from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
Besides, it's supposed to be simple. Unless you can think of something
simpler?

--NSLE

On 4/2/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 4/2/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
> > At 09:27 +0100 2/4/06, Gordon Joly wrote:
> > >I have just "discovered" the "Simple English Wikipedia"
> > >
> > >http://simple.wikipedia.org/
> > >
> > >
> > >On the left, under "Navigation", I find
> > >
> > >>>   Newest changes
> > >
> > >I am very surprised to find this phrase here, since it is very poor
> English!
> > >
> > >Gordo
> > >
> > >--
> >
> >
> > In fact, all menus have been "munged" (**) into dialect of English!
> >
> >
> > # My talk
> > # My settings
> > # My watched pages
> > # Pages I worked on
> > # Log out
> >
> > # Show any page (which is really "Random Page")
> >
> > Gordo
> >
> >
> > **
> >
> > http://foldoc.org/foldoc/foldoc.cgi?query=munge
> >
> > --
> > "Think Feynman"/////////
> > http://pobox.com/~gordo/
> > gordon.joly at pobox.com///
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
> New, Newer newest. What's wrong with that?
>
> Mgm
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: foundation-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [Foundation-l] New CafePress designs

body:
Upon request I created a new CafePress shop for Wikipedia that only features the Wikipedia logo -
no text or anything else. See
http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia/1330270

I also uploaded Tlogmer's neat designs for two bumper stickers: One sticker has an abstract of the
English Wikipedia's [[Bumper sticker]] article and another has an abstract of the [[Automobile]]
article. I've already asked him to create [[Mousepad]] and [[T-shirt]] article designs. Hopefully
many more article designs will follow that will be suitable for placement on shirts (an abstract
of the [[Exploding whale]] article on a shirt, for example).
See:
http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.53160509
http://www.cafepress.com/wikipedia.53159981

Tlogmer's neat 'wiki-swoosh' design is still waiting for me or somebody else to figure out what to
use it for or even what to name it (I'd like to avoid using the 'swoosh' name for obvious
trademark reasons with a certain shoe company). Might be a good logo for the whole Wikimedia
community in order to distinguish it from the foundation....

For those of you not familiar with it, the design is here:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_ideas/Cafe_Press#New_Logo_for_clothing

All rights to that logo have already been assigned to the Wikimedia Foundation.

Another great thing Tlogmer created was a very unique design for possible Wikimania logo. You can
see it here:
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page/mockup

No matter what logo is used, I do think that it would be a bit boring to use the Wikimedia logo
again for Wikimania. Something unique is needed. However, we need to choose a logo fast so that we
can promote it for Wikimania and order plenty of shirts and other items with it.

-- mav

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


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] New CafePress designs


list: wikipedia-l

subject: [Wikipedia-l] New CafePress designs


list: wikien-l

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ethics

body:
As long as the editor follows NPOV. Yes, why not.

Garion

On 3/31/06, Thommandel at aol.com <Thommandel at aol.com> wrote:
>
> Is it ethical for an editor to support one viewpoint and then edit the
> opposing viewpoint? Is it ethical for a supporter of the big bang to edit
> the
> alternative plasma cosmology?
>
> tom
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Project proposal

body:
It's a nice idea, but who determines what's worth listing in such a
further reading section and what will you do to stop people from
spamming long lists of books into such sections?

You'd also need to find a way to teach people the difference between
"further reading" and "references" or it might lose us a lot of
references in the process because of people ignorant on the subject.

Mgm

On 3/31/06, flogan1 at swarthmore.edu <flogan1 at swarthmore.edu> wrote:
>
> Hello list! I'm new to the list, so perhaps a short intro is in order. My
> name is Finlay and I am known to WP as Cantara. I've been a Wikipedian since
> sometime in 2004, but have only become really active in the last few months.
> I joined the list at the suggestion of CComMack, who thought that an idea I
> had (see below) might want input from people knowledgeably about policy and
> so forth.
>
> My idea is this. We all know that Wikipedia is great and all, repository of
> the world's information, &c. However, there are people who disagree, who
> think that Wikipedia is inaccurate because it is written by people who are
> not experts and because it lacks oversight (or whatever it is they're saying
> now). When considering these two things together, I realized that there is a
> kind of information that Wikipedia seriously lacks, and that is
> bibliographies. If you've written a research paper lately (I'm writing two at
> the moment, myself) you know that the list of books that the author has read
> is just as valuable as whatever the book itself is about. However,
> Wikipedians don't really make an effort to include "further reading" as part
> of the entry, beyond what they list as citations.
>
> I wanted to start a project to focus on getting that store of information
> into Wikipedia, and once I get around to it I'll list it on Proposed
> Projects. However, as mentioned about, a fellow editor suggested that a
> project like this might have repurcussions in other areas (and I hope he
> responds to explain what they were - something about the manual of style?).
>
> Discuss, then, and if you'd like to help, I'll have information up somewhere
> on my userpage fairly soon.
>
> Yours,
> Cantara
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: charles matthews

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ethics

body:
<Thommandel at aol.com> wrote

> Is it ethical for an editor to support one viewpoint and then edit the
> opposing viewpoint? Is it ethical for a supporter of the big bang to edit
> the
> alternative plasma cosmology?

All answers to questions posed in these terms are 'yes'.  It is not what you
edit, but how, that matters.

Charles


from_name: Benjamin Webb

subject:
[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki,
	wishes to become a wiki project

body:
What do you think of the idea of limiting information to the names of living
people? If our database of people was large enough, then there will be quite
a few people with the same names, but they are actually different people. If
we do not publish extra information, such as date/place of birth etc, it
would be impossible to find the right person, so the inclusion of his
mothers maiden name will not pose such serious concerns.

On 01/04/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Benjamin Webb wrote:
>
> >On 01/04/06, Robert Scott Horning <robert_horning at netzero.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Yourself, perhaps.  I understand in part that you want to show a full
> >>family tree starting with yourself and going to your ancestors (or
> >>decendants if you are older).  The problem here is that this information
> >>is all going to be publicly available for anybody to use and have
> >>access.  Indeed, a very, very common "security question" used to help
> >>prevent identity theft is to ask what your mother's maiden name was.  By
> >>publishing full geneological links in a public place like on a Wikimedia
> >>project, you are inviting fraud, identity theft, and violation of
> >>several personal privacy laws.  With the Wikimedia Foundation so
> >>paranoid about something so insignificant as an IP address connected to
> >>a user account and the hyper paranoid (in my opinion) check user policy,
> >>this might be enough to kill this whole proposal completely in terms of
> >>violating privacy laws.
> >>
> >>More important, the suggestion here is that other living relatives may
> >>also be listed if a policy like this isn't implemented.  They did not
> >>give concent to have their information posted in a public forum, even if
> >>on a technical level the information is available through public records
> >>like birth certificates and driver's license registrations.
> >>
> >>I completely agree that this is a sticky issue.  I'm just suggesting
> >>that some thought needs to go into it and I'm also suggesting what other
> >>groups are doing who publish geneological information in a public forum.
> >>
> >>
> >I understand the need for being cautious about security and I think that
> >your comment that the subject is something that needs to be thought hard
> >about is exactly right. However, there's one thing that I have been
> >wondering about. You have raised the point that identity theft could be
> >carried out, using the mother's maiden name. As, Rodovid grows and the
> >number of people with the same increases, it will be difficult to link a
> >person whose identity you are trying to steal with someone on the
> database.
> >To do this would mean having other data such as age, place of birth and
> so
> >on, which would probably be as difficult to obtain as  the maiden name.
> >
> These other data may be as difficult to obtain, but it can be done.  If
> a person is intent on stealing an identity, he is bound to look for what
> can be done most conveniently and be most suitable to his intents.  Just
> because the guy's a crook doesn't mean he's stupid.  A genealogical
> database where people with the same name are easily confused isn't a
> very good database, and isn't even worth having for the purposes for
> which it is intended.
>
> In pre-internet days mother's maiden name was an easy security test,
> because it was something that most people knew about themselves and were
> unlikely to mention in ordinary conversation.  For a variety of reasons
> this test may not be as secure as it used to be.  In a sensible
> genealogical database women should conventionally be listed by their
> birth names; without such a convention it can be far more difficult to
> connect people.
>
> In any event if this project is going to be viable we need to start with
> the possible.  Initially, at least, a conservative privacy policy should
> be adopted with the understanding that it could be relaxed in the future
> when we have a better idea of what information is really public like BDM
> announcements in newspapers, or newspaper lists of graduation classes.
>
> Putting that issue on the backburner that way would leave us
> concentrating on the issue of verifiability, so that we can avoid
> importing and perpetuating the sloppy research of others.  I would
> prefer that whatever we produce not be a companion piece to the Da Vinci
> Code. :-)
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] [Foundation-l] Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta

body:
On 3/31/06, Anthere <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> David Gerard wrote:
> >> Can you give us a little more context? I can see that there is a
> >>proposal to create a separate meta wiki just for the english
> >>wikipedia, presumably because many things currently on meta.wikipedia
> >>are not really applicable to other wikipedias?
>
> Uh. No.
> The proposal born from the fact several editors from the english
> wikipedia recently decided to entirely fix meta as they believed it was
> best. THeir work to categorize meta generally met approval. Their work
> to clean meta (understand speedy delete) generally met opprobe.
>

This is the way I see it, too.  In general I lean towards keeping
documentation unless it's absolutely useless--and I'm not about to
make that call.  I will be working on categorising pages in main
namespace for a while, in the hope that this will help us to at least
see all the documents as part of the organisation of meta, and further
refine it to correctly mark those that are, at least for now,
inactive.


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Analysis of Request for Adminship

body:
On 4/2/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Indeed.  I'm not clear when the policy that a non-admin cannot close
> an AfD came into play, for example.  When I was first an admin, it was
> the case that non-admins could close AfDs, but it's my understanding
> now that a non-admin who attempts to close an AfD will probably get
> blocked.

Provided it's not done maliciously, I personally undertake to unblock
anyone who is blocked for this.

--
Sam


body:
On 4/2/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Last month bureaucrats on en changed user rights 35 times, 22 of them
> by Cecropia.
>
> Last month bureaucrats on en renamed users 97 times, 62 of them by NichalP.
>
> There is, so far as I know, no evidence of a backlog for either activity.
>
> Seems like we don't need any more bureaucrats, and likely won't for
> quite a while.

Just to be clear, Cecropia has just resigned his bureaucratship.
Whether we do need more is soon to be seen.  However, I am sure that
we need fewer, as almost all are completely inactive as bureaucrats,
which isn't good.

--
Sam


from_name: michael_irwin at verizon.net

subject: [Foundation-l] [WikiEN-l] Meta:MetaProject to Overhaul Meta

body:
Cormac Lawler wrote:

>Ah, right - that's definitely a point - that would apply to Wikimedia
>UK. But this is about people not_using_Meta, rather than
>Meta_itself_being_unusable. I'd really like more people to get
>involved on Meta, and as much as I link to pages from Wikipedia notice
>boards etc., only a small number actually come. And before anybody
>jumps on this and says "look, that's what we've been saying all along
>- Meta is unusable", I would say "well, i've been agreeing with you
>all along - Meta needs improvement". :-)
>
>

That is not necessarily a meta problem.  People do not like to waste
their time and energy being ignored.

Very few people are going to participate in a process that involves
yakking some trivia to death and then waiting breathlessly to see what
the Board or designated agents will decide all by themselves via secret
information, interests, and discussion without exhibiting much evidence
they even bothered to read the yak yak.

regards,
lazyquasar


from_name: Cormac Lawler

subject: [WikiEN-l] Project proposal

body:
On 3/31/06, flogan1 at swarthmore.edu <flogan1 at swarthmore.edu> wrote:
>
> Hello list! I'm new to the list, so perhaps a short intro is in order. My
> name is Finlay and I am known to WP as Cantara. I've been a Wikipedian since
> sometime in 2004, but have only become really active in the last few months.
> I joined the list at the suggestion of CComMack, who thought that an idea I
> had (see below) might want input from people knowledgeably about policy and
> so forth.
>
> My idea is this. We all know that Wikipedia is great and all, repository of
> the world's information, &c. However, there are people who disagree, who
> think that Wikipedia is inaccurate because it is written by people who are
> not experts and because it lacks oversight (or whatever it is they're saying
> now). When considering these two things together, I realized that there is a
> kind of information that Wikipedia seriously lacks, and that is
> bibliographies. If you've written a research paper lately (I'm writing two at
> the moment, myself) you know that the list of books that the author has read
> is just as valuable as whatever the book itself is about. However,
> Wikipedians don't really make an effort to include "further reading" as part
> of the entry, beyond what they list as citations.
>
> I wanted to start a project to focus on getting that store of information
> into Wikipedia, and once I get around to it I'll list it on Proposed
> Projects. However, as mentioned about, a fellow editor suggested that a
> project like this might have repurcussions in other areas (and I hope he
> responds to explain what they were - something about the manual of style?).
>
> Discuss, then, and if you'd like to help, I'll have information up somewhere
> on my userpage fairly soon.
>
> Yours,
> Cantara

Hi Finlay,

I think there's real merit to this idea, and, though I understand the
previously mentioned problems of blindly adding books for the sake of
it or adding books for commercial interest, this needn't deter people
from building (and then accessing) a comprehensive bibliography on a
given subject.

I agree this could be done better in Wikipedia in general (though
there are obvious good examples where this *is* done well). But I'm
thinking this could fit quite well with Wikiversity (another proposed
project), which will (amongst other things) assemble a network of
references for further reading on a topic. You can see details for
this project at:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikiversity/Modified_project_proposal -
though there is much more information on this (something I'm working
on at the moment).

What do you think?

Cormac

> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Mikkerpikker

subject: [WikiEN-l] Project proposal

body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's a nice idea, but who determines what's worth listing in such a
> further reading section and what will you do to stop people from
> spamming long lists of books into such sections?
>
> You'd also need to find a way to teach people the difference between
> "further reading" and "references" or it might lose us a lot of
> references in the process because of people ignorant on the subject.
>
> Mgm

Yeah, I agree. Nice idea, but a bibliography is only useful if the
person who created it has actually read the books/articles. Many
people will just randomly throw books they've heard about once into
the bibliography...


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

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

Philip Welch stated for the record:

> If I wrote an article that had bare breasts, I wouldn't be in the
> least offended if someone tagged it as "has bare breasts".

And if you wrote an article about dinosaurs, or one about a homosexual
that conformed to NPOV regarding the subject's sex life, would you be
offended if someone tagged either as "promotes heresy"?

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Time is nature's way of keeping
 sean at epoptic.org | everything from happening all at once.
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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VBLYMprEERZr3jcMfhChmhY=
=LDZb
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body:
On 4/2/06, Elisabeth Bauer <elian at djini.de> wrote:
> Cormac Lawler schrieb:
>
> > The fact that people might not be using the Wikimedia UK pages (if
> > that's true) is a symptom of the fact that *we* haven't provided for
> > that. That's you, me, and the others who have been working on this
> > over the last few months. If you want to get participation of and
> > ideas from Welsh speakers, you use a variety of methods (email, wiki,
> > IRC, real-life meetings) and a variety of these mailing lists, wikis,
> > chatrooms and community gatherings to bring together some ideas. The
> > fact that it's not what we want it to be right now is nothing to do
> > with Meta *itself*.
>
> When we started Wikimedia Deutschland, we decided to use meta-wiki to
> host the wiki pages related to the verein instead of hosting them on the
> german wikipedia. The effect: nothings happens there. I think
> participation on these pages would have been much higher, had they been
> in the german wikipedia. I don't know the situation for the other
> chapters, but it might be similar.
>
> So, it somehow _has_ to do with meta itself.
>
> greetings,
> elian

Ah, right - that's definitely a point - that would apply to Wikimedia
UK. But this is about people not_using_Meta, rather than
Meta_itself_being_unusable. I'd really like more people to get
involved on Meta, and as much as I link to pages from Wikipedia notice
boards etc., only a small number actually come. And before anybody
jumps on this and says "look, that's what we've been saying all along
- Meta is unusable", I would say "well, i've been agreeing with you
all along - Meta needs improvement". :-)

Cormac

> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On Apr 2, 2006, at 7:58 PM, Sean Barrett wrote:

>> If I wrote an article that had bare breasts, I wouldn't be in the
>> least offended if someone tagged it as "has bare breasts".
>
> And if you wrote an article about dinosaurs, or one about a homosexual
> that conformed to NPOV regarding the subject's sex life, would you be
> offended if someone tagged either as "promotes heresy"?

That's a straw man and I won't dignify it with a response.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Thommandel at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ethics - conflict of interest - relia

body:
In a message dated 4/2/2006 1:32:51 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
guettarda at gmail.com writes:

The  essence of NPOV is to be able to "write for your enemies".  It's a  great
(and somewhat humbling) experience to write fairly about something  you
disagree with or someone you dislike.

Sounds good, but what if the writing is not fair?  How does the NPOV  handle
that?  What if the writing is contradictory data, and the admin says  on entry
(A) that it belongs on entry (B) and on entry (B) he says it belongs on  (A)?
Is that what you call   Neutral

                                    callNeutral  writing?

And what about when contradictory evidence is mentioned, and the admin
simply reverts it out with the comment "That does not explain why..."  And  what if
he comes over from his home entry, and adds to his enemies page "This  theory
has been widely discredited by most cosmologists."  And then starts  an
argument over the meaning of the word cosmologist...And what if when he is in  a
dispute, he closes the discussion with a claim of disruption, incompetence,
silly,  said that the one expert editing has "questionable credentials, "  and
when his edits get reverted, he threatens to ban the one editor who has done
most of the work citing vandalism or some other Wikipolicy violation.  And  when
evidence of this behavoir is copied over to the discussion page, His friend
deletes it. And when I suggest that in the real world that action would
constitute obstruction of justice, I am arrested for making a legal threat and
banned from Wikipedia without a hearing.

Is that an example of your Wiki NPOV?

tm


from_name: Guettarda

subject: [WikiEN-l] what are the ethics involved?

body:
On 4/2/06, Thommandel at aol.com <Thommandel at aol.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>         What if the editor only  thinks he is a good wikipedian, but in
> reality
>          by what he  does, is actually promoting a POV? How is that
> determined?
>         and where is the line  drawn between good editing and POV pushing?

If someone is making a good faith attempt at NPOV, but are being
unsuccessful, then you need to let them know what the problem is with their
editing.  Do so in a polite, collegial manner, and clearly reference sources
and policy.

> If a reader, a researcher say, accesses  the pages of standard and non-
>         standard theories, what  kind of "neutrality" is he looking for?
> If
> there is a
>         controversy between  standard and non-standard, was it good
> editing
> to
>         remove that controversy  from the Wikientry?    Is it "neutral"
> for
> an admin
>         editor advocate of the  standard theory to write "non-standard
> theories are
>         widely discredited" on  the non-standard theory page?

It's more than "neutral" to do so, it's necessary.  If non-standard theories
have been discredited, then the article needs to say so.

>
>         You are assuming "good Wikipedian"  but what about not-good
>         Wikipedian  admin/editors? How do you  identify  them?
>         For example, what  sort of evidence  would you want  if I were
>         to present a case  against an aledged  wikiadmin pov  pusher?

An article RFC is probably the best way to go in a case like this - get
input from other editors


from_name: zero 0000

subject: [WikiEN-l] Nature replies to Britannica

body:
Sorry if someone posted this already, but I didn't see it.
The current issue of Nature has a reply to Britannica.
It is subscription-only so giving a link won't help.
There is an editorial and a slightly longer reply that
does not need subscription (see link near the end
of the editorial).

Zero.

=============================

Editorial

Nature 440, 582 (30 March 2006) | doi:10.1038/440582b

Britannica attacks
... and we respond.

Last December, Nature published a News story about the accuracy of two
online references sources. We compared the website of an established
publication, Encyclopaedia Britannica, with that of Wikipedia, a new
kind of online encyclopaedia that anyone can edit and update,
regardless of expertise.

The result (see Nature 438, 900?901; 2005) surprised us, and many
others. Forty-two expert reviewers carried out the comparison. After we
had tallied their results, we saw that they had picked up errors (the
great majority of them minor) at a rate of about three per online
Britannica item and about four per Wikipedia item.

Last week, Encyclopaedia Britannica issued a statement
(http://corporate.britannica.com/britannica_nature_response.pdf), and
this week published a half-page advertisement in the London Times
criticizing our study and demanding that we retract our story.

Britannica complains that we did not check the errors that our
reviewers identified, and that some of them are not errors at all. We
disagree with their claims in some of the cases (others are too
specialized for an immediate response), but there is a more important
point to make. Our reviewers may have made some mistakes ? we have been
open about our methodology and never claimed otherwise ? but the
entries they reviewed were blinded: they did not know which entry came
from Wikipedia and which from Britannica. We see no reason to believe
that any misidentifications of errors would adversely affect one
publication more than the other. And of the 123 purported errors in
question, Britannica takes issue with fewer than half.

Another Britannica criticism concerns the fact that we provided
material from other Britannica publications, such as the Britannica
Book of the Year. This was deliberate: the aim of our story, as we made
clear, was to compare the online material available from Britannica and
Wikipedia. When users search Britannica online, they get results from
several Britannica publications. They have no reason to think that any
one is less reliable than the others. In the case of some year-book
entries, Britannica itself asks readers to reference the articles as
coming from "Encyclopaedia Britannica Online" ? exactly the source we
set out to compare.

Other objections are simply incorrect. The company has, for example,
claimed that in one case we sent a reviewer material that did not come
from any Britannica publication. When the company made this point to us
in private we asked for details, but it provided none. Now Britannica
has identified the review in question as being on ethanol. We have
checked the original e-mail that we sent to the reviewer who looked at
the Britannica article on ethanol, and it is clear to us that all the
reviewer's comments refer to specific paragraphs from Britannica.

Our responses to the points raised by Britannica in its original online
posting and in its subsequent advertisement can be found at
http://www.nature.com/press_releases/Britannica_response.pdf. Our
comparison was unbiased, and we reject Britannica's allegation that we
have acted in a dishonest manner. We stand by the story.

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


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
At 21:58 +1000 2/4/06, Angela wrote:
>  > On the left, under "Navigation", I find
>>
>  > >>  Newest changes
>
>IIRC, the idea was to keep to the 1000 basic words at
><http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_1000_basic_words>.
>"Recent" isn't one of them, but "new" is.
>
>Three new admins were made last month, so if you suggest changes to
>the navigation at
>http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_talk someone should
>be able to implement your suggestions.
>
>Angela.

Thanks for the pointer.

I have suspicion that the one thousand word vocabulary idea has been
modified. I recall that the "BBC Worldservice" had dropped the news
in English using that restricted vocabulary.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/newsenglish/

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


from_name: Angela

subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
> On the left, under "Navigation", I find
>
> >>  Newest changes

IIRC, the idea was to keep to the 1000 basic words at
<http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:List_of_1000_basic_words>.
"Recent" isn't one of them, but "new" is.

Three new admins were made last month, so if you suggest changes to
the navigation at
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Simple_talk someone should
be able to implement your suggestions.

Angela.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

body:
On Sun, 2 Apr 2006 11:55:53 -0600, you wrote:

>There's no reason why a non-admin cannot close a keep, except that the
>process wonks have decided that only an admin can do this, for no
>reason that makes any sense to me.

I wasn't aware that even the process wonks had decided this.  I'm
pretty sure I closed some speedy keeps before I was an admin, nobody
called me on it.
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
My assertion remains the menu words do not have to be words in Simple English.

For example "portal" - is that meaning (of that word) in Simple English?

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Specialpages and overdue note

body:
On 02/04/06, Aerik Sylvan <aerik at thesylvans.com> wrote:
> I must be completely stupid, but I can't seem to create a special page for
> mediawiki 1.5.8 following any flavor of the instructions on Meta - Help!!!

Exactly what are you having trouble with? I presume you're writing an extension?

Rob Church


from_name: Minh Nguyen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia Survey

body:
Just to help people out, interiot's Edit Counter tool
<http://tools.wikimedia.de/~interiot/cgi-bin/count_edits/> can break
down your total edits by month and hour and provide insight on your
editing patterns.

eromanme at gmu.edu wrote:
> Dear Wikipedians,
>
> I am a professor at George Mason University (Virginia, USA), and I am researching the Wikipedia contribution practices. As part of my research, I am conducting a survey of Wikipedians. If you would like to participate, you can access the survey at
>
> http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=276181968078
>
> The survey consits of 33 short questions, and It should not take you longer than 15 minutes to complete the questionnaire. Your participation in the survey is completely anonymous.
>
> Thank you very much for your help. Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.
>
> Best regards,
> Esperanza
--
Minh Nguyen <mxn at zoomtown.com>
AIM: trycom2000; Jabber: mxn at myjabber.net; Blog: http://mxn.f2o.org/


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Towards arbitrary client-side JavaScript execution

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
>>> * Why does MediaWiki ever allow unescaped ">" characters? This
>>> behaviour seem to increase the chances of a JavaScript security
>>> problem.
>> It doesn't, modulo uncaught bugs.
>
> Well, all I can tell you is that this is the behaviour that I observe.

That's why they're called "bugs".

> Question: will this break wikis with $wgRawHtml on? (Used to embed
> arbitrary HTML.)

Arbitrary HTML, by being arbitrary, does not have attribute normalization
applied to it.

> Instead, we now have one article, and one template. For the template
> (call it "Template:OpenTag") we have:
> ------------------------------------
> {| BGCOLOR=
> ------------------------------------
>
> Then in the article we have:
> ------------------------------------
> {{OpenTag}}
> ------------------------------------
>
> Which now renders as this HTML output:
> ------------------------------------
>
>>>>>
>

> <table bgcolor="

I'm afraid I can't reproduce your output here; I see:

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

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

Are you keeping up to date with the code?

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
David Alexander Russell wrote:
> Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> jayjg wrote:
>>
>>> There are people who are working towards getting several userids up to
>>> admin
>>>
>>> status, doing uncontroverisal editing in areas they don't care about, so
>>> that they can then use that status to enforce their views in areas which are
>>> truly of concern to them.  This has been advertised and discussed on
>>> off-Wikipedia fora.
>>>
>>
>> Maybe we should simply ban socksysops.  Checkuser could be used to
>> identify that kind of abuse.
>>
>
> How about just banning all sockpuppets?
>

Identifying sockpuppets is more of an art than a science. Per
[[WP:BEANS]], I won't elaborate any further.

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

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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
NSLE (Wikipedia) (nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com) [060402 19:05]:

> Besides, it's supposed to be simple. Unless you can think of something
> simpler?

    http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Babel:Simple

Uncyclopedia for Americans!

- d.


from_name: Mark Gallagher

body:
G'day Thom,

> Is it ethical for a Wiki editor, who is also an admistrator,  to edit  both
> sides of an issue?

If that editor is a good Wikipedian --- and, being an administrator, we
should hope he is --- then it is entirely appropriate for him (or her)
to edit any article he (or she) damn well pleases.

It's called "writing from a netural point-of-view", and some of us pride
ourselves on our ability to do just that.

You might as well ask if it's ethical for me to edit an article about
Manchester United FC ...

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.4/299 - Release Date: 31/03/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] emailing to "query being blocked"

body:
(cc'ed in case you aren't subscribed to the list)

G'day Lauren,

> This evening I saw something that I knew to be inaccurate on a Wikipedia
> page (namely on the *Starbucks* page).  I often visit Wikipedia, and enjoy
> reading it, but never before had I ever attempted to edit anything.  So I
> was really surprised when I clicked on the *edit* button and it send me to a
> page informing me that I was blocked.  I would like to find out why my I.P.
> address is associated with this event, and I appreciate your efforts in
> looking into this.

This happens often.  On Wikipedia, we (perhaps tactlessly) refer to it
as "collateral damage".  It means that you are editing from the same IP
address as someone who has made malicious edits ("vandalism").  We
recognise that this is not your fault, and will usually try to unblock
people caught up as you were as soon as we can.

> *General info*:
>
> I do not have an account at this time, so no username.
>
> My I.P. address is *198.151.179.66*
> **
> Wikipedia says that I was blocked by *Refdoc* for "vandalism," but does not
> specify any further (i.e. what it was concerning).

I've checked the relevant logs, and an editor using the computer you
used at uni made this edit back in September:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=University_of_the_Ozarks&diff=prev&oldid=24875327>

I am not sure why your IP address remained blocked over all this time,
as we generally try to keep our IP blocks as short as possible to avoid
as much as possible affecting legitimate editors like yourself.

> I would be really pleased if this could be sorted out/cleared up,
> explained, and I could then create an account with Wikipedia.  I really want
> to find out what this "block" is referring to.  Again, thank you for your
> time.

I've unblocked you, and apologise for the inconvenience caused.  Thanks
for supporting Wikipedia: first impressions notwithstanding, good
authors *are* always welcome! :-)

Thanks,

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.4/299 - Release Date: 31/03/2006


body:
G'day David,

> A quick 'WHOIS' reveals that your IP is registered to Austin College.
> Most colleges operate 'proxy' systems so that everyone accessing the
> internet from that college will have the same IP address. The problem
> this presents is that if ANYONE in your college vandalizes Wikipedia,
> you will see the warning messages and suffer from the ban that has to be
> imposed. There isn't a lot that can be done about this - all you can do
> is wait for the ban to expire or try editing from a non-college computer

That won't be possible, as the IP was blocked indefinitely in September
2005.

The IP's contribs show only the one edit; it's unlikely that an entire
university would produce only a single edit, and even if Austin only
connected to the Internet in late 2005, the blocking would presumably
have generated *some* complaint.  As such ISTM that the entire
University wasn't blocked, but rather one workstation, which Ms Sweat
had the misfortune to edit from some months later.

There's very rarely a good reason to indefinitely block an IP address
(only do it in cases of open proxies, or Raul's cunning "email me to get
unblocked, school administrators" manoeuvre), and in this case the
blocking admin almost certainly did not have enough information to make
the "block forever" call like that.  I'll take the issue up with him.

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

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.385 / Virus Database: 268.3.4/299 - Release Date: 31/03/2006


subject: [WikiEN-l] One month block from Wikipedia

body:
> Actually, nobody accused you of being any of those thing's; they just
> pointed out some rather unsavory comments you had made.? If you
> think those comments made you look like a neo-Nazi/racist/anti-Semite,
> then perhaps you should have thought twice before making them.

While you have a good point, the accusations were quite pointed... I don't believe I could have interpreted them any other way. Some of the statements that I made, such as on the older WR board, were mis-statements - I had't said what I had intended to say, and therefore, my intentions and meaning behind that was taken the wrong way.

> In any event, since that point you've used dozens of IPs to continue
> your attacks, and deliberately vandalized WikiMedia and
> WikiCommons.? Are you really suggesting that, at this point, you
> should be allowed to come back to Wikipedia?
>
> Jay.

No, I'm not suggesting this at all, anymore. My email wasn't timely - my message got sent to the moderated list, and by the time it was cleared to the actual list, the situation had already escalated beyond repair. I don't expect to be unblocked anytime soon, if ever, but that doesn't bother me as much anymore. I do not intend to come back to Wikipedia as Blu Aardvark. If I do decide I want to edit Wikipedia (and I have not at this point decided that I want to continue to contribute), I will come back and make a fresh start with a fresh account. Just... seems more maneagable that way.

I do apologize for our misunderstanding, Jay. I shouldn't have said those things that I said to and about you. In retrospect, it seems as if we both misunderstood each other, expected the worst, and got what we expected as a result.


body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> So I get the same behaviour with 1.5.8 - which I believe is the most
> up to date released version that I can get.

That's before the fixes checked in on head (which will go into 1.5.9 also).

> Exactly how "up to date" do you mean? If you're talking CVS-checkout
> up-to-date, then no, I'm not up to date. But neither are most people,
> I daresay. What I'm personal interested in is the behaviour of
> released available-now production-ready-here-and-now
> latest-and-greatest-stable-version software, for the simple reason
> that that's the software I know I'll use.

That'd be 1.6.0 as of tomorrow or shortly thereafter.

> However, undeterred, I checked out from CVS following the cvs checkout
> instructions on http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_CVS :

We're junking CVS due to longtime problems and a total outage for the last few
days; grab current code from Subersion.
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Subversion

> Completely ignoring the directions, I tried to use it anyway, but got
> various errors. No big surprise, but it didn't hurt to try. So, short
> of upgrading the system I'm using, it's as up-to-date as can be.

Well, upgrading would be nice. :)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> ------------------------------------
> {|
> | |[ftp://|x||]" onmouseover="alert(document.cookie)">test
> ------------------------------------

I've tossed in a quick tweak to the table parser to reduce the danger of this;
it'll now attempt to do the || split only outside of tags. The above example
still ends up with bad nesting (not well-formed XML output) but there's nothing
injected into the attribute area.

(It might also make sense to move the table translation several steps up, before
the various link parsing. In theory, we can think of it as a transformation from
one wiki-markup to another wiki-markup bit. Probably we'll want a bigger set of
test cases for tables, however; anyone want to scour the help pages and
infoboxes and such?)

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: herostratus at comcast.net

subject: [WikiEN-l] request to Jimbo for out-of-process deletion of image

body:
Jimbo -

I hate to ask this, and wouldn't if I could think of a better solution, but would you please consider an out-of-process deletion of the image

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hikari_Hayashibara_Manga.jpg

Which illustrates the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon

This is a Manga drawing of a female about age seven, rear view, kneeling on bed, looking back over shoulder. Underpants pulled down revealing buttocks, subject is holding a toy stuffed bear which wears sado-masochism regalia (studded leather straps) and a prominant strap-on dildo.

I know that we don't shy from including shocking or revolting images on the 'pedia, but this is just over the top, all the way to just plain evil.

I don't think this is the kind of image that you want to get hit with during an interview. I also don't think this ia good way to surprise our readers in countries where this image is illegal, and I don't think its inclusion reflects well on the 'pedia or attracts the kind of publicity and readership (and editorship) that we want.  So I wanted to bring the image to your attention. If you're OK with it, or are not OK with deleting it out-of-process, that's your call.

There has been much discussion on the [[Lolicon]] talk page and recently on the Images for Deletion, with no clear consensus to delete, and the next step absent a deletion by fiat is Request for Comments. That will certainly result in much typing and probably in no consensus to delete, and I'd rather see if you will just destroy the image before going through all that.

Thanks for your attention,
Herostratus


from_name: Phil Boswell

subject:
[Foundation-l] Rodovid.org, family tree wiki,
 wishes to become a wiki project

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
>
>   We also need to address the privacy
> issues.  The copyright question may turn out to be a less critical
> problem.
>

Has anybody thought to check the "World Family Tree"?

As far as I can tell, having been redirected to ancestry.co.uk which appears
to be the UK version, they do not display information about living family
members born after 1930 to anybody except the owner of the tree.

Don't know how wiki that is, but it's somewhere to start.

HTH HAND
--
Phil
--
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Rodovid.org%2C-family-tree-wiki%2C-wishes-to-become-a-wiki-project-t1331307.html#a3725260
Sent from the WikiMedia Foundation forum at Nabble.com.


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
In some countries it's also illegal to show a penis or someone
masturbating and we won't have those images deleted from their
respective articles any time soon. I don't think you can call it
surprising the reader when they know what article they're visiting
either.

Perhaps, you'll have a better chance of asking this image to be
replaced with one that doesn't contain an SM bear and dildo.

Mgm

On 4/3/06, herostratus at comcast.net <herostratus at comcast.net> wrote:
> Jimbo -
>
> I hate to ask this, and wouldn't if I could think of a better solution, but would you please consider an out-of-process deletion of the image
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hikari_Hayashibara_Manga.jpg
>
> Which illustrates the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon
>
> This is a Manga drawing of a female about age seven, rear view, kneeling on bed, looking back over shoulder. Underpants pulled down revealing buttocks, subject is holding a toy stuffed bear which wears sado-masochism regalia (studded leather straps) and a prominant strap-on dildo.
>
> I know that we don't shy from including shocking or revolting images on the 'pedia, but this is just over the top, all the way to just plain evil.
>
> I don't think this is the kind of image that you want to get hit with during an interview. I also don't think this ia good way to surprise our readers in countries where this image is illegal, and I don't think its inclusion reflects well on the 'pedia or attracts the kind of publicity and readership (and editorship) that we want.  So I wanted to bring the image to your attention. If you're OK with it, or are not OK with deleting it out-of-process, that's your call.
>
> There has been much discussion on the [[Lolicon]] talk page and recently on the Images for Deletion, with no clear consensus to delete, and the next step absent a deletion by fiat is Request for Comments. That will certainly result in much typing and probably in no consensus to delete, and I'd rather see if you will just destroy the image before going through all that.
>
> Thanks for your attention,
> Herostratus
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Ryan Delaney

body:
On 4/3/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> Now if it was a free picture, not a copyrighted one with a somewhat
> dubious fair use claim I might feel inclined to defend it.
>

I agree with this. I would be much more inclined to defend this image if we
weren't already bending over backwards, both legally and morally, to justify
its inclusion. I don't believe that Wikipedia should be censored either but
we have to draw the line somewhere, and fair use child porn ought to be
outside the boundary.

Ryan


from_name: Sean Barrett

subject:
[WikiEN-l] External links to image boards with images of a
 child engaged in sexually explicit acts.

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

Sydney Poore stated for the record:

> Instead of a single image that can be presented in a context to make it
> clear it is educational , a bigger concern is external links to image
> boards with images of a child engaged in sexually explicit act.  These
> appear on Wikipedia on a regular basis. When I went  to image board web
> sites to look for inappropriate images, I felt disgusted that another
> Wikipedia editor would put it on Wikipedia. I think we need to modify
> our policy/guidelines dealing with images with children engaged in
> sexually explicit acts. They should not be permitted in my opinion.
> Editors that repeatedly add them should be blocked for being disruptive.

Certain sites stand out as excellent starting points for such a policy.
 The worst offender is something called "Google," which has innumerable
links to inappropriate material.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Honk if you've never seen a gun
 sean at epoptic.org | fired from a moving vehicle.
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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hRHRiotz8VRHA8NouJtS3w8=
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from_name: Steve Bennett

subject: [WikiEN-l] (No subject)

body:
On 3/30/06, Geoffrey Burling <llywrch at agora.rdrop.com> wrote:
> Thanks. It's clearly something for our ambassadors to say when a
> jourmalist repeats the claim that Wikipedia has this collection of
> pr0n beneath the surface. Say, along the lines of "I'm not aware of
> that allegation, & while I doubt its accuracy anyone concerned can
> easily filter out objectionable material by looking at the article's
> category."

Filtering on category is a very broad brush. You would end up wiping
out straight forward sexual education material with no objectional
images, in the same blow as porn or sex positions or whatever. Content
tagging the pages or images themselves would work a lot better.

Steve


body:
On 3/31/06, Lars Aronsson <lars at aronsson.se> wrote:
> One of the archaic pages on meta is
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikispecies
> which hasn't really changed much since September 2004. The project
> proposal is dead, nobody works on it.  There are few better
> examples of dead meat on meta.

Wikispecies doesn't seem to be dead.

http://species.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Recentchanges

Steve


body:
On 4/3/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
>
> Jimbo is liable for 10 years imprisonment should he ever visit New
> Zealand.

Not to split hairs, but wouldn't he have had to have possessed the child
porn while in New Zealand to be liable?

Anyway, why are we all sitting around waiting? Will someone just delete this
image and be done with it already?

Ryan


from_name: SP

body:
Would Jimbo or someone else from the Foundation please look at of my
comments at
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AImages_and_media_for_deletion%2F2006_March_29&diff=46739530&oldid=46719757
<http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AImages_and_media_for_deletion%2F2006_March_29&diff=46739530&oldid=46719757>
and correct me if I have overstated the Foundation and Jimbo's opinion
on  the use of free images over fair use images.

I also have a slightly different opinion on the use of this photo (or a
similar free one) for educational purposes.  While the image itself is
horrible because it depicts the sexual exploitation of a child, its use
for educational purposes is not horrible. It is one of the least
offensive images available to illustrates the sexual exploitation of a
child. There are ways to make it obvious that it is being used for
educational purposes. Displaying the image lower on the page, reducing
the size of the image or using a link are possibilities. It has not been
used that way on Wikipedia and that is the problem. There are editors
arguing for the inclusion of the image because there is nothing
offensive about the image. These comments will get use close scrutiny
from groups like Perverted Justice. I don't know how it fix that as long
as we permit open discussion on talk pages.

regards,
Sydney aka FloNight

herostratus at comcast.net wrote:
> Jimbo -
>
> I hate to ask this, and wouldn't if I could think of a better solution, but would you please consider an out-of-process deletion of the image
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Hikari_Hayashibara_Manga.jpg
>
> Which illustrates the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolicon
>
> This is a Manga drawing of a female about age seven, rear view, kneeling on bed, looking back over shoulder. Underpants pulled down revealing buttocks, subject is holding a toy stuffed bear which wears sado-masochism regalia (studded leather straps) and a prominant strap-on dildo.
>
> I know that we don't shy from including shocking or revolting images on the 'pedia, but this is just over the top, all the way to just plain evil.
>
> I don't think this is the kind of image that you want to get hit with during an interview. I also don't think this ia good way to surprise our readers in countries where this image is illegal, and I don't think its inclusion reflects well on the 'pedia or attracts the kind of publicity and readership (and editorship) that we want.  So I wanted to bring the image to your attention. If you're OK with it, or are not OK with deleting it out-of-process, that's your call.
>
> There has been much discussion on the [[Lolicon]] talk page and recently on the Images for Deletion, with no clear consensus to delete, and the next step absent a deletion by fiat is Request for Comments. That will certainly result in much typing and probably in no consensus to delete, and I'd rather see if you will just destroy the image before going through all that.
>
> Thanks for your attention,
> Herostratus
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

--
Sydney Poore

Go Bengals!


body:
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Sydney Poore stated for the record:

> Are you equating Google search, where some one must deliberately type in
> the words, to an external link to image boards on an article? Or are you
> talking about Google images site?
>
> Sydney aka FloNight
>
> Sean Barrett wrote:
>
> Sydney Poore stated for the record:
>
>
>
>>Instead of a single image that can be presented in a context to make it
>>clear it is educational , a bigger concern is external links to image
>>boards with images of a child engaged in sexually explicit act.  These
>>appear on Wikipedia on a regular basis. When I went  to image board web
>>sites to look for inappropriate images, I felt disgusted that another
>>Wikipedia editor would put it on Wikipedia. I think we need to modify
>>our policy/guidelines dealing with images with children engaged in
>>sexually explicit acts. They should not be permitted in my opinion.
>>Editors that repeatedly add them should be blocked for being disruptive.
>
>
> Certain sites stand out as excellent starting points for such a policy.
>  The worst offender is something called "Google," which has innumerable
> links to inappropriate material.

You wrote, and I quote, "When I went to image board web sites to look
for inappropriate images, I felt disgusted...."  If you go deliberately
looking for inappropriate images, you shouldn't be disappointed when you
succeed.

- --
 Sean Barrett     | Honk if you've never seen a gun
 sean at epoptic.org | fired from a moving vehicle.
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from_name: Philip Welch

body:
On Apr 2, 2006, at 9:56 AM, Kelly Martin wrote:

> On 4/1/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
>> Kelly, you seem to always ascribe bad faith to people for no reason
>> other than the fact they disagree with you. I wish I had a solution
>> to THAT problem.
>
> Nonsense.  I have never attributed bad faith to Geogre, Johnleemk,
> JayJG, Raul654, for example, despite disagreeing with them, in some
> cases quite vehemently.
>
> The comments you so pithily dismissed as "assuming bad faith" are
> simply my observations on the political nature of the Wikipedia
> community.  You apparently don't like those observations, and so
> you've accused me of assuming bad faith by making them.  Talk about
> the pot calling the kettle black.

You made a blanket assertion that anyone who opposes "special
administrator selection committees" are "more interested in Wikipedia
as an social experiment" for no clear reason other than the fact that
they oppose taking decision-making power out of the hands of the
common contributor. While that's an admirable way to trivialize
opposing points of view, it also marginalizes those of us who oppose
that sort of cabalism *because* we want to write a comprehensive and
accurate encyclopedia from the neutral point of view. Instead of
addressing opposing views, the sorts of blanket assertions you're
making serve only to dismiss them without consideration by attacking
people's supposed motivations.

If that's not a textbook example of assumption of bad faith, ad
hominem, and a straw man, I don't know what is.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: Fastfission

body:
Take a look at our page on [[WP:NPOV]]. If you are trying to come up
with a formulation or even an agreement that people should be excluded
from editing certain topics based on "ethical" considerations you will
not find one on this list or on our policy pages. Wikipedia's
neutrality policy does not care whether one agrees or disagrees with a
topic ahead of time; it concerns only the actual content written. If
something does not meet NPOV, there are methods for looking for second
opinions and getting things changed. But there is no "ethical" issue
here, nothing that can a priori get you around the NPOV policy based
on pre-held opinions or anything like that.

Obviously NPOV is a hard thing to reach and people disagree all the
time on its implementation -- that's just how things work on here. It
sounds to me like you are just disagreeing with an implementation of
NPOV. Try to work it out with the editor(s) in question; if you still
feel you want a second opinion you can try listing an article Request
for Comments ([[WP:RFC]]). But there's no way you are going to get
permission to trump the opinions of other editors in all situations,
no matter how you vaguely describe it on here.

FF

On 4/2/06, Thommandel at aol.com <Thommandel at aol.com> wrote:
>
> In a message dated 4/2/2006 1:32:51 P.M. Central Daylight Time,
> guettarda at gmail.com writes:
>
> The  essence of NPOV is to be able to "write for your enemies".  It's a  great
> (and somewhat humbling) experience to write fairly about something  you
> disagree with or someone you dislike.
>
>
>
> Sounds good, but what if the writing is not fair?  How does the NPOV  handle
> that?  What if the writing is contradictory data, and the admin says  on entry
> (A) that it belongs on entry (B) and on entry (B) he says it belongs on  (A)?
> Is that what you call   Neutral
>                                     callNeutral  writing?
>
> And what about when contradictory evidence is mentioned, and the admin
> simply reverts it out with the comment "That does not explain why..."  And  what if
> he comes over from his home entry, and adds to his enemies page "This  theory
> has been widely discredited by most cosmologists."  And then starts  an
> argument over the meaning of the word cosmologist...And what if when he is in  a
> dispute, he closes the discussion with a claim of disruption, incompetence,
> silly,  said that the one expert editing has "questionable credentials, "  and
> when his edits get reverted, he threatens to ban the one editor who has done
> most of the work citing vandalism or some other Wikipolicy violation.  And  when
> evidence of this behavoir is copied over to the discussion page, His friend
> deletes it. And when I suggest that in the real world that action would
> constitute obstruction of justice, I am arrested for making a legal threat and
> banned from Wikipedia without a hearing.
>
> Is that an example of your Wiki NPOV?
>
> tm
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Obviously, I don't think it is child pornography. This is a lolicon
drawing. It is clear that it is not a real child.

To be clear, I think the image is horrible because it shows the sexual
exploitation of a child in a benign manner. Pro-pedophilia groups argue
that children consent to and enjoy sex with adults. This is horrible.
Using of this photo to make it clear what pro-pedophilia want to be
available is a good thing.
Sydney aka FloNight

Justin Cormack wrote:
> On 3 Apr 2006, at 13:24, SP wrote:
>
>> I also have a slightly different opinion on the use of this photo
>> (or a
>> similar free one) for educational purposes.  While the image itself is
>> horrible because it depicts the sexual exploitation of a child, its
>> use
>> for educational purposes is not horrible. It is one of the least
>> offensive images available to illustrates the sexual exploitation of a
>> child. There are ways to make it obvious that it is being used for
>> educational purposes. Displaying the image lower on the page, reducing
>> the size of the image or using a link are possibilities. It has not
>> been
>> used that way on Wikipedia and that is the problem. There are editors
>> arguing for the inclusion of the image because there is nothing
>> offensive about the image. These comments will get use close scrutiny
>> from groups like Perverted Justice. I don't know how it fix that as
>> long
>> as we permit open discussion on talk pages.
>>
>
> And why exactly is it necessary to use an image. Surely this is a
> case where
> a word is better than a thousand images.
>
> Educational use is not a permitted exemption for showing child
> pornography
> in any jurisdiction.
>
> Justinc


body:
Correction: should have written using this IMAGE. It is not a photo.
Sydney aka FloNight

SP wrote:
> Obviously, I don't think it is child pornography. This is a lolicon
> drawing. It is clear that it is not a real child.
>
> To be clear, I think the image is horrible because it shows the sexual
> exploitation of a child in a benign manner. Pro-pedophilia groups argue
> that children consent to and enjoy sex with adults. This is horrible.
> Using of this photo to make it clear what pro-pedophilia want to be
> available is a good thing.
> Sydney aka FloNight
>
> Justin Cormack wrote:
>


from_name: Justin Cormack

body:
On 3 Apr 2006, at 05:52, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> In some countries it's also illegal to show a penis or someone
> masturbating and we won't have those images deleted from their
> respective articles any time soon. I don't think you can call it
> surprising the reader when they know what article they're visiting
> either.
>
> Perhaps, you'll have a better chance of asking this image to be
> replaced with one that doesn't contain an SM bear and dildo.

Its not the bear and dildo that are illegal in my jurisdiction
(UK). Child pornography is illegal even if it is simulated or
drawn rather than taken from life.

Now if it was a free picture, not a copyrighted one with a somewhat
dubious fair use claim I might feel inclined to defend it.

Note that I havent actually looked at the picture as being put on
the Sex Offenders Register would seriously impair my ability to
take (free) photographs for wikipedia.

Justinc


body:
Sam, my understanding that the image passed the legal test in prior
image for deletion discussions.  If that is not true then it should be
deleted.

Sydney aka FloNight

Sam Korn wrote:
> On 4/3/06, SP <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
>
>> Obviously, I don't think it is child pornography. This is a lolicon
>> drawing. It is clear that it is not a real child.
>>
>
> Under some juristictions, including mine, even a cartoon version of
> child pornography counts as child pornography.  From the description,
> I'd guess that this image would be enough to put you on the Sex
> Offenders Register for some time.  That to me is an excellent reason
> for deletion.
>
> --
> Sam
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

--
Sydney Poore

Go Bengals!


from_name: Jimmy Wales

body:
Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> herostratus at comcast.net wrote:
> <snip stuff about "that image">
>
> FWIW, Rama got a friend to take some nice montages of magazines in a
> store - but did they go into the article? No. There is something
> fundamentally wrong when we're willing to accept a potentially offensive
> copyvio (which we justify under "fair use") over a neutral, Free image.

Can you send us a link to this alternative image?  What objections were
there to including this image in the article instead?

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
>In some countries it's also illegal to show a penis...

Believe me, this has been much discussed. The "If this, then next they'll want to delete  BAMBI!" argument has been made many a time. But not all slopes are slippery.

>Perhaps you'll have a better chance of asking this image to be replaced with >one that doesn't contain an SM bear and dildo.

That's been tried too, resulting in endless discussions, edit wars, and page protection. As long as the image exists, it'll be used in the article, it seems.

- Herostratus


from_name: Gordon Joly

subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
At 09:59 +0200 3/4/06, Steve Bennett wrote:
>On 4/2/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
>>  My assertion remains the menu words do not have to be words in
>>Simple English.
>>
>>  For example "portal" - is that meaning (of that word) in Simple English?
>
>I'm not an expert on SE, but just to follow the logic of this
>conversation, "portal" would appear to be a specialised vocabulary
>word defined for the purpose of Wikipedia (as far as the SE universe
>goes). There's no good reason to define "recent" the same way, when
>it's only going to be used for that single page, "recent changes".

Surely all pages that show that set of navigation elements?

>That said, either "New changes" or "Newest changes" seem quite
>reasonable to me.
>
>Steve

"New changes" is fine.

So, "portal". Is that in "Simple English"? And is the modern meaning
in Simple English?

What seems to be missing, as with much in Wikipedia, is semantic
content. Links are created all over Wikipedia (Full English) which
link on word meaning and ignore the context (meaning).

I looked in recent Featured Articles, and could not find a good
example. Maybe these semantic blips are weeding out under a fuller
review.

And people who write Simple English pages are creating some very
strange English. Does this help the reader?

Gordo

--
"Think Feynman"/////////
http://pobox.com/~gordo/
gordon.joly at pobox.com///


body:
On 4/2/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> It sounds like the kind of reasonable proposal that most people will
> agree to and ignore.  Either by ignoring the background check, or by not
> bothering to make nominations.

I was presuming that a potential admin would find themselves an admin
willing to nominate them (perhaps simply by posting to an appropriate
page, even Village Pump?).  I wasn't anticipating that admins would
have to actually go recruiting for new members.

Steve


body:
On 3/31/06, Ilmari Karonen <lists at vyznev.net> wrote:
> When a nomination is uncontroversial, the first dozen or so voters tend
> to say most of what needs to be said.  After that most votes gradually
> become "per X above", simply because there's no point in restating what
> someone else already said better.

Except that it demonstrates that they really have thought about what
they're voting on, and aren't just being a sheep ;)

> So you're essentially proposing that candidates should only be nominated
> by someone who is already an admin, and that the nominating admin would
> be expected to carry out a background check on the nominee.

Yep, but to clarify, the "background check" is not a pass/fail, it's a
short report summarising all of the user's contributions (perhaps
month by month?), whether good or bad. To give any debate over the
user a bit of a starting point. Perhaps it could look something like
this:

March 2006: Two semi-edit wars on [[Spock]] and [[Star Trek]], accused
of violating NPOV. Large number of apparently helpful contributions on
[[Brian Peppers]] and [[Moldova]].
:Yes, I saw this edit war on [[Spock]], he behaved like a total prat.
[[User:PeanutGallery1]]...
April 2006:No contributions, except for deleting the word
"anti-semite" from 6 articles.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Project proposal

body:
On 4/2/06, Finlay Logan <flogan1 at swarthmore.edu> wrote:
> To respond to some other people re: spamming. People can already do
> that, but they don't, really. I'm going to take the optimistic view and
> say this: that I intend only to add sources that I have read or am at
> least familiar with, and to accompany the less obvious listings with a
> short description. If someone posts a long list of sources with no
> explanation, other editors can sift through them, adding commentary,
> and removing the ones that seem truly spurious. This is how the rest of
> WP works, I don't see that this will be much different.

I don't know about books, but people *do* add unhelpful "external
links" very frequently. Usually it's some massively broad topic, and
they add their own favourite fansite, personal webpage or whatever.
I'm inclined to think it's generally in good faith - they're not aware
that these lists are deliberately kept short and concise.

Steve


body:
On 4/2/06, Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> There's no reason why a non-admin cannot close a keep, except that the
> process wonks have decided that only an admin can do this, for no
> reason that makes any sense to me.

Really? From memory, strong keeps can explicitly be closed by
non-admins in the official process. However, all deletes (strong or
otherwise) cannot.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
On 4/2/06, Gordon Joly <gordon.joly at pobox.com> wrote:
> My assertion remains the menu words do not have to be words in Simple English.
>
> For example "portal" - is that meaning (of that word) in Simple English?

I'm not an expert on SE, but just to follow the logic of this
conversation, "portal" would appear to be a specialised vocabulary
word defined for the purpose of Wikipedia (as far as the SE universe
goes). There's no good reason to define "recent" the same way, when
it's only going to be used for that single page, "recent changes".

That said, either "New changes" or "Newest changes" seem quite reasonable to me.

Steve


from_name: Arie van Buuren

subject: [WikiEN-l] Ethics

body:
In general, editing language describing a POV one does not share is neither
ethical nor unethical. The main variants are:

Writing for the opposition (i.e. improving, not detracting) - ethical
Writing against the opposition (i.e. detracting) - unethical

I may be wrong, being a 4-month WP newbie, but it seems to me that the
former type of edits are much thinner on the ground than the latter.

(Obviously detracting will always be against Wikipedia's spirit and
policies. Detracting from language describing one's personal POV
is either unethical or stupid.)

Arie
[[User:AvB]]


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] justifying the "no NC/ND" requirement

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> Does anyone have a really succint, persuasive argument for this?

One of the things we want to do is empower broad competitive
distribution of our work at low cost.  When we have a license which is
compatible with commercial redistribution, we empower small scale (or
large scale) entrepreneurs to competitively print (or burn onto CD) our
work for sale to people who can afford the costs of distribution, but
who can not afford the costs of proprietary content.

At the same time, we also do nothing thereby to stand in the way of
people acting charitably to distribute the same thing for free as in beer.

Noncommercial licenses are deeply flawed as a way to help the poor.

--Jimbo

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################
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body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Brianna Laugher:
>
>> OK. Saying "Well, we might want to sell a DVD one day" sounds a bit
>> weak.
>
> Why's that? The Germans are already doing it:
> http://www.digitale-bibliothek.de/scripts/ts.dll?s=1&id=0C20BDC3&mp=/art/7001/&sc=WikiPress1.htm

Yes, but I think what Brianna meant about it sounding weak is that for
many contributors, the idea that we might sell DVDs to make money is not
by itself particularly compelling.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
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body:
On 3/31/06, Thommandel at aol.com <Thommandel at aol.com> wrote:
> Is it ethical for a Wiki editor, who is also an admistrator,  to edit  both
> sides of an issue?

An editor should always try and edit "both sides" of an issue. If the
administrator in question has taken administrative action on the page
(blocking users, protecting etc), then they should probably avoid
editing it. Or do I have that the wrong way around?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3 Apr 2006, at 10:00, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
>> To put it another way:  Why do we have a rule against personal
>> attacks?
>> Because personal attacks make people feel less welcome and less
>> willing
>> to collaborate.  Calling someone's work smutty or harmful to
>> minors will
>> have that very same effect.
>
> I don't think anyone working on [[autofellatio]] will be terribly
> offended by it being called "smutty", to be perfectly frank. But see
> my previous remark.
>
>> Not really.  How would you like it if someone went around to _your_
>> contributions and marked them up in ways you found insulting and
>> derogatory?  That would be a bad thing, and nobody should do it.  It
>
> Sure. But that's not what I was proposing. If I was working on a porn
> article, and someone labelled it "porn", I'd be hard pressed to argue.

Yes, but [[Breastfeeding]] (a featured article) is going to be tagged as
unsuitable, isnt it. This is not acceptable.

And "smutty" is a rather loaded term. I dont think [[No-pan kissa]] is
smutty for example, and have tried to make it an informative article
with references. I cant see anything in it that children should not see,
but I imagine it would be tagged too.

Justinc


from_name: Sydney Poore

subject:
[WikiEN-l] External links to image boards with images of a child
 engaged in sexually explicit acts.

body:
While we are discussing child pornography and drawing of children
engaged in sex acts, lets talk about external links to sites with these
images.

Instead of a single image that can be presented in a context to make it
clear it is educational , a bigger concern is external links to image
boards with images of a child engaged in sexually explicit act.  These
appear on Wikipedia on a regular basis. When I went  to image board web
sites to look for inappropriate images, I felt disgusted that another
Wikipedia editor would put it on Wikipedia. I think we need to modify
our policy/guidelines dealing with images with children engaged in
sexually explicit acts. They should not be permitted in my opinion.
Editors that repeatedly add them should be blocked for being disruptive.

regards,

Sydney aka FloNight


from_name: Mark Wagner

subject:
[WikiEN-l] External links to image boards with images of a
	child engaged in sexually explicit acts.

body:
On 4/3/06, Sydney Poore <poore5 at adelphia.net> wrote:
> While we are discussing child pornography and drawing of children
> engaged in sex acts, lets talk about external links to sites with these
> images.
>
> Instead of a single image that can be presented in a context to make it
> clear it is educational , a bigger concern is external links to image
> boards with images of a child engaged in sexually explicit act.  These
> appear on Wikipedia on a regular basis. When I went  to image board web
> sites to look for inappropriate images, I felt disgusted that another
> Wikipedia editor would put it on Wikipedia. I think we need to modify
> our policy/guidelines dealing with images with children engaged in
> sexually explicit acts. They should not be permitted in my opinion.
> Editors that repeatedly add them should be blocked for being disruptive.

What articles are you referring to?

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Project proposal

body:
On 03/04/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/2/06, Finlay Logan <flogan1 at swarthmore.edu> wrote:
> > To respond to some other people re: spamming. People can already do
> > that, but they don't, really. I'm going to take the optimistic view and
> > say this: that I intend only to add sources that I have read or am at
> > least familiar with, and to accompany the less obvious listings with a
> > short description. If someone posts a long list of sources with no
> > explanation, other editors can sift through them, adding commentary,
> > and removing the ones that seem truly spurious. This is how the rest of
> > WP works, I don't see that this will be much different.
>
> I don't know about books, but people *do* add unhelpful "external
> links" very frequently. Usually it's some massively broad topic, and
> they add their own favourite fansite, personal webpage or whatever.
> I'm inclined to think it's generally in good faith - they're not aware
> that these lists are deliberately kept short and concise.

I've seen people adding a book, singular, to the references section a
good few times; I assume they're treating it as "further reading" and
just being helpful.

(But, then, I'm also the sort of person who includes Further Reading
sections...)

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


from_name: charles matthews

body:
<Thommandel at aol.com> wrote

> Sounds good, but what if the writing is not fair?  How does the NPOV
> handle
> that?  What if the writing is contradictory data, and the admin says  on
> entry
> (A) that it belongs on entry (B) and on entry (B) he says it belongs on
> (A)?
> Is that what you call   Neutral

You seem to be fencing around a particular situation which concerns you.
Why not just say what it is?  Not everything goes perfectly on Wikipedia,
and if there is a problem, you will not be given a hard time just for
mentioning where it is.

Charles


body:
Are you equating Google search, where some one must deliberately type in
the words, to an external link to image boards on an article? Or are you
talking about Google images site?

Sydney aka FloNight

Sean Barrett wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Sydney Poore stated for the record:
>
>
>> Instead of a single image that can be presented in a context to make it
>> clear it is educational , a bigger concern is external links to image
>> boards with images of a child engaged in sexually explicit act.  These
>> appear on Wikipedia on a regular basis. When I went  to image board web
>> sites to look for inappropriate images, I felt disgusted that another
>> Wikipedia editor would put it on Wikipedia. I think we need to modify
>> our policy/guidelines dealing with images with children engaged in
>> sexually explicit acts. They should not be permitted in my opinion.
>> Editors that repeatedly add them should be blocked for being disruptive.
>>
>
> Certain sites stand out as excellent starting points for such a policy.
>  The worst offender is something called "Google," which has innumerable
> links to inappropriate material.
>
> - --
>  Sean Barrett     | Honk if you've never seen a gun
>  sean at epoptic.org | fired from a moving vehicle.
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
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> hRHRiotz8VRHA8NouJtS3w8=
> =Rqyd
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>
>
>

--
Sydney Poore

Go Bengals!


from_name: Ben Greenberg

subject: [WikiEN-l] Deterioration of Featured Articles

body:
The biggest problem that wikipedia is facing right now is deterioration.  I
really don't find the featured article review to be effective enough to
prevent featured articles from getting worse.  What ideas do you guys have
for how we could prevent featured article deterioration?

--Ben


subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
On 4/3/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On Apr 3, 2006, at 11:04 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:
>
> > On 4/3/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> My biggest problem with "simple" is that many of the articles I have
> >> seen on there are just plain *incorrect* (i.e. one which listed
> >
> > It seems to me that whereas normally between wikipedias, we can't
> > guarantee a one to one correspondance. Is there any reason that should
> > be the case for SE? Perhaps by default every En page should contain a
> > (red)link to its simple equivalent, and definitely vice versa. Perhaps
> > even stubs should be created for every single en article on simple,
> > saying "we don't have this version in simple english, in the meantime,
> > click here" or something?
>
> Simple English has one fatal flaw: sometimes there is no way to
> describe a subject without using big, confusing words. I would
> shudder at any presentation of any important topic in philosophy
> that's restricted to a 1,000 word vocabulary.

Someone did a reasonably good explanation of Special Relativity using
only words of four letters or less.

--
Mark
[[User:Carnildo]]


subject: [WikiEN-l] Britannica quote of the day

body:
On 3/28/06, Karl A. Krueger <karl at simons-rock.edu> wrote:
> Right!  That means your censorship proposal fails to represent the
> views of people who _do_ want religious censorship.  That means it's
> non-neutral:  it represents only one POV about what should be censored
> (the anti-sex view) and not another (the anti-blasphemy view).

I'm not sure I understand or agree with this viewpoint. Banning guns
but not prostitution is not somehow an endorsement of prostitution.
And I haven't actually hard of "anti-blasphemy" content filtering. My
proposal was made in the context of teachers refusing to let kids use
Wikipedia because of sexual photos or material being too easily
accessible.

> Right!  Each of those censorship bodies expresses particular views
> about what is "bad" or "explicit".  Those groups are not bound by an
> NPOV policy; indeed, they are frequently commercial firms hired for the
> purpose of enforcing particular religious and moral points of view.
>
> However, Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral.  It isn't up to us to say
> that nipples are "explicit" and elbows are not.

I don't think "Wikipedia" is supposed to be neutral. *Content* in
Wikipedia is supposed to be balanced. So I don't really see that as an
argument for anything.

But anyway, as for nipples...*everyone* (and in almost every culture)
recognises them as  controversial. And there are people not using
Wikipedia because of the risk of encountering them. If and when elbows
become a problem, we could cross that bridge too.

> Our policy against self-censorship is still a consensus policy, though.
> Censorship proposals (such as [[WP:TOBY]]) have been consistently and
> roundly rejected.

I don't think Toby was the be-all and end-all of all possible content
filtering policies. And you're calling it "self-censorship", which I
think refers to excluding material from Wikipedia, so that *no one*
could see it. I'm only proposing preventing people already using
content filtering software from seeing it.

I'm really puzzled that my suggestion could be so controversial, but
there you go.

> The "material" I was referring to was censorship tags.  Adding those
> tags to Wikipedia articles, for the purpose of getting those articles
> censored, is against the policy that Wikipedia doesn't do censorship.

I'm proposing changing that policy.

> No.  Writers will be discouraged from writing on topics which won't be
> seen because of censorship measures.

"Won't be seen" - I suspect that readership of any given page would
diminish by less than 5% even with content filtering tags. Perhaps
much less than that.

> No.  The coverage of [[sex]] and [[breast cancer]] and [[testicle]] and
> [[abortion]] and [[mastectomy]] and [[Playboy magazine]] and [[nude]]
> will be worse because people will be less interested in writing if they
> think the audience is smaller.

Those people should ask themselves which audience members they are
losing. Who would find themselves blocked from such a page? Think
about it.

> Or, to pick another popular censorship topic -- violence -- the coverage
> of [[war]] and [[murder]] and [[AK-47]] and [[crushing by elephant]] and
> [[electrocution]] and [[Quake III Arena]] and [[terrorism]] will be
> worse, because people will be less interested in writing if they think
> the audience is smaller.

Same argument. Why write for people whose parents/teachers don't want
them to see this material?

> People write to be read.  The effect of censorship measures is to reduce
> the size of the audience.  (If a "censorship" measure does not prevent
> anyone from reading the "censored" material, then it is _ineffective_.)
> If the audience size is reduced, then the incentive to write is reduced.

I honestly feel this is a pretty weak argument. You're bringing
economics into it, but aren't considering things like whether the
given user wouldn't go and read another page instead, for example.

> No.  Labelling it as "unsuitable for reading" amounts to a personal
> attack on the contributors.  Any time you enable censorship of
> particular material, you are making a claim that it is unfit to be read.

Well, again, you're not really attacking my proposal, which is to
allow end users to filter content themselves, based on tags we supply.
It's up to the end user (or their supervisor) to determine what is
"unfit" to read.

> To put it another way:  Why do we have a rule against personal attacks?
> Because personal attacks make people feel less welcome and less willing
> to collaborate.  Calling someone's work smutty or harmful to minors will
> have that very same effect.

I don't think anyone working on [[autofellatio]] will be terribly
offended by it being called "smutty", to be perfectly frank. But see
my previous remark.

> Not really.  How would you like it if someone went around to _your_
> contributions and marked them up in ways you found insulting and
> derogatory?  That would be a bad thing, and nobody should do it.  It

Sure. But that's not what I was proposing. If I was working on a porn
article, and someone labelled it "porn", I'd be hard pressed to argue.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Nature replies to Britannica

body:
On 4/3/06, zero 0000 <nought_0000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Sorry if someone posted this already, but I didn't see it.

Don't think so. Thanks!

> publication more than the other. And of the 123 purported errors in
> question, Britannica takes issue with fewer than half.

This is very interesting - I had completely missed this when I read
the Britannica response. I thought they rejected almost everything.

Steve


body:
On 4/3/06, Justin Cormack <justin at specialbusservice.com> wrote:
> Its not the bear and dildo that are illegal in my jurisdiction
> (UK). Child pornography is illegal even if it is simulated or
> drawn rather than taken from life.

Surely this does not bear argument. We do *not* under any
circumstances want images portarying child pornography, real or
simulated.

I can't look at the image (at work), but if that's what it is, what is
anyone waiting for?

Steve


body:
On 4/3/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
> [[Wikipedia:Maintenance]] used to say "There is a common misconception
> that only administrators can deal with Wikipedia:Votes for deletion."
> It seems there is still this misconception, and for some reason, that
> statement was replaced last July with the ambiguous "Non-admins can
> help keep deletion pages clean by resolving discussions." (I'm not
> sure what "resolving" means here, but I suppose it could be inferred
> to mean closing.

If I can ask, what is the benefit of a non-admin closing a delete
decision? He can't actually carry out the deletion, so is it just a
question of saving a bit of housekeeping for the eventual admin?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Use of English

body:
On Apr 3, 2006, at 11:04 AM, Steve Bennett wrote:

> On 4/3/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> My biggest problem with "simple" is that many of the articles I have
>> seen on there are just plain *incorrect* (i.e. one which listed
>
> It seems to me that whereas normally between wikipedias, we can't
> guarantee a one to one correspondance. Is there any reason that should
> be the case for SE? Perhaps by default every En page should contain a
> (red)link to its simple equivalent, and definitely vice versa. Perhaps
> even stubs should be created for every single en article on simple,
> saying "we don't have this version in simple english, in the meantime,
> click here" or something?

Simple English has one fatal flaw: sometimes there is no way to
describe a subject without using big, confusing words. I would
shudder at any presentation of any important topic in philosophy
that's restricted to a 1,000 word vocabulary.

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


from_name: David Alexander Russell

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

Since this is fair use, why can't an admin just remove it from the
article (as there are better free alternatives) and then speedy it under
CSD IM5?

Cynical

Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> herostratus at comcast.net wrote:
> <snip stuff about "that image">
>
> FWIW, Rama got a friend to take some nice montages of magazines in a
> store - but did they go into the article? No. There is something
> fundamentally wrong when we're willing to accept a potentially offensive
> copyvio (which we justify under "fair use") over a neutral, Free image.
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

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from_name: Tony Sidaway

body:
On 4/3/06, herostratus at comcast.net <herostratus at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> This is a Manga drawing of a female about age seven, rear view, kneeling on bed, looking back over shoulder. Underpants pulled down revealing buttocks, subject is holding a toy stuffed bear which wears sado-masochism regalia (studded leather straps) and a prominant strap-on dildo.
>

Best of luck.  I've been trying to do something about this picture for
over a year now, without much success.  I thought Rama's recent effort
would get somewhere, but we still have this blatantly unsuitable image
on the site.


from_name: Jan Vanoverpelt

subject: [Wikitech-l] Automatically put text on a non existing page?

body:
I added the preload parameter like this:

{{hotspot |
| Image = image.gif
| Link = new-page-to-be-made
| Height = 81px
| Preload= the-preloaded-text
}}
but without any result.

When i put Link= http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=
new-page-to-be-made&action=edit&preload=the-preloaded-text , then i get a
link to a non-existing page named "
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=new-page-to-be-made&action=edit&preload=
the-preloaded-text" , but without the template being added in the edit-box.

Do you mean i have to adapt my hotspot-template? I don't see how i should do
this, because the "Link-parameter" is already added. Do I just have to add a
{{{{Preload}}} parameter after each {{{Link}}} parameter in the
hotspot-template?

Kind regards and thanks for the help!
JAN

2006/3/31, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com>:
>
> On 31/03/06, Jan Vanoverpelt <jan.vanoverpelt at gmail.com> wrote:
> [snippety snip]
> > What i would like to achieve now is to put a preload-parameter into it
> (just
> > like is done with the inputbox), so the above becomes.
>
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=This_is_not_a_real_page&action=edit&preload=Template:Afd
>
> You can use {{FULLURL}} (or {{LOCALURL}} etc), the title, and the
> preload parameter to achieve this.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 03/04/06, Alphax (Wikipedia email) <alphasigmax at gmail.com> wrote:
> herostratus at comcast.net wrote:
> <snip stuff about "that image">
>
> FWIW, Rama got a friend to take some nice montages of magazines in a
> store - but did they go into the article? No. There is something
> fundamentally wrong when we're willing to accept a potentially offensive
> copyvio (which we justify under "fair use") over a neutral, Free image.

Might be worth finding the WP:POINT stick...

That said, people have a hard time accepting "replace fair use" at the
best of times. I've been wandering through various articles where
we're bound to have free images in the last couple of days and
replacing the fair-use ones with free. It's surprising how many of
these changes are reverted on sight...

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


body:
On 3 Apr 2006, at 12:13, MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:

> I think we can make a good fair use claim for the image. It
> illustrates the article and as far as I can determine, there's no free
> alternatives. If there are, they need to be used instead of the
> current one, before we can properly delete it.

Read Alphax's mail. There is a free alternative.

Justinc