subject: [Wikipedia-l] censorship and guidelines

body:
I really don't know what to say Ant, I think if these images are
relevant to articles all Wikipedias should have them. But should we
use photos? I don't know.

I know that which photos I wouldn't want to see and those I wouldn't
mind are just due to learned cultural values, so it's difficult for me
to say "Well, we should allow these but not these."

So instead, I will say that for all of these we should use drawings
instead because they still illustrate the point effectively.

In some countries however, even a drawing of a man raping a baby girl
would be illegal, so that's an issue.

Some people are offended by very diverse things.

For example, some people are offended by owls (yes, owls).

Does this mean we should replace pictures of owls with drawings? I
think it really depends. If the concept can be effectively illustrated
by drawings, then yes, even though the people who are offended are a
minority. Some differences in species may be difficult to illustrate
with a drawing, and so photos may be nessecary. I don't know, though,
I think we should keep all pictures of animals even though they may
offend some people... but... then again.

Mark

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:53:14 -0800 (PST), Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> My concern was that you appear to be supporting the
> idea that due to
> differences in cultural norms it is acceptable to
> censor content on
> some wikipedias and not others. If I have
> misunderstood you I
> apologise.
>
> No, you are correct.
> I support differences in cultural norms to be acceptable to decide the content to be displayed on some wikipedias and not on others.
> And I support each community to decide which norms it should follow.
>
> Currently, you are suggesting that if the autofellatio image is kept by the english wikipedia, it should be accepted by all other projects
> Sorry, but I absolutely do not agree with this position.
> The english wikipedia has the entire responsability to decide whether to keep it or not to keep it, but its decision should only have a local impact.
> There is absolutely no argument to say that it should impact all other projects. The english wikipedia has no authority over the other projects. It has certainly experience to bring, it has plenty of good people to listen to, but it is not the boss of other projects.
>
> There is a strong reason for this.
> While we have a general agreement that our projects should avoid censorship, we would be fools to pretend a certain degree of censorship is not currently and naturally applied in all communitites.
>
> Let me cite a couple of examples, some possibly being in your local project, but some perhaps not.
> * picture of a man shitting on his girlfriend
> * picture of a man forcing a kid to eat shit under torture
> * venerial diseases and consequences on sexual organs
> * photo of a man and a woman making love
> * photo of a clitoris
>
> * goatse image
> * photo of a man raping a woman
> * photo of a man fucking with a sheep
> * movie of a group of 5 men raping a teenage boy (with the cries of the boy who is still conscious)
> * movie of a man raping a baby girl, with the blood resulting from an exploded vagina
> * photo of Nick severed head
> * photo of a girl cutting a man balls
> * movie of soldiers torturing another soldier by burning him with cigarette (with the screams, when internet is able to, let's not forget the smell of burnt skin)
> * photo of bodies cut into pieces by a madman
> * photos of a woman giving birth
> * Zoom photos of bloated bodies after a tsunami
> * photo of a man vomiting
> * movie of a little girl slowly drowning between logs after an earthquake, while journalists take pictures of her calling her mom
>
> I could go on and on forever.
> All this exist.
> Most is informative.
> Some is already in Wikipedia. Most is not.
>
> Is it censorship NOT to put these pictures in Wikipedia ? YES, IT IS CENSORSHIP.
>
> Should these absolutely be in wikipedia ? To my opinion, some should be, some should not, and others, I do not know.
> I am all ready to admit that I have a pov on those. Just as everyone else. But the point is, not only editors have each a pov, but whether we like it or not, different cultures have different povs directions.
>
> For example, being french, I am quite confortable saying that the americans generally have a much stronger taboo with regards to sex than we do, and that northern european have less taboo than french regarding to nudity. I also understood that japanese have some habits that I regard as very odd (such as collecting teenager girls pants) and practice bounding much more than my culture does. It would not be very strange that they have different povs than us on what is shocking or not shocking regarding sex fun.
>
> In some cultures, some of the things I listed might be more shocking than in other cultures.
> This means that we will have tendencies to censor different things, due to our taboos.
> It is just plain non acceptable that one of our cultures decide for the other cultures what is taboo and shocking from what is not.
>
> And the very fact the current english wikipedia does not have most of the item listed above SHOW THAT THERE IS CENSORSHIP.
> And maybe some of the things the english speaking people censor will not be censored on the other pedias.
>
> We consequently have three options.
> First solution : we decide for a totally censor-free content (and in this case, all the items listed above are to be included and displayed directly online on all projects). I am pretty confident we will rather admit that it would be best that we censor a little bit, even though our goal is not to censor...
> Second solution : we decide that we should collectively take decisions on what should be censored and what should not be (and in this case, I invite all editors on all projects to go vote on the autofellatio, clitoris and severed head matters). I do not support that solution, in great part for practical reasons
> Third solution : we all share a common goal of non censorship, but we admit we censor a little bit nevertheless and we admit that these decisions should be taken locally, by local communities.
>
> Needless to say, I am all for the third one. I think minorities opinions should always be considered, and the argument that the english wikipedia community is the bigger so should be the one to decide for other communities is not valid as far as I am concerned. We have common goals, we have common big rules, but we have essentially local applications of these rules.
>
> It is my strongly held position that if you wish to
> censor, then you
> are not in agreement with the ideals of the overall
> project and you
> would be better off with your own fork.
>
> Now, since you call for me to quit the community and to set up a fork where I could act as a censor, I would like to add this.
>
> I think my goal of letting each project independant on such decisions as much as possible is much more supported than your opinion that only one frame of mind in what should be censored or not censored should be.
>
> Here is what I did for all the past year.
>
> I think all participants are aware of our guidelines of non-censorship.
> Most reasonable participants will also realise that the strongest interest of that guideline is essentially to give something to cite to those keeping/protecting the project from pov pushers. I do not think it means "we should not censor anything", but rather "we should aim at not censoring ourselves due to our personal taboos". In short, the idea is not to totally prevent censorship, but to follow a general and collective goal to find a reasonable path. When an editor alone is deleting autofellatio image, this image can be reverted on the grounds that "we should not self-censor ourselves". But if the community decides the image should be deleted, then it should. If the community is able to decide an image is not informative enough in balance with the amount of shock it generates, then it should just not be there.
>
> Generally, all big wikipedias have a strong and diverse community, absolutely able to make that decision. And generally, I think Wikimedia Foundation should not get involved in such decisions, because the communities are strong enough to make the GOOD decision. I do not know if the english wikipedia will keep or not the autofellatio image and whatever the decision, I will not oppose it, because when say 100 people in a culture make that type of decision, then it is certainly a better decision than I could have taken myself.
>
> Same for all big wikipedias, such as the french or the dutch or the spanish ones (since they recently have troubles with the image concerned).
>
> Where I think the board is involved, it is only for trying to keep and promote the big picture, the guideline, and ONLY help those communities which are not able to take a decision by themselves, or too small to do so.
>
> Couple of examples in the past year
> * a very small wikipedia starting in an african language. Only one editor and he started adding advertisement for his organisation on the main page. There was no community, I got involved and stopped this.
> * the french wikinews : very very small community and one of the most involved does not believe NPOV, does not want to follow it, and consider neutrality is even illegal. I keep a careful eye on this, because it might be very detrimental to our project. If needed, I will either block the person, or even stop the project
> * The hebrew wikipedia seemed to delete all interwiki languages some time ago, but for the english ones. We considered this against our general principles and reacted. Very recently, an hebrew editor reported possible censorship, since I do not read hebrew, I suggested Danny (a very trusted person) to check what was going on.
>
> Whatever my own position on the autofellatio image, I will never interfere on big wikipedias in one way or another, because I think communities are more able to decide than I what is okay or not. However, if I felt there was a very strange misdirection, I would get involved. Yes, a strange direction could be to censor all articles about sex, or excluding all editors who have a communist pov, or similar things.
> I am confident this can not happen on any of the big wikipedias, where there is a strong base of very involved people.
>
> > Who is "you" ???
>
> Whomever you speak for that has decided that whatever
> language you are
> editing needs a differing policy with respect to
> neutrality and
> censorship than the more heavily trafficed wikipedias.
>
> French, Spanish, Dutch wikipedias are amongst the most heavily trafficed wikipedias. French is number 4, Dutch is number 5.
> They are absolutely in their right to have differing policies than the bigger English wikipedia. If they decide to delete the autofellatio, while the english decide to keep it, it is their absolute right. And telling them to fork for thinking different from the English is frankly uncalled for.
> Neither the community deciding to keep it, nor the community deciding to delete would be wrong. They would both be right in their diversity.
>
> > May I suggest that the english wikipedia is NOT the
> > Foundation. And that if I recognise the rights of
> the
> > english wikipedia to decide itself what is good
> taste
> > from what is bad taste, I do not recognise its right
> > to decide alone what is censorship and what is not
> > censorship. And I do not recognise its right to
> decide
> > what should be on all the other projects from what
> > should be absolutely.
>
> Is there not a consensus that denying, by policy, the
> inclusion of
> useful, informative, and encyclopedic information is
> censorship?
>
> Maybe the arguments of the dozen of editors supporting the deletion of that image would be enough to answer your question.
>
> Of course everyone has a right to decide what you will
> add... but if
> you wish to procedurally remove informative
> contributions because of
> some non-neutral position, than you would be better
> off involved with
> another project that includes such a non-neutral slant
> as part of its
> charter.
>
> Procedurally ?
> Uh, I do not get what you mean here ?
> You mean by vote ?
> Do you think all editors supporting the deletion of that picture should fork ???
>
> > And when editors are complaining of large vandalism
> > displaying porn pictures on their talk page, I think
> > it would be good manner to recognise there is a
> > problem and find a solution to it.
>
> Agreed.
>
> However, your proposals included censoring wikipedia.
> Not only would
> this not solve your problem (bad guy just uploads the
> image under a
> new name and you're even more shocked, because you
> cant just click the
> firefox adfilter plugin option to block it forever if
> they keep
> changing the name), but it is not an acceptable means
> for preventing
> vandalism because it compromises the core goals of the
> project.
>
> No, there were not my proposals. These were A list of proposals.
> One of these proposals is not a proposal; it is was is actually happening (ie, french editors voting for deletion on the english wikipedia).
> I do not say this is a good idea, and my call for help is precisely to avoid this to happen.
>
> > I admire your ability to discuss an issue. I report 3
> > different wikipedias complaints about large scale
> > vandalisme, and your answer is "fork".
>
> I admire your ability to discuss an issue. Three
> different wikipedias
> have a problem with a class of vandalism which can be
> reduced by
> simple technical/procedural means (soft redirects +
> three mouse
> clicks), and your answer is to censor.
>
> When editors asked for the technical/procedural means to the technical team, their request was rejected.
> Hence my desire to talk about it openly... which is interpretated as censorship.
> Censorship INSIDE the project will exist the day when we are not able to talk about a topic without someone accusing you of censorship.
>
> > There is currently strong support for deleting this
> > image.
>
> Throughout history there has been strong support for a
> lot of things
> that we view in hindsight as very wrong. Neutrality is
> a core value of
> these projects. By supporting this venture you are
> attempting to
> impose your values on others, it's not neutral. If
> we abandon this
> goal in the favor of a few practical gains we abandon
> much of what
> makes the project special.
>
> Supporting which venture ?
> If I wanted to impose MY views on editors, I would have long time ago DELETED that image.
> I did not. I limited myself to just vote for its deletion with no comments whatsoever.
> As things are, I took great effort all along the past year, to avoid giving my opinion on many topics, to avoid to impose my views on others.
> However, when editors contact me to ask me to help them into a matter, I try to help them, and I do not appreciate at all this is viewed as trying to impose *my* views.
>
> > > Wiki vandalism is unfortunate, but it is not a
> > > sufficient cause to
> > > reduce the available knowledge and the free
> exchange
> > > of information to
> > > mankind. It is not an excuse for censorship.
>
> >
> > I do not think a talk page being replaced by
> > pornographic pictures will reduce world knowledge.
> And
> > I do not think a man sucking is cock being limited
> on
> > one article only rather than thousand of pages will
> be
> > a bad blow in free exchange of information.
>
> Why do you now limit your remedies to talk pages?
> In your initial message you proposed censoring the
> images available
> for use in all wikipedias to be the least common
> denominator. It
> would hurt knowledge, and it wouldn't help your goal.
> I'd attach a
> copy of the image to this email to demonstrate how
> censoring wikipedia
> doesn't protect you from unwanted content.... If
> you're that
> concerned, you can browse with images off. (or use the
> firefox adblock
> plugin to filter it with two mouse clicks).
>
> Then read again my initial message.
> I did not propose to censor the image; I indicated that unless a technical solution be found and implemented, the image will found itself naturally censored by all non english editors tired of seeing their main page or talk pages replaced by porn.
>
> By the way, I can not use Firefox on my old system 9. So, I have no filter.
> In all cases, you seem to be unable to understand that I currently talk in the name of many editors and not in my proper name.
>
> However, I think the Foundation hold a certain responsability on user talk page. If editors do not want their talk page to display porn images, it would be a good idea that we help this not to happen. I think that this is hurting our image. Incidently, I do think it would be a serious blow in our image that jimbo talk page be replaced by the picture of a man sucking his cock. It is hard to go negociate with outside people when so.
>
> > However, I do think that such reactions to other
> > people opinions is a bad blow in wikilove that we
> > should all try to respect.
>
> I respect peoples feelings, but feelings are more
> transitory than
> freedom and feelings are less universal than
> knowledge. If the
> project goals were amended to say that it is the
> primary objective to
> make people feel good, then I would not be making the
> same argument
> now.
>
> As I already said, you are entitled to your opinion.
> But an autofellatio image displayed in thousand of copies on editors talk page is NOT helping free knowledge.
>
> Sometimes, there is need to balance things. And consider the weight of a decision. It may help on one hand, and have detrimental impact on the other hand.
>
> Upsetting several wikipedias with many vandalised talk pages and telling them "guys, guys, please tolerate sex images on your talk pages for the sake of free knowledge. We decided for you this picture was okay on wikipedia" is not exactly the good move. Imho.
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Do you Yahoo!?
>  Make Yahoo! your home page
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
> If your interest is to censor encyclopedic content on any wikimedia
> wikipedia, then your goals are at odds with the goals of the
> foundation.  Because you do not share the same goals, you should fork
> and produce your own project with censorship among it's goals.
>
> If you continue to endorse censorship you are harming the project.
> Please allow those who want to share knowledge freely the ability to
> do so on wikipedia by taking your censorship someplace else.
>
> The claim that pages are somehow 'dirtied'  by a mere image speaks
> strongly about your lack of neutral perspective.

Agreed.


list: wikien-l

from_name: Viajero

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
Although I realize this isn't the proper channel for doing so, I'd like
to nominate the following for Featured Article this coming Friday:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen/European_toilet_paper_holder

V.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: April Fool contest idea (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article)

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:
>
>>Although I realize this isn't the proper channel for doing so, I'd like
>>to nominate the following for Featured Article this coming Friday:
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen/European_toilet_paper_holder
>>
>
>That is not a featured article. In fact it is not even an article - it is a
>hoax. It will be removed as would any other sneaky vandalism masquerading as
>valid content.
>
In the interests of adding to instruction creep :-), we ought to have
some ground rules for April Fool's, maybe make a contest out of it,
for instance the winner is the hoax that goes the longest without
being detected. For instance:

* New articles only, we continue to be humorless about edits to
  existing articles.
* Article must be created on 1 April, between 00:00 and 23:59 UTC.
* Detection is by the addition of a special template by an editor,
  who must also add on the talk page the evidence that the article
  is a hoax.
* The winner is the one with the longest time between creation
  and detection.
* Undetected hoaxes must be marked by their creator by the end of
  April 2; they are also counted as winners.
* Winners get moved to WP: namespace, have " (April Fool 2005)"
  added to the title (in case of inadvertant links from elsewhere),
  all internal links removed, and are added to a list of winners
  linked to from BJAODN or some such.
* Losers are deleted sometime on April 2.

The rules page can be on meta somewhere, linked from a couple
relevant places. It works to have it be advertised; more of a
challenge to include references etc that can fool a thousand
editors already on the outlook for fiction that day.

Stan


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
> Well most people decided it shouldn't be on Wikipedia, whether because
> they suspected it was a copyright violation, they thought it was too open
> to abuse, or they didn't think it was suitable for Wikipedia.  Quadell has
> closed the discussion, deleted the image, and removed the link from the
> article.
> I'm happy with this outcome.  The image was deleted by consensus.

I'm not sure the reason many people gave for deleting this particular
image on grounds of copyright violation was their real reason for
wanting it gone, we have a lot of images with the same unconfirmed
copyright state, that is,  someone with <50 edits uploaded it never to
be seen again and slapped a GFDL notice on it. I'm not sure I disagree
with deleting them on those reasons but I ask those that did vote to
delete this picture on grounds of copyright violation to not apply
double standards and find and or vote to delete other images of
similar copyright status in the future if that was their real reason
but not some pretext for wanting it gone.


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
Wouter Steenbeek said:
>
> Now more concrete on the picture itself: If there is an encyclopedic
> article  on a sexual topic in which a picture of someone doing a blow
> job on himself  is or might be relevant, then we must maintain the
> article, otherwise we  shouldn't, because it can only be abused. The
> case is that simple in my  view. (Correct me if I'm wrong, I am a
> relative newbe...)
>

Well most people decided it shouldn't be on Wikipedia, whether because
they suspected it was a copyright violation, they thought it was too open
to abuse, or they didn't think it was suitable for Wikipedia.  Quadell has
closed the discussion, deleted the image, and removed the link from the
article.
I'm happy with this outcome.  The image was deleted by consensus.


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 04:42:36 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> But don't imagine that those of us who think that, for example, it is
> blatantly obvious that the [[Imgae:Autofellatio_2.jpg]] image is wildly
> inappropriate for wikipedia are simply prudish censors.  Such a view
> really fails to respect and understand the point that we are making.
>
> A respectful discussion of this difficult issue is hard to have if
> anyone who is in favor of deleting some images from wikipedia is to be
> shunned as a censor who ought to leave the project and fork.

I do not want to discuss whether the image is appropriate or not.
That's an issue that I do not want to discuss here, although I guess
it needs to be discussed. What I do want to state is that if there is
one Wikipedia page in one language where it *is* appropriate, and
1.499.999 pages on the various Wikimedia Wikis where it is *not*
appropriate, the one page that can use it should weigh more heavily
than those other 1.499.999 where it is not. And in particular, an
image should not be deleted from the *English* Wikipedia because it is
inappropriate at the *French* one.

Andre Engels


from_name: Tom Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with censorship?

body:
OK, Uncle Ed.  I will try it.

At Wikipedia we practice censorship!!!!!!  We admit it!

You know, that did kind of feel liberating.  :-D

Tom Haws
"And [the angel] said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God?
And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I
do not know the meaning of all things."


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Edward Z. Yang

subject: [Wikitech-l] Full text search

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

Stefan Groschupf wrote:
> Well nutch makes no sense for you guys since it uses a webcrawler you
> don't need since you can simply index your database content.
> Lucene it definitely what you need!!!
>
> If you one day decide to use java, let me know I can contribute a search
> engine for you.
> Anyway we never really got the wiki syntax parser done (we tried regex,
> neko and javacc) but all was just to bad and slow results.
> To index en wikipedia content uses 4 h on a dual os x.
> My prototype search engine is able to answer more then 10 queries per
> second with less then 50 CPU usage on dual g5.
>
> So, discuss  the java issue and let me know. :-)

How does Google do it? :P

Maybe we'll just have to deal with slow index times as a tradeoff to a
fast, working (albeit slightly out of date) search.

- --
Edward Z. Yang      Personal: edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com
SN:Ambush Commander Website: http://www.thewritingpot.com/
GPGKey:0x869C48DA   http://www.thewritingpot.com/gpgpubkey.asc
3FA8 E9A9 7385 B691 A6FC B3CB A933 BE7D 869C 48DA
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFCSb/eqTO+fYacSNoRAmplAJoDYXvMX6jf7tEJiT/1/VpAtuJIkwCfbK2s
n9+ApKMrfZJob8+mZWb+E8Y=
=A8mb
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Wouter Steenbeek

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
Well, to contract the whole discussion: Anthere states we must be able to
ban dirty pictures that are irrelevant, Gregory considers this "censorship"
and states that the pornographicness of a picture is a subjective
appropriety, which goes counter to the objectivity claim of the project.

Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever been taught in scientifical method? If
so, you must know that objectivity is an illusion. If there is an autonomous
reality at all, we always view it through coloured subjective veils. Extreme
attemps to objectivity and apersonality will lead to no knowledge at all. We
imply have to accept that and deal with our common sense both in daily life
and in science.

Thus: what we should allow on Wikipedia and its sisters and what not depends
on conventions. If most people think pictures considered pornographic are
not at home, than we must delete them.

Now more concrete on the picture itself: If there is an encyclopedic article
on a sexual topic in which a picture of someone doing a blow job on himself
is or might be relevant, then we must maintain the article, otherwise we
shouldn't, because it can only be abused. The case is that simple in my
view. (Correct me if I'm wrong, I am a relative newbe...)

Thanks for reading this,
Wouter

_________________________________________________________________
Gebruik MSN Webmessenger op je werk en op school
http://webmessenger.msn.com/


subject:
April Fool contest idea (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured
	article)

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:

> In the interests of adding to instruction creep :-), we ought to have
> some ground rules for April Fool's, maybe make a contest out of it,

Delightful!  Let's start now.  With your rules verbatim.   :-D

Tom


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
Alfio Puglisi said:
>
> This is not an "outcome", in the sense that it will not stop here.
> Other images will appear, and one can easily find images that are fine
> for articles but will upset a lot of people if they are put in place of
> their user page.

Yes.  I am not really bothered by the redirect vandalism.  It's a wiki and
will always be vulnerable to mischief of one sort or another.  Presumably
a technical fix that still permits interwiki links of some sort will be
forthcoming.
I was referring to the outcome of all those months of individuals trying
to pre-empt consensus to delete, by acting unilaterally.  This was the
right way to do it.


from_name: Tony Mobily IMAP

subject: [WikiEN-l] Free Software Magazine and Wikipedia

body:
Hi,

 From the Welcome page:

Welcome to Wikisource. This site is a repository of source texts in any
language which are either in the public domain, or are released under
the GNU Free Documentation License. The site is part of the Wikimedia
foundation and is a sister project of Wikipedia, which is a
multilingual project to create a complete and accurate, free content
encyclopedia.

It only talks about GNU FDL, not Verbatim.

Is the page not up-to-date?

Merc.

On 29/03/2005, at 2:01 PM, Andrew Lih wrote:

> You might want to take a look at Wikisource, which is a repository for
> verbatim content.
>
> -Andrew
>
>
>
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 13:54:38 +0800, Tony Mobily IMAP <merc at mobily.com>
> wrote:
>> Hello,
>>
>> My name is Tony Mobily. I am the Editor In Chief of Free Software
>> Magazine (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com).
>>
>> Our magazine has articles about free software and free culture in
>> general. All our articles are released under a free license (Cretive
>> Common, GFDL or Verbatim Only) 6 weeks after the magazine is out.
>> I KNOW that a Verbatim Only license is hardly free, but it's our
>> current option for "opinionated" articles about a specific subject.
>>
>> Some of my authors told me that some of the articles would be perfect
>> as follow-up articles to wikipedia entries. The beauty of this is that
>> the follow-up articles themselves would be editable, and would
>> therefore stay "alive".
>>
>> For example he article "Format Wars"
>> (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/issue_01/
>> focus_format_history/) would fit very neatly in Wikipedia's
>> "File_format" entry.
>>
>> The requirement of course would be that these article are released
>> under the GFDL. That will depend on the authors, but I have talked to
>> some of them already and they said that they would be happy with that.
>>
>> The problem is: do you have a spot in Wikipedia (or in "Wikimedia" in
>> general) for general articles such as the ones we publish? If the
>> answer is "no", would it be worthwhile creating such a spot?
>>
>> Thanks a lot,
>>
>> Merc.
>>
>> Tony Mobily
>> Editor-In-Chief
>> Free Software Magazine http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>
>>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Tony Mobily
Author of "Hardening Apache" (Apress)
"...this book can save you..." -- Mitchell Pirtle, PHP Magazine 05/2004


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
>From: "Tony Sidaway" <minorityreport at bluebottle.com>
>Reply-To: minorityreport at bluebottle.com, wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
>To: <wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio
>Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 15:28:52 +0100 (BST)
>
>Wouter Steenbeek said:
> >
> > Now more concrete on the picture itself: If there is an encyclopedic
> > article  on a sexual topic in which a picture of someone doing a blow
> > job on himself  is or might be relevant, then we must maintain the
> > article, otherwise we  shouldn't, because it can only be abused. The
> > case is that simple in my  view. (Correct me if I'm wrong, I am a
> > relative newbe...)
> >
>
>Well most people decided it shouldn't be on Wikipedia, whether because
>they suspected it was a copyright violation, they thought it was too open
>to abuse, or they didn't think it was suitable for Wikipedia.  Quadell has
>closed the discussion, deleted the image, and removed the link from the
>article.
>I'm happy with this outcome.  The image was deleted by consensus.

So am I, don't get me wrong. The image was said to be copyrighted and I
don't see any opportunity to include the picture (perhaps in [[Back
Troubles]]...). If the picture was re-added by the same guy (very probably
it was a guy) who uploaded it first, then block him, for he will very likely
be the vandal who put it on everyone's Talk pages as well. However, I must
express a certain admiration for this creative way of vandalism... (which is
in no way meant to justify it!)

_________________________________________________________________
MSN Webmessenger doet het altijd en overal http://webmessenger.msn.com/


subject:
[WikiEN-l] apologies for Tony and anyone who might have felt
	offended

body:
Tom Haws said:
> Thank you.  You are right about this.  And I support you.  I understand
>  the difficulty of "feeling" the emotional impact of words in a
> non-native language.

Or even in one's own.  As a native English speaker I have to say I did not
find Anthere's list unduly emotive.  I appreciate the words may have upset
others.


from_name: Alfio Puglisi

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005, Tony Sidaway wrote:

>Well most people decided it shouldn't be on Wikipedia, whether because
>they suspected it was a copyright violation, they thought it was too open
>to abuse, or they didn't think it was suitable for Wikipedia.  Quadell has
>closed the discussion, deleted the image, and removed the link from the
>article.
>I'm happy with this outcome.  The image was deleted by consensus.

This is not an "outcome", in the sense that it will not stop here. Other
images will appear, and one can easily find images that are fine for
articles but will upset a lot of people if they are put in place of their
user page.

The problem is using invisible redirects that are difficult to remove for
90% of wikipedia users, so that cleanup is substantially delayed.

Since the interwiki redirect has been so seldomly used, I propose to
remove the functionality altogether. One will still be able to vandalize
an user's page with an ordinary redirect, but it will be one to the same
wikipedia and much more manageable.

Alfio


subject: [WikiEN-l] censorship and guidelines

body:
Hi,

> Let me cite a couple of examples, some possibly being in your local
> project, but some perhaps not.
> * picture of a man shitting on his girlfriend
[...]
> journalists take pictures of her calling her mom

I understand you were making a point, and I also understand I am the
new kid in the block.
However, I would like to suggest that such a crude list could be
avoided without weakening your point.

If not, I don't think I will last very long in this mailing list.
Sorry.

Merc.

Tony Mobily
Editor-In-Chief
Free Software Magazine http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com


from_name: Poor, Edmund W

body:
RK emerged from his lonely exile to comment that censorship is
suppression of IDEAS.

I submit that this is only one form of censorship. When it comes to
ideas about politics or religion, the U.S. Constitution seems to oppose
this form. "Freedom of press", according to my meager and scanty reading
of the Federalist Papers and other documents of the Founding, guarantees
all political ideas an airing. Whether any one wants to hear, of course,
is up to them. (No question of religious ideas: we freaky faith-based
folks are allowed to print, read and sell whatever screwy scriptures we
can scrape up.)

Let's not allow the general Wikipedian distaste for (or outrage at)
censorship blind us to what is really is, or is not.

When a junior high school library decides not to shelve Lady Chatterly's
Lover (or The Story of O), that is most definitely censorship. Whether
you think pubescent students should be "shielded" from sexual texts or
not, the ACT of shielding them has a name, and it's called "censorship".

Complying with local, regional or national laws which forbid certain
expressions or depictions is also censorship. If we want to send a print
edition to "strait-laced" countries, such as Communist China (or
possibly even Uganda), we will have to respect their laws - or try
smuggling in some CDs instead. I want no part of smuggling (the legal
liability is too high).

Masking censorship by calling it "editorial decisions" sounds timid at
best. Why not call a spade a spade?

Uncle Ed

P.S. Attagirl, Anthere!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tom Haws [mailto:hawstom at sprintmail.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 29, 2005 10:45 AM
> To: English Wikipedia
> Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] censorship and guidelines
>
>
> Tony Mobily IMAP wrote:
>
> > I understand you were making a point, and I also understand I am the
> > new kid in the block.
> > However, I would like to suggest that such a crude list could be
> > avoided without weakening your point.
> >
> > If not, I don't think I will last very long in this mailing list.
>
> Thank you for saying that, Tony.
>
> Tom Haws
>
>
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: censorship and guidelines

body:
Hi,

I'll sit and watch quitely for a while, like I should have done in the
first place - sorry!

Thanks for letting me know...

Merc.

> You just managed to walk into a most devisive and controversial issue.
> This is about as rough as it gets on this mailing list - and the point
> is being rammed home by Anthere because we've actually had to delete
> images like these ones from articles about topics similar to these.
>
> The swear words are a little regrettable though.
>
> TBSDY
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Tony Mobily
Author of "Hardening Apache" (Apress)
"...this book can save you..." -- Mitchell Pirtle, PHP Magazine 05/2004


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia blocked alongside "gambling,
	porn and other potential hazardous sites"

body:
Hi,

>> I hope if they are, that they raise a big stink.  With
>> newspapers involved.
>> RickK
>
> If I find out which ISP it is (if in fact they have done this) then I
> will most definitely make a big stink. I might get a few bloggers
> involved and alert the media.
>
> I need to know which ISP first, however.

Well, I live in Australia and there aren't that many 25000+ ISPs over
here.
What was the IP address?

Bye,

Merc.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Tony Mobily
Author of "Hardening Apache" (Apress)
"...this book can save you..." -- Mitchell Pirtle, PHP Magazine 05/2004


body:
Hi,

OK. However, in the page I read:

"The Wikimedia Commons is a project that provides a central repository
for free images, music, sound & video clips and, possibly, texts and
spoken texts, used in pages of any Wikimedia project"

It seems like a spot for Music and visual arts, more than computer
articles...
Please remember that we don't mind changing the license of the articles
if we need to!

Is Wikipedia Commons really the best spot for non-encyclopedia articles?

Bye!

Merc.

On 29/03/2005, at 5:27 PM, Andrew Lih wrote:

> Tony, you're right, it seems wikicommons is probably a better fit,
> since it supports more than just GFDL, and has Creative Commons
> licenses.
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
>
> -Andrew
>
>
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 16:45:29 +0800, Tony Mobily IMAP <merc at mobily.com>
> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>>  From the Welcome page:
>>
>> Welcome to Wikisource. This site is a repository of source texts in
>> any
>> language which are either in the public domain, or are released under
>> the GNU Free Documentation License. The site is part of the Wikimedia
>> foundation and is a sister project of Wikipedia, which is a
>> multilingual project to create a complete and accurate, free content
>> encyclopedia.
>>
>> It only talks about GNU FDL, not Verbatim.
>>
>> Is the page not up-to-date?
>>
>> Merc.
>>
>>
>> On 29/03/2005, at 2:01 PM, Andrew Lih wrote:
>>
>>> You might want to take a look at Wikisource, which is a repository
>>> for
>>> verbatim content.
>>>
>>> -Andrew
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 13:54:38 +0800, Tony Mobily IMAP
>>> <merc at mobily.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> My name is Tony Mobily. I am the Editor In Chief of Free Software
>>>> Magazine (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com).
>>>>
>>>> Our magazine has articles about free software and free culture in
>>>> general. All our articles are released under a free license (Cretive
>>>> Common, GFDL or Verbatim Only) 6 weeks after the magazine is out.
>>>> I KNOW that a Verbatim Only license is hardly free, but it's our
>>>> current option for "opinionated" articles about a specific subject.
>>>>
>>>> Some of my authors told me that some of the articles would be
>>>> perfect
>>>> as follow-up articles to wikipedia entries. The beauty of this is
>>>> that
>>>> the follow-up articles themselves would be editable, and would
>>>> therefore stay "alive".
>>>>
>>>> For example he article "Format Wars"
>>>> (http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/issue_01/
>>>> focus_format_history/) would fit very neatly in Wikipedia's
>>>> "File_format" entry.
>>>>
>>>> The requirement of course would be that these article are released
>>>> under the GFDL. That will depend on the authors, but I have talked
>>>> to
>>>> some of them already and they said that they would be happy with
>>>> that.
>>>>
>>>> The problem is: do you have a spot in Wikipedia (or in "Wikimedia"
>>>> in
>>>> general) for general articles such as the ones we publish? If the
>>>> answer is "no", would it be worthwhile creating such a spot?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks a lot,
>>>>
>>>> Merc.
>>>>
>>>> Tony Mobily
>>>> Editor-In-Chief
>>>> Free Software Magazine http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> WikiEN-l mailing list
>>>> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
>>>> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>>>>
>>>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> --
>> ----
>> Tony Mobily
>> Author of "Hardening Apache" (Apress)
>> "...this book can save you..." -- Mitchell Pirtle, PHP Magazine
>> 05/2004
>>
>>
>>

------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Tony Mobily
Author of "Hardening Apache" (Apress)
"...this book can save you..." -- Mitchell Pirtle, PHP Magazine 05/2004


subject: [WikiEN-l] Editorial decisions are not the same as censorship

body:
Robert said:
> Censorship is
> an act which prevents the free discussion of ideas. The
> term is really only meaningful when it comes to repressing
> ideas due to a social, religious or political agenda.

No, censorship just means removing something you don't want someone else
to see.  There's nothing wrong with it, in principle.  We can and do
censor Wikipedia--if we didn't it would be a real mess.  But we should
always discuss whether this or that kind of censorship is appropriate.


from_name: Nathan Wong

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

>--- Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:
>
>
>>Although I realize this isn't the proper channel for doing so, I'd like
>>to nominate the following for Featured Article this coming Friday:
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen/European_toilet_paper_holder
>>
>>
>
>That is not a featured article. In fact it is not even an article - it is a
>hoax. It will be removed as would any other sneaky vandalism masquerading as
>valid content.
>
>-- mav
>
>
A good, nice hoax however. It was notable enough to be mentioned on
Wikipedia signpost here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2005-02-14/Article_hoax
- though I still support it to appear as the Front Page featured article
on April Fools ;-)


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
>1. It doesn't slow down the vandals one bit - they routinely create a
>username, upload the image then make their edit putting it in place.
>The image will keep reappearing as long as the technical facility exists.
>
I am absolutely zero when it comes to technical topics, but I can hardly
imagine that it be impossible for servers to exclude single computers -
regardless of the User Name apllied. Moreover, still most vandals do not
create user names - at least not at first - and once their anonymous
"account" in numbers has been blocked, they can't enter Wikipedia from their
own machine anyway. Third, I can tell you most vandals are deviant
adolescents, and if they notice vandalism is removed very fastly more than
once (and don't notice their great deeds are discussed somewhere), they will
most likely stop, because they get bored. "Professional" vandals are
relatively rare. I think persistent participators in edit wars are more
serious a problem than vandals.

_________________________________________________________________
Direct antwoord op je vragen: gebruik MSN Messenger http://messenger.msn.nl/


from_name: csherlock at ljh.com.au

subject: [WikiEN-l] Your assistance is requested

body:
Just a brief call for help on maintaining [[WP:Press]]. It's very easy.
Here's the procedure:

1. Go to http://news.google.com
2. Search for Wikipedia
3. Setup an alert for new articles on Wikipedia via email
4. When an Google alerts you, put it onto the [[Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a
press source]] page (next year, can someone change the redirection to
[[Wikipedia:Wikipedia as a press source 2006]]?) - please link to the
article in question! If it is an article that references information in
a Wikipedia article, or to [[Wikipedia:Press coverage]] if it is an
article ABOUT Wikipedia. There are some other categories, but I'm sure
everyone gets the jist.
5. If the article is due to us being a press source, go to the article
talk page and:

a. if an author is provided, use [[Template:authoronlinesource2005]]. An
example is:
{{{{authoronlinesource2005|section=March 21-31
| author=Dan Ackman
| date=March 21, 2005
| title=John DeLorean, Car Man Of The Future
| org=Forbes
|
url=http://www.forbes.com/business/manufacturing/2005/03/21/cx_da_0321topnews.html}}
(this is on [[John DeLorean]]).

b. if no author is provided, use [[Template:onlinesource2005]]. An
example is:

{{onlinesource2005|section=February 1-10
|title=Veritas Lux Mea.
|org=The Feature
|date=February 9, 2005
|url=http://www.thefeature.com/user/fadereu/journalentry?id=1335&ref=-1}}

(this is on [[Mass media]]).

Simple!

Oh, the reason I ask is 'cause I just noticed that noone has updated it
for a while (the anon is me - I couldn't help myself), and I figured
this would be as good a place as any to ask for someone to take this
over from myself.

TBSDY


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Britannica proud to lag years behind recent
 developments such as SARS and nanotechnology

body:
>>There is even an article on earth-impact hazard, the science of
>>predicting the probability of astronomical bodies hitting the planet.
>
>
> LOL - I wrote the first Wikipedia version more than two years ago. It is now a
> pretty darn good article.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event

Out of interest, should that "further reading" be "references"?

TBSDY


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Autofellatio

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 04:42:36 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
<jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > If your interest is to censor encyclopedic content on any wikimedia
> > wikipedia, then your goals are at odds with the goals of the
> > foundation.  Because you do not share the same goals, you should fork
> > and produce your own project with censorship among it's goals.
>
> This is really over-the-top, Gregory.

Is that really the case?
I'm surprised that you would disagree with the statement above, that
if someone's intention is to censor encyclopedic content, based on
such value judgements, that they are at odds with the project and
should work on something else.

I certainly see how you might state that I was mistaken in classifying
the proposed measures as censorship, or that it was rude of me to
insult someone of unquestionable value...

> My problem with people using the word "censorship" in talking about
> this very complex issue is precisely that we get responses like yours,
> which are really not very helpful and short-circuit our ability to
> think critically about the issue.
>
> We are *all* (the major participants) opposed to censorship (in the
> sense that you mean), including (very strongly) Anthere.  It is our
> goal to educate and inform, not to shock, offend, or titillate.
> Of course there is a tiny majority of people who are interested in
> censoring Wikipedia.  Fine.  Ignore them.

This is quite heartening to hear reaffirmed.

At the same time, what I see being proposed is the idea that it's
acceptable for wikipedias in differing languages to have a differing
set of standards, and this is the one, and perhaps only, point where I
am reasonably confident that I am not misunderstanding Anthere.  I
don't see how these ideas can coexist.

If our test of a material is it's value to educate and inform, is it
not true that the same material which would educate and inform would
also educate and inform people of another language?

A policy that says that we will exclude content differently depending
on the language of wikipedia, says that we are applying an additional
test, a test of moral rightness.

> But don't imagine that those of us who think that, for example, it is
> blatantly obvious that the [[Imgae:Autofellatio_2.jpg]] image is wildly
> inappropriate for wikipedia are simply prudish censors.  Such a view
> really fails to respect and understand the point that we are making.

This thread is surrounded on all sides with bad information...
Anthere's initial concern was primarily about vandalism... But
vandalism is an issue that we can't even come close to solving by the
proposed measures that I objected so strongly to (value based
standards of content)...

The autofellatio image is a bad example because most people would
agree that it has some of the poorest inform to shock ratios of call
the contested images on wikipedia.  (I'd still argue it's of value, as
one person said after seeing it... "wow.. thats possible? eww",  but I
haven't been involved in the voting for that image and don't intend to
be)

I jumped in the thread because I believe that the idea of differing
standards inclusion standards in differing languages necessitates
censorship and I decided that it was a worthwhile matter which was
being ignored in the thread... because of the separately worthwhile
discussion of applying technical means to address that specific form
of vandalism.

> A respectful discussion of this difficult issue is hard to have if
> anyone who is in favor of deleting some images from wikipedia is to be
> shunned as a censor who ought to leave the project and fork.

My apologies, both to the list and Anthere, on this matter... My
attempt cut away issues I saw as extranious to the issue I wanted to
discuss (vandalism, that specific image,etc) came off as offensive. (I
may not care if you find a useful image on the 'pedia offensive, but I
really would hope you don't find my discussions as offensive.)

Grey paint begins with black and white.

I did not mean to imply that we should shun the issues or the people
bringing them, but rather strike up some vigorous discussion on this
important matter...   and through out some ideas that I think should
be widely acceptable, such as "if making good/evil value judgements
about content is someones goal then everyone would gain from them
working on a fork, given the intentions of the project".

> Especially, for goodness sake, Anthere, who is a hero to us all.

Well,  If I'm going to have to base my discussions on whom is
proposing an idea rather than the merits of the idea, then I should
probably give up now.... :)


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Re: Wikipedia blocked alongside "gambling,
 porn and other potential hazardous sites"

body:
Matt R wrote:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:220.233.86.223#We_now_have_to_block_Wikipedia
>
> Amusing, but I thought I'd let people know. An anon has claimed, "I am in
> charge of 25K plus internet users in Australia and have decided to block the
> Wikipedia site through our routers." His reasons include a legal need to
> protect his customers from the net (yes, folks, WP is that sinister...).
>
> (The background to this is that this user was blocked a couple of weeks back
> for posting a user's personal information and insinuating threats (legal and
> otherwise) in a dispute about the [[Potter's House Christian Fellowship]]
> article. Presumably sour grapes -- and bluff, in all likelihood.)
>
> Matt
> -- [[User:Matt Crypto]]
>
>
> Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com

Really? If he's done this, then please advise me of the ISP and I will
get in contact with them. If they are blocking at the router and killing
off access to their Internet customers then I will get on the phone to
their customer service division and talk to their management.

Incidently, I think it was I who blocked this nitwit (before I asked to
be desysoped). I actually told TimStarling what they had done and he
edited the revision to remove One Salient Oversight's personal information.

I don't think it's a bluff, for what it's worth. The user quite possibly
might be working for an ISP.

TBSDY


body:
csherlock at ljh.com.au wrote:

> Rick wrote:
>
>> --- MacGyverMagic/Mgm
>> <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I just hope this doesn't result in any Wikipedia
>>> regulars being blocked...
>>>
>>> Mgm
>>
>>
>>
>> I hope if they are, that they raise a big stink.  With
>> newspapers involved.
>>
>> RickK
>
>
> If I find out which ISP it is (if in fact they have done this) then I
> will most definitely make a big stink. I might get a few bloggers
> involved and alert the media.
>
> I need to know which ISP first, however.
>
> TBSDY

220.233.86.223 resolves to Exetel (http://www.exetel.com.au).
Having said that I don't think we need even contact them, the whole ring
just reeks of bulls**t.

Pete


from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] graphviz extension -- can we have this ?

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Moin,

On Friday 25 March 2005 23:59, Thomas Gries wrote:
> UPDATE:
> [3] shows, how all nodes <nodename> can automatically be linked to e.g.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<nodename> w/o codechanges on graphviz
> software.
>
> I recently came across Vic's extension package [1] which allows
> visualisation by using the graphviz/dot package. Would like to ask,
> whether this can be enabled on all wikis. I can only support this.
> Tom
>
> [1] http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/Graphviz_extension
> [2] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category_talk:Mediawiki_Extensions
> [3]
> http://www.wickle.com/wiki/index.php/Graphviz_extension#How_to_make_aut
>olinks_.28all_nodes.29

Please see also: http://bloodgate.com/perl/graph/

[ Me: Hard Work ] -> [ You: :o) ]

:o)

Best wishes,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Tue Mar 29 19:16:53 2005 with key 0x93B84C15.
 Visit my photo gallery at http://bloodgate.com/photos/
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 Q: "Dr. Fisher, how did you begin your great career in Contact
 Dermatology?" Dr. Alexander Fisher: "I started from Scratch!"

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body:
Rick wrote:
> --- MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>I just hope this doesn't result in any Wikipedia
>>regulars being blocked...
>>
>>Mgm
>
>
> I hope if they are, that they raise a big stink.  With
> newspapers involved.
>
> RickK

If I find out which ISP it is (if in fact they have done this) then I
will most definitely make a big stink. I might get a few bloggers
involved and alert the media.

I need to know which ISP first, however.

TBSDY


subject: [Wikipedia-l] censorship

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 10:16:10 -0600, Richard Holton
> I don't think the issue is really about "right" or "wrong". I think
> that most people in most cultures would agree that "murder" is wrong
> (though they may define murder in differing ways). However, it would
> take a _very_ extreme position to suggest that we not have an article
> about murder in Wikipedia. Its wrongness does not at all suggest that
> is should not be covered.

I think of it as more of a meta issue. By deleting such images based
on that type of right or wrong you are stating that pornography
(nudity, sex, .. whichever applies) is right or wrong, that is, we
delete it because it's wrong.

Can we write a neutral article on pornography when we make the claim
that images showing nudity are wrong (by having a policy which
excludes such images)?

I don't think that we can rationally. It would be a very hippo
critical position which would be difficult to support with an
internally consistent policy.  If we can't write an internally
consistent policy on the matter, we invite everyone with a possible
objection to remove whatever content they dislike.

> However, I suspect you'd find much less agreement about including in
> that article a photo or a movie showing an actual murder. Again, this
> is not about right or wrong. It's about appropriateness. In this case,
> you might find substantial cultural variation, as well as differences
> of opinion within some cultures.

Well the matter is a little more complex, in that I don't think there
would be all that much objection to a murder clip cut down to the bare
minimum required to be informative beyond the lack of a murder clip.
... Also, I can't even think of a situation where a murder clip would
even be as informative as the autofelletiao image.

> Making a decision to include or exclude such an image/movie from an
> article is not a question of censorship. It's a question of what is
> appropriate, which is subjective and will vary between cultures.

I don't agree, You can just as easily make the same claim about text
"making the decision to include or exclude such text from an article
is not a question of censorship. It's a question of what is
appropriate".    Images are not all that different from text.

> To, for example, insist that an article on murder _must_ include an
> image/movie showing murder if a free, informational one is available,
> is to become enslaved to the concept of censorship as much as
> insisting that the article must not have such an image/movie. Either
> way, we are sacrificing our ability to apply editorial judgment.

This is a silly argument because it's addressing a point I have never
made and will never make.  I've never argued that an article must
contain anything, what it contains is a matter of concern for it's
editors.   My complaint is that we are talking about what articles may
not contain.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Foundation-l] Autoblocking on all wikis now ?!?!?!

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> On 3 wikis I got today the message
>
> You are autoblocked because your IP is on a list named SORB ..... who
> did that ???? Whose idea was that ???? I got blocked on ia, li and lo
> whose brilliant idea was this. Am I deliberately being chased away on
> all wikis now????

Walter's ISP runs an open web proxy; this means that everybody in the
world can use it as a shield for attacking various web sites (including us).

We're working on making the spam-blocking and vandalism-blocking less
painful, though whapping this lame-brained ISP with a big cluestick
would help too.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> On 3 wikis I got today the message
>
> You are autoblocked because your IP is on a list named SORB ..... who
> did that ???? Whose idea was that ???? I got blocked on ia, li and lo
> whose brilliant idea was this. Am I deliberately being chased away on
> all wikis now????

Walter's ISP runs an open web proxy; this means that everybody in the
world can use it as a shield for attacking various web sites (including us).

We're working on making the spam-blocking and vandalism-blocking less
painful, though whapping this lame-brained ISP with a big cluestick
would help too.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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list: wikimedia-l

body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> On 3 wikis I got today the message
>
> You are autoblocked because your IP is on a list named SORB ..... who
> did that ???? Whose idea was that ???? I got blocked on ia, li and lo
> whose brilliant idea was this. Am I deliberately being chased away on
> all wikis now????

Walter's ISP runs an open web proxy; this means that everybody in the
world can use it as a shield for attacking various web sites (including us).

We're working on making the spam-blocking and vandalism-blocking less
painful, though whapping this lame-brained ISP with a big cluestick
would help too.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Walter van Kalken wrote:
> On 3 wikis I got today the message
>
> You are autoblocked because your IP is on a list named SORB ..... who
> did that ???? Whose idea was that ???? I got blocked on ia, li and lo
> whose brilliant idea was this. Am I deliberately being chased away on
> all wikis now????

Walter's ISP runs an open web proxy; this means that everybody in the
world can use it as a shield for attacking various web sites (including us).

We're working on making the spam-blocking and vandalism-blocking less
painful, though whapping this lame-brained ISP with a big cluestick
would help too.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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body:
Tony Mobily IMAP wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> Let me cite a couple of examples, some possibly being in your local
>> project, but some perhaps not.
>> * picture of a man shitting on his girlfriend
>
> [...]
>
>> journalists take pictures of her calling her mom
>
>
> I understand you were making a point, and I also understand I am the new
> kid in the block.
> However, I would like to suggest that such a crude list could be avoided
> without weakening your point.
>
> If not, I don't think I will last very long in this mailing list.
> Sorry.
>
> Merc.
>
> Tony Mobily
> Editor-In-Chief
> Free Software Magazine http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com

Tony,

You just managed to walk into a most devisive and controversial issue.
This is about as rough as it gets on this mailing list - and the point
is being rammed home by Anthere because we've actually had to delete
images like these ones from articles about topics similar to these.

The swear words are a little regrettable though.

TBSDY


from_name: Anthere

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
Erik Moeller a ?crit:
> Ant-
>
>>Unless I am entirely mistaken somewhere, I was elected
>>to be a representative of editors.
>
>
> Just to clarify, in case you are referring to your official position, you
> were elected to be the representative of "contributing members" (paying
> members of the Wikimedia Foundation). Angela was elected to be the
> representative of volunteer editors. The distinction has become moot at
> this point.
>
> Erik

Yup. You are absolutely right. I do not represent anyone somehow.
The good point is that mean I can choose to represent who I wish to, and
I can choose to take in to account the opinions I wish to.

Till today, I chose to represent absolutely every editor on all projects
and to listen to all.

Today, it is everyone minus one.

Bad move.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 19:55:25 +0200, Anthere
> And ?
> I do not think anyone can claim to be truely neutral on this picture :-)
> And I think we have the right to have opinions. All those who voted had
> an opinion.

But is it appropriate for people to organize flash mobs to go vote on
content in an encyclopedia that they don't even use?

Sounds like the image was VFDed (I don't know, I don't really care
about it)...  If it is the case that users which only registered to
keep it off of their languages swung the vote, then a tragedy
occurred.

Especially since the use of that image in vandalism could very well
have been the actions of strongly POVed people who wanted it removed
to suit their prudish wishes (not saying that all who want it gone are
prudes...)

As far as being neutral on the image. I've seen it a few times and
have utterly no emotional reaction to it, when I first saw it I said
"ha, I bet that causes edit wars".  ::shrugs::    Not everyone makes a
big deal out of sexual things. To each his own.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Wikipedia on Radio 4 today

body:
Angela wrote:

>The BBC Radio 4 programme "Nice Work" will include a part about
>Wikipedia today in a section on Knowledge Management.
>
>The show is on from 4-4.30 (BST) (15-15.30 UTC). and can be listened
>to online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/live_feed.html
>
>Details of the programme are at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/nicework/
>
>
The Listen Again feed Real Media and can be found at
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/news/nicework/ram/nicework_current.ram . If
you only want to hear Angela's (disappointingly brief) interview, then
go to the 23rd / 24th minute. Very nice though.

Estel


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Friday's featured article

body:
Daniel Mayer wrote:

> --- Viajero <viajero at quilombo.nl> wrote:
>
>>Although I realize this isn't the proper channel for doing so, I'd like
>>to nominate the following for Featured Article this coming Friday:
>>
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bishonen/European_toilet_paper_holder
>
>
> That is not a featured article. In fact it is not even an article - it is a
> hoax. It will be removed as would any other sneaky vandalism masquerading as
> valid content.

We have a plurality of interested parties (including many long-standing
users who care deeply about the project) saying that that sort of hoax
is appropriate for Friday, but Raul and Mav very belligrently (vis
"veto" , "sneaky vandalism") opposing.

At the moment it looks like Raul's and Mav's concerns have been
addressed on the FAC talk page but they do not accept the response. We
would do well to sort this out one way or the other before Friday...
what if someone on the other side decides to get as threatening as mav
and Raul and get into a revert war on the issue... now that ''would'' be
lame.

Pete


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: censorship

body:
Gregory Maxwell a ?crit:
 > On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 01:12:27 -0800 (PST), Anthere
<anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
 >
 >>I think you are confusing censorship and neutrality
 >
 >
 > I don't think I am...

Well, we might agree to disagree then :-)

 >>If we were claiming autofellatio is not possible, we would be incorrect.
 >
 >
 > Right, which is a reason why the image is useful.... It says that it
 > is possible in a manner which is difficult for text or drawings to do
 > alone.

You have a point here.

 >>If we were saying autofellatio is bad, we would be non-neutral.
 >>If we were deleting the autofellatio article and pretending it does
not exist, it would be censorship.
 >
 >
 > If we delete an informative part of the article because we think that
 > autofellatio is bad, or because we think that images of
 > nudity/sexuality are bad, it would be censorship *and* it would be
 > nonneutral because we are deciding content based on the same type of
 > value judgement you provided above.
 >
 > At least, that is my position.

Na, you did not understand mine. I do not support its deletion due to
the act being bad, nor to nudity being bad. I think that it is a
delicate topic and we should be careful to limit rejection from readers.
The very vivid colors of the picture, the sweat, the bestial look, the
angle of pictures... all suggest porn. The picture is NOT pretty.
I think sensible topics could be much less problematic is treated in a
sensible manner.

Here is what I would suggest.
If you are still young enough and have a partner able to do decent
pictures, please propose your own picture. Select soft colors, a
pleasant angle of view, a neutral or just gently expecting look on your
own face, and let's talk about it again ? Okay ?

(I am serious).

 >>If we display a picture of autofellatio in the autofellation article,
it is possibly displaying offensive content, or possibly not.
 >>If we decide to use a drawing rather than the image in the
autofellatio article, it is possibly admitting a taboo, or possibly not.
 >
 >
 > I think it's pretty obvious that some people are offended by the
 > image, for they think images of such things are bad just as some are
 > offended by the concept alone, and would like to see the whole  thing
 > deleted.

This is not my position (no pun intended)

 >>If we display autofellatio image in user talk page, it is hurting
people who do not expect to see such a picture on a talk page (while
they can choose not to go to the autofellatio)
 >>If we do nothing to help those who spent hours cleaning up, it is
lacking respect for other people time. It is unwikilove.
 >
 >
 > Right, I don't argue for keeping it in talk pages....
 > Do you think that this isn't known to the people spamming the talk
 > pages with this image?    There are many many more offensive images on
 > the internet, but they don't have a possible place on the wikipedia
 > because they are not informative about such a subject. It's quite
 > possible that the vandals motivate is to make a problem of the image
 > so that you will have it deleted because they are morally opposed to
 > it's availability.. And in that case, you are playing right into their
 > wishes.

Possibly. But my personal conviction this image was not okay for
wikipedia was not spawned by its use on talk page.

 > We must consider the matters of censorship and vandalism as completely
 > separate matters, unless we wish to be forced to abandon our ideals
 > due to the agenda of anyone with a webbrowser and the time to
 > vandalize.

Agreed

 >>Both neutrality and censorship are "strong guidelines".
 >
 > [snip guidelines examples]

This is very unfortunate you chose not to comment on the examples.
I think this is very relevant to the contrary. Most of you hardest core
supporters of non-censorship, an opinion I respect, do not comment on
where you would draw the hardline. I am sure you have a hardline just as
anybody else, but you just put it further than we do. It might be
informative to know where you put it. Classification of system to filter
content do not do any different. They try to define level of "violence
or sex" to define the different levels of filtering. If we admit that we
have a sort of line, we might just as well try to define where it is.

 >>As for all guidelines applications, only editors have the authority
to try to set rules to attempt to follow the guidelines.
 >>
 >>On wikipedia, there is a strong desire to follow a couple of
mandatory guidelines/principles, but there is an equally strong desire
to let editors create themselves their own rules to try to fit the
guidelines.
 >
 >
 > I contend that censorship is a matter of neutrality because it imposes
 > good/bad value judgements on articles.
 >
 > What I'm reading here is that neutrality is negotiable.
 > I did not think this was the case.

Unfortunately, we can not easily modify a picture. This is a black and
white option.

...Though some attempts have been made on the clitoris picture. The best
solution is probably to provide a picture which might be more acceptable
by a larger set of body.

 >>I think accepting that cultures have different taboos is right.
 >>
 >>Calling other communities rules and opinions, when differing from
yours, "non-neutral" is wrong. This is what you are doing. The decision
of the english wikipedia is fine, but the rules applied on the english
wikipedia, belongs to the english wikipedia. They should not impair the
right of other communities to set their own rules, without those being
called censorship.
 >
 >
 > I'm having a problem getting over the cognative dissonance here.

Sorry, I do not understand that sentence.

 > People have differing views of what is right and wrong, this is true
 > for people of the same culture or people of differing cultures.

Agreed.

When
 > we attempt to modify the article to fit our views and exclude others,
 > this is non-neutral and this is censorship.

Well, I tried to exclude an image. You tried to exclude people. These
are different approaches. Telling people to fork is also a bit
censorship, don't you think ? I do not hope to start a fight in saying
this, but just to mention that it is very easy to talk about censorship,
but it has several faces.

Well, anyway, thanks for the more moderated tone, I appreciated. Hope I
do not offend you in this mail. Do not wish to.

 > For what it's worth, as best I can tell, the image is quite offensive
 > to many people in the United States, ... This isn't a matter of it
 > being non-offensive to one group and not others.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] incidently, talking about big principles...

body:
incidently

These days, when you navigate quietly on the smaller
wikipedias, this is what you see

http://ia.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AFrontispicio&diff=0&oldid=13653

I thought I was working for a project trying to gather
free content so as to make free knowledge available ?

So why are we using copyrighted pictures ?

"This image is copyrighted. The copyright holder
allows anyone to use it for any purpose, provided that
 the copyright holder and image provider are credited.

Image provided by hornyboy.com and copyright held by
RudeBox Media, Inc."

Ant

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Small Business - Try our new resources site!
http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/resources/


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
Andre Engels a ?crit:
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 04:42:36 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales
> <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>
>>But don't imagine that those of us who think that, for example, it is
>>blatantly obvious that the [[Imgae:Autofellatio_2.jpg]] image is wildly
>>inappropriate for wikipedia are simply prudish censors.  Such a view
>>really fails to respect and understand the point that we are making.
>>
>>A respectful discussion of this difficult issue is hard to have if
>>anyone who is in favor of deleting some images from wikipedia is to be
>>shunned as a censor who ought to leave the project and fork.
>
>
> I do not want to discuss whether the image is appropriate or not.
> That's an issue that I do not want to discuss here, although I guess
> it needs to be discussed. What I do want to state is that if there is
> one Wikipedia page in one language where it *is* appropriate, and
> 1.499.999 pages on the various Wikimedia Wikis where it is *not*
> appropriate, the one page that can use it should weigh more heavily
> than those other 1.499.999 where it is not. And in particular, an
> image should not be deleted from the *English* Wikipedia because it is
> inappropriate at the *French* one.
>
> Andre Engels

Agreed as well. Ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
?var Arnfj?r? Bjarmason a ?crit:
>>If your interest is to censor encyclopedic content on any wikimedia
>>wikipedia, then your goals are at odds with the goals of the
>>foundation.  Because you do not share the same goals, you should fork
>>and produce your own project with censorship among it's goals.
>>
>>If you continue to endorse censorship you are harming the project.
>>Please allow those who want to share knowledge freely the ability to
>>do so on wikipedia by taking your censorship someplace else.
>>
>>The claim that pages are somehow 'dirtied'  by a mere image speaks
>>strongly about your lack of neutral perspective.
>
>
> Agreed.

And ?
I do not think anyone can claim to be truely neutral on this picture :-)
And I think we have the right to have opinions. All those who voted had
an opinion.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
Alfio Puglisi a ?crit:
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005, Tony Sidaway wrote:
>
>
>>Well most people decided it shouldn't be on Wikipedia, whether because
>>they suspected it was a copyright violation, they thought it was too open
>>to abuse, or they didn't think it was suitable for Wikipedia.  Quadell has
>>closed the discussion, deleted the image, and removed the link from the
>>article.
>>I'm happy with this outcome.  The image was deleted by consensus.
>
>
> This is not an "outcome", in the sense that it will not stop here. Other
> images will appear, and one can easily find images that are fine for
> articles but will upset a lot of people if they are put in place of their
> user page.
>
> The problem is using invisible redirects that are difficult to remove for
> 90% of wikipedia users, so that cleanup is substantially delayed.
>
> Since the interwiki redirect has been so seldomly used, I propose to
> remove the functionality altogether. One will still be able to vandalize
> an user's page with an ordinary redirect, but it will be one to the same
> wikipedia and much more manageable.
>
> Alfio

Agree with this very much. Ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: censorship

body:
Richard Holton a ?crit:
> On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 07:26:33 -0500, Gregory Maxwell
> <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote (in part):
>
>
>>I'm having a problem getting over the cognative dissonance here.
>>People have differing views of what is right and wrong, this is true
>>for people of the same culture or people of differing cultures. When
>>we attempt to modify the article to fit our views and exclude others,
>>this is non-neutral and this is censorship.
>>
>
> I don't think the issue is really about "right" or "wrong". I think
> that most people in most cultures would agree that "murder" is wrong
> (though they may define murder in differing ways). However, it would
> take a _very_ extreme position to suggest that we not have an article
> about murder in Wikipedia. Its wrongness does not at all suggest that
> is should not be covered.
>
> However, I suspect you'd find much less agreement about including in
> that article a photo or a movie showing an actual murder. Again, this
> is not about right or wrong. It's about appropriateness. In this case,
> you might find substantial cultural variation, as well as differences
> of opinion within some cultures.
>
> Making a decision to include or exclude such an image/movie from an
> article is not a question of censorship. It's a question of what is
> appropriate, which is subjective and will vary between cultures.
>
> To, for example, insist that an article on murder _must_ include an
> image/movie showing murder if a free, informational one is available,
> is to become enslaved to the concept of censorship as much as
> insisting that the article must not have such an image/movie. Either
> way, we are sacrificing our ability to apply editorial judgment.
>
> -- Rich Holton
>
> en.wikipedia:User:Rholton

Nod. I also agree with this. Ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
David Gerard a ?crit:
> Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050329 15:02]:
>
>
>>However, I just limited myself to vote for its deletion on the english
>>wikipedia, and will absolutely accept very willingly any decision the
>>community will find toward its future.
>
>
>
> You realise that action was probably worse than useless:

Uh ?
Giving one's opinion is worse than useless ???

> 1. It doesn't slow down the vandals one bit - they routinely create a
> username, upload the image then make their edit putting it in place.
> The image will keep reappearing as long as the technical facility exists.

Yes, but if the image is voted once for deletion, it should be
automatically redeleted afterwards.

> 2. The deletion vote has reoccurred so often as to be vexatious IMO. It
> keeps getting nominated for deletion, it keeps getting voted to be kept.
> (What's the point, to keep nominating it until you get the answer you
> want?)

This was the first time *I* voted.

> 3. It encourages threads like this has become.
>
>
> - d.

...

Well, if the current direction is to encourage editors to say nothing at
all when they disagree with a situation, or to flow them under
accusations and insults when they do nevertheless, I think Wikipedia is
in big trouble. It is never a good think to threaten people who try to
give their opinion, and today makes me really wonder what project I am
in all fairness giving my time to.

Ant


from_name: Lee Daniel Crocker

subject: [Wikitech-l] Full text search

body:
On Tue, 2005-03-29 at 13:02 -0800, Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales wrote:
> Why don't we use pylucene?

It should be pretty simple to use something like this.  Now that we
have several servers, we can dedicate one or more to text searches
only (perhaps "search.wikimedia.org" on round-robin DNS or something)
and not have any impact the wiki servers at all.  I'll experiment a
bit at let you know.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>  <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


from_name: Minty

subject: [Wikitech-l] Full text search

body:
anyone playing with http://nutch.org/

?


subject: [Wikitech-l] Full text search

body:
On Tue, 2005-03-29 at 23:09 +0200, Stefan Groschupf wrote:

> This is the only open issue when you plan to use lucene, you need a
> good parser for the syntax and this is very difficult.

Mediawiki already saves a pre-parsed text at article save time.
It would be no problem to save this into a place where something
like lucene could get to it.  But even if the search engine
does have to do some of its own parsing, that's not such a big
deal.

--
Lee Daniel Crocker <lee at piclab.com>  <http://www.piclab.com/lee/>
<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/>


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] technical problem

body:
Nope, things are working fine for me. Have you got a cookie installed
that keeps you logged into Wikipedia?

Mgm

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 13:24:47 -0500, steven l. rubenstein
<rubenste at ohiou.edu> wrote:
> For the past few days, whenever I hit "user contributions" I am taken to my
> user contribution page, BUT the most recent contribution listed is from
> 19:05, 27 Mar 2005 (I have made many edits since then).  Also, it seems to
> have logged me out in the process, as "create an account/log in" appears in
> the upper right-hand corner of my screen (in place of the usual choices:
> Slrubenstein My talk Preferences My watchlist My contributions Log
> out).  When I log back in, and try to go the "user contributions," the same
> thing happens.
>
> This does not happen why I go to my watchlist or other pages, only when I
> go to my user contribution page.
>
> Does anyone know what is going on, and what I can do?
>
> Thanks,
> Steve
>
> Steven L. Rubenstein
> Associate Professor
> Department of Sociology and Anthropology
> Bentley Annex
> Ohio University
> Athens, Ohio 45701
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
Isn't there a non-hoax version in the main article space now following
the hoax' discovery which resulted in the Signpost article?

Mgm


from_name: Daniel Mayer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Friday's featured article

body:
--- Matt R <matt_crypto at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Equally, if there is a consensus that the hoax should go ahead, it will be
> restored.

I will not let any mob of people subvert our goal of creating an encyclopedia
just because it it is popular in part of the community.

The community exists to create the encyclopedia. When the community starts to
pull pranks on our readers for nothing more than some type of thrill, then the
community needs to be reminded of our goals.

Now I may be wrong about the severity of this specific case but I am *not* at
all wrong in the general.

I defer this specific case to Jimbo.

-- mav

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from_name: Karl A. Krueger

body:
On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 05:30:08PM -0500, Poor, Edmund W wrote:
> RK emerged from his lonely exile to comment that censorship is
> suppression of IDEAS.
	[snip]
> When a junior high school library decides not to shelve Lady Chatterly's
> Lover (or The Story of O), that is most definitely censorship. Whether
> you think pubescent students should be "shielded" from sexual texts or
> not, the ACT of shielding them has a name, and it's called "censorship".

While I can understand both definitions of the word "censorship", I
think it is far more useful to draw the distinction around the type of
behavior that seeks to suppress ideas or deny points of view a public
hearing, as opposed to that which simply refuses to support particular
points of view.

For instance, it would be absurd (it seems to me) to state that when I
choose to buy novels by Neal Stephenson and not to buy novels by Stephen
King that I am "censoring" King by not supporting his work, granting it
space on my bookshelf, or recommending it to my friends.  To define
"censorship" this broadly makes the term meaningless.

Censorship, it seems to me, needs to be defined in terms of a space of
discourse, and an act of intrusion upon it.  There have to be speakers
who want to speak, listeners who want to listen, and an act which
stifles the speech for the purpose of keeping it from being heard by
those who would choose to hear.

(Government schools are such a bad example, and so frequently cited,
precisely because they come already politicized.  They are supported
with taxpayer funds which people do not have the choice to withhold;
everyone is compelled to underwrite whatever the schools teach.

That is why people get so agitated when government schools teach things
they disapprove of -- not just because *someone* is teaching sex or
religion or whatever, but because it's being done with *our money* and,
in a republic, with the presumption of the "consent of the governed".
When than consent has *not* really been given, people get indignant at
the presumption.

Wikipedia has none of those problems.)

> Complying with local, regional or national laws which forbid certain
> expressions or depictions is also censorship. If we want to send a print
> edition to "strait-laced" countries, such as Communist China (or
> possibly even Uganda), we will have to respect their laws - or try
> smuggling in some CDs instead. I want no part of smuggling (the legal
> liability is too high).

Wikipedia has a structural commitment to the idea that open public
collaboration, with a focus on neutrality, can generate value and can
approximate truth.  Wherever this idea or its practice is forbidden,
Wikipedia is by necessity subversive and illegal.

There's no getting around that.  If there is a regime under which NPOV
is illegal because (let's say) all credit must be given to the Great
Leader, then Wikipedia must either fail to propagate into that regime,
or else defy the laws of that regime.  It cannot propagate into that
regime without either breaking the law or becoming anti-Wikipedia.

Where the law says we must lie, we simply must not go unless we are
willing to break the law.  If we go there and follow the law by lying,
then we have destroyed what we went there to build.

> Masking censorship by calling it "editorial decisions" sounds timid at
> best. Why not call a spade a spade?

What we have -is- a spade.  It makes no sense to call a perfectly
innocent spade by the name of a sword that has brought untold death and
mutilation to the world.

--
Karl A. Krueger <kkrueger at whoi.edu>


body:
--- Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:
> In the interests of adding to instruction creep :-), we ought to have
> some ground rules for April Fool's, maybe make a contest out of it,
> for instance the winner is the hoax that goes the longest without
> being detected. For instance:

This is the type of utter and complete nonsense that I'm talking about.  How
does this help us create the encyclopedia? How can you justify *encouraging*
people to create bogus entries?

Wikipedia is NOT A PLAYTHING! This project is not here for your enjoyment - we
are here to create an encyclopedia. If you happen to have fun while helping us
toward *that goal*, then great. If not, then let others work and be free of
this type of distracting nonsense.

-- mav

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Editorial decisions are not the same as censorship

body:
Karl A. Krueger a ?crit:
 > On Tue, Mar 29, 2005 at 07:42:32AM -0800, Robert wrote:
 >
 >>Let me give an example: The English Wikipedia has an article on
 >>fertilization of an egg, pregnancy and giving birth.  But we do *not*
 >>have photographs of men having sex with women, impregnating them!
 >>That is an editorial decision, made for very good reasons.  The
 >>decision not to publish any given sex photograph is in no way, shape
 >>or form censorship.
 >
 >
 > I agree with you that this is not censorship.  However, your description
 > implies that we don't have such pictures at all.
 >
 > The articles on [[fertilization]], [[pregnancy]], and so forth all link
 > to [[Sexual intercourse]].  That article, as it so happens, starts out
 > with a photograph of two lions engaging in sexual intercourse, and goes
 > on to include line-drawings (but not lion-drawings) of people doing the
 > same.
 >
 > So no, we do not editorially exclude images of sexual conduct.  We -do-
 > place them on articles whose focus is sexual conduct, for instance
 > [[Sexual intercourse]], rather than on articles whose focus is the cell
 > biology of reproduction or the course of pregnancy.

I agree with RK it is a matter of editorial decisions, in great part
based on taste and consideration to the way our readers will appreciate
the content proposed.

Hmmmm... another side comment on the reproduction matter... as a
pregnant woman trying to find information on all the different stages of
developement, I find Wikipedia teribly lacking information.

Ant


subject: [Wikipedia-l] interwikis redirects disabled

body:
/me gives a big kiss to Tim

Tim Starling a ?crit:
> Due to popular demand (I'm told consensus), I've
disabled interwiki
> redirects on all projects. Also, redirects to
special pages are
> disabled, which use the same mechanism and so are
just as hard to revert.
>
> -- Tim Starling

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subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: Autofellatio

body:
David Gerard a ?crit:
> Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050330 04:12]:
>
>
>>
>>David Gerard a ?crit:
>>
>>>Anthere (anthere9 at yahoo.com) [050329 15:02]:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>However, I just limited myself to vote for its deletion on the english
>>>>wikipedia, and will absolutely accept very willingly any decision the
>>>>community will find toward its future.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>You realise that action was probably worse than useless:
>>
>>Uh ?
>>Giving one's opinion is worse than useless ???
>>
>>
>>>1. It doesn't slow down the vandals one bit - they routinely create a
>>>username, upload the image then make their edit putting it in place.
>>>The image will keep reappearing as long as the technical facility exists.
>>
>>Yes, but if the image is voted once for deletion, it should be
>>automatically redeleted afterwards.
>>
>>
>>>2. The deletion vote has reoccurred so often as to be vexatious IMO. It
>>>keeps getting nominated for deletion, it keeps getting voted to be kept.
>>>(What's the point, to keep nominating it until you get the answer you
>>>want?)
>>
>>This was the first time *I* voted.
>>
>>
>>>3. It encourages threads like this has become.
>>>
>>>
>>>- d.
>>
>>...
>>
>>Well, if the current direction is to encourage editors to say nothing at
>>all when they disagree with a situation, or to flow them under
>>accusations and insults when they do nevertheless, I think Wikipedia is
>>in big trouble. It is never a good think to threaten people who try to
>>give their opinion, and today makes me really wonder what project I am
>>in all fairness giving my time to.
>
>
>
> Where in the above did I threaten you, or do anything even resembling
> threatening you?
>
> (Or were you responding to someone else in replying to my message?)
>
>
> - d.

Sorry, the conclusion is not about your comments of course, but about
all those I receive in the course of the day. Let me limit myself to say
that some of the comments I heard today from three people terribly
hurted me, and that the near absence of reaction to this mishandling is
even hurting me more.


from_name: Viajero

body:
In response to a suggestion I made on [[Wikipedia talk:Featured article
candidates]], another user added a link to [[Nihilartikel]] at the
bottom of the article, so there is at least one explict clue for the
observant if otherwise na?ve reader.

V.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Re: censorship and guidelines

body:
Delirium a ?crit:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>> Third solution : we all share a common goal of non censorship, but we
>> admit we censor a little bit nevertheless and we admit that these
>> decisions should be taken locally, by local communities.
>>
>> Needless to say, I am all for the third one. I think minorities
>> opinions should always be considered, and the argument that the
>> english wikipedia community is the bigger so should be the one to
>> decide for other communities is not valid as far as I am concerned. We
>> have common goals, we have common big rules, but we have essentially
>> local applications of these rules.
>>
>>
> But this is in itself a majority-rules view, in which minority opinions
> in a language are ignored.  Languages only correlate weakly with
> countries, and so what, for example, people from France say should not
> automatically be the deciding factor in what the fr: Wikipedia does.
> What French-speaking people from other countries say (and not just
> countries that have French as an official language) should also be taken
> into account.

This is correct, though I must say that for the greatest part, I do not
know where most french-speaking editors come from. Essentially, the
differences of written french between say canadian, belgium, french,
swiss people is so little that it is very difficult to guess unless they
tell you.

> Which is why, generally, I strongly oppose language-specific policies
> that cater towards "local" sentiment, where "local" is defined as "the
> dominant countries that speak the language".  This is fortunately
> easiest in the en: Wikipedia, because the U.S. and U.K. are quickly
> becoming less and less dominant in terms of English-speakers on the
> internet, so will no longer be able to consider en: their "local"
> Wikipedia, but a *global* one, but is still a major problem in many
> other languages...
>
> -Mark

So.... are you saying that you consider that editorial policies should
be taken on a more global basis than it is currently the case ?


from_name: Tom Haws

subject: [WikiEN-l] What's wrong with censorship?

body:
Wikipedia is global and universal, and somebody will always be
censored.  That is simply the plain reality.  There are potential
authors, readers, and subjects that the consensus of the Wikipedia
community simple does not allow to come together.  This is, if you will,
censorship.

Tom Haws
"And [the angel] said unto me: Knowest thou the condescension of God?
And I said unto him: I know that he loveth his children; nevertheless, I
do not know the meaning of all things."


from_name: Thomas Gries

body:
http://www.wickle.com/wikis/index.php/Graphviz_extension#How_to_make_autolinks_.28all_nodes.29

Graphviz is well known in the community of "Graph Drawing". It allows "auto-linking" for all nodes in a graph, which do not have an URL tag given by the page editor: because all nodes X, Y, Z ... automatically become links to wiki pages X, Y, Z ...
Very useful for mediawikis and wikipedia.


from_name: Tomer Chachamu

subject: [Wikitech-l] Full text search

body:
On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:16:03 +0100, Minty <mintywalker at gmail.com> wrote:
> anyone playing with http://nutch.org/
> ?

Actually, I think the more generic Lucene library which Nutch is built
upon will be more useful. We should be indexing the wikitext, not the
HTML (which is a lower quality version ;))

Seriously, we also don't want a crawler. What is left in Nutch's favour?

However, I don't imagine either will be used by Wikimedia, as they are
written in Java, which is  slow and takes up too much memory compared
to natively running stuff (i.e. C or C++). It's already bad enough
that we're using PHP! (In one extreme case, a diff took 45.5 seconds
in PHP while the same algorithm took 0.5 seconds in C (or maybe C++)
(this is from a developer)).