal* website.
There is a huge difference between a blog and the website of a respected
news source (e.g. New York Times, BBC), or the site of a publically traded
corporation, or that of a major non-profit organization, or of an
encyclopedia, or a government website, or a UN website, or etc.

All websites are not created equal.

Jay.


body:
This is true, but even blogs need to keep up their
standards or things can fall apart and people go
elsewhere. It helps to have accountability in the
sense of having someone actually "in charge" -- this
kind of comes in lieu of a more institutional
"reputation" of a newsgathering organization. Even the
latter rests on some institutional assumptions, and
recent cases (Judy Miller) might make current newsorgs
appear rather Herstian (Yellow journalism) and
therefore something to avoid like the flux.

Wikipedia, being neither a newsorg (under reputation),
or a blog (editorial paper under personal account)
isnt likely to benefit from any static "policy." It
may benefit from an editorial board, however, who
contribute to a 'policy body' (like a case record for
Arbcom).

Dont even ask me about wikinews:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Purpose

SV

--- charles matthews <charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com>
wrote:

> Keith Old wrote
>
>
> >Blogs have editorial standards depending on the
> expertise and capacity of
> the blogger.
>
> Or not.  Strange to equate in any way blogs, which
> are only online diaries
> or journals, with media where incompetent journalism
> can cost a job or
> career.
>
> Charles
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> With the control over information that the Chinese government has, it
> doesn't really surprise me or shock me in the least. The shocking thing
> was that they premitted as much as they did. In some ways, having the
> communist government ban Wikipedia may be the best thing that could have
> happened. It will get international attention to the project,
> particularly when the international press realizes that Wikipedia is
> even in Chinese and many other languages as well. It will also stop the
> cautious attitude that editors on the Chinese Wikipedia have had so far
> to try and avoid pissing off the Chinese government, strongly affecting
> POV issues. The only worry I would see now is that the zh.wikipedia
> doesn't go too far the other way in becoming a forum for Chinese
> dissidents.

In case you haven't noticed, Wikipedia has been blocked and unblocked in
China several times already, and I'm sure will be several times in the
future.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> With the control over information that the Chinese government has, it
> doesn't really surprise me or shock me in the least. The shocking thing
> was that they premitted as much as they did. In some ways, having the
> communist government ban Wikipedia may be the best thing that could have
> happened. It will get international attention to the project,
> particularly when the international press realizes that Wikipedia is
> even in Chinese and many other languages as well. It will also stop the
> cautious attitude that editors on the Chinese Wikipedia have had so far
> to try and avoid pissing off the Chinese government, strongly affecting
> POV issues. The only worry I would see now is that the zh.wikipedia
> doesn't go too far the other way in becoming a forum for Chinese
> dissidents.

In case you haven't noticed, Wikipedia has been blocked and unblocked in
China several times already, and I'm sure will be several times in the
future.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> With the control over information that the Chinese government has, it
> doesn't really surprise me or shock me in the least. The shocking thing
> was that they premitted as much as they did. In some ways, having the
> communist government ban Wikipedia may be the best thing that could have
> happened. It will get international attention to the project,
> particularly when the international press realizes that Wikipedia is
> even in Chinese and many other languages as well. It will also stop the
> cautious attitude that editors on the Chinese Wikipedia have had so far
> to try and avoid pissing off the Chinese government, strongly affecting
> POV issues. The only worry I would see now is that the zh.wikipedia
> doesn't go too far the other way in becoming a forum for Chinese
> dissidents.

In case you haven't noticed, Wikipedia has been blocked and unblocked in
China several times already, and I'm sure will be several times in the
future.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Robert Scott Horning wrote:
> With the control over information that the Chinese government has, it
> doesn't really surprise me or shock me in the least. The shocking thing
> was that they premitted as much as they did. In some ways, having the
> communist government ban Wikipedia may be the best thing that could have
> happened. It will get international attention to the project,
> particularly when the international press realizes that Wikipedia is
> even in Chinese and many other languages as well. It will also stop the
> cautious attitude that editors on the Chinese Wikipedia have had so far
> to try and avoid pissing off the Chinese government, strongly affecting
> POV issues. The only worry I would see now is that the zh.wikipedia
> doesn't go too far the other way in becoming a forum for Chinese
> dissidents.

In case you haven't noticed, Wikipedia has been blocked and unblocked in
China several times already, and I'm sure will be several times in the
future.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Add namespace parameter to _What links here_

body:
Would it be especially complicated to add the namespace=? parameter to the
"What links here?" mechanism?

I would be quite happy to add it to the URL manually at first, but this
would be most useful ploughing through huge lists of links trying to make
out whether something is actually being linked to meaningfully.
--
Phil
[[en:User:Phil Boswell]]


body:
On 21 Oct 2005, at 13:49, Matt Brown wrote:

> On 10/21/05, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 21 Oct 2005, at 12:24, Matt Brown wrote:
>> The argument used is the converse - as we dont have a free picture we
>> can tag anything fair use. Which is of course completely bogus.
>>
>
>
> Personally, if I cannot obtain a free picture, I do not consider
> "anything"
> usable as Fair Use, although I know that puts me in the minority! I do
> consider promotional pictures freely distributed to be usable under
> that
> doctrine, though, when used to illustrate the thing or person the
> promotional picture shows. Plus, in practice, we can consider
> promotional
> images to be used with permission - the Fair Use claim is only
> required by
> Wikipedia's policies.

Ah the can of worms that is promo photos. Almost none of them are promo
photos at all. Its just another way that people can put non free
pictures
into wikipedia, as it is a blanket "fair use" category. As we no longer
accept images with permission the whole category is very dubious. I
listed
one for ifd today, as the site it came from did forbid reproduction on
the front page, and some will go when the other 8000 images with no
source
get deleted next week, but the category as a whole is very grim.

Justinc


subject: [Wikipedia-l] multilingual redirect

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> Lars Aronsson wrote:
>>Opposition to this move in 2002 held that existing links should
>>not be broken.  It was agreed that www.wikipedia.org (and .com)
>>could become an international starting page, but that old article
>>URLs, such as www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Chernobyl should not be
>>broken, but should redirect to the new address on the English
>>Wikipedia.  This contract has been held since.
>
>
> I think talking of this as a "contract" is somewhat overdoing it -
> it's an important point that this was the compromise reached during a
> previous discussion, but unless there's a *very* strong statement
> promising to uphold it "forever", we generally treat all consensus
> policies as re-negotiable.

There is such a promise.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Oskar Sigvardsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: local bots

references:
<dj4msp$os8$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<51dd1af80510190453x45c9631dv27bf41816ada0cdf@mail.gmail.com>
	<dj5s5k$h81$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
This might be a little scare-mongering (and unlikely to happen since
bureocrats are very trusted individuals), but if we give a number of
users access to both the ability to run bots and admin them, they
could do ALOT of damage. Imagine an image deletion bot, if you will.
But, again, this is scare-mongering since bureocrats are really
trusted.

Anyway, I think that if stewards have to high of a load, make more
stewards, don't delegate some of the power down.

Although, it would be pretty neat for a bureocrat or admin to be able
to grant rollback to trusted users.

--gkhan

On 10/19/05, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> ?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason wrote:
> > On 10/19/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >>Pakaran made a comment on irc which really makes a lot of sense to me
> >>
> >>Why could not be bureaucrat be allowed to give bots on their local
> >>projects ? They are more likely to know the peoople as well as the rules.
> >
> >
> > This is a deliberate constraint put in place for reasons unknown to
> > me, I can't see why local bureaucrats can't be trusted with the full
> > Makesysop interface, which would allow them advanced control over user
> > rights such as granting/revoking any right on the wiki. I can't see
> > this becoming a problem, as it would cut down on the overhead of
> > getting a steward to grant bot rights and in case some bureaucrat goes
> > AWOL we can always quickly clean up the mess (which I don't see
> > happening in the first place since these are trusted individuals).
>
> The current power structure reflects the outcome numerous discussions I
> had on the subject, with developers, users and probably most
> influentially, Sunir Shah. My personal preference was for an IRC-style
> model, a two-level system where sysops could sysop or desysop anyone.
> But I was talked out of it by IRC and wiki experts alike.
>
> The bureaucrat model was pioneered by Brion and Snok, and I introduced
> stewards as a way to completely displace the power of developers within
> the wiki power structure. The current model has a population of people
> holding various rights proportional to the quantity of demand for use of
> those rights. The aim is to give away the minimum amount of power needed
> for oversight and a timely response, not to give the maximum amount of
> power allowable by considerations of trust. This seems to mirror
> sentiments in the general community. Desysopping is rare and potentially
> destructive, so the ability is only given to a small number of people.
>
> To answer Avar's objection directly, you can be a trusted individual and
> still be rash or arrogant. We minimise power to minimise the damage done
> when trusted individuals act in anger. I'm not talking about damage to
> articles, I'm talking about damage to egos, and there's no rollback
> button for that.
>
> It may be that there's not enough active stewards at the moment, and
> that may be leading to tensions. But I think the system we have has been
> quite effective in general, so if steward workload is a problem, we
> should just get more stewards.
>
> The fact that bot access can only be granted by stewards is not a
> deliberate constraint, and I would have no problem allowing bureaucrats
> to both grant and revoke it. The steward interface is general, so they
> can grant and revoke anything, but the bureaucrat interface has to be
> extended for each new ability. Rollback is another example of a right
> which could potentially be granted at the bureaucrat or sysop level. It
> certainly wouldn't be practical to require stewards to grant it.
>
> -- Tim Starling
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Ting Chen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia blocked in China?

body:
The block is officially confirmed. One of the sysops in Beijing would submit
a pittition in the next days.

>What is really happening? There's
> rumor
> on the net that it's been blocked by the government here, but I don't know
> exactly what is happening.
>  Plus, is it a malfunction of the colocation servers in Seoul, Korea where
> the Asian access might be directed to?
>  And I can view wikipedia articles from A9's syndication, but sure no
> editing.
>  I see from the Berlios site that it seems fine in the US and Europe, so
> friends from Taiwan and Hongkong could be esp helpful.
>  Thank ou.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Highspeed-Freiheit. Bei GMX superg?nstig, z.B. GMX DSL_Cityflat,
DSL-Flatrate f?r nur 4,99 Euro/Monat*  http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject:
[WikiEN-l] The Power of Free Images (Was: Questionable fair use
	claims: a case study)

body:
Keith Old wrote:
> Geoff,
>
> On a related issue, there may well be publicists who will be prepared to
> give us images of the actors, musicians etc given that Wikipedia has become
> so popular.
>
> It might simply be a case of writing or e-mailing them and asking nicely.

I think that's right.  But a lot of education may be needed.

I have a neat idea: a text, a brochure, in pdf format, that we could
print and mail to publicists of famous people, asking them to submit a
photo, and explaining what this is all about.

We can recommend a CC license so that they have a clue what it is for.

I was recently approached by a publicist for Bon Jovi about providing
photos for Wikipedia.  When I explained about the free licensing, the
publicist had to go back the band's management to find out about it.
(The publicist doesn't own the copyrights to the photo, of course.)

--Jimbo


from_name: Brian

subject: [Foundation-l] Virtual Tour proposed project, "Wikitour"

body:
I've started a proposal page for a project called "Wikitour" that would lend
itself directly to Wikipedia. Whereas Commons hosts individual images of
places that have articles on Wikipedia, Wikitour would host "virtual tours"
of these places, such as castles, museums, galleries, caverns, mountains,
college campuses, typical mosques or churches, archaeological sites, etc.
The main point is to provide visual detail to accompany the other projects'
textual detail.

The basic idea is as follows: a user submits numerous photos of a notable
place, which are organized into pages/subpages to create a navigable
environment similar to that in Myst, Riven, or other graphical adventures;
the navigation system would be on Wikitour, while the files themselves would
be on Commons, with a link in the respective article on WP. Basically, any
topic that has an article on Wikipedia has the possibility of its own entry
in Wikitour. Users could also submit photos of an object from various
sides/angles/distances, rather than a place.

Please leave your impressions/suggestions at [[meta:Talk:Wikitour]].

Thanks.

en:User:Brian0918
brian0918 at gmail.com


from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
Hi All,

Are other people having grief importing the new XML format database-dumps?

Today, I've just tried 3 different methods of importing the EN
20051009_pages_articles.xml.bz2 dump, and not one of them seems to
work properly.

Incidentally, I have verified that the md5sum of the dump is correct,
so as to eliminate downloading problems:
ludo:/home/nickj/wikipedia# md5sum 20051009_pages_articles.xml.bz2
4d18ffa1550196f3a6a0abc9ebbd7d06  20051009_pages_articles.xml.bz2

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

Method 1:
Importing using ImportDump from MediaWiki 1.5.0 running on PHP 4.1.2

This I knew this one might have problems, due to the oldness of the
version of PHP.

However, this one got the furthest of all the methods. It ran for 6
hours and 24 minutes, and imported around 60 percent of articles.

Something (probably PHP) has a memory leak however, as it resulted in
Linux 2.6.8's Out-of-Memory killer kicking in, until it killed the
script in question. The machine has 448 Mb of RAM, so it took a while
for the leak to consume all the memory.

Command line was:
bzip2 -dc /home/nickj/wikipedia/20051009_pages_articles.xml.bz2 | php
maintenance/importDump.php

But from the overnight system log we have:
Oct 21 03:05:01 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 816 (apache).
Oct 21 03:13:04 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 817 (apache).
Oct 21 03:20:41 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 7677 (apache).
Oct 21 03:23:30 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 946 (apache).
Oct 21 03:26:57 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 7696 (apache).
Oct 21 03:27:06 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 573 (mysqld).
Oct 21 03:27:06 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 575 (mysqld).
Oct 21 03:27:06 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 576 (mysqld).
Oct 21 03:27:06 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 577 (mysqld).
Oct 21 03:27:06 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 3111 (mysqld).
Oct 21 06:29:24 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 7697 (apache).
Oct 21 06:29:25 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 7699 (apache).
Oct 21 06:29:25 ludo kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 3110 (php).

At that point importing stopped.

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

Method 2:
Importing using ImportDump from MediaWiki 1.5.0 using a fresh PHP 4.4
STABLE CVS snapshot build (From really old, to really new).

This I though would work, but it didn't:

ludo:/var/www/hosts/local-wikipedia/wiki# bzip2 -dc
/home/nickj/wikipedia/20051009_pages_articles.xml.bz2 |
~root/tmp/php-5.1-dev/php4-STABLE-200510201252/sapi/cli/php
maintenance/importDump.php
100 (22.802267296596 pages/sec 22.802267296596 revs/sec)
200 (20.961060430845 pages/sec 20.961060430845 revs/sec)
300 (20.006219254115 pages/sec 20.006219254115 revs/sec)
[...snip lots of progress lines...]
64000 (41.86646431353 pages/sec 41.86646431353 revs/sec)
64100 (41.87977053847 pages/sec 41.87977053847 revs/sec)
64200 (41.891992792767 pages/sec 41.891992792767 revs/sec)
64300 (41.902506473828 pages/sec 41.902506473828 revs/sec)
64400 (41.920741784615 pages/sec 41.920741784615 revs/sec)
64500 (41.937710744276 pages/sec 41.937710744276 revs/sec)
64600 (41.945053966443 pages/sec 41.945053966443 revs/sec)
64700 (41.95428629711 pages/sec 41.95428629711 revs/sec)
PHP Fatal error:  Call to a member function on a non-object in
/var/www/hosts/local-wikipedia/wiki/includes/Article.php on line 934
ludo:/var/www/hosts/local-wikipedia/wiki#

I.e. it dies, after 13 minutes, and at around 4% of the articles.

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

Method 3:
Using the latest mwdumper (from http://download.wikimedia.org/tools/
), plus the latest and greatest stable JRE (1.5.0_05), and converting
into 1.4 format, then importing that into MySQL:

/usr/java/jre1.5.0_05/bin/java -server -jar mwdumper.jar
--format=sql:1.4 20051009_pages_articles.xml.bz2 | mysql enwiki

This ran without any errors, and looked really promising.

However before this, where were some 1.5 million articles (from a June
SQL dump, which was the last Wikipedia dump I've been able import
properly):

mysql> select count(*) from cur;
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|  1535910 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

# Then I cleared the table:

mysql> delete from cur;
Query OK, 0 rows affected (4.11 sec)

# Then the above mwdumper command ran for 53 minutes before finishing,
which seemed way too quick. Checking how many articles had been
imported showed there was something wrong:

mysql> select count(*) from cur;
+----------+
| count(*) |
+----------+
|    29166 |
+----------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

I.e. less than 2% of the articles got imported.

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

So, my question to the list is this:

What methods have you tried for importing the XML dumps? In particular
what you tried that actually _worked_ ? (and by "working", I mean runs
without a memory leak, runs without dying of an error message, and
imports all of the articles into a database).

All the best,
Nick.


from_name: dake

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: local bots

body:
Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:
> This might be a little scare-mongering (and unlikely to happen since
> bureocrats are very trusted individuals), but if we give a number of
> users access to both the ability to run bots and admin them, they
> could do ALOT of damage. Imagine an image deletion bot, if you will.
> But, again, this is scare-mongering since bureocrats are really
> trusted.

Off-topic but why images can't be restored ? Or at least if storage is a
concern, create a trash which is cleaned every two or three days.


from_name: Any File

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wikitech-l Digest, Vol 27, Issue 30

body:
Anthere wrote:
>* request for having bot status. And here, yes, there is a lONNNNNNNG
>waiting time. Because when we get request, we get them for 50 different
>projects sometimes. And mind you, this is *really* a boring task to do
>them one by one. Additionnaly, each project may have different rules for
>granting bot flag, so if we are serious, we must check each project
>rules. Not adding that sometimes, the bot creator fails to created the
>user name in the project, which is a loss of time for us.
>
>All in all, the bot request is frankly the ***more*** painful by far.
>And granting bot access is likely not controversial.
>Which is why I support giving bureaucrat the ability of doing this.

I am not in position to give any indication if is good or not to give
bureaucrat the ability of giving bot states, but if this is not done a
way to reduce the stewards job is to request that the bit request is
previously disscussed and approved locally (by the buroctrater, by a
group of admins or by the comunity). The request to the steward should
be have a link to the local discussion. (I perfectly know that if such
a rule were in action you would still recive a lot of request without
that, but this could be solved ... ahmmm ... just ignoring them as not
conforming to the rules).

In such a way local comunity (or the burocrates) would be able to
express thei opinion on the bot (conforming to local policy). The
stweards would be the only people tecnically able to change the bot
status flags on the database and he/she could still do any required
checks, but in this way these checks should be easier.

I am conscious that there will be the problem to decide if an apeal
would be possible in case of refuse from the local comunity, but this
is a thing that can be discussed.

Oskar Sigvardsson wrote:

> Anyway, I think that if stewards have to high of a load, make more
> stewards, don't delegate some of the power down.

This can reduce the job level, but even in this case I consider that
my above suggestion could be still useful.

>
> Although, it would be pretty neat for a bureocrat or admin to be able
> to grant rollback to trusted users.

Actually I do not understood why if an user is so trusted that
rollback right could be given why admin staus should not be  given to
them.

AnyFile


from_name: Uwe Brauer

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: latex2wiki, html2wiki, no online

body:
>>>>> "David" == David Iberri <diberri at public.gmane.org> writes:

   David> You might try my HTML::WikiConverter Perl module (available
   David> from CPAN [1]) which comes with a simple html2wiki
   David> command-line interface. [[Wikipedia:Tools]] might also be of
   David> use [2].

Thanks:

The second can't transform tables and cannot deal with simple mark up
such as textit{test}. Yours looks interesting I installed it BUT,
forgive me I don't understand the help (man HTML::WikiConverter) nor
do I find that html2wiki script you are talking about.

Can you just give me a small hint?

Thanks

Uwe Brauer


body:
>>>>> "Axel" == Axel  <axelclk at gmail.com> writes:

   Axel> I just released a new version of the Eclipse Wikipedia Editor
   Axel> for Eclipse 3.1:
   Axel> http://sourceforge.net/project/admin/editpackages.php?group_id=128886

   Axel> Main description and installation:
   Axel> http://www.plog4u.org/index.php/Using_Eclipse_Wikipedia_Editor

   Axel> In the editorarea you can insert HTML texts converted to Wiki texts
   Axel> from the Clipboard:

Thanks, the truth is I would prefer an external editor (Xemacs), it
seems that there are very little no online converters around.

Uwe


from_name: Han Dao

body:
The chinese goverment is a pain in the ass to deal with isn't it?

On 10/21/05, Ting Chen <Wing.Philopp at gmx.de> wrote:
>
> No, we have no official representative in China. We have people in China,
> who works voluntarily as sysops as well as elsewhere in the world and as
> well as the other language versions.
>
> Regards.
> Ting Chen
>
> > --- Urspr?ngliche Nachricht ---
> > Von: Jiaming Xu <john.xu.1982 at gmail.com>
> > An: Wing.Philopp at gmx.de
> > Betreff: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia blocked in China?
> > Datum: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 22:16:27 +0800
> >
> > Thanks pal. Is this sysops in Beijing an official representative of
> > wikimedia in China?
> >
> > On 10/21/05, Ting Chen <Wing.Philopp at gmx.de> wrote:
> > >
> > > The block is officially confirmed. One of the sysops in Beijing would
> > > submit
> > > a pittition in the next days.
> > >
> > > >What is really happening? There's
> > > > rumor
> > > > on the net that it's been blocked by the government here, but I
> don't
> > > know
> > > > exactly what is happening.
> > > > Plus, is it a malfunction of the colocation servers in Seoul, Korea
> > > where
> > > > the Asian access might be directed to?
> > > > And I can view wikipedia articles from A9's syndication, but sure no
> > > > editing.
> > > > I see from the Berlios site that it seems fine in the US and Europe,
> > so
> > > > friends from Taiwan and Hongkong could be esp helpful.
> > > > Thank ou.
> > > > _______________________________________________
> > > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > > >
> > >
> > > --
> > > Highspeed-Freiheit. Bei GMX superg?nstig, z.B. GMX DSL_Cityflat,
> > > DSL-Flatrate f?r nur 4,99 Euro/Monat* http://www.gmx.net/de/go/dsl
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > Wikipedia-l mailing list
> > > Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> > >
> >
>
> --
> 10 GB Mailbox, 100 FreeSMS/Monat http://www.gmx.net/de/go/topmail
> +++ GMX - die erste Adresse f?r Mail, Message, More +++
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


from_name: Alphax

subject:
[WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Being Prepared in the face of Hurricane Wilma
	as	far as communications.]

body:
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Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 10/20/05, Neil Harris <usenet at tonal.clara.co.uk> wrote:
>
>>Alphax wrote:
>>
>>
>>>* Once we have the infrastructure, have entire database backups (or at
>>>least parts of them) scattered around the place so that should Florida
>>>go down for an extended period (or be destroyed completely), everything
>>>would still be safe. I forget what the estimated worth of all the
>>>Wikimedia content is, but I believe it's in the millions of dollars.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Well, as of July 2005, all of the different language editions of
>>Wikipedia came to 491 M words: it must be _considerably_ greater than
>>that now. At a journalist's rate of $1/word, that would make Wikipedia
>>worth in excess of $500,000,000.
>>
>>-- Neil
>
>
>
> They get about 50 billion hits a year, right? So at $2 CPM that's $100
> million a year, and at a P/E of 20 that's $2 billion. Of course, that's more
> than just the value of the content, and it ignores the expenses to run the
> site, which isn't much compared to $100 million a year.
>
> It's too bad non-profits can't IPO. :)
>

Which reminds me of a post to helpdesk-l the other day...

> Hello, I am thoroughly impressed with the Wikipedia
> project.
>
> May I ask, would it be possible to receive an
> administration account in return for a sizable
> donation?
>

The answer is clearly "no"; can't you get a server named after yourself
though?

- --
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from_name: Ryan Delaney

subject: [WikiEN-l] Policy on breaches of bans

body:
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Tom Cadden wrote:

>
>The guy has already driven some people off Wikipedia,
>and used off-Wikipedia sites to libel Wikipedians. Now
>he has turned some pages into battle grounds. Who
>knows what he will do next. We have a serious problem.
>He is probably the most persistent vandal Wikipedia
>has ever had to face. We need to develop a policy to
>deal with him before he ups the ante and causes
>further chaos.
>Simply restarting his one year ban every time and
>reverting his edits, the recommendations of the
>arbcom, are not working.
>
I'm sure someone thought of this already, but how about blocking his
IP range?

Ryan
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from_name: charles matthews

body:
Keith Old wrote

>Blogs have editorial standards depending on the expertise and capacity of
the blogger.

Or not.  Strange to equate in any way blogs, which are only online diaries
or journals, with media where incompetent journalism can cost a job or
career.

Charles


body:
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JAY JG wrote:
>> From: Alphax <alphasigmax at gmail.com>
>>
>> Delirium wrote:
>> > Alphax wrote:
>> >
>> >> What about if the author has blogged about (some current event) that
>> >> they witnessed or attended?
>> >>
>> >>
>> > That still seems like a shaky source.  That's basically saying, "some
>> > guy on the internet claims he saw this happen".  If I "blogged" about
>> > witnessing an event on my Wikipedia User page, could we cite that as a
>> > source?
>> >
>>
>> What's the difference between a blog and any other page on the internet?
>
>
> Blogs have no editorial standards, no way of verifying that anything on
> them is correct, true, relevant, notable, reliable, sane.  Blogs are
> only good as sources for articles about those specific blogs.
>

You still haven't answered my question: what's the difference between a
blog and ANY OTHER WEBSITE?

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: The whole point of wikipedia

body:
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Andrew Gray wrote:
> On 20/10/05, Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org> wrote:
>
>
>>>A username is more anonymous than an IP, and provides a greater sense of
>>>identity. It's impossible to tell which of an IP's edits are good and
>>>bad, because good and bad users could be using it.
>>
>> "A username is more anonymous than an IP, and [a username] provides a
>>greater sense of identity"? I must not be understanding what you mean,
>>because that statement seems to contradict itself.
>
>
> If you edit as an IP which resolves to
> 452c.student-resnet.chicago.edu, I can tell a surprising amount about
> you. If you edit as [[User:Chicago_guy]], I can't.
>
> But it's a lot *easier* for the community to attatch an identity to
> the one with a username, rather than the one with an IP. There's a
> couple of IPs that I know are good, reliable editors, people I have no
> reason to distrust, yet I keep checking their edits on my watchlist
> simply because I can't ever remember that 123.123.123.123 (or
> whatever) is the person who keeps working on the date pages. If they
> were editing under a name, after a week or so I'd easily remember the
> name, I'd know not to chase them around when I had no reason to...
>

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Hmm. I posted that way too late at night.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
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