subject: [Foundation-l] Association française - French chapter

body:
Jimbo, and all

J?ai r?fl?chi aux ?tapes propos?es par Villy et je les
approuve ? quelques petits points pr?t. Les besoins
exprim?s actuellement semblent pouvoir ?tre satisfaits
par des solutions temporaires (par exemple un ? titre
? officiel pour Yann pour l?aider dans ses d?marches
ext?rieures, une donation temporaire de la foundation
ou de tout autre donateur pour l?impression de tracts
et de tee-shirts, une structure existant d?j? pour
l?impression de tee-shirts? ? explorer). En attendant,
nous pourrions nous organiser du mieux possible.

I have been thinking of the planning proposed by
Villy, and it seems to be a good move to me. I made a
few changes in the proposition though. Indeed, the
current needs expressed in terms of a legal structure
do not require that we hurry (official position,
tee-shirt printing, funds by Wikimedia are directions
to explore), and the association would highly benefit
that we organise it the best we can.

The stages currently proposed are :

Etape 1 : juin juillet 2004-06-01

Mise en discussion de l?avant-projet de statuts de
WIKIMEDIA FRANCAIS.

Appel ? candidatures pour constituer un comit? de
pilotage . Les membres du comit? de pilotage ont
vocation ? ?tre membres fondateurs de l?association et
payeront chaucn une somme de 20-25 ? pour constituer
la premi?re caisse de l?association. Trois de ses
membres auront vocation ? composer le futur conseil
d?administration temporaire. Le comit? de pilotage
aura seul autorit? pour valider le projet d?finitif de
statuts et pour faire les ajouts ou retranchements
n?cessaires ? sa s?ret? juridique. Cependant, le
conseil d?administration sera ?lu par tous les
contributeurs aux projets francophones.

Wiki discussion of the preliminary draft of statutes
of WIKIMEDIA FRANCAIS. Calling up of candidatures to
constitute a piloting project committee. The members
of this committee have vocation to be founder members
of the association and each of them will pay sum of
20-25 ? to constitute the starting fund of the
association. Three of its members will have vocation
to compose the future temporary board of directors.
The piloting project committee will have alone
authority to validate the final draft of statutes and
to make the additions or cuttings off necessary to its
legal safety.

Election du comit? de pilotage, avant le 1er juillet
2004.

- Pourquoi un comit? de pilotage ?
Pour s?assurer que suffisement de participants sont
int?ress?s dans le projet d?une association. Le comit?
devra faire au moins 10 personnes par exemple (ou 15,
? discuter)
Si moins de 10 personnes se d?clarent int?ress?es par
une association, il y a de fortes chances pour que
l?association ne soit pas viable.
Par ailleurs, une personne faisant officiellement
partie d?un comit? de pilotage se sentira probablement
plus responsable de la r?ussite du projet et
participera d?avantage ? sa mise en place. L?objectif
est que le ? boulot ? ne retombe pas uniquement dans
les mains de 2-3 personnes au final.
Enfin, certaines d?cisions avancent plus rapidement
quand elles sont prises en petits comit?s. L?objectif
est aussi d??viter les situations de blocage au cours
d?une ?tape.

Election of the piloting project committee, before the
1rst of july 2004.

Why a governing committee ?
To ensure enough participants are interested in an
association project. The committee should be of at
least 10-15 participants.
If less than 10 persons are interested by setting up
an association, chances are that the association is
not viable.
Besides, a person officially involved in a committee
will feel more responsible of its success and will
participate more to its setting up. The goal is that
all the work does not fall back on 2 or 3 people only.
Finally, some decisions are taken more rapidly when in
small groups. The goal is also to avoid reaching
blocking stages.

- Pourquoi le 1er juillet ?
Afin de conserver une certaine structure ? la visite
de Jimbo du 4 juillet. A cette occasion, il serait
int?ressant que la majeure partie du comit? de
pilotage soit ? Paris (tous les participants sont bien
entendu cordialement invit?s ? comit? ou pas).

Why the 1rst of july ?
To better structure Jimbo visit on the 4th of July. It
would be nice that most of those involved in the
committee try to be in Paris at this date (all
participants are welcome naturally)

- Comment sera pratiqu?e l??lection ?
D?pendra probablement du nombre de candidats
int?ress?s. Si le nombre est proche de 10, nous
reposerons sur un simple syst?me d?approbation (type
nommage au status de sysop, ce qui permettra
d??liminer les candidatures fantaisistes) . Si le
nombre d?int?ress?s est de 50 (on peut toujours
r?ver?.), un syst?me de vote pour lequel les 10-15
candidats les plus soutenus seront au comit? de
pilotage.

How will the organised the election ?
It will depends on the number of candidates
interested. If it is near 10, we could do a
approval/disapproval process (similar to admin status
approval, this to eliminate very unwelcome
candidacies. If the number is above 50 (dreamland), a
voting system will allow to vote for the candidates
most supported to the governing committee.

- d?p?t des candidatures : jusqu?au 15 juin.
Pour rappel, le comit? de pilotage a pour objectif de
travailler ensemble ? mettre en place l?association.
C?est surtout une d?claration de motivation et
d?intention. Les candidats sont les bienvenus pour
donner plus d?information sur leur int?r?t pour le
comit? de pilotage, la participation qu?ils comptent
fournir, et le r?le qu?ils souhaiterait pour
l?association. Les candidats de tous pays sont les
bienvenus.
L?objectif de la petite description est 1) de discuter
les r?les de l?association et 2) v?rifier l?int?r?t
r?el de cette association et 3) s?assurer du niveau de
motivation individuel. A nouveau, r?p?tons le,
l?association demandera de l?investissement personnel,
plus nous serons nombreux, plus nous pourrons nous
r?partir le travail. Une association g?r?e par une
seule et unique personne est vou?e ? l??chec. Une
association est n?cessairement un travail collectif.

End of candidacies : 15 of june
As a reminder, the goal of the governing committee is
to work together to set the association. It is mostly
an intent of willingness and motivation. Candidates
are welcome to give more information about their
interest in the governing committee, help they intend
to bring, and role they would be willing to have in
the association itself. Candidates of all countries
welcome.
The goal of the little description requested from
candidates is 1) to discuss the roles given to the
association 2) check the interest of setting up an
association 3) check individual interest. Again, the
association will ask time and energy. The more you
will be to work on it, the less work for each person
there will be; An association managed by only one
person is bound to failure. It is necessarily a
collectif effort.

- ?lections : du 16 au 30 juin. Modalit?s ? d?finir
L?objectif n?est pas de barrer les bonnes volont?s,
mais tout au plus d??liminer les candidatures
fantaisistes.

-Elections : from the 16 to 30 june. Modalities to
define. The goal is not to discourage people, but to
eliminate unwelcome candidacies (trolls...)

Etape 2 Juillet 2004 - Septembre 2004

Travail sur les statuts de l?association.

D?but de la recherche d?un partenariat bancaire pour
les dons (paiement en ligne) et le cas ?ch?ant des
outils n?cessaires ? la tenue d?un compte d?emploi

Work on bylaws. Beginning of the search for a banking
partnership for the donations (payment on line) and if
needed for the tools necessary to maintain a special
accountancy system (related to Frenc law on donations)

Etape 3 Octobre 2004

Validation du projet de statuts par le comit? de
pilotage.

Elections du conseil d?administration temporaire (pris
au sein des membres du comit? de pilotage) par la
totalit? des participants des projets francophones
(restriction d?anciennet?) ; int?gration de leurs noms
dans les statuts.

Exp?dition du projet ? Jimbo Wales et Wikimedia
Foundation Inc. pour accord

Validation of the project of statutes by the piloting
project committee. Elections of the temporary board of
directors (candidates will be necessarily among
members of the piloting project) by all participants ;
integration of their names in the statutes. Forwarding
of the project to Jimbo Wales and Wikimedia Foundation
Inc.

Etape 4 Novembre 2004

Circularisation des statuts pour signature des
fondateurs (membres du comit? de pilotage)

Exp?dition des statuts sign?s ? Jimbo Wales et
Wikimedia Foundation Inc. pour signature

A r?ception des statuts sign?s, d?claration de
l?association en pr?fecture et lancement d?une
campagne de communication sur l?adh?sion.

Circularization of the statutes for signature of the
founders (members of the piloting project committee).
Forwarding of the signed statutes with Jimbo Wales and
Wikimedia Foundation Inc for signature. When signed by
WF Inc., declaration of the association in prefecture
and launching of a communication campaign on adhesion.

Etape 5 D?cembre 2004

Mise en place de la comptabilit? pour les cotisations,
et le cas ?ch?ant du compte d?emploi

Lancement de la campagne de dons

Installation of the accountancy for the contribution,
and if necessary of the special accountancy system
(i.e. for donations). Launching of a donation
campaign.

-------

Une association, ?a se construit. Faut y mettre un peu
de sueur :-)

It is basically in your hands. Many people to work
with dedication -> an association. Three people to do
everything -> no association. Simple. Just "saying"
you want an association is not enough to make
everything work.

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list: wikimedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Anthere


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Wikipedia-l] A favorable review

body:
>But just when pessimism about the internet has reached its most
>chronic depths, the web's most stunning and exciting site is becoming
>wildly popular and threatening to provide all the glorious
>enlightenment we had stopped daring to hope would arrive.

http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=14292033&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=-name_page.html


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re : MBTI

body:
On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 03:40:19PM +1000, Tim Starling
wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> >
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type
> > > > How do you explain the current majority of NTs
?
> > > > > MBTI is pseudoscience. I don't know why
people bother with it.

>The wikipedia article gives the answer: confirmation
>bias.

>"Some even demonstrate that profiles can apparently
>seem to fit any person by confirmation bias,
ambiguity >of basic terms and the Byzantine complexity
that >allows any kind of behavior to fit any
personality >type."

>People have a natural craving to "belong"; they want
>to be accepted
>into whatever social group they see themselves as
part >of. By
>deliberately ambiguous wording, the test lets you
>answer questions
>in such a way that you can deceive yourself into
>finding external
>confirmation of your perception of yourself. That's
>the lure.

>Arvind

Yup, I agree.

Since I think these two comments are making me look
silly :-) I will list below the slow construction of
wikipedians, who feel so cold in our current
organisation, that they feel the need to create sub
cultural groups to gather warm around them. Of course,
that is also confirmation of personal perception.

Wikipedians categorized by sub-cultural affiliation
>From Meta, a wiki about Wikimedia

*Wikipedians with criminal records
*Wikipedians who use recreational drugs
*Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Wikipedians
*Wiccapedians or other neopagan Wikipedians
*Roots Rock Reggae Security Investigative Wikipedians
*Vegetarian Wikipedians
*Wikipedians who don't like to be categorised
*WIKIngs
*Academia pro Interlingua Wikipedians
*Politically conservative Wikipedians
*Blue Wikipedians
*Green Wikipedians
*Surrealist Wikipedians
*Non-American Wikipedians
*American Indigene
*Wikipedians American Wikipedians
*Anti-American Wikipedians
*Anti-Anti-American users
*Anti-Anti-Anti-American_users
*European Union Wikipedians
*Southeastern European Wikipedians
*United Nations Wikipedians
*Gothic Wikipedians
*Not Gothic Wikipedians
*Anti-Anti-anything users
*Wikipedians by religion
*Wikipedians by race
*Wikipedians who use PDA's
*Wikipedians who use laptops
*Wikipedians who use a regular computer
*Wikipedians by favorite color
*Wikipedians by favorite text editor
*Fannish Wikipedians
*Wikipediholics
*Wikipedians by Favorite Ice Cream Flavor
*Wikipedians who are students or alumni of McGill
University Phish
*Fans of Wikipedia
*Wikipedians who support a World Government
*Wikipedians who support a Universal Religion
*Internationalist Wikipedians
*Multilingual Wikipedians
*Intellectual Wikipedians
*Wikimedians by age
*Wikimedians by birthday
*Wikipedians by geekness
*Wikipedians by MBTI type
*Operating System Preference
*Linux user Wikipedians
*Mac user Wikipedians
*BSD user Wikipedians
*Windows user Wikipedians
*Biological affiliations
*WikiMen WikiWomen
*Deaf Wikipedians
*Twin Wikipedians
*Aspergian Wikipedians
*Unemployed Wikipedians
*Internet connection
*Wikipedians with slow Internet connections

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: MBTI

body:
Arvind Narayanan wrote:
> People have a natural craving to "belong"; they want to be accepted
> into whatever social group they see themselves as part of. By
> deliberately ambiguous wording, the test lets you answer questions
> in such a way that you can deceive yourself into finding external
> confirmation of your perception of yourself. That's the lure.

Strangely, though, the test I took tells me that I'm "ESTP", promoter,
even though the description of it sounds distasteful to me.  On the
other hand, pseudoscience or not, it can't be denied that I "have no
hesitation at all in approaching strangers and persuading them to do
something".  Even something as ridiculous as writing an entire
encyclopedia from scratch and just *giving it away*!

I just can't wait to hear from the MBTI people -- they already
complain to me every few months about our article in the encyclopedia.

For the record, I do agree that MBTI is pseudoscience, but I also think
it's interesting and fun as a parlor game.

--Jimbo


list: wikitech-l

subject: [Wikitech-l] Root pw for Jerome

body:
Is there a list somewhere of everyone who has access?

Erik Moeller wrote:

> I've granted root access on the machines to Jerome Jamnicky (jeronim on
> IRC), he's done good work on the servers in recent weeks. I hope that's
> OK.
>
> Regards,
>
> Erik
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] VfD etiquette

body:
Daniel P.B.Smith wrote:
> But, particularly in VfD, discussants should maintain an awareness that
> the contributors whose items are being discussed are quite likely to be
> newbies, and are quite likely to be _present_.

Yes, this is 100% right.  A little kindness is always a good idea.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Klingon resurrected

body:
Timwi wrote:
> I was indeed assuming that the compromise of disallowing inter-wiki
> links to it would also apply to Toki Pona. After all, my entire goal in
> this discussion was not to have a Klingon Wikipedia, but to have Klingon
> and Toki Pona be treated equally.

If Toki Pona Wikipedia did not already exist, I would not be in favor
of allowing it.  I think that Toki Pona is a vanity project and not a
serious constructed language.  (But, my knowledge is limited so my
opinion of that is tentative.)

Given that we already *have* Toki Pona, my main interest is that we
all understand that whatever we end up doing with it, it is an
historical anomoly that should not be viewed as precedent setting for
the future.

We should strive for consistency, but we should also recognize that
perfect consistency must sometimes be adjusted to historical
realities.

--Jimbo


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: MBTI

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Tim-
> > Anthere wrote:
> >>
>
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type
> >>
> >> How do you explain the current majority of NTs ?
> >>
>
> > MBTI is pseudoscience. I don't know why people
> bother with it.
>
> MBTI doesn't tell us much about what people really
> *are* like. But it does
> tell us something about how they see themselves.
> Unlike astrological
> signs, these MBTI profiles are self-selected, and
> there are quite
> substantial differences between the different
> profiles.
>
> Knowing how people see themselves can be
> interesting. It's certainly not
> surprising that many people working on Wikipedia
> view themselves as
> centered around logic and rational argument. It
> would be disturbing if it
> was any other way.
>

I think Erik has hit it dead-on.

-Rich Holton

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Brion Vibber Day

body:
Saluton!

I hereby decree, in my usual authoritarian and bossy manner, that
today (June 1st) shall forever be known as Brion Vibber day.
Wikipedians of the distant future will marvel at his incredible
dedication and hard work, without which the project should have
collapsed a long time ago.  Tonight at dinner, every Wikipedian should
say a toast to Brion and his many inventions.

On Brion Vibber day, Wikipedians everywhere greet each other in
Esperanto.

Dankon, Brion.

Bondezirojn,

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Brion Vibber Day


from_name: David Carson

subject: [WikiEN-l] what's the deal with categories?

body:
K Forstner wrote:
> A few hours I mildly protested against one of those categorizations. See
> [[George Ritzer]], pigeonholed as a "writer".

Hang on, he hasn't been "pigeonholed". He has been noted as being a
writer, which seems fair enough - his article says "He has published
extensively", and more than half of it is taken up with a list of books
he has written. Just because he is in category "Writers" doesn't mean he
can't also be in categories "Sociologists" and "Professors"!

Cheers!
David...


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: what's the deal with categories?

body:
Timwi wrote:

> K Forstner wrote:
>
>> A few hours I mildly protested against one of those categorizations. See
>> [[George Ritzer]], pigeonholed as a "writer".
>
> Interestingly, though, you haven't changed it either.

It's clear from the article that he has been a writer.  If you want to
add further categories, do go ahead.

Ec


subject: [Wikipedia-l] A favorable review

body:
Mathias Schindler wrote:

> Jimmy Wales wrote:
>
>> http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=14292033&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=-name_page.html
>>
>
> It's interesting to see that David Williamson didn't make a single
> reference on your last name while writing about wikipedia on "the
> national website of Wales". :

My reply to them:

> I enjoyed Williamson's piece about Wikipedia. There is of course the
> common error of referring to the site as a ".com" rather than a
> ".org", but the technical people have learned to cope with that. The
> most glaring omission, given the nature of your usual audience, is in
> failing to mention that there is a small but thriving Welsh language
> "Wicipedia" at cy.wikipedia.org

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] How we should be dealing with Wik

body:
KNOTT, T wrote:
> Wik has declared a "War" on Jimbo's talk page. He appears to feel that
> since there are a large number of proxies he could use, that there is
> nothing we can do to stop him. I disagree. There is only one of him, and
> hundreds of us. I suggest we adopt the following approach.

It is not 100% clear to me what the community views the limits of my
constitutional powers to be in situation like this.  It would be good
to have this clarified, so that I could make appropriate proclamations
at appropriate times so as to ensure that behavior like this is not
implicitly rewarded by the (necesssary) time delays of the arbitration
committee.

In my opinion, when a banned user makes direct threats of a "war"
including elaborate proclamations as to how he's going to use a large
number of proxies, sock puppets, whatever, it would be best for me to
firmly and immediately declare that this is an extra-ordinary case and
that the ban is extended indefinitely until appeal is made to the
arbitration committee.

Such an approach would help to eliminate the unease that people feel
that Wik might be allowed back after his week ban is up, since after
all, the week ban was implemented *before* he went on this rampage,
and clearly these transgressions were far beyond the complex
circumstances that led to the ban in the first place.

There is room in wikipedia for tough controversies about what the
limits of reverting are, and so on.  There is no room for people
declaring war on the very concept of a civilized and organized system
of decision making.

I don't want to return to the day when I was the sole banning
authority - I found that job to be extremely unpleasant.  But I think
it would be fine, and safe, if it were clear that I still can ban in
some extra-ordinary cases, particularly since I would also be honor
bound to respect the outcome of an appeal to the arbitration
committee.

--Jimbo


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: w to properly use articles from an outside GFDL
	source?

body:
Tomos at Wikipedia wrote:
> And last, but not the least, I am not sure if it is okay to just say that
> we should keep violating GFDL just because it cannot be held accountable in
> court.

Just to be clear, I think we are in full compliance with the GFDL in
every way.  That isn't to say that we couldn't improve our practices
in any way, nor to say that the license can't be improved... obviously
there is always room for improvement.  But I don't think that anything
that we do is a GFDL violation.

--Jimbo


list: foundation-l

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: [WikiEN-l] proposed policy change - allow
	*certain* CC-licensed images on Wikipedia...

body:
I fully support that we should accept images under all free licenses,
using the aggregation clause of the GNU FDL. (Clause 7.)

--Jimbo


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> I fully support that we should accept images under all free licenses,
> using the aggregation clause of the GNU FDL. (Clause 7.)

So do I. Images are easier to deal with in that respect.

-- mav

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subject: [Foundation-l] Copyright issues of wikimedia projects

body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> >Yes, but that deals with the freedom of your use, not the freedom of the
> >content
>
> The ''only'' issue in the freedom of content
> is the freedom of people to ''use'' that content.
> It may well be that this limitation on freedom is justified,
> given the substandard world of incompatible licences
> (and the even more fundamentally substandard world
> where proprietary control is possible at all),
> but we're only deluding ourselves if we pretend
> that it's not any limitation on freedom whatsoever.

I disagree and maintain that the expression of knowledge in content almost has
a 'life' (metaphorically speaking) of its own and deserves to be free from
proprietary control. If derivative works are not ensured freedom from
proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop
improving that content.

Much of our effort would be used to feed a black hole instead of being
continually reused and expanded.

>...
>  I don't know if that problem is significant,
> and we certainly don't have to decide Wikinews now.
> But remember why this conversation started (this time):
> the Wikimedia Foundation is supposed to have a policy
> requiring that Wikimedia works be covered by a "free" licence
> "like the GNU FDL".  We need to decide what "free" means here.
> And the last thing that you've said about that in this thread
> is that you want to use "free" in the nonstandard sense
> that includes ?copyleft? in addition to ?free? in the sense of GNU.

The GNU FDL is copyleft, so IMO anything 'like it' must also be copyleft (such
as the CC by-sa).

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikipedia-l] MBTI

body:
Anthere wrote:

>http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type
>
>How do you explain the current majority of NTs ?
>

Could it be that NTs are more willing than others to fill in a questionary
in order to categorize themselves, without a job selector looking over their
shoulders?

I did complete the questionaire and put my name on the list, but still I'm
rather skeptical, or should I be according to my type? :)

For fun try to convince yourself that you scored any other type than you did
and read the description, part of it will still seem to describe you, at
least that was my experience. Just like with astrology charts, people tend
to agree with all niceties written about them.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Fred Bauder

body:
I have yet to see any actual evidence (other than his use of the name) that
Wik was in fact the person who posted that material on your talk page. I
think you are still "dictator" in any circumstance you choose to be. Your
problem, usually, unless somehow you were personally involved, is not
knowing the details and having to spend of lot of time researching things
before you act.

Fred

> From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com>
> Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Date: Tue, 1 Jun 2004 08:36:53 -0700
> To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] How we should be dealing with Wik
>
> But I think
> it would be fine, and safe, if it were clear that I still can ban in
> some extra-ordinary cases, particularly since I would also be honor
> bound to respect the outcome of an appeal to the arbitration
> committee.
>
> --Jimbo


from_name: Tim Starling

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] Re: SIL Ethnologue vs. ISO codes for determination of
 language inclusion

body:
Jay Bowks wrote:
> The SIL ethnologue list is quite flawed.
> In this respect the ISO codes are more
> dependable...
>
> The Ethnologue lists
> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_family.asp?subid=827
> Esperanto, Europanto, and Interlingua.
> It further mentions that Interlingua is
> a language of France...
> http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=INR
> It also claims that Esperanto is a language
> of France, and that it has "200 to 2,000 people who
> speak it as first language". If so it would be a
> natural and non-artificial language for them
> wouldn't it, those French native speakers of
> Esperanto.... Highly irregular!
>
> The list is flawed, and the fact that they include
> "Europanto" is quite a joke, no kidding,
> Europanto was a joke language developed
> by translators within the EU and only for
> amusement. To exclude Volap?k which
> had at one time hundreds of thousands
> of learners and users and still has a small
> community of active users is just wrong
> if one is going to include "Europanto"
> which no one really uses as a community
> except joking translators within the
> EU Brussels, European Union buildings...
> as Ethnologue points out.

We're not interested in language classification, number of native
speakers or country of origin, so I don't really care if there are
errors in that respect. We are not suggesting using the ethnologue as
the only source for our articles on languages. Mistakes in the inclusion
or non-inclusion of languages I'll admit is a more serious issue.
However I did point out that SIL has little time for artificial
languages, so mistakes in this section are hardly suprising.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Debian on new 1Us

body:
Ivan Krstic wrote:
> The only objection that was raised to Debian on the list was that it
> doesn't have a stable 64-bit release, which clearly isn't an issue for
> the P4s. Also, since I'm told Jimbo is unfamiliar with Debian (which
> might be a problem during the installation),

It is is safe to assume that I could competently install it at least,
particularly with guidance from the #mediawiki channel.

But there is a bigger issue -- these machines are already in service,
and I'm leaving town tomorrow.  I do not believe that there is time
for an install before I go.

However, I am supportive of the next batch of servers running Debian
if that's a popular choice.

We are experiencing a staggering traffic peak today.

--Jimbo


from_name: Timwi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Vote: Artificial languages equal rights

body:
Hi.

Please vote.

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_languages_equal_rights

Thanks,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Wiktionaries broken

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> Somebody badly broke Wiktionary etc by overwriting /home/common/php
>> with files from /home/common/php-new. I'm trying to restore things.
>
>
> I've got them working again, more or less.
>

At around May 31, 14:20, all the Wikipedias went down, displaying a PHP
error. Shaihulud, Erik, Jeronim and myself were present in #mediawiki.
My response was as follows. First I tried swapping the entire php-new
directory for a backup in lazy-backups. This produced a 404 error on all
wikipedias, so I swapped it back.

Next I enabled display_errors by hacking index.php. This showed that a
file inclusion was failing due to the include path being set to
/usr/local/apache/common/php instead of php-new. I investigated this
error, finding that the correct ini_set statement was still present in
CommonSettings.php. At a loss with the minutes of downtime wearing on, I
moved the php directory to php.v12, and copied (cp -r) the php-new
directory to php, then did a sync-common-all. This was intended as a
stopgap measure, to give the script the proper files to include, while I
tracked down the root cause of the problem. I was fully aware that it
would break Wiktionary temporarily.

While it was synching, I spotted the root cause --
php-new/LocalSettings.php had been overwritten with a skeleton
LocalSettings.php apparently from ab, which contained
include("CommonSettings.php") instead of specifying a full path. Someone
had probably mistakenly edited it via the symlinks in the htdocs directory.

After fixing this, I moved common/php to lazy-backups/php-new and moved
common/php.v12 back to common/php, where it came from, then did a sync.
Or at least, that's what I thought I did. If the files were overwritten,
I guess I messed up something along the way. I didn't think to check if
the Wiktionaries were working.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Debian on new 1Us

body:
Ricky Beam wrote:
> On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Ivan Krstic wrote:
> >... Also, since I'm told Jimbo is unfamiliar with Debian (which
> >might be a problem during the installation), I'd like to point out that
> >you can install Debian pretty easily from a Knoppix CD. Only a barebones
> >install is needed - the rest can be done over ssh.
>
> Two words: Serial Console

Do you have a specific hardware recommendation?  I think this is a
good idea.

--Jimbo


subject: [Wikitech-l] Suggesting change to error message

body:
Hi,

currently the wiki-down message reads:

	Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties,
	and cannot contact the database server.

In the interest of better usability and comprehensibility, please could
someone change it to:

	Wikipedia is currently experiencing technical difficulties.
	Please try again later. We apologise for the inconvenience.

Please also let me know how many more times I need to post this until
someone at least replies to it, much less actually changes it.

Thanks,
Timwi


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Danish localization on 1.3 removed

body:
Jerome Jamnicky wrote:
> On Mon, 31 May 2004 22:20, Christian List wrote:
>
>>On the danish Wikipedia we have already localized everything into danish on
>>the new MediaWiki 1.3, but a couple of hours ago all the newly introduced
>>translations disappeared. Please, whoever deleted them, put them back ASAP.
>>
>>Regards
>>Christian List
>
>
> I don't know exactly what went on, but it appears that a buggy script damaged
> entries in the Mediawiki: namespace, and they had to be restored from an
> earlier backup.  So you'll have to re-do the translations you've recently
> done.  Tim Starling knows what happened, and he should reply to your mail
> later, when he wakes up
>
> -Jerome

Yes, I ran a script that was meant to update the MediaWiki namespace by
overwriting any message which had only been changed by the "MediaWiki
default" user, without recording the edit in the old table. At least,
that's how it worked in testing. In fact it overwrote all internal
messages. This affected all wikis aa-dz plus fr, 28 in all. To fix this,
I restored all namespace 8 pages from the most recent backup, which was
made about 24 hours ago. This restoration would have appeared as an edit
-- the damaged text was copied back into the old table.

Before I run it again, I will modify the script to perform proper edits
instead of simply changing cur_text, and I will fix whatever bug caused
it to edit human-edited pages, when it was only meant to update
unmodified pages.

-- Tim Starling


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: a humble request about the category display bug

body:
Brion Vibber wrote:

> That's not actually a bug;

It's a usability bug.

> it's just that *nothing* interacts well with
> right-aligned images/tables (for instance, section edit links, and other
> right-aligned images/tables).

The categories shouldn't be inside the article itself; they should be
moved further up a bit:

ARTICLE TITLE                                      Categories: Foo | Bar
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article text...

Of course, this is my opinion. Discussion is welcome.

Greetings,
Timwi


body:
K Forstner wrote:

> A few hours I mildly protested against one of those categorizations. See
> [[George Ritzer]], pigeonholed as a "writer".

Interestingly, though, you haven't changed it either.


from_name: Mathias Schindler

subject: [Wikipedia-l] telepolis on wikipedia on WOS 03 (Berlin, June 2004)

body:
http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/wos/17544/1.html

The Planet of Free Knowledge

Volker Grassmuck   01.06.2004

The future of the digital commons will be discussed during the
conference Wizards of OS 3

The  Wizards of OS 3 (10-12 June 2004, Berliner Congress Center) is
bringing together an interdisciplinary group of leading scholars and
practitioners from the planet of free knowledge. This planet is bustling
with activity. Everywhere there are people creating and exchanging
information, working together to build a solid foundation of free
technology and to erect cathedrals of wisdom -- by all and for all --
such as Wikipedia. Some are labouring to bring science back to its
philosophical foundations: an unencumbered exchange of ideas and the
freedom essential for research and innovation.

http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/wos/17549/1.html

The Online Library of Alexandria

Stefan Krempl   01.06.2004

Interview with Jimmy Wales, co-founder of the ever-growing online
encyclopedia Wikipedia

Open Content -- the effort of the Online Community to produce freely
available editorial essays, articles, and other forms of writings -- has
become a major success in the realm of Open Source. Pioneer is the Web
based encyclopedia  Wikipedia which is supposed reach another milestone
of 300.000 articles soon. The open content forerunner is giving
commercial encyclopedias like Britannica or Encarta a hard time, since
they are loosing customers quickly now.
--
nach uns der synflood.


from_name: Joachim Schiele

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Klingon

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tuesday 01 June 2004 00:20, Timwi wrote:

Hi Timwi,
I'm not a Klingon-fan altough I don't have anything against a
Klingon-Wikipedia. But please don't spam the list because some people here
don't share your opinion. I've read ~70 or more emails related to "Klingon"
and that's about ~3-6 times more than it's usual on this list. So please if
you need some technical information about how to get the mediawiki installed
ask it and I think there will be some friendly helpers here.

But if it's just a flaming war related to the Klingons or their language, post
somewhere else. Go and create your own wiki-server. It's easy to setup and
maintain a wiki which is _as_ good as the mediawiki is.

Thank you,
Joachim

> Sheldon Rampton wrote:
> > Personally, I think this whole thing is silly. I don't think there
> > should be a Wikipedia in Klingon, or Ferengi, or Pig-Latin, or any other
> > pseudo-language.
>
> You are about the fortyseventhousandtwohundredandninetythird person to
> call it a "pseudo-language" (or "nonsense language" or any other
> variant). That doesn't make it any more true, nor does it put Klingon
> anywhere near the same level as "Pig Latin" or "Bork Bork Bork". Inform
> yourself before passing such derogatory and unjustified judgements.
>
> Timwi
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from_name: Arvind Narayanan

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: MBTI

body:
On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 03:40:19PM +1000, Tim Starling wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
> > http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type
> >
> > How do you explain the current majority of NTs ?
> >
>
>
> MBTI is pseudoscience. I don't know why people bother with it.

The wikipedia article gives the answer: confirmation bias.

"Some even demonstrate that profiles can apparently seem to fit any person by confirmation bias, ambiguity of basic terms and the Byzantine complexity that allows any kind of behavior to fit any personality type."

People have a natural craving to "belong"; they want to be accepted
into whatever social group they see themselves as part of. By
deliberately ambiguous wording, the test lets you answer questions
in such a way that you can deceive yourself into finding external
confirmation of your perception of yourself. That's the lure.

Arvind
>
> http://skepdic.com/myersb.html
>
--
Its all GNU to me


from_name: Neil Harris

body:
Timwi wrote:

> Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>> That's not actually a bug;
>
>
> It's a usability bug.
>
>> it's just that *nothing* interacts well with right-aligned
>> images/tables (for instance, section edit links, and other
>> right-aligned images/tables).
>
>
> The categories shouldn't be inside the article itself; they should be
> moved further up a bit:
>
>
> ARTICLE TITLE                                      Categories: Foo | Bar
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Article text...
>
>
> Of course, this is my opinion. Discussion is welcome.
>
> Greetings,
> Timwi

I agree: this is one of the biggest problems at the moment with adding
categories to articles: all their markup breaks if they have
right-floating elements.  An alternative solution is:

ARTICLE TITLE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
                                                   Categories: Foo | Bar
ARTICLE BODY....

which is likely to scale better for long lists of categories.

Neil


from_name: Josip Rodin

body:
On Tue, Jun 01, 2004 at 11:23:42AM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> currently the wiki-down message reads:
>
> 	Sorry! The wiki is experiencing some technical difficulties,
> 	and cannot contact the database server.
>
> In the interest of better usability and comprehensibility, please could
> someone change it to:
>
> 	Wikipedia is currently experiencing technical difficulties.
> 	Please try again later. We apologise for the inconvenience.
>
> Please also let me know how many more times I need to post this until
> someone at least replies to it, much less actually changes it.

Err, you don't need to remove the actual reason (inability to contact the
database server) in order to make it "comprehensible". I wouldn't be
surprised if the techies previously ignored the request because they refused
to blithely dumb the message down.

--
     2. That which causes joy or happiness.


from_name: Constans, Camille (C.C.)

subject: [Wikitech-l] Root pw for Jerome

body:
On meta IIRC

Shaihulud

>-----Message d'origine-----
>De : wikitech-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
>[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org]De la part de Jimmy Wales
>Envoy? : mardi 1 juin 2004 14:11
>? : Wikimedia developers
>Objet : Re: [Wikitech-l] Root pw for Jerome
>
>
>Is there a list somewhere of everyone who has access?
>
>Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>> I've granted root access on the machines to Jerome Jamnicky
>(jeronim on
>> IRC), he's done good work on the servers in recent weeks. I
>hope that's
>> OK.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Erik
>> _______________________________________________
>> Wikitech-l mailing list
>> Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>>
>_______________________________________________
>Wikitech-l mailing list
>Wikitech-l at Wikipedia.org
>http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Brion Vibber Day

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:
> I hereby decree, in my usual authoritarian and bossy manner, that
> today (June 1st) shall forever be known as Brion Vibber day.
> Wikipedians of the distant future will marvel at his incredible
> dedication and hard work, without which the project should have
> collapsed a long time ago.  Tonight at dinner, every Wikipedian should
> say a toast to Brion and his many inventions.
>
> On Brion Vibber day, Wikipedians everywhere greet each other in
> Esperanto.
>
> Dankon, Brion.

*blush*

It's a group effort. Tim Starling and Gwicke and Shaihulud and JeLuF and
Jeronim and even my arch nemesis Eloquence ;) have all been putting in a
lot of work to get the new release up and running and minimize the
inevitable growing pains. Thanks also to Jamesday and Ricky Beam for
hardware & kernel advice, and all you folks out there filing bug reports. :D

And of course we wouldn't have the software we have today without Magnus
Manske and Lee Daniel Crocker's work... or for that matter Clifford
Adams' efforts on UseModWiki which got us off the ground.

Nun, revenu al la enciklopedio kaj redaktu ghis la venko! :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>The ''only'' issue in the freedom of content
>>is the freedom of people to ''use'' that content.

>I disagree and maintain that the expression of knowledge in content almost has
>a 'life' (metaphorically speaking) of its own and deserves to be free from
>proprietary control.

It's all well and good to speak metaphorically of the "life"
of a work of art, or of an idea, or of a meme, and so forth.
But when I spoke of freedom above, I was speaking ''literally''.
Freedom is a property of living creatures like human beings,
not of inanimate things like encyclopaedia articles
(except, of course, in a metaphorical sense).
Similarly, it is only people that "deserve" free content;
abstract ideas do not "deserve" anything for themselves.
This is why organisations like the Free Software Foundation,
the Open Source Initiative, the Debian project, etc, etc, etc
define freedom of software code, manuals, documentation, and so forth
in terms of what ''people'' can do with them.

Now we are getting highly philosophical, perhaps.
So I will focus on your down-to-earth factual statement:

>If derivative works are not ensured freedom from
>proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop
>improving that content.

And this statement is FALSE -- or at least not necessarily true.

I believe that it was Erik that argued that WikiNews
would not be picked up by newspapers that rely on wire services
(like Reuters, AP, etc) if it's GNU FDL or otherwise copyleft.
(Traditional news feeds are copyright and their subscribers must pay.)
Now, Erik may or may not be correct about this --
perhaps Internet news services are what really matter,
and perhaps they would be perfectly happy to put their stories
under the GNU FDL if that means that they can use WikiNews gratis,
perhaps it will even turn out that the New York Times will publish
copyleft stories in order to make use of WikiNews feeds,
once those become superior to the proprietary news services.
But it's hardly obvious (not to me) that Erik is wrong.
So let's suppose for the sake of argument that he's correct.

Then in one possible world, WikiNews is GNU FDL or CC-by-sa,
and (following Erik's fears) is not used very much by others.
When it ''is'' used, then the resulting derivative work is free,
and this creates a small amount of feedback for a day or two,
as readers not only return to WikiNews but also incorporate
the derivative works into the original WikiNews articles.
Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now.
However, in another possible world, WikiNews is CC-by,
and (following Erik's hopes) is widely picked up by other news sites.
These other news organisations often use it to create derivative works,
which (thanks to the "by" provisions) mention WikiNews as a source.
Interested readers flock to WikiNews in droves for a day or two,
generating a great deal of feedback to the WikiNews articles,
even though their edits are limited to their own material.
Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now.

The upshot of this hypothetical situation is this:
There are ''two'' components (at least) to the level of feedback.
One is whether every derivative work can be fed back,
and a copyleft insures that this condition will be met.
But another is whether the original work receives a wide audience,
and freer document (in the strict literal sense of what people
are allowed to do with it) will generally lead to wider distribution.
Which of these effects is greater will depend on the circumstances.

>Much of our effort would be used to feed a black hole instead of being
>continually reused and expanded.

There won't be much of a black hole with WikiNews.
This wouldn't be like Microsoft's habit of incorporating
free (but noncopyleft) BSD code into proprietary Windows code,
which causes Microsoft's best work to be unethically derived
from the free/open software community (or so RMS charges).
After a day or two, a WikiNews article would be worthless
to a black hole like MSN.  This is not to say that there is no problem,
but it does not build up like encyclopaedia articles or literal black holes do.

I do not want to argue that WikiNews would be better of with CC-by.
I'm not in a position to judge that, and it's only hypothetical now.
In fact, I don't believe that ''anybody'' is taking such a strong position.
And since I have no intention of working on WikiNews in the first place,
I really doubt that I'll even be involved in that discussion.
The point is, we don't have to decide now.
But we should not set Wikimedia policy ahead of time
to say that copyleft licences are better,
because after due consideration, that may not turn out to be so.

>>But remember why this conversation started (this time):
>>the Wikimedia Foundation is supposed to have a policy
>>requiring that Wikimedia works be covered by a "free" licence
>>"like the GNU FDL".  We need to decide what "free" means here.
>>And the last thing that you've said about that in this thread
>>is that you want to use "free" in the nonstandard sense
>>that includes ?copyleft? in addition to ?free? in the sense of GNU.

>The GNU FDL is copyleft, so IMO anything 'like it' must also be copyleft (such
>as the CC by-sa).

That's obviously not an absolute statement;
the English term "like" is very vague.
You might as well argue that the GNU FDL
is written by the Free Software Foundation,
so anything "like it" must also be written by the FSF
(which the CC-by-sa, of course, is not).

I assume that what you mean is that, IYO,
the copyleft feature of the GNU FDL is vitally important,
while the written-by-FSF feature is not vitally important.
In contrast, I would say that even copyleft is not vital,
while the free (in the strict FSF sense) feature is vital.

Anyway, since you're now saying that Wikimedia policy
should require all Wikimedia works to be copyleft,
you're now in disagreement with (if I'm remember correctly
how this conversation went) me, Erik, Andre, and Anth?re.
Since they're probably not all paying attention anymore --
we took many detours to discuss theoretical issues --
I'll bring this to their attention (after checking
that I've got the correct people), so we can stop you. ^_^

-- Toby


from_name: cprompt

subject: [WikiEN-l] Brion Vibber Day

body:
Gloru Brion!

Je lia sano!

On Tue, 1 Jun 2004 06:16:34 -0700, "Jimmy Wales" <jwales at bomis.com> said:
> Saluton!
>
> I hereby decree, in my usual authoritarian and bossy manner, that
> today (June 1st) shall forever be known as Brion Vibber day.
> Wikipedians of the distant future will marvel at his incredible
> dedication and hard work, without which the project should have
> collapsed a long time ago.  Tonight at dinner, every Wikipedian should
> say a toast to Brion and his many inventions.
>
> On Brion Vibber day, Wikipedians everywhere greet each other in
> Esperanto.
>
> Dankon, Brion.
>
> Bondezirojn,
>
> --Jimbo
>

--
http://www.fastmail.fm - And now for something completely different


subject: [Wikitech-l] Debian on new 1Us

body:
Ivan Krstic wrote:
> It seems there is reasonably strong support for running Debian on the
> new 1Us. Shaihulud, gwicke, jeronim would like Debian; I remember there
> was also support for it from various people here on tech-l.

There's nothing wrong with Debian, but the machines have been in service
for several days already. It would be pretty silly to wipe them clean
and start over.

> Again, it
> would make system administration and maintenance considerably easier and
> more manageable.

Not really; it would require taking much greater care to differentiate
between the Red Hat and non-Red Hat machines. apt-get is available on
the new machines already, so that's not an issue.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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subject: [Wikipedia-l] A favorable review

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

> http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/tm_objectid=14292033&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=-name_page.html

It's interesting to see that David Williamson didn't make a single
reference on your last name while writing about wikipedia on "the
national website of Wales". :)

Mathias
--
nach uns der synflood.


from_name: Ivan Krstic

subject: [Wikitech-l] Debian on new 1Us

body:
It seems there is reasonably strong support for running Debian on the
new 1Us. Shaihulud, gwicke, jeronim would like Debian; I remember there
was also support for it from various people here on tech-l. Again, it
would make system administration and maintenance considerably easier and
more manageable.

The only objection that was raised to Debian on the list was that it
doesn't have a stable 64-bit release, which clearly isn't an issue for
the P4s. Also, since I'm told Jimbo is unfamiliar with Debian (which
might be a problem during the installation), I'd like to point out that
you can install Debian pretty easily from a Knoppix CD. Only a barebones
install is needed - the rest can be done over ssh.

Cheers,
Ivan.


from_name: Angela

subject: [Wikitech-l] Root pw for Jerome

body:
 --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> wrote:
> Is there a list somewhere of everyone who has
> access?

http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developers

Angela.

____________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping"
your friends today! Download Messenger Now
http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html


from_name: Ricky Beam

subject: [Wikitech-l] Debian on new 1Us

body:
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Ivan Krstic wrote:
>... Also, since I'm told Jimbo is unfamiliar with Debian (which
>might be a problem during the installation), I'd like to point out that
>you can install Debian pretty easily from a Knoppix CD. Only a barebones
>install is needed - the rest can be done over ssh.

Two words: Serial Console

Even better when netboot is in the picture. (I've done this several times.
redhat, debian, suse, ...)

--Ricky


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: MBTI

body:
Tim-
> Anthere wrote:
>> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type
>>
>> How do you explain the current majority of NTs ?
>>

> MBTI is pseudoscience. I don't know why people bother with it.

MBTI doesn't tell us much about what people really *are* like. But it does
tell us something about how they see themselves. Unlike astrological
signs, these MBTI profiles are self-selected, and there are quite
substantial differences between the different profiles.

Knowing how people see themselves can be interesting. It's certainly not
surprising that many people working on Wikipedia view themselves as
centered around logic and rational argument. It would be disturbing if it
was any other way.

Regards,

Erik


from_name: Daniel Mayer

body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
> Mav is a reasonable person and he would never use his influence or power
> in the project to unilaterally enforce his point of view. The rift in
> opinion between "copyleft" and "attribution-only" likely exists across the
> whole Wikimedia community. A project-wide vote may be useful.
>...

Thank you Erik.

Even if I did have that type of power or influence (which I do not have and
will not even if I am elected trustee), I would not ram something through in
direct opposition to the community's wishes. That would only alienate many
people and possibly fragment the whole project. However, I will continue to
argue my position when I see it is needed. If I am overruled, then so be it,
I'll just make sure my opposition is on record.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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from_name: Nicholas Moreau

body:
I was actually coming to this mailing list today, to discuss the same thing. I'm glad its noticed. I can't see anything against Timwi's idea, it seems to work perfectly.

- Zanimum

wikitech-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 2004 11:28:38 +0100
From: Timwi

Brion Vibber wrote:

> That's not actually a bug;

It's a usability bug.

> it's just that *nothing* interacts well with
> right-aligned images/tables (for instance, section edit links, and other
> right-aligned images/tables).

The categories shouldn't be inside the article itself; they should be
moved further up a bit:

ARTICLE TITLE Categories: Foo | Bar
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Article text...

Of course, this is my opinion. Discussion is welcome.

Greetings,
Timwi

---------------------------------
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from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: What's the deal with categories?

body:
K Forstner wrote:

>From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
>
>Yesterday I wrote:
>
>A few hours ago I mildly protested against one of those categorizations. See
>[[George Ritzer]], pigeonholed as a "writer".
>
>
>>>Interestingly, though, you haven't changed it either.
>>>
>>>
>>It's clear from the article that he has been a writer.  If you want to
>>add further categories, do go ahead.
>>
>>Ec
>>
>>
>
>This is surprisingly inconsistent. What exactly in the [[George Ritzer]]
>article makes it clear that he has been a "writer"? As I tried to point out
>on the talk page, well of course he has "written" something, but nothing
>even remotely comparable to what the other categorized "writers" have
>written, namely fiction.
>
>Also, why should I change anything? I may be wrong. What's more, I'm not at
>all familiar with those new categorizations, I don't think they have been
>properly discussed, so why should I go ahead and contribute to something I'm
>not convinced of?
>
>
I have no problem agreein that to say that Ritzer is a writer is a
remarkably shallow observation.  But for this epistulary fugue I might
never have heard of Ritzer, so I am ill-equipped to participate in his
categorization.

The year-long discussion that preceded  was focused on whether there
should be categories at all, and how such an idea might be technically
implemented.  The discussion of specific categories was negligible.
Details of the scheme(s) have yet to mature.

Ec


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: MBTI

body:
Anthere wrote:
> http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedians_by_MBTI_type
>
> How do you explain the current majority of NTs ?
>

MBTI is pseudoscience. I don't know why people bother with it.

http://skepdic.com/myersb.html

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Gabriel Wicke

subject: [Wikitech-l] parser trouble

body:
On Sun, 2004-05-30 at 22:26 +0200, Ashar Voultoiz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> As shaihulub told me on irc, it seems the parser using tokenizer.php
> have been disabled. It looks like we are now using an old parser instead.
>
> Lot of the recent bug reports on sourceforge are related to this swicth:
> lot of features and bugfixing are no more implemented / fixed :-(
>
> It seems there is a performance issue on the tokenizer, so should we :
>
> 1/ get ride of the tokenizer (current situation) and fix bug /
> reimplement features
>
> 2/ improve the tokenizer performances

I think there's no debate that 2) is the way to go, however this will
most likely involve writing the parser in c (possibly as php extension)-
not very likely to happen in the next days.

Gabriel Wicke


from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Brion Vibber Day

body:
I'll drink to this -- in three languages, but not Esperanto :-(

On 06/01/04  at 06:16 AM, Jimmy Wales <jwales at bomis.com> said:

> I hereby decree, in my usual authoritarian and bossy manner, that today
> (June 1st) shall forever be known as Brion Vibber day. Wikipedians of
> the distant future will marvel at his incredible dedication and hard
> work, without which the project should have collapsed a long time ago.
> Tonight at dinner, every Wikipedian should say a toast to Brion and his
> many inventions.

V.


body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> It's all well and good to speak metaphorically of the "life"
> of a work of art, or of an idea, or of a meme, and so forth.
> But when I spoke of freedom above, I was speaking ''literally''.
> Freedom is a property of living creatures like human beings,
> not of inanimate things like encyclopaedia articles
> (except, of course, in a metaphorical sense).

Knowledge should not be owned, nor should the expression of that knowledge,
IMO. But we live in a world where the norm *is* ownership of that expression,
so we play the game but reverse the rules in order to free the content.

> ...
> >If derivative works are not ensured freedom from
> >proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop
> >improving that content.
>
> And this statement is FALSE -- or at least not necessarily true.

The statement is true since all improvements that create derivative works from
copyleft content can be re-incorporated back into the original. That is
positive feedback. However if the original were under an attribution license,
then many of those derivative works will be proprietary and thus any
improvements made to them could not be re-incorporated back into the original.
That would not be positive feedback.

> ...
> Then in one possible world, WikiNews is GNU FDL or CC-by-sa,
> and (following Erik's fears) is not used very much by others.
> When it ''is'' used, then the resulting derivative work is free,
> and this creates a small amount of feedback for a day or two,
> as readers not only return to WikiNews but also incorporate
> the derivative works into the original WikiNews articles.
> Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now.
> However, in another possible world, WikiNews is CC-by,
> and (following Erik's hopes) is widely picked up by other news sites.
> These other news organisations often use it to create derivative works,
> which (thanks to the "by" provisions) mention WikiNews as a source.
> Interested readers flock to WikiNews in droves for a day or two,
> generating a great deal of feedback to the WikiNews articles,
> even though their edits are limited to their own material.
> Then the news is out of date, and the feedback is over for now.

Let's not just assume that copyleft content would fail to attract attention -
Wikipedia has already proved that copyleft material *can* attract a lot of
attention and can be copied all over the place (including on many otherwise
proprietary content websites). *If* a copyleft Wikinews project did not do well
and we suspected it was due to the license, then we could talk about the
possibility of changing. Due to the nature of news articles, a future change of
license would not be such a big deal.

But I completely see a point about the GNU FDL - a printed newspaper could
never abide the FDL's requirement to include a copy of the license. The CC
by-sa with an upgrade clause (which is oddly not part of the 1.0 version) or my
proposal for a GNU FCL would be much better suited for that.

Since Wikinews content would primarily flow to, instead of from Wikipedia, an
interim solution could be to dual license Wikinews articles under both the GNU
FDL (for one way compatibility to Wikipedia) and the CC by-sa (for a
lightweight copyleft license that could be used by print media). Downstream
users would have to choose just one of the two licenses. This would fork
derivative work development between the two copyleft licenses and none of that
work could be re-incorporated back into the original dual-licensed article, but
we plan to fix the incompatibility issue anyway (that is why this would be an
interim solution).

>...
>
> >The GNU FDL is copyleft, so IMO anything 'like it' must also be copyleft
> (such
> >as the CC by-sa).
>
> That's obviously not an absolute statement;
> the English term "like" is very vague.

Exactly, thus I stated 'IMO.' It is my interpretation from reading stuff like:

|The goal of Wikipedia is to create an information source in an encyclopedia
|format that is freely available. The license we use grants free access to our
|content in the same sense as free software is licensed freely. This principle
|is known as copyleft. That is to say, Wikipedia content can be copied,
|modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same
|freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used
|(a direct link back to the article satisfies our author credit requirement).
|Wikipedia articles therefore will remain free forever and can be used by
|anybody subject to certain restrictions, most of which serve to ensure that
|freedom.

>From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

Notice use of the word 'copyleft' (which is even bolded), the phrase 'so long
as the new version grants the same freedoms to others' and the term 'free
forever'.

I will not support any license whereby a downstream user could make a
derivative work of our content and be able to not grant us the same freedoms
over that work.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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body:
Erik Moeller wrote in effect:

>>However, please keep in mind the one-way incompatibility that would result
>>from adopting a non-copyleft license

A CC-by project could become a CC-by-sa project any time that it wished.
If the incompatibilities between CC-by-sa and GNU FDL are worked out,
then it could become a GNU FDL project.

This is not to say that any such change would go smoothly,
because there would doubtless be resistance from some users
to any change. ^_^

-- Toby


from_name: Peter Danenberg

subject: [Wikitech-l] parser trouble

body:
> I think there's no debate that 2) is the way to go, however this will
> most likely involve writing the parser in c (possibly as php extension)-
> not very likely to happen in the next days.

     Speaking  of which, Gabriel: has there been any serious
deliberation on C?

     I'm rewriting the lexer/parser for WikiTeX, and it  may
be  an opportune time to design a system from the ground up;
robust enough to take into account, for instance,  arbitrary
tags and local languages.

     Best, Peter


subject: [Wikitech-l] Debian on new 1Us

body:
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Jimmy Wales wrote:
>> Two words: Serial Console
>
>Do you have a specific hardware recommendation?  I think this is a
>good idea.

Personally, I like the lightwave console servers.  But they are very much
not cheap.  Beyond that, just about anything with a bunch of serial ports
will do.  The most cost effective solution would probablly be finding an
old Cisco 2511 -- 16 serial ports. (Or a CS-500 if you want to go that
far back into history.)

--Ricky

Note: Lightwave was purchased by Lantronix...
	http://www.lantronix.com/products/cs/scs1600_3200/index.html


subject: [Wikitech-l] Debian on new 1Us

body:
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Ricky Beam wrote:
>Personally, I like the lightwave console servers.
...
>Note: Lightwave was purchased by Lantronix...
>	http://www.lantronix.com/products/cs/scs1600_3200/index.html

http://www.pcnation.com/web/details.asp?item=031463 -- $1,391.83 (free ship)

--Ricky


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

subject: [WikiEN-l] Can we ban 172 now? And VV too!

body:
According to my reading of the edit history of [[Augusto Pinochet]],
both 172 and VV engaged in a "more than 3 times" reversion war.

I hold 172 more responsible, because he's an admin and should know
better. But VV did the same thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?title=Augusto+Pinochet&action=histo
ry&limit=100&offset=0

I think they should both be banned for 3 weeks, and also that 172 should
lose sysop privileges for 3 months (after which he can re-apply via the
usual community process).

Ed Poor
Bureacrat


body:
--- Erik Moeller <erik_moeller at gmx.de> wrote:
>If we have a three revert rule, everyone should have
> to respect it.

I agree with this, and am tempted to support the deputizing of all admins to
enforce our policies (temp bans would require at least three admins to approve,
except in cases of obvious vandalism). But that would probably do more harm
than good absent a quadrupling of the size of the AC and converting part of its
function into an appeals board.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

__________________________________
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http://messenger.yahoo.com/


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>Since they're probably not all paying attention anymore,
>>I'll bring this to their attention (after checking
>>that I've got the correct people), so we can stop you. ^_^

>Mav is a reasonable person and he would never use his influence or power
>in the project to unilaterally enforce his point of view.

I hope that I haven't given anybody the wrong impression,
because I agree entirely with what Erik says here.
The way to "stop [mav]" is to stop him from convincing
everybody else that he's correct, nothing more than that!

>I agree with Mav that first and foremost, we need to work with the FSF
>towards simplifying the FDL for our purposes, perhaps just as an FDL 2.0,
>or using his FCL migration clause idea.

To work things out with the FSF for our benefit would be ideal.
I don't want to finalise a policy that rules things out ahead of time,
which is why I've been doing all this discussion and argument.
But it'll be fantastic if the issue never comes up in practice
because Jimmy and Stallman and Lessig make everything perfect.
I don't have much faith that it ''will'' be worked out,
but it's times like these that I like to be wrong!

-- Toby


subject: [WikiEN-l] Dealing with conflicts (was: ban 172 & VV)

body:
Viajero wrote:

> Ed, a process for dealing with such conflicts is
> evolving and it is called the Arbitration Committee.
> Such matters aren't tackled on an ad hoc manner on the
> ML anymore.

Eh, what's that, sonny? Speak up, so dear old Uncle Ed can hear you; I'm
getting hard of hearing and forgetful in my old age. ;-)

In the last six months, the conflict-resolution process has changed
faster than I can keep up with it. Clearly the days are gone when I was
counted on as a sort of second-to-last resort to take bold action when
the committees were taking endless amounts of time to consider an issue
and getting nowhere. But what happened to quickpolls? By the time I
finally figured out how they worked, and was ready to submit a case, I
was told they no longer existed.

Help a poor old man cross this street, and you're sure to win a merit
badge!

Gray-haired Uncle Ed


from_name: André Müller

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Brion Vibber Day

body:
Koran dankon anka? de mi, Brion.

- Andr?
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body:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>It's all well and good to speak metaphorically of the "life"
>>of a work of art, or of an idea, or of a meme, and so forth.
>>But when I spoke of freedom above, I was speaking ''literally''.
>>Freedom is a property of living creatures like human beings,
>>not of inanimate things like encyclopaedia articles
>>(except, of course, in a metaphorical sense).

>Knowledge should not be owned, nor should the expression of that knowledge,
>IMO. But we live in a world where the norm *is* ownership of that expression,
>so we play the game but reverse the rules in order to free the content.

Yes, I understand the reasons for copyleft.
We limit minor freedoms of the document's readers
(like combining with another document that has a different copyleft licence)
in order to keep major freedoms for everybody
(like distributing a derived work based on the original document).
The copylefter reserves copyright rights only for the purpose
of preventing other people from reserving copyright rights,
analogously to using violence only in self defence.
(Personally, I don't use violence even in self defence,
and I don't reserve any copyrights to any of my work.
But I refuse to condemn those who choose differently from me.)

>>Mav wrote:

>>>If derivative works are not ensured freedom from
>>>proprietary control, then there is much less of a positive feedback loop
>>>improving that content.

>>And this statement is FALSE -- or at least not necessarily true.

>The statement is true since all improvements that create derivative works from
>copyleft content can be re-incorporated back into the original. That is
>positive feedback. However if the original were under an attribution license,
>then many of those derivative works will be proprietary and thus any
>improvements made to them could not be re-incorporated back into the original.
>That would not be positive feedback.

I understand this argument, but it is not valid as it stands.
To make this argument work, you have to explain why
a copyleft document will always attract as much derivative work
as the same document distributed under a free non-copyleft licence.

This is certainly not true in general!  Taking the Snow White example,
the Walt Disney Company, given its profit motives, would not make
as many derivative works from public domain (hence free but not copyleft)
fairy tales if its derivative movies had to be free as well.
Yet the free fairy tale community gets some feedback from Disney,
since the Disney characters are now available for some uses in parodies.
This is an extreme example, and all things considered,
I would be much happier if Disney didn't make any movies,
if that meant that the movies that other people ''did'' make
would all be free.  But I will not pretend that copyright
serves no purpose at all -- it ''does'' encourage creation
by people motivated by profit (as we all are to some extent).

>Let's not just assume that copyleft content would fail to attract attention.

I am not making this assumption.  I am only considering the ''possibility''
(and that only relatively -- copyleft might attract ''less'' attention).
You're assuming that a copyleft document will attract as much attention
as a free-but-not-copyleft document; that is the only way that your argument
beginning "The statement is true [...]" above will go through.
I am refusing to make any assumption one way or another.
Thus I am not advocating that WikiNews use a non-copyleft licence.
I am only advocating that the Wikimedia Foundation adopt a policy
that (implicitly is enough) allows for a non-copyleft (but free) licence.

I like this text suggested by Erik (Eloquence):
<http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2004-May/000222.html>

"All text on Wikimedia projects will be under a license which allows free
distribution and modification by anyone. The image copyright policies are
set by individual projects."

(I guess that I'd like the image language to be somewhat stronger,
but I'm not really sure how to improve it -- that's famously tricky.)

>*If* a copyleft Wikinews project did not do well
>and we suspected it was due to the license, then we could talk about the
>possibility of changing. Due to the nature of news articles, a future change
>of license would not be such a big deal.

This is true.  I'm not very worried about how WikiNews is licensed;
but it's fresh ground for coming up with hypothetical scenarios.

>But I completely see a point about the GNU FDL - a printed newspaper could
>never abide the FDL's requirement to include a copy of the license.

I'm not sure that it's even that bad.  Standard policy with the GNU GPL
is to place the license in a separate file, and the GNU FDL allows aggregates,
so a newspaper should be able to include several FDL articles in its pages,
each with the brief statement that its licence may be found on page A2.

>The CC
>by-sa with an upgrade clause (which is oddly not part of the 1.0 version)
>or my proposal for a GNU FCL would be much better suited for that.

The CC 1.0 licences had several annoying flaws, like no upgrade clause.
(Similarly, the GNU 1.0 licences had several annoying flaws,
but they are much older so we don't remember that. ^_^)
The CC-sa 2.0 licences now do have an upgrade clause, like the GNU FDL
(which of course is a very good thing for your GNU FCL proposal).

>Since Wikinews content would primarily flow to, instead of from Wikipedia, an
>interim solution could be to dual license Wikinews articles under both the GNU
>FDL (for one way compatibility to Wikipedia) and the CC by-sa (for a
>lightweight copyleft license that could be used by print media). Downstream
>users would have to choose just one of the two licenses. This would fork
>derivative work development between the two copyleft licenses and none of that
>work could be re-incorporated back into the original dual-licensed article, but
>we plan to fix the incompatibility issue anyway (that is why this would be an
>interim solution).

I wouldn't want to rely on being able to fix the incompatibility,
so I'd want any interim solution to be viable indefinitely.
That said, this solution probably ''is'' viable indefinitely.
If a dual-licensed project ever wants to change to a single licence,
then it can do so any time that the users wish.

>>>The GNU FDL is copyleft, so IMO anything 'like it' must also be copyleft
>>>(such as the CC by-sa).

>>That's obviously not an absolute statement;
>>the English term "like" is very vague.

>Exactly, thus I stated 'IMO.' It is my interpretation

OK, fair enough.
The relevance of the vaguness is that the statement as it stands
is not explicit, so that your interpretation isn't the only possibility.
But this thread began with Anth?re asking for a clarification,
so we're discussing how the statement ought to be clarified.
If it's clarified, then there will no longer be any vagueness.

>I will not support any license whereby a downstream user could make a
>derivative work of our content and be able to not grant us the same freedoms
>over that work.

Of course, I might support one (and indeed have, on various occasions
unconnected with Wikimedia).  Someday I may even try to convince you to.
But right now, I only want to convince you that the Wikimedia Foundation
shall not adopt a policy that it will ''never'' support one.

-- Toby


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>Poor,-
>
>
>>According to my reading of the edit history of [[Augusto Pinochet]],
>>both 172 and VV engaged in a "more than 3 times" reversion war.
>>
>>
>
>The edit war is mostly about whether the intro should state that the 1973
>coup was "US backed", with some (primarily 172) arguing that this is an
>indisputable fact, and others (primarily VV) holding that it is
>controversial and therefore needs to be written in NPOV "many believe"
>style. Majority opinion is on 172's side, and Encarta also uses the
>"United States backed" phrase.
>
>I initially agreed with VV that some compromise was needed, but last week
>new evidence was revealed in the form of a transcript of a conversation
>between Kissinger and Nixon, shortly after the coup, in which Kissinger
>flat-out stated "We helped them" and Nixon responded "That's right". In my
>opinion, in combination with the sum of the evidence (including a CIA memo
>which states that Allende should be overthrown with a coup, and that the
>American hand should be "well hidden"), this justifies the phrase "United
>States backed". VV sees no reason to change his position.
>
>172 has long proposed a compromise, namely a footnote behind the "United
>States backed" to clarify what it means, but VV has ignored that
>compromise. I have worked with him on another compromise intro with the
>"many believe" phrase, but I feel this is no longer adequate in light of
>the new evidence.
>
>Both 172 and VV have edit warred repeatedly on the article in violation of
>policy. In addition, there have been a number of personal attacks.
>
>I'm against banning either of them from Wikipedia as a whole, but a 3
>month ban from editing [[Augusto Pinochet]] may be a good idea. The sad
>result of these edit wars is that the article has been protected for much
>of its lifespan, which is obviously completely against the spirit of a
>wiki.
>
>I think that a quickpoll was held on the matter when quickpolls for three-
>revert violations were still in effect. The result was a vote for banning
>VV but not for banning 172. This is one of the reasons people, including
>myself, have become skeptical about the procedure: it ends up as a
>popularity contest. If we have a three revert rule, everyone should have
>to respect it.
>
>
I've looked at the matter and I agree with Erik on this.  I've never
been keen about the 3-revert rule because it accomplishes nothing.  A
50-revert rule would do no better.  The state of an article when the
warriors have reache the threshold might just as well be determined by a
toss of a coin.  After each has had his three reverts they wait until
the next day and have three new reverts each; that accomplishes nothing
either.

The side which provides reference and sources in an argument should be
given preference.  Opposition to those sources is valid, but that too
needs some basis in reality.  It is not enough to oppose something
because it would cause embarassment to one's favoured side.  NPOV is
best attained when we can accept substantiated information contrary to
our own point of view.  It makes an article much easier to read than one
sprinkled with weasel words..

Ec


body:
--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia at math.ucr.edu> wrote:
> (Personally, I don't use violence even in self defence,
> and I don't reserve any copyrights to any of my work.

Then it looks like neither of us will be able to convince the other.

>...
> This is certainly not true in general!  Taking the Snow White example,
> the Walt Disney Company, given its profit motives, would not make
> as many derivative works from public domain (hence free but not copyleft)
> fairy tales if its derivative movies had to be free as well.
> Yet the free fairy tale community gets some feedback from Disney,
> since the Disney characters are now available for some uses in parodies.
> This is an extreme example, and all things considered,
> I would be much happier if Disney didn't make any movies,
> if that meant that the movies that other people ''did'' make
> would all be free.

The comparison to public domain (merely gratis) content is not relevant to the
issue of copyleft (libre). I have in fact been arguing against using
attribution licenses (which essentially are grants into the public domain but
with the requirement of attribution - thus there still is need for a license).

> But I will not pretend that copyright
> serves no purpose at all -- it ''does'' encourage creation
> by people motivated by profit (as we all are to some extent).

Yes, that is true.

>...
> Thus I am not advocating that WikiNews use a non-copyleft licence.
> I am only advocating that the Wikimedia Foundation adopt a policy
> that (implicitly is enough) allows for a non-copyleft (but free) licence.

And on that point we will continue to argue.

> ...
> >But I completely see a point about the GNU FDL - a printed newspaper could
> >never abide the FDL's requirement to include a copy of the license.
>
> I'm not sure that it's even that bad.  Standard policy with the GNU GPL
> is to place the license in a separate file, and the GNU FDL allows
> aggregates,
> so a newspaper should be able to include several FDL articles in its pages,
> each with the brief statement that its licence may be found on page A2.

The FDL is still several pages long and will take up at least one newsprint
column that could have been used for an advertisement. With the cost of
newsprint, ink, labor, and the small profit margins of most newspapers, I doubt
they would be willing to give up that space (even for no-cost content). This is
a serious issue with the FDL that needs to be fixed.

> >The CC
> >by-sa with an upgrade clause (which is oddly not part of the 1.0 version)
> >or my proposal for a GNU FCL would be much better suited for that.
>
> The CC 1.0 licences had several annoying flaws, like no upgrade clause.
> (Similarly, the GNU 1.0 licences had several annoying flaws,
> but they are much older so we don't remember that. ^_^)
> The CC-sa 2.0 licences now do have an upgrade clause, like the GNU FDL
> (which of course is a very good thing for your GNU FCL proposal).

That is good to hear.

> >Since Wikinews content would primarily flow to, instead of from Wikipedia,
> an
> >interim solution could be to dual license Wikinews articles under both the
> GNU
> >FDL (for one way compatibility to Wikipedia) and the CC by-sa (for a
> >lightweight copyleft license that could be used by print media). Downstream
> >users would have to choose just one of the two licenses. This would fork
> >derivative work development between the two copyleft licenses and none of
> that
> >work could be re-incorporated back into the original dual-licensed article,
> but
> >we plan to fix the incompatibility issue anyway (that is why this would be
> an
> >interim solution).
>
> I wouldn't want to rely on being able to fix the incompatibility,
> so I'd want any interim solution to be viable indefinitely.
> That said, this solution probably ''is'' viable indefinitely.
> If a dual-licensed project ever wants to change to a single licence,
> then it can do so any time that the users wish.

That is a good fallback position.

-- Daniel Mayer (aka mav)

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from_name: K Forstner

body:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ray Saintonge" <saintonge at telus.net>
To: "English Wikipedia" <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 4:46 PM
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: what's the deal with categories?

Yesterday I wrote:

A few hours ago I mildly protested against one of those categorizations. See
[[George Ritzer]], pigeonholed as a "writer".

> > Interestingly, though, you haven't changed it either.
>
> It's clear from the article that he has been a writer.  If you want to
> add further categories, do go ahead.
>
> Ec

And now I'd like to add:

This is surprisingly inconsistent. What exactly in the [[George Ritzer]]
article makes it clear that he has been a "writer"? As I tried to point out
on the talk page, well of course he has "written" something, but nothing
even remotely comparable to what the other categorized "writers" have
written, namely fiction.

Also, why should I change anything? I may be wrong. What's more, I'm not at
all familiar with those new categorizations, I don't think they have been
properly discussed, so why should I go ahead and contribute to something I'm
not convinced of?

KF


from_name: Roozbeh Pournader

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Brion Vibber Day

body:
> On Brion Vibber day, Wikipedians everywhere greet each other in
> Esperanto.

I would appreciate if you send a list of Esperanto greetings here.... ;)

roozbeh


from_name: Toby Bartels

body:
Daniel Mayer (maveric149) wrote:

>Toby Bartels wrote:

>>(Personally, I don't use violence even in self defence,
>>and I don't reserve any copyrights to any of my work.

>Then it looks like neither of us will be able to convince the other.

I don't see why not, because this is not the basis for my position.
There was another sentence in the paragraph, after all:

>>But I refuse to condemn those who choose differently from me.)

I'm not arguing that violence in self defence is immoral,
and I would not use that argument to convince somebody
to refuse violence in self defence (to my parents regret).
What I choose for myself is not necessarily required for everybody.
Similarly, in this conversation I'm not making a moral argument
against reserving copy rights in ultimate defence of copy freedom.
Everything that I've said is based on pragmatic considerations,
and if you convince me that my arguments on ''that'' basis are wrong,
then I will acquiesce and not switch to moral arguments.

This is not to say that I never made moral/ethical arguments.
But your position is beyond any ethical objections from me.

>The comparison to public domain (merely gratis) content is not relevant to the
>issue of copyleft (libre). I have in fact been arguing against using
>attribution licenses (which essentially are grants into the public domain but
>with the requirement of attribution - thus there still is need for a license).

But this is precisely the comparison that is relevant!
The public domain, like CC-by, is free but not copyleft.
And the public domain ''is'' made use of for derivative works
more readily than copyleft material is.  So it is not correct
to say that copyleft doesn't inhibit the creation of derivative works,
or more generally that it can never inhibit positive feedback.
Only a balance between its ''two'' effects: fewer derivative works,
but a greater percentage (indeed all) of those derivative works
becoming available for feedback.

I'm comparing copyleft to non-copyleft here,
to see which will give more positive feedback.
(You say that copyleft always gives more positive feedback,
while I say that it may depend on the circumstances.)
That's why I discussed a public domain example;
it's the example from the non-copyleft side.

-- Toby


from_name: Michael Snow

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: How we should be dealing with Wik

body:
Jimmy Wales wrote:

>It is not 100% clear to me what the community views the limits of my
>constitutional powers to be in situation like this.  It would be good
>to have this clarified, so that I could make appropriate proclamations
>at appropriate times so as to ensure that behavior like this is not
>implicitly rewarded by the (necesssary) time delays of the arbitration
>committee.
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration_policy
According to the arbitration policy, you are effectively the court to
which decrees of the arbitration committee can be appealed. Since the
situation arose from such a decree, I think we can take a broad view and
consider the circumstances a form of appeal. And to the extent that this
appeal raised questions not directly considered during arbitration (for
example, Quagga's behavior), I'm comfortable with you handling those
issues as well. As part of an appeal, I think you can still be, in legal
terms, a court of original jurisdiction.

>In my opinion, when a banned user makes direct threats of a "war"
>including elaborate proclamations as to how he's going to use a large
>number of proxies, sock puppets, whatever, it would be best for me to
>firmly and immediately declare that this is an extra-ordinary case and
>that the ban is extended indefinitely until appeal is made to the
>arbitration committee.
>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Banning_policy
Since we seem to have determined that evading a ban causes the ban
period to start over, I don't think additional declarations are
necessary. "Banned users with poor self-control may end up banning
themselves indefinitely", no intervention by you is required.

Also, while the arbitration committee may be slow, they did already
provide for an additional 30-day ban at their discretion if Wik tried to
circumvent the decree. If Wik did return after serving his one-week ban,
I trust implementing that would be a simple formality.

>But I think it would be fine, and safe, if it were clear that I still can ban in some extra-ordinary cases,
>
I know extraordinary measures may seem necessary in the heat of the
moment, but even this incident is starting to fade a little, and I think
our procedures are holding up reasonably well. In the end, of course,
you still have the authority to ban people. The thing is, that's not an
extraordinary power, we can just say it's inherent in being a court of
appeal. You can, if you choose, modify arbitration rulings, including
shortening, lengthening, or imposing bans. The real problem, as Fred
already identified, is having to study the case enough to make an
informed decision.

--Michael Snow