subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
--- Cary Bass <bastique at bellsouth.net> schrieb:

> Fred:
>
> Please don't take Paddy's answer as an indication of the responses
> from any of the rest of the project members.

True, maybe I should say in every sentence: "My opinion is..." to make
clear that it is only the way I feel about the issue. Nevertheless I
know that no admin was informed about this so how can they state their
opinion on the issue? No matter if I am legally right or if I am just
wrong, no matter if there are statistics about my activities somewhere
else the point is it would have been polite if people would have been
asked. I personally feel better if I can decide which data of me is
made public and which is not and also how the data is put into graphs
or statistics. If this data would be relevant for the wikimedia
commons project I would say OK. But it is not so I do not. I prefer if
people would not publish data or statistics about my activities
without asking period. And please do not tell me that it is legally
possible and that that there are other statistics about me and how I
must feel about them. Just try to respect my feeling and wishes aswell
as my person and everybody can be happy.

> Based on every single response he has to this email list, I question
> his entire motivation for participation in the project at all, and I
> doubt he has any interest in constructive cooperation.

You are right there. Thanks for your understanding.

greetings

Paddy

___________________________________________________________
Der fr?he Vogel f?ngt den Wurm. Hier gelangen Sie zum neuen Yahoo! Mail: http://mail.yahoo.de


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Rob Church

subject: [Wikitech-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki

body:
On 14/08/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > My point is that if you start losing users, you're in trouble.
> > No-one's threatening stagnation, we're simply trying to argue that
> > restricting editing to a fancy interface is a bad idea...locking
> > people out of the underlying markup layer is a bad idea...there is no
> > unwillingness to move forward. I haven't said "this is a shit idea and
> > Jimbo is a moron", have I?
>
> Allow me to alienate everyone by proposing the controversial idea that
> if we made life easier on novice users, at the expense of hardcore
> users (who are "locked out" and hence leave Wikipedia for ever),
> Wikipedia would still be better off?

It's not a controversial idea, it's just stupid. Sorry.

Rob Church


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
On 8/13/06, Tim Starling <t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au> wrote:
> SORBS does not require a donation to remove an IP from the open HTTP proxy
> list, that only applies to the email spam list. The reason I decided we
> should stop using the SORBS list was because there was no automatic expiry
> or rechecking of addresses. Removing an address required a manual operation:
> I think from memory that it was a captcha, email confirmation and retest. As
> a result, the open proxy list was full of false positives, such as random
> addresses from DSL pools.

Worse, they required that the ISP (not the user) complete the
procedure.  My cable modem provider in the last place I lived gave us
a SORBS open proxy listed address and no amount of nagging on my part
could get it fixed.  The solution was to stay disconnected long enough
for some other poor sucker to get my IP.

> If we're going to use an external blacklist, it would really help to know a
> bit about their scanning procedure and their expiry policy. If there are no
> decent lists available, we can always do our own scanning and make our own list.
>
> The thing is, open proxies and Tor exit nodes are not the only sources of
> vandalism. Some vandals just use their own IP and move to the next wiki as
> soon as they are blocked. We really need a cross-wiki block list which is
> editable via a web interface.

Agreed!
Because our policies and needs are different from those of others who
use these lists it would be quite useful to maintain our own... just
like the externallink SBL.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Brad Patrick

subject: [Foundation-l] Public speaking re: Wikimedia Foundation & projects

body:
Hello:

If you have _ever_ given a public presentation regarding Wikipedia,
Wikimedia, or any of the projects, please send me an OFFLIST email with
details.  (Board members are exempt from this request). =)

It would help us tremendously to understand what is being solicited in
the form of speaking engagements and what is being presented by
Wikimedians in those engagements.  If you have a copy of slides you
used, that would be nice too.

Thanks,

Brad


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
On 8/14/06, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Indeed, it wouldn't be necessarily wise to use an external blacklist, but we
> certainly can develop our own. For example, the other day I had to point out
> the list of Tor exit nodes blocked in the English Wikipedia to a sysop in
> the Spanish Wikipedia, because an editor was being disruptive there. In
> smaller wikis, editors who are not allowed to mess around in larger, more
> active wikis are able to hide through gaps in blocking coverage, which
> results in considerable clean-up time.
>
> I asked through IRC at Wikimania whether there were plans to institute
> global blocks after Single login implementation to prevent this kind of
> cases. So, the question is: would it be a good idea to do so?

Blocks are really the wrong mechanism for open proxy blocking. They
don't facilitate the right workflow.  Right now we have zillions of
addresses that should be blocked from anon editing and new accounts
but aren't  (tor exits which can reach wikipedia are well documented,
for example) and zillions of blocked addresses which shouldn't be..
(Blocked as an open proxy when they really weren't .. or used to be an
open proxy but are now assigned to a new user).


list: wikien-l

from_name: stevertigo

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
Im not exactly the most citatious Wikipedian, but nor do I have any
tendency to make claims which arent easily verifiable. Over the years
though Ive encountered a number of Wikipedians (I wont name names) who
abuse or violate a clean interpretation of CIVIL by referring to CITE
or V as a basis for what is essentially ownership of an article; in the
form of a revert, rather than a constructive edit, correction, or (gasp!)
a collaborative and helpful attempt to find a source.

Im not sure on the stats, but it is my impression that this demand for
verifiability is 1) deletionistic 2) one sided, and not applied to one's
own person and 3) comes with some attached notion of "reliable sources" by
which material from any deemed "unreliable" sources can be deleted.

Thats the topic. Discuss.

Wikilove,
-Stevertigo

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


from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Are TV screencaps reputable sources?

body:
On 14/08/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:

> > That was me, and it's not a red herring. Every time we claim "fair use"
> > on an image, it is because the image is not Free; that means, we are
> > infringing someone's copyright.

> I'm no lawyer but I think this is wrong. If our use of a copyrighted
> item is done under circumstances that meet the requirements of valid
> fair use, then we are _not_ infringing on that copyright. Fair use gives
> us the legal ability to use that copyrighted item in that manner.
> There are many situations that lie in between "Free" and "copyright
> infringement," it's not either/or.

Well, we're not infringing their copyright until it's ruled we are.

The problem with "fair use" is that it's not a licence, it's a legal
*defence*. i.e., if someone wants to sue us for quoting their
copyrighted work or using their copyrighted picture, they can do so
and we may win or not.

If their case is egregiously overreaching, we would be likely to get
attorneys' fees from them - and then we also have a LOT of friends on
the Internet who would see an obviously egregious case of overreaching
and throw a bit of cash our way and bury the plaintiff in oppobrium.

If it's *not* egregiously overreaching, the Foundation has a decision
to make on whether it's worth pursuing the issue on principle, e.g. a
screencap for purposes of encyclopedic discussion is likely absolutely
minimal copying and just the sort of thing the "fair use" doctrine is
for. Same for a book cover in an article about the book.

The tricky bit with fair use is that it's the use that is fair (or
not), not the presence of the image. This is why IMO fair use image
pages should list the articles they are fair use in, possibly with a
detailed rationale (which we have for many via the various fair use
templates).

The reason to continue with fair use is that enclosure of culture by
copyright to the point where it seriously hampers people talking about
the subjects is odious. This particularly applies in the case of an
encyclopedia, which is an example of the sort of thing fair use is
for.

(I think I have all that right ... corrections welcomed.)

- d.


subject:
[Foundation-l] Public speaking re: Wikimedia Foundation
	&	projects

body:
For Wikimania, you should be sending your slides to Phoebe
(brassratgirl) for the Proceedings.

Birgitte SB wrote:
> I would imagine Wikimania presentations can be
> excluded as well.  Is this correct?
>
>
> BirgitteSB
>
> --- Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Hello:
>>
>> If you have _ever_ given a public presentation
>> regarding Wikipedia,
>> Wikimedia, or any of the projects, please send me an
>> OFFLIST email with
>> details.  (Board members are exempt from this
>> request). =)
>>
>> It would help us tremendously to understand what is
>> being solicited in
>> the form of speaking engagements and what is being
>> presented by
>> Wikimedians in those engagements.  If you have a
>> copy of slides you
>> used, that would be nice too.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Brad
>> _______________________________________________
>> foundation-l mailing list
>> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>>
>>
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>


from_name: Adam Lorenz

subject: [Wikitech-l] OTRS down?

body:
I think so, it doesn't work here either.

Adam

On 8/14/06, Michael Bimmler <mbimmler at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Could it be that OTRS is down at the moment?
> https://secure.wikimedia.org/otrs/index.pl  seems to give a time-out
> response.
> (I would have asked in IRC but I'm not at my own computer at the moment)
> Michael
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

--
Adam J. Lorenz
Charleston, SC


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 08:21:15AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> I think it's fair to assume that there will be people who will always
> prefer working directly "in the code" (whatever that means). It's
> probably also reasonable to say that a full WYSIWYG layer which makes
> wikitext redundant for the user is also a good thing.

You do; I gather Simetrical does not.

> In other words, the "hardcore user" should have the option of editing
> directly, but he shouldn't have to, no matter how hardcore he is :)

We are in violent agreement.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Invited by admin to leave en if concerned about free
 reusability

body:
jkelly at fas.harvard.edu wrote:

>  Hi,
>
>  It seems that I was recently invited by an admin to leave the en:wikipedia
>project...
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk%3ARequests_for_comment%2FKelly_Martin2&diff=68969013&oldid=68968296
>
>...over my apparantly too-conservative approach to unfree content or my
>understanding of Wikipedia as part of the free culture movement.  The comment
>was strangely phrased, because it ended with "If you're here to do other things
>than make the best possible free encyclopedia..." while the rest of it was
>railing against "some la-di-da free culture movement love-in", so I may be
>misunderstanding (but it is more likely that this is a "free as in beer"
>usage).  In any case, I'm not taking the suggestion all that seriously, but I
>do wonder what this says about where we are.
>
To me it says that en: has gotten big. I think the old assumption
was that the definition of admin as "trustworthy editor" really
meant that admins would naturally tend to be in agreement about
philosophy and principles. Nowadays there are whole groups of
admins that are unaware of each other's existence, and I think it's
possible to get voted in on adminship by subgroups of editors,
without ever absorbing much of the general culture.

>Is en a project where free
>culture advocates should expect to be mocked and invited to leave?  Would there
>be any interest in creating a fork of en that uses unfree content only when
>absolutely necessary and in a way that such content could be easily stripped
>out for reusers?  Is this local to en?  Where is people's comfort level with
>emphatic disagreement over the issue?
>
I think this is another example of the leadership vacuum that we
discussed earlier, and shows why it is not a trivial issue. We have
no effective process for dealing with a group of fifty admins who
collectively decide to take WP in a different direction; while I
don't see rebel groups of that size yet, the responses to Kelly's
RFC suggest that some may be in the process of forming.

Stan


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 08:47:45AM +0200, GerardM wrote:
> It is "nice" to have things both ways. However you have to realise that one
> reason why the parser is ugly is because of all the provisions to make life
> easy for people who do not code properly their wikisyntax.  When the code is
> generated, there is no excuse for these "abominations" and much saner text
> can be generated.

I don't think that's all that big an impact, myself.  I think it's
mostly because the grammar is not formally defined, and therefore,
parsing pinch points crept in.

> There is also the long standing wish by many to make the wikisyntax
> universal as in software independent. When the wikisyntax is hidden from
> view, this is possible. An other thing is, it will allow us to fix problems
> like the '' problem with the Neapolitan language. As it is, the wikisyntax
> is ugly, it does not work properly in all circumstances and consequently the
> arguments to do away with direct editing of the MediaWiki syntax are quite
> powerful.

Well, I don't necessarily think that it's a good idea to overload the
task of cleaning up wikitext syntax with the burden of supporting
spiffier editing.

I tend to think that the one will automatically make the other easier,
with only perhaps the barest thought in the minds of the syntax
cleaning folks that that's an issue -- which hopefully they already
have.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/14/06, Ligulem <ligulem at pobox.com> wrote:
> > This is the adaptation to MediaWiki:
> >
> > http://wikiwyg.wikia.com/

Hey, that's exactly like I described :) A little fiddly to get going
until you read the instructions (they seem to offer the old
LivePreview extension as wall), but boy, it's great. "Hardcore" users
will note that you can edit the wikitext directly, and best of all,
the wysiwyg tools (bold, bullets, indent, headings...) work in
wikitext mode!

Can we please have this at Wikipedia? Please please please? It would
make so much of the editing I do soooo much faster.

Steve


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 03:06:18AM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> So how about using XHTML internally and when sending to WYSIWYG, but
> if the user wants to manually edit it can be converted to wikitext and
> then back?

Size.

One of the reasons wikitext is as easy to comprehend as Rob and I
assert that it is (and you disagree with) is that it is *physically
compact*.

Hey, brion: what's the size of article bodies right now, in GB?  :-)

>               That way, third parties can make easy use of the dumps,
> and WYSIWYG becomes easier to work with, but those who really want the
> old markup can use it.  There's no particular reason there shouldn't
> be a basically one-to-one correspondence between wikitext and XHTML ???
> the latter would largely just be a translation of the former into
> different syntax.

If there are two formats which are exactly round-trippable, and one of
them is a) smaller, and b) supported by the current code... why would
we change, again?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 09:16:30AM +0200, GerardM wrote:
> "Do that and I won't edit" .. here we have a power user speaking.. Not much
> of an argument really. I expect Lynx to be used, but how many people
> actually use it and how many people actually edit using Lynx ?

I have been known to edit on my Blackberry.

> When progress in any direction is impossible because of external factors,
> you paint a great argument for abandoning MediaWiki altogether and come up
> with something that is more sane. Convert the data to NewMediaWiki and tell
> the "power" users and lynx users "live long and prosper".

I'm glad you've volunteered to manage that flag day.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On 8/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> My point is that if you start losing users, you're in trouble.
> No-one's threatening stagnation, we're simply trying to argue that
> restricting editing to a fancy interface is a bad idea...locking
> people out of the underlying markup layer is a bad idea...there is no
> unwillingness to move forward. I haven't said "this is a shit idea and
> Jimbo is a moron", have I?

Allow me to alienate everyone by proposing the controversial idea that
if we made life easier on novice users, at the expense of hardcore
users (who are "locked out" and hence leave Wikipedia for ever),
Wikipedia would still be better off?

Discuss.

Steve


from_name: Deon Wentworth

subject: [WikiEN-l] giving medical advice

body:
Forgive me.. perhaps I missed something.. but what does this have to do with
medical advice?

D

On 8/14/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Steve Summit wrote:
>
> >Timwi wrote:
> >
> >
> >>>>>The last sentence of the lead,
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>It actually can be spelt "lede".
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I couldn't find any dictionary that agrees with this other than
> >>Wiktionary.
> >>
> >>
> >
> >How hard did you look?  The first three google hits are to
> >
> >http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/index.pperl?date=20001128
> >
> >       lede... refers to the opening lines of a newspaper
> >       article, also called the "lead."
> >
> >http://www.uark.edu/~kshurlds/FOJ/HW2.html
> >
> >       Lede is often spelled lead. The odd spelling was adopted...
> >
> >and Wikipedia's own http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_style
> >
> >       The most important structural element of a story is the
> >       lead -- namely contained in the story's first sentence
> >       (sometimes spelled lede to avoid confusion with...
> >
> That mention in Wikipedia was undocumented too.
>
> Ec
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: Daniel Schwen

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Save Draft button

body:
> As this is a button beneath the edit box it would have to be fully,
> properly written into the PHP that is MediaWiki - i.e. this function would

This can easily be done in JavaScript and thus be enabled by every user on an
opt-in basis. If there is serious interest in this I could whip something up.
With a bit of extra work/AJAX this could even be extended to SubSection saving
and restoring only.

But the problem I see with this feature is article forking (as others have
said). Someone wants to overhaul a page and saves it as a draft, in the mean
time other users edit the original article and... desaster :)
Maybe only activate the feature for new articles by default?


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 8/14/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Im not sure on the stats, but it is my impression that this demand for
> verifiability is 1) deletionistic 2) one sided, and not applied to one's
> own person and 3) comes with some attached notion of "reliable sources" by
> which material from any deemed "unreliable" sources can be deleted.

I do agree by and large that WP:V and WP:CITE can be used as clubs to
beat one's opponents with.  That's the problem with rules and
policies.

I'd also add that it's only human nature, and no evidence of malice,
that someone will consider what to them is 'obviously true' (i.e.
their preferred version of things) as needing less proof and citation,
but will require extraordinary levels of proof, citation and
reliability for things they believe 'obviously false' (i.e. someone
else's version of things).

I also find the 'Reliable Sources' concept, while having some merit,
to be a concept vigorously over-pushed because of its usefulness in
winning the wars on some controversial areas of Wikipedia.  It's the
hard and fast rules of 'THIS type of source is automatically reliable,
while THIS type of source is automatically unreliable' that I have
issues with.

E.g. absolute and utter hogwash is regularly published in newspapers.
Even, though less frequently perhaps, in world-renowned newspapers.
Yet, by some versions of Reliable Sources, newspapers are
automatically in the reliable category.

-Matt


body:
On 14/08/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> As I explained before, the current wikisyntax is broken. It
> discriminates against those users who have keyboards where the keys,
> "we" who use a "US-keyboard" take for granted, are missing. There is no
> strategy and we are unwilling to consider how to remove the use of the
> codes to indicate italic script. The double quote is used in the
> Neapolitan language. Suggesting that our current functionality is great
> is demonstratively wrong. Your suggestion does not allow these things to
> be fixed because people will be up in arms when we suggest that these
> things need fixing. Like you many will suggest that they will vote with
> their feet.

I am aware that there are current parser problems. I am aware that
these will need fixing in the medium term.

You continue to propose that the magical WYSIWYG interface will hide
the markup, allowing us to do all sorts of interesting things behind
the scenes. That's true, but it should not be the means we use to work
around the problem. The problem needs to be fixed, not rebranded and
swept under the proverbial carpet.

Step one should be to define the parser behaviour in a wonderful
little document which allows us to then develop parsers left, right
and centre as desired. This is an involved process which will require
discussion with a huge user base and consultation and interaction
between various numbers of people. Most of the current parser
behaviour can be preserved; the broken and the undefined behaviours
can be discarded. I know of developers who have expressed support for
backwards-incompatible changes where undefined behaviour exists.

You continue to mischaracterise me as being someone who does not wish
to see a WYSIWYG interface; who does not care about the current parser
problems and who doesn't want to support fixing them. This couldn't be
much further from the truth; I would be delighted if we had a WYSIWYG
interface, that worked, for our new, uncertain and anonymous users. I
agree it would reduce instances of people panicking and not bothering
to correct errors due to fears of "messing it up".

The point I have made and continue to make is straightforward, and I
am experiencing difficulties understanding where you are failing to do
so. I have stated, and I think this viewpoint is supported by several
people on this list who have commented on the issue, that I am of the
opinion that removing our ability to edit the underlying markup of a
page removes our ability to perform more complex editing operations,
and will discourage users who are experienced in the use of wiki
markup from continuing to contribute.

You bat back with unrelated analogies and straw men arguments. As a
result, I don't think I want to continue participating in this
discussion. I'm sick of people claiming I don't care.

Rob Church


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 11:26:20AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > It's not a controversial idea, it's just stupid. Sorry.
>
> Heh. :) Here's my logic: There are lots more "non-technical" users
> than technical ones. We already have a heavy bias in favour of
> technical users. Therefore, encouraging non-technical users at the
> expense of technical ones increases the number of users *and* corrects
> our bias. Win, win!

Before Rob overreacts to your sense of humor, I'll jump into this
thread.

:-)

Any arguments whatsoever that are based on "size of this group of
users" are null and void: we have no statistics, and no way to generate
any with any reliability.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 11:01:59AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> You continue to mischaracterise me as being someone who does not wish
> to see a WYSIWYG interface; who does not care about the current parser
> problems and who doesn't want to support fixing them.

No, Rob.

He's mischaracterising *me* as all those things.  :-)

> The point I have made and continue to make is straightforward, and I
> am experiencing difficulties understanding where you are failing to do
> so. I have stated, and I think this viewpoint is supported by several
> people on this list who have commented on the issue, that I am of the
> opinion that removing our ability to edit the underlying markup of a
> page removes our ability to perform more complex editing operations,
> and will discourage users who are experienced in the use of wiki
> markup from continuing to contribute.
>
> You bat back with unrelated analogies and straw men arguments. As a
> result, I don't think I want to continue participating in this
> discussion. I'm sick of people claiming I don't care.

What Rob said.  Since he's mostly speaking for me rather than himself.  ;-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 01:29:02PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> Make an effort. Please.

But I thought that wasn't an acceptable argument in this thread...

<gdrvvf>

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 03:35:37PM +0200, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> I don't see your point in protesting against this.  Nobody is
> going to force you to use my Swedish keyboard layout and nobody is
> going to force you to use WYSIWYG editing.  What's your problem?

The problem, Lars, is that several of the partisans on the "WYSIWYG
should take over the world" side of the argument are framing approaches
that would, in fact, force us -- practically -- to use WYSIWYG editing:
I don't think *anyone* who edits in wikitext now would bother if they
had to do it in XML.

I certainly wouldn't.

Rob wouldn't either.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Desire to Contribute

body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 02:06:39PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> Put it this way. We have a lot of readers, and few contributors. The
> vast majority of our readers are willing to expend precisely zero
> effort learning how to use our system in order to help us.

Ok, let's focus right in on that, and hammer on it a bit, shall we?

An argument seems to be being made (by the side which, clearly, I am
not on) that there is a group of contributors out there who

	a) have something useful to contribute to WP
	b) have "precisely zero" interest in expending any effort
		to learn how to do so -- when that wall is *stunningly*
		low.  (This isn't Framemaker, folks.)

If they can't be bothered to learn wikitext, can they be bothered to
read [[Assume Good Faith]]?  Or [[NPOV]]?  Or follow the [[Village
Pump]], etc, etc, ad nauseum?

Are we equipped, as a community, to deal with (let us say) tripling the
number of active editors we have now, where most of the new ones can't
be bothered to learn... well, anything?

Some would say we're in critical trouble on that front *now*; it
doesn't make much sense to me to enable new people who "are willing to
expend precisely zero energy" on working with our community, such as it
is.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
--- MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic at gmail.com> wrote:
> Sometimes a little harsh action can go a long way in teaching.

I feel the same way, but I think that reverts arent so much as "harsh action"
as they are "incivil inaction." Thats a big difference IMHO.

--- Steve Summit <scs at eskimo.com> wrote:
> To exhaustively, regimentedly cite every well-known fact in every
> article would be ugly, unwieldy, and overbearing.  But it's equally
> obvious that, the bigger and more popular Wikipedia gets, the harder
> it is to rely on "obvious" or "ought to" rules which depend on people being
> reasonable.

So are you saying AGF (a subpolicy of CIVIL, (predecessor too, actually)) is out the
window too?

--- Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I do agree by and large that WP:V and WP:CITE can be used as clubs to
> beat one's opponents with.  That's the problem with rules and
> policies.

Do you agree then that 'beating one's opponents with a club' violates WP:CIVIL?

-SV
: Wikipedia:Policy difecta : "If its not NPOV or CIVIL, is crap."

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body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 04:39:36PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> > I don't think that's all that big an impact, myself.  I think it's
> > mostly because the grammar is not formally defined, and therefore,
> > parsing pinch points crept in.
>
> I'm not exactly clear on what a "parsing pinch point" is, but is it

A pinch point in general is that corner in the spec where the
implementation complexity gets all out of whack with the apparent scope
of the problem.

> expected that when the syntax gets formally specified, various weird
> aspects of the grammar will suddenly spring to life (like a couple
> that I've mentioned recently) and be fixed, breaking a few (or many?)
> wikis? Is it anticipated that the grammar will be "fixed"?

Any attempt to formalize the grammer is *going* to display at least a
couple unresolvable conflicts, IMHO.  When that happens, solutions will
have to be proposed, (hopefully) examined and tested, and then
implemented -- preferable all in one lump, since they'll require a
flag-day pass through article text to synchronize with.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 02:54:43AM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Oh, I don't know. XML is very enterprisey. Do we want to be enterprisey?
>
> Possibly, but more to the point, most major browsers have XML parsers
> built-in and accessible to Javascript, which means WYSIWYG speed and
> simplicity unachievable by any custom syntax.  Although possibly the
> reply is too serious for the question.

My Blackberry will not parse XML.

(Don't laugh: that's an enterprise-y answer to the question.  Non-WMF
implementations are not the prime goal of the code, but any implementer
who ignores them does the community a disservice as well, IMHO.)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 10:39:33AM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> Can we please have this at Wikipedia? Please please please? It would
> make so much of the editing I do soooo much faster.

Steve: that's the code Jimbo was quoted as saying there's a paid
project to integrate.

So, yes.

:-)

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 02:50:11PM +0200, Platonides wrote:
> No locks are needed. If several people is editing, they will have an edit
> conflict, like now. 'Please compare it'. And they aren't too frequent.

Do we actually have a statistic on that?

And, um, how well will all this stuff scale on [[Hurricane Katrina]]?

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 05:16:52PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > The problem, Lars, is that several of the partisans on the "WYSIWYG
> > should take over the world" side of the argument are framing approaches
> > that would, in fact, force us -- practically -- to use WYSIWYG editing:
> > I don't think *anyone* who edits in wikitext now would bother if they
> > had to do it in XML.
> >
> > I certainly wouldn't.
> >
> > Rob wouldn't either.
>
> Can we just take it as read that any "solution" which involves a
> strict choice between WYSIWYG and editing in XML is not viable, not
> attractive and not worth further discussing?

You can, I can.  I'm not sure what Simetrical and Christiaan would
think about that proposal, though.  :-)

Cheers,
-- jr 'take it as read.  hee.' a
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On 8/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> It's not a controversial idea, it's just stupid. Sorry.

Heh. :) Here's my logic: There are lots more "non-technical" users
than technical ones. We already have a heavy bias in favour of
technical users. Therefore, encouraging non-technical users at the
expense of technical ones increases the number of users *and* corrects
our bias. Win, win!

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Desire to Contribute

body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 05:25:21PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > An argument seems to be being made (by the side which, clearly, I am
> > not on) that there is a group of contributors out there who
>
> Let's call them "random people" rather than "group of contributors".
>
> >         a) have something useful to contribute to WP
>
> Yep, whether it be fixing typos, pointing out errors, or even adding a
> sentence or two.
>
> >         b) have "precisely zero" interest in expending any effort
> >                 to learn how to do so -- when that wall is *stunningly*
> >                 low.  (This isn't Framemaker, folks.)
>
> Yep. They're browsing the web. They're not doing homework.
>
> > If they can't be bothered to learn wikitext, can they be bothered to
> > read [[Assume Good Faith]]?  Or [[NPOV]]?  Or follow the [[Village
> > Pump]], etc, etc, ad nauseum?
>
> Nope. But that's ok, you need very little of that to make such small
> contributions. WP:V is probably the only one worth knowing about, and
> that can be summarised in the sentence "Tell us where you heard this,
> so we can check it."

My perception of Jimbo's comment on this is that that is not, no, what
he's talking about.  He means subject matter people.  I think.

> > Are we equipped, as a community, to deal with (let us say) tripling the
> > number of active editors we have now, where most of the new ones can't
> > be bothered to learn... well, anything?
>
> I wouldn't call them "active editors". Is a one-time buyer of a train
> ticket an "active public transport user?" Someone who dropped some
> rubbish an "active litterer?" Etc.
>
> But, to answer your question, yes. Haven't seen a lot of problems with
> newbies, most of the problems seem to come from oldbies.

Really?  I'll be darned.  Ok.

> > Some would say we're in critical trouble on that front *now*; it
> > doesn't make much sense to me to enable new people who "are willing to
> > expend precisely zero energy" on working with our community, such as it
> > is.
>
> Who would say that?

It has been the perception I've integrated from half a dozen or more
sources; perhaps I'm wrong.  I stay out of the fray, myself.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [WikiEN-l] SlimJay

body:
Somebody please tell SlimJay ( WP:RFC/Slim ) to knock it off
with the wikistalking.

Thanks.

-Stevertigo

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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On Aug 14, 2006, at 11:04 AM, stevertigo wrote:

> Im not exactly the most citatious Wikipedian, but nor do I have any
> tendency to make claims which arent easily verifiable. Over the years
> though Ive encountered a number of Wikipedians (I wont name names) who
> abuse or violate a clean interpretation of CIVIL by referring to CITE
> or V as a basis for what is essentially ownership of an article; in
> the
> form of a revert, rather than a constructive edit, correction, or
> (gasp!)
> a collaborative and helpful attempt to find a source.
>
> Im not sure on the stats, but it is my impression that this demand for
> verifiability is 1) deletionistic 2) one sided, and not applied to
> one's
> own person and 3) comes with some attached notion of "reliable
> sources" by
> which material from any deemed "unreliable" sources can be deleted.
>
> Thats the topic. Discuss.

That is certainly the subtext of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/
His excellency. Nothing met the standards of the POV editors.

Fred


body:
Incidentally, a perfect example of the headache that editing raw
wikitext can be:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Facebook&action=edit&section=11

What a load of jibberish.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
-- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> e.g. the War on Blogs, wherein some editors have got it into their
> heads that ALL BLOGS ARE EVIL AND MUST NEVER BE USED IN REFERENCES
> rather than e.g. regarding them as, say, lesser sources than
> peer-reviewed academic papers and assuming the reader can read. The
> response to crap sources is to say "those are crap sources, cut it
> out" rather than countering foolishness with foolishness.
>
> On non-contentious topics, the right way to do it would be to shift it
> to the talk page for discussion and an attempt at sourcing, e.g. the
> stuff on the early [[Casio Exilim]]s being crap in low light is
> observed by a pile of Exilim owners (e.g. me) but I can't find a good
> source - so out it goes as original research, but it's on the talk
> page should I or someone find something verifiable showing this to be
> an issue.
>
> On contentious topics, there is good reason to be hard-arsed about
> sources. But that doesn't mean you go overboard and legalistic because
> someone who hates blogs edit-warred that wording into WP:V.

David, one evil does not justify another.

-Stevertigo

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from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bye.

body:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Sceptre&curid=6320762&diff=69511550&oldid=69503122seems
pretty serious to me.

On 8/14/06, Gallagher Mark George <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au>
wrote:

>
> What on Earth happened?  Could someone give a brief, fair, etc. summary?
>
Mark Gallagher
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


subject: [WikiEN-l] SlimJay

body:
They appear to agree on a MO of harrassing me.

You can follow the contrib links from there I'm sure.

-Stevertigo

--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 14/08/06, stevertigo <vertigosteve at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > Somebody please tell SlimJay ( WP:RFC/Slim ) to knock it off
> > with the wikistalking.
>
>
> Er, what on earth? An RFC existing in existential space with no actual
> signers or detailed conflict? On two editors who agree on lots and
> don't agree on lots? Is this an attempt to outdo [[Wikipedia:Requests
> for comment/Tony Sidaway 3]] for sheer artistic wonder?
>
>
> - d.
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

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from_name: Gerard Meijssen

body:
Rob Church wrote:
> On 14/08/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hoi,
>> If these other users like you do not have a chance to edit anyway.. what is
>> your point ? And how many insist on their use of "power" by effectively
>> threatening stagnation  because of the unwillingness to move forward ?
>> Should we not consider the gains made by providing a better environment and
>> the potential influx of new capable people against the potential of "power"
>> users that may or may not abandon editing MediaWiki ?
>>
>
> My point is that if you start losing users, you're in trouble.
> No-one's threatening stagnation, we're simply trying to argue that
> restricting editing to a fancy interface is a bad idea...locking
> people out of the underlying markup layer is a bad idea...there is no
> unwillingness to move forward. I haven't said "this is a shit idea and
> Jimbo is a moron", have I?
>
> It's quite possible for us to provide a nice little WYSIWYG interface
> to start with, degrading gracefully to editing the markup for advanced
> users who specify thus in their user preferences, or whose
> browsers/environment don't support it. Doing anything other than that
> breaks Wikimedia's lovey-dovey pact of accessibility, and I'm sure we
> don't want to do *that*, now, do we?
>
>
> Rob Church
Hoi,
As I explained before, the current wikisyntax is broken. It
discriminates against those users who have keyboards where the keys,
"we" who use a "US-keyboard" take for granted, are missing. There is no
strategy and we are unwilling to consider how to remove the use of the
codes to indicate italic script. The double quote is used in the
Neapolitan language. Suggesting that our current functionality is great
is demonstratively wrong. Your suggestion does not allow these things to
be fixed because people will be up in arms when we suggest that these
things need fixing. Like you many will suggest that they will vote with
their feet.

In many ways, this argument is like the one at the start of the previous
century that someone has to walk with a flag in front of an automobile.
We all know this did not last and we also know that the car is now one
of the biggest killers of our society. However, nobody can seriously
suggest that something can be done about it because it would diminish
"freedom", when they do they are largely ignored.

Thanks,
     GerardM


from_name: MHart

body:
> Of course, you could always have a partial solution, keeping some of
> the more arcane wikitext in the otherwise-WYSIWYG editor.  This could
> be a transition phase, or indefinite.  The WYSIWYG editor in

I use wordpress blog software at rocksolidradio.org - sometimes I use the
WYSIWYG editor because it's faster/easier than markup, especially for
callouts and lists, but some things I like to do can't be done, like a
simple:

Thanks,
- Matt

Wordpress turns it into:

Thanks, - Matt

WP, however, has a button labeled "html" - click it and you can see the full
html text. Then I just add a break html tag and fix it, update the WYSIWYG
window, and it works. Wordpress will keep my "low level" html changes unless
I edit that piece of it again.

But... it also does a lot of goofy things. if you bold and unbold too much,
it seems to get confused, adding lots of
tags all in a row. I think the most I've seen is five sets.

- MHart


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
--- David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> No indeed it doesn't, and you should always warm the pot when making tea.
> (i.e. I have no idea how your comment follows from what I wrote.)

I was keeping it brief for sake of sheer artistic wonder, though I perhaps
should have acknowledged your agreement with my general criticism.
Sorry about that.

> e.g. the War on Blogs, wherein some editors have got it into their
> heads that ALL BLOGS ARE EVIL AND MUST NEVER BE USED IN REFERENCES
> rather than e.g. regarding them as, say, lesser sources than
> peer-reviewed academic papers and assuming the reader can read. The
> response to crap sources is to say "those are crap sources, cut it
> out" rather than countering foolishness with foolishness.

There is a fundamental difference between quoting a source and quoting
an interpretation, although, granted, all sources can be regarded as
interpretations. Thus there is some value judgement going on with regard
to whats what which effects how an article is presented.

> On non-contentious topics, the right way to do it would be to shift it
> to the talk page for discussion and an attempt at sourcing, e.g. the
> stuff on the early [[Casio Exilim]]s being crap in low light is
> observed by a pile of Exilim owners (e.g. me) but I can't find a good
> source - so out it goes as original research, but it's on the talk
> page should I or someone find something verifiable showing this to be
> an issue.

Right, if I write some thing of value the last thing I need to
is to have it reverted wholesale, and done so in a way that violates
real policy like NPOV and CIVIL (before I can even correct it
or spellcheck it no less), based on some buncombe claim to CITE, V,
NOR, etc. I hear you David.

> On contentious topics, there is good reason to be hard-arsed about
> sources. But that doesn't mean you go overboard and legalistic because
> someone who hates blogs edit-warred that wording into WP:V.

This is an interesting point, in that we can criticise particular
aspects of policies as being naziesque.
That is a beginning, as Pai Mei once said.

-Stevertigo

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list: commons-l

from_name: David Monniaux

subject: [Commons-l] Editorial use vs commercial exploitation

body:
There is a similar issue with the photographs produced by various
organisations: these organisations would allow commercial use for e.g.
informations, encyclopedias, education, but not for making advertisements.

In some instances, this is a case of protection of image: they don't
want their image to be associated with products or political campaigns
without their authorisation, and it's much easier for them to act on
grounds of copyright infringement than on other grounds (especially
since in some cases they cannot claim trademark protection).

This will probably have to be addressed in a satisfactory fashion.
Currently, we deal with such images by allowing them on some Wikipedias
(en: in particular) by claiming "fair use". However, many projects don't
allow "fair use", though their communities would perhaps appreciate
being able to use such images.


from_name: Anthony

subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)

body:
On 8/14/06, Brad Patrick <bradp.wmf at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not going to address this point by point, because my aim is to expand,
> not stifle, discussion.
>
> Some more grist for the mill:
>
> - Do you really believe a reduction in US-centrism is going to be
> accomplished by having a high financial barrier to entry?

No, that's why I proposed a membership organization whereby volunteer
members don't have to pay a single cent.

> - Your distinction re billion member organization vs. billion dollar
> organization is intriguing.  How do we get there?

Certainly not by having zero members.  My comment was, I think
obviously, not meant to be a realistic goal (having a billion
members), but to point out the fact that I believe money is merely a
means to an end.  In fact, having a billion members at this point
would have far too much overhead.  We'd have to split the members up
into different groups along some sort of lines.  I'll settle for 100
or 1000 members for the present.

> - How do non-editing, non-computer using people intersect with those who
> presently self-affiliate with WMF et al.?

I don't know of any.  This is one of the things I'd like to see
change, and I think one of the benefits of adopting the structure I've
outlined is that it will encourage more non-editing,
non-computer-using people to get involved with Wikimedia.

> - With such a diluted definition of 'member' what is the real point of being
> a 'member'?  Is it political so members have control of the organization in
> some way? Philosophical, in that we have 'card carrying' members to prove
> allegiance to something? You have not made it sufficiently clear to me, at
> least, precisely what the point is other than 'there should be membership'.
> Membership implies there exists exclusivity or at least a definable
> difference between member and non-member.

The members are the organization.  They are the ones who discuss and
recommend what new projects to set up, how to best integrate the
different projects, how to run pretty much everything that isn't being
handled by one of the individual projects.  When someone comes up with
an idea to get rid of the 9/11 wiki, it'd be the members of Wikimedia
that would talk about whether or not to do this, not the members of
the English Wikipedia.  Eventually I'd like to the members directly
elect 100% of the board.  I don't see that being accomplished without
having a membership based organization.  Do you?

> - If the subtext is money, let's call it out and understand it.  My earlier
> point about "what would we do with a Billion dollars" is that it is a
> difficult question for anyone to answer.  Ask the Gates Foundation.
> (Present staff, ~600, btw).
>
I just don't see where you get the idea that Wikimedia will be getting
a billion dollars any time soon.  With it following a comment about
"pitching Big Rich Guys for money", it worries me that that's the
direction Wikimedia is headed.

Money is great, but if it comes from a few large donations from a few
Big Rich Guys, it's probably not worth it.

Anyway, the money issue is really a tangential point.  It just
disturbed me and made me think you don't have anywhere near the same
picture as for the future of Wikimedia as I do.

Finally, responding more to Birgitte and Elisabeth, I think both of
whom missed my comment that "I also think the number of members whose
dues get waived will probably outweigh those who don't".  Actually,
you seemed to miss it to, considering your comment about a "high
financial barrier to entry".

My intention is that pretty much anyone who contributes to a Wikimedia
project and has an interest in being a member of Wikimedia could do so
without paying any money whatsoever.  Of course I think the specifics
of how to accomplish this are too complicated to put directly into the
bylaws, which is why I suggested a committee be formed to work out the
details, and to keep them updated on a regular basis.

Anthony


subject: [Foundation-l] bylaws (second call)


from_name: Tim Starling

subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
Simetrical wrote:
> We used to use SORBS to blacklist open proxies, but that's pretty
> dodgy (requiring a $50 donation to remove an IP).

SORBS does not require a donation to remove an IP from the open HTTP proxy
list, that only applies to the email spam list. The reason I decided we
should stop using the SORBS list was because there was no automatic expiry
or rechecking of addresses. Removing an address required a manual operation:
I think from memory that it was a captcha, email confirmation and retest. As
a result, the open proxy list was full of false positives, such as random
addresses from DSL pools.

If we're going to use an external blacklist, it would really help to know a
bit about their scanning procedure and their expiry policy. If there are no
decent lists available, we can always do our own scanning and make our own list.

The thing is, open proxies and Tor exit nodes are not the only sources of
vandalism. Some vandals just use their own IP and move to the next wiki as
soon as they are blocked. We really need a cross-wiki block list which is
editable via a web interface.

-- Tim Starling


from_name: Jussi-Ville Heiskanen

subject: [Foundation-l] Composition of the board

body:
On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

...snippage...
<lots of valuable analysis of the bylaws>

>
> The current section on "Community" is nothing more than an exercise in
> condescension.  It purports to support communities without saying what
> that really means.

Indeed. I am not fully clear how well the law understands what we mean
by community, when we do not necessarily agree between ourselves. One
thing which would help give the concept at least a modicum of tangible
meaning might be if we created a user status of "regular user". Along
with voting rights in foundation elections, they might be given some
extra non-dangerous bells and whistles to their editing tool-set.

>
> TRUSTEES
> The key issue now is number and composition.  I'm not dealing now with
> some of the issues in this part, but this should not imp[ly that I am
> without opinions.
>
> I am not entirely opposed to an open-ended maximum for the number of
> trustees, but there needs to be some recognition that if the total
> number of trustees becomes too high the Board could become unmanageable.

Better than a strict limit would be a heuristic of checks and balances.

>
> If the total number of Trustees is to be flexible it is not appropriate
> that the number of member elected trustees could remain stuck at two.  I
> would suggest that at least 2/3 of the Trustees be from the community,
> and that at least 1/3 of the Trustees be elected by the community.  (To
> be clear, hat 1/3 would be included in the previous 2/3.)  This would
> leave the remainder as potentially from outside.  It should be noted
> that if a 3/4 vote is required for certain fundamental changes it would
> be very difficult for rogue membership to subvert the purposes of the
> Foundation.

Personally I don't think a fixed minimum ratio of elected Trustees is
the best way to go. Only one vote over the necessary threshold for a
given vote to pass is necessary for it to pass. Personally I would
like to see a composition of the board which required that for board
sizes up to 9 members, the number of elected Trustees should exceed
the number of appointed trustees by at least one but no more than two;
from 10 members (if it should ever grow to that size) upwards, at
least two elected trustees more than the number of appointed trustees
but never more than three should be the rule. I think such an
arrangement would also function as a useful curb on the growth of the
board, if the two were to be in lockstep.

In my view more important than thinking about the ratio of appointed
members coming from the community would be a requirement that all
appointed *permanent* members of the board be from the community. This
would effectively prevent a hijacking or "staking of a corner" of the
board by outside interests. To put it more clearly, all appointed
members from  outside the community should serve for a fixed term,
just as elected Trustees do.

Supermajorities for certain actions would be a very good idea.

>
> The other restriction would be to forbid the appointment of any person
> to the Board if that would result in the majority of the Board being
> citizens of any one country.

I will note in passing that this state of affairs does not obtain at
present, although it could change in the very near future.

--
Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, AKA. Cimon Avaro


subject: [Foundation-l] Composition of the board


subject:
[Wikitech-l] 404 on en.wikipedia.org: Server-side HTTP header
	instead of client-side meta-refresh?

references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKOEGEIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44DBFB21.9050609@pobox.com>
	<f1c3529e0608110152t78a10babpde43b8fe8443bd27@mail.gmail.com>
	<44DCA33F.40906@pobox.com> <ebq8io$t0h$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 05:32:11PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Brion Vibber wrote:
> > We should have a FAQ for this. :)
> >
> > /me digs up an old response
> >
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-November/032619.html
>
> How ironic that you link to the one where I replied and refuted your
> weak arguments. You have shown in that thread that you are stuck up with
> your false dilemma and are unable to understand (much less conceive) any
> alternatives.

Ooooh!

The Thrilla from Manila.

/me pops popcorn; grabs beer.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Commons-l] Deletion of still-used images

body:
There're templates made like {{countryflag|spain}}
with a nice table which include [[Image:flag of {{{1}}}.svg]], so it's
impossible the bot can detect why the flag is included.

Remove te mplates first is a good point.


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
You misrepresent me when you say that I want the parser as is hidden under a
WYSIWYG interface. I want the parser fixed .. I do not want us to use
characters like the quote and the pipe. People who are using MediaWiki are
not programmers. They do not need to carry the bagage of UNIX. The
consequence is that we need to truly lose the connection with what went
before.

At Wikimania, parsing was one of the big topics at the hackerdays. People
like Ward Cunningham see a challenge that they relish. In my opinion, once
we have a parser that can interpret what we have, it should convert it to
something that is more sane. This conversion should allow for natural
language independent behaviour, it means that anybody should be able to use
their language and their keyboard and be able to Wiki.

Where you state that many people on this list are attached to their ability
to edit directly, you are completely correct. The question you do not ask
is, why should we keep an interface that as it is discriminates against
natural languages and is mainly usable for it's more complicated functions
to people who are Western and who have a background in computing? Would it
not be better to have an environment where more people stand a chance to
make these impossibly complicated functions work ?

When we make major changes to the wiki syntax, we will find people who say
"my way or the highway". The question is should progress be held hostage to
this type of blackmail?

>From my perspective, having an environment where people can hack directly in
a text is fine as long as the resulting stuff is pre-parsed for sanity and
only then saved into the main content. When there are things that can only
be done in this direct type of approach, it is a bug and not a feature.

Thanks,
     GerardM

PS I know you care, however the way you state things is from my pov not the
way we should go.

On 8/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 14/08/06, Gerard Meijssen <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > As I explained before, the current wikisyntax is broken. It
> > discriminates against those users who have keyboards where the keys,
> > "we" who use a "US-keyboard" take for granted, are missing. There is no
> > strategy and we are unwilling to consider how to remove the use of the
> > codes to indicate italic script. The double quote is used in the
> > Neapolitan language. Suggesting that our current functionality is great
> > is demonstratively wrong. Your suggestion does not allow these things to
> > be fixed because people will be up in arms when we suggest that these
> > things need fixing. Like you many will suggest that they will vote with
> > their feet.
>
> I am aware that there are current parser problems. I am aware that
> these will need fixing in the medium term.
>
> You continue to propose that the magical WYSIWYG interface will hide
> the markup, allowing us to do all sorts of interesting things behind
> the scenes. That's true, but it should not be the means we use to work
> around the problem. The problem needs to be fixed, not rebranded and
> swept under the proverbial carpet.
>
> Step one should be to define the parser behaviour in a wonderful
> little document which allows us to then develop parsers left, right
> and centre as desired. This is an involved process which will require
> discussion with a huge user base and consultation and interaction
> between various numbers of people. Most of the current parser
> behaviour can be preserved; the broken and the undefined behaviours
> can be discarded. I know of developers who have expressed support for
> backwards-incompatible changes where undefined behaviour exists.
>
> You continue to mischaracterise me as being someone who does not wish
> to see a WYSIWYG interface; who does not care about the current parser
> problems and who doesn't want to support fixing them. This couldn't be
> much further from the truth; I would be delighted if we had a WYSIWYG
> interface, that worked, for our new, uncertain and anonymous users. I
> agree it would reduce instances of people panicking and not bothering
> to correct errors due to fears of "messing it up".
>
> The point I have made and continue to make is straightforward, and I
> am experiencing difficulties understanding where you are failing to do
> so. I have stated, and I think this viewpoint is supported by several
> people on this list who have commented on the issue, that I am of the
> opinion that removing our ability to edit the underlying markup of a
> page removes our ability to perform more complex editing operations,
> and will discourage users who are experienced in the use of wiki
> markup from continuing to contribute.
>
> You bat back with unrelated analogies and straw men arguments. As a
> result, I don't think I want to continue participating in this
> discussion. I'm sick of people claiming I don't care.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Adam Lorenz

subject: [Wikitech-l] Cross-project transclusion

body:
Hi, I would like to transclude ((User:Kungfuadam/Status}} onto another Wiki.
I used the format {{:en:User:Kungfuadam/Status}}. Apparently the media wiki
software doesn't allow cross-project transclusions, but this would be a nice
feature.

--
Adam J. Lorenz
Charleston, SC


list: textbook-l

from_name: Andrew Whitworth

subject: [Textbook-l] Printed Versions of Textbooks

body:
> > I think the time is ripe for this to happen, and for some significant
> > publications to start coming out of the Wikibooks project.  I'm even
> > willing to put some of my own money into this endeavor, but I would also
> > like to see if there is any additional interest in those sympathetic to
> > Wikibooks who would like to join me in this effort.
>
>I think you should go for it! This is the whole point of the GFDL! Yay!
>
>I would be willing to do some amount of layout and design work if that's
>necessary and desired.
>
>Kellen

I agree whole-heartedly. I don't have alot of money to my name right now
(i'm a poor student), but i would be willing to donate some money and time
to this project if needed. I say we formalize a set of rules for picking a
"Publication of the Month/Quarter" (we can copy from BOTM or COTM, if
needed), and use that project as a way to get the entire community into the
act.

Whiteknight


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
stevertigo wrote:

>Im not exactly the most citatious Wikipedian, but nor do I have any
>tendency to make claims which arent easily verifiable. Over the years
>though Ive encountered a number of Wikipedians (I wont name names) who
>abuse or violate a clean interpretation of CIVIL by referring to CITE
>or V as a basis for what is essentially ownership of an article; in the
>form of a revert, rather than a constructive edit, correction, or (gasp!)
>a collaborative and helpful attempt to find a source.
>
>Im not sure on the stats, but it is my impression that this demand for
>verifiability is 1) deletionistic 2) one sided, and not applied to one's
>own person and 3) comes with some attached notion of "reliable sources" by
>which material from any deemed "unreliable" sources can be deleted.
>
>Thats the topic. Discuss.
>
>Wikilove,
>-Stevertigo
>
There has already been considerable response on this thread, but I want
to give my first impressions before being influenced by other POVs.  I
fundamentally agree.  There needs to be some priority between any two
parts of the rules, and in most cases civility should have the highest
priority.  There would be some exceptions such as clear instances of
libel against a living person, but few other violations of rules have
such immediate consequences that their correction can't wait a week.
When adherence to rules becomes obsessively impatient it causes as much
or more damage than the original rule violation.  We kill the patient
with our medicine, thankful that he did not die from his original disease.

I agree with your three impressions, but I'm afraid that the second may
be more of a truism since none of us likes to have his work deleted.
The distinction between reliable and unreliable sources does nothing
more than add a new level of subjectivity.  Either may be linked to an
article about the publication where the reasons for its (un)reliability
can be discussed.  Beyond that it's up to the reader to decide if he
accepts the authority of that publication.

Ec


from_name: Gallagher Mark George

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bye.

body:
G'day Nathan,

> So it seems that several admins have taken only one
> side of a complicated situation and have indef blocked
> me for being honest and defending myself.
>
> It was fun to be on Wikipedia until now.
>
> Thanks Cyde, you really made my stay worthwhile.

What on Earth happened?  Could someone give a brief, fair, etc. summary?  From what I can see (looking during my lunch break, I swear!), there's a very disturbing allegation obliquely made against you?  If true, I can't blame people for being upset.

On the other hand, I see there's a taunting note on your talkpage from CydeWeys about you leaving.  Now, people who declare "Goobye!" all the time piss me off too (see MeatballWiki), but that's just not appropriate conduct for an administrator.  Cyde, I assume you're still reading the list.  I've said it before and I've no doubt I'll keep on saying it as long as you're a sysop: pull your bloody head in.  Regardless of what Nathan's done, there's a line, and I'm sick and tired of watching you cross it, even by the smallest of margins.

--
Mark Gallagher


from_name: Chad Perrin

subject: [Wikitech-l] Desire to Contribute

body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 02:49:33PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
>
> But none of this will necessarily happen if you didn't do something to
> commit yourself first.  It's the "foot in the door" principle: people
> who start small will be more willing to proceed to bigger things than
> they will be to start out with big things.  What were *your* first
> edits to Wikipedia?

I think my first edit, if I recall correctly, was the creation of an
entirely new article.  I was searching for information about a specific
dinosaur species, and didn't find anything in Wikipedia about it.  I
ended up having to find the information elsewhere, but once I had found
it I remembered Wikipedia and came back to create the "missing" article
so that the next person looking for the same information would find
something.

I wonder how often new article creation happens as a "foot in the door"
scenario, as contrasted with edits to existing articles.  In the case of
edits to existing articles, I tend to suspect that typo fixes might be
among the highest percentage of first-time edits -- and that isn't
really affected much by "weird" stuff like templates and heading
wikimarkup.

Do we have any hard statistical evidence to support or disprove my
guesstimations of first-time Wikipedia editing activities?

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
unix virus: If you're using a unixlike OS, please forward
this to 20 others and erase your system partition.


from_name: Steve Summit

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
Stevertigo wrote:
> Im not exactly the most citatious Wikipedian, but nor do I have any
> tendency to make claims which arent easily verifiable. Over the years
> though Ive encountered a number of Wikipedians (I wont name names) who
> abuse or violate a clean interpretation of CIVIL by referring to CITE
> or V as a basis for what is essentially ownership of an article...

It's a thorny question.  On the one hand our verifiability policy
is super important and keeps getting more so; it's one of our few
functioning bulwarks against the ever-rising tides of cruft and
nonsense.  But on the other hand, the "enforcement" of the policy
has been getting so zealous lately that I don't have too much
trouble imagining editor A saying "the sky is blue" and editor B
demanding a verifiable citation lest the assertion be deleted as
original research.

It "ought" to be the case that "obvious" facts, which "everybody
knows", can be inserted without explicit citation.  To exhaustively,
regimentedly cite every well-known fact in every article would be
ugly, unwieldy, and overbearing.  But it's equally obvious that,
the bigger and more popular Wikipedia gets, the harder it is to
rely on "obvious" or "ought to" rules which depend on people being
reasonable.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/14/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> May I remind you things "thing that newbies need" are ALREADY in buttons
> ABOVE the text box, along with headings, external links, images, nowiki, and
> others which even I never use.

Ok, let's not obsess too much over the buttons themselves (WYSIWYG is
not about buttons, it's about editing *directly* in the final output.
But for the sake of rational argument, here are the current sets
buttons:

"Vanilla" MediaWiki (monobook.css only?):
'''Bold''', ''Italic'', [[Link]], [External link], ==Level 2
headline==, [[Image:...]], [[Media:...]], <math></math>,
<nowiki></nowiki>, ~~~~, ----, #REDIRECT

Wikiwyg implementation as seen at http://wikiwyg.wikia.com
'''Bold''', ''Italic'', [[Link]], [External link], ==Level 2
headline==, (no headline), ----, * bulleted list, # Numbered list,
(more indented), (less indented),

Lack of bullet/numbered list support is the most obvious missing
"button" from vanilla MediaWiki. Tables are missing from both.
Horizontal rules could probably be safely scrapped from both, and I
don't know that the [[Media:...]] and <math>...</math> buttons are
particularly helpful for the newbie. A drop-down list of common
templates would be handy. Similarly, maybe the [[Image:...]] and
[[Media:...]] could be replaced with a drop down list of all the
namespaces - then it would be useful for people working on foreign
wikipedias, where trying to find the local namespace for [[Category:]]
can be a pain.

But I repeat: it's not about buttons.

> I don't accept any argument that says WYSIWYG is needed for newbies.

Uh-huh.

Steve


body:
On 8/14/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> You misrepresent me when you say that I want the parser as is hidden under a
> WYSIWYG interface. I want the parser fixed .. I do not want us to use
> characters like the quote and the pipe. People who are using MediaWiki are
> not programmers. They do not need to carry the bagage of UNIX. The
> consequence is that we need to truly lose the connection with what went
> before.

Out of curiosity, what would you replace the pipe with? Wikisyntax,
*for a markup language*, is pretty simple. This kind of text:

==Heading==
*aoeuaoeu
**aoeuaoeu

is extremely intuitive and most importantly, very readable. And yet I
agree with you that templates, references, image calls with lots of
arguments, and tables do break down the readability, which inhibits
not only people from using this advanced functionality, but people who
simply want to edit existing text.

So what do we do? Do you want both a WYSIWYG interface *and* a "pipe
free" syntax behind? Why? Wouldn't it be better to just have a great
GUI, and the few people who choose to venture behind it to tackle the
wikimarkup directly can deal with the | and other problems?

(I note, incidentally, that if one typed '' in WYSIWYG mode, the
interface would presumably escape it as appropriate, fixing that
particular issue...)

Steve


body:
Hoi,
In his speech Jimmy spoke about people he knows. People he knows to be
really great at the subject they stand for. People that are intimidated by
what you seem to say is perfectly adequate. People that do not contribute to
our content.

The buttons above the text area where you can edit are abysmal in their
functionality. They serve a need but once you have learned the codes, you
will not use them.

It is nice that you do not accept any argument.. it implies that you are not
willing to listen.
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 8/14/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> May I remind you things "thing that newbies need" are ALREADY in buttons
> ABOVE the text box, along with headings, external links, images, nowiki,
> and
> others which even I never use.
>
> I don't accept any argument that says WYSIWYG is needed for newbies.
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 8/14/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:

> All I see is a not-so-live live preview

Make an effort. Please. You might try even reading the first paragraph of text:

Click on Wikiwyg Disabled in the toolbox on the left, and try out
WikiWYG editing on this Wikia creatures page Creatures_3 or on the
test page. Please report problems or ask questions at Wikiwyg bugs.

Steve


body:
Hoi,
We need to change how we indicate italics and bold because the way it is
implemented is incompatible with some natural languages.
Thanks,
     GerardM

On 8/14/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Why do we need WYSIWYG to visualise italics and bold?
>
> On 8/14/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Wikiwyg implementation as seen at http://wikiwyg.wikia.com
>
>
> All I see is a not-so-live live preview
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
On 8/14/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> We need to change how we indicate italics and bold because the way it is
> implemented is incompatible with some natural languages.

They're incompatible, in a very minor way, with a somewhat uncommon
grammatical construct, which occurs in exactly one natural language,
spoken by comparatively few people - let's not exaggerate here. And
the last I heard, the one problem they were having (notably,
categories) had a simple workaround: using the unicode in place of one
of the ' characters, like ' or something.

Steve


body:
On 8/14/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> I still say utterly useless.

Are you looking for a pat on the head or a kick up the arse?

Steve


body:
Hoi,
What you call a "simple" workaround is enough to drive people away. You only
address one problem that I raised in an unsatisfactory way. There are many
keyboard that do not have a character like the | The consequence is that all
the functionality that requires this character is not available to many
people. You are bound to suggest that there is a "simple" workaround for
that as well.

At issue is that our current software while great, is not that great for a
many people. Because you are one of the "haves" you defend what you have and
ridicule what is necessary for those that do need make a much bigger effort
in order to use our software.

The one thing you forget is, that MediaWiki is there to provide and create
content. The argument is about does MediaWiki help or hinder creating
content. The argument on the one hand is: "it does not work for many
people"and on the other hand "it works for me". So please start writing
content in Neapolitan, Yoruba, Nepali, Bengali ...

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 8/14/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/14/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > We need to change how we indicate italics and bold because the way it is
> > implemented is incompatible with some natural languages.
>
> They're incompatible, in a very minor way, with a somewhat uncommon
> grammatical construct, which occurs in exactly one natural language,
> spoken by comparatively few people - let's not exaggerate here. And
> the last I heard, the one problem they were having (notably,
> categories) had a simple workaround: using the unicode in place of one
> of the ' characters, like ' or something.
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


subject: [Wikitech-l] Desire to Contribute

body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 03:48:39PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Chad Perrin <perrin at apotheon.com> wrote:
> > In the case of
> > edits to existing articles, I tend to suspect that typo fixes might be
> > among the highest percentage of first-time edits -- and that isn't
> > really affected much by "weird" stuff like templates and heading
> > wikimarkup.
>
> Well, that's the whole issue.  I, Jimbo Wales, etc. disagree.  We
> think a large number of the less technically-inclined are probably
> scared off by this kind of stuff, rather than ignoring it as they
> should.

It may be that there's a lower comparative number of first-time edits
by "less technically-inclined" people because of that.  I suppose I was
referring more to successful first edits than first-time viewings of an
edit page that led to an actual, useful edit.

--
CCD CopyWrite Chad Perrin [ http://ccd.apotheon.org ]
Ben Franklin: "As we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of
others we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any
Invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously."


from_name: Aerik Sylvan

subject: [Wikitech-l] Statistics?

body:
Do I correctly remember that mediawiki projects do not keep log files and
statistics and stuff (other than the ones that can be gleaned from the
database itself) to reduce server load?  I think I remember somebody saying
the even log files are not kept... or that could have been some other
reality.

I found
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Statistics
and
http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaEN.htm

And a few other things, but nothing that looks like it would answer some of
the questions being asked.

So - hitting an external log with the standard client issued image /
javascript type counter thingy would get some of that.  More data could be
gleaned by combining that with the info available from the database.

Has this already been discussed/beaten to death?  Is it a dumb idea?

Anybody got a server and bandwidth to take a gazillion hits to crunch some
additional statistics? :-)


from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 06:48:07PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> Ok, that's what I was wondering. Is that true though? You can't
> "integrate" non-GPL software with GPL software? Anyway, it was just a
> vague query that I had.

You cannot create non-GPL'd software, very roughly, that integrates
code from GPL'd software -- absent a separate license to do so --
unless it's an LGPL'd library.

You can create a program that, say, calls a GPL'd binary program and
utilizes its results across an execv boundary, without having to GPL
your code, but you can't *utilize source* without the license
"infecting" your code.

IANAL; CNY.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
On 8/14/06, mboverload <mboverload at gmail.com> wrote:
> Ok, present me a case on how WYSIWYG would help a new user on
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Empire
>
> We are not assuming they are idiots.  They can figure out by comparing the
> regular text and the final version that [[ ]] makes a link, ''' ''' makes
> bold, and == == makes a header.

Put it this way. We have a lot of readers, and few contributors. The
vast majority of our readers are willing to expend precisely zero
effort learning how to use our system in order to help us. The easier
we can make the system, the better for everyone. Even just replacing
the two step view page/edit page process with a single step "edit on
the same page" process we're making progress. Especially as if the
user clicks the most obvious link on the page (the "edit" tab) and has
to wade through around 40,000 characters trying to find that typo he
wanted to click....as compared to simply clicking "edit" then clicking
directly on the typo, which hasn't moved!

Anyone *can* figure out lots of things, they just may not be bothered doing it.

Note though, that I'm really talking about our minimal contributors -
the people who could fix typos, remove mistakes, etc, if only it was
incredibly easy. These arguments apply to a lesser extent to our
seasoned contributors (though I would still be much more willing to
fix typos and to copyedit in general if the required effort was
lower).

Steve


references:
<NABBJGECPILFNLFEAPIKOEGEIKAA.nickpj@gmail.com>
	<44DBFB21.9050609@pobox.com>
	<f1c3529e0608110152t78a10babpde43b8fe8443bd27@mail.gmail.com>
	<44DCA33F.40906@pobox.com>
	<f1c3529e0608111008i713ab8e0n99105ff93cbcf1e1@mail.gmail.com>
	<ebq8p9$u1b$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<f1c3529e0608141016i2e16d2bave327654d9acaebc@mail.gmail.com>

body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 07:16:28PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/14/06, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
> > > a) It hard redirects you, and there's absolutely no link back to where
> > > you came from. Very bad for maintenance, working on the redirect
> > > itself etc.
> > > b) It redirects you, but leaves the link back to the original
> > > redirecting page.
> >
> > or (c) It hard redirects you, and there's a link back to where you came
> > from.
>
> Ok, what do "hard direct" and "soft redirect" mean in this context
> exactly? Let's take some page A which redirects to page B. They're
> hosted directly at wiki.org.
>
> Currently wiki.org/A shows the content of wiki.org/B, but with a link
> back to A. The URL shows wiki.org/A.
>
> You're proposing that wiki.org/A force a (server-side?) redirect to
> wiki.org/B, display the content of B, with a link back to A, and yet
> the URL shows wiki.org/B? The question is, how does MediaWiki know to
> show the link back if the URL is only wiki.org/B, and not
> wiki.org/B&red=A or something?

The problem is that we want a "clean" URL when we land, and yet we also
want a backlink on the page proper.  There doesn't seem to be any good
way to get both.

I, too, think it would be nice to make it as difficult as possible to
bookmark a URL that's the *source* of a redirect (which I presume is
what everyone's on about), but as brion says, there doesn't seem to be
any clean way to do that and still have link back to the redirect --
without maintaining state in the server, which is entirely uncalled for
here.

IMHO.

Timwi clearly thinks that one of our premises, or our conclusion, are
incorrect, but doesn't seem to have provided details yet.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wysiwyg debate

body:
On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 05:51:55PM +0100, Timwi wrote:
> Firstly, if you spot a typo in a reference, the instinct is to click the
> "edit" link for the References section. But then all you see is:
>
> 	== References ==
> 	<references/>
>
> The other thing is that if you spot a typo in the middle of a paragraph
> which has inline references in every sentence, it is *extremely* hard to
> find that typo because all the inline references distract. You look
> somewhere and you don't even know if you're looking at the paragraph or
> the inside of a <ref> tag.
>
> If the person designing the references syntax had thought about this a
> bit more, these severe problems should have been apparent to them. A
> much more sensible thing would be to use [1], [2] etc. in the text, and
> define the references in the place where they are actually displayed --
> the References section. (Duh.)

Well, now; *here* we go into water that's easier to deal with: even
now, and particularly once the syntax is cleaned up a bit, it wouldn't
be that hard, I don't think, to implement syntax coloring in the
wikitext editor (he says, not being the one who's gonna write the code
:-), which would make it substantially easier to deal with such
circumstances.

And FWIW, I'm split, Timwi, on whether it's better to put the reference
inline or not; I can see good arguments both ways.

Cheers,
-- jra
--
Jay R. Ashworth                                                jra at baylink.com
Designer                          Baylink                             RFC 2100
Ashworth & Associates        The Things I Think                        '87 e24
St Petersburg FL USA      http://baylink.pitas.com             +1 727 647 1274

	The Internet: We paved paradise, and put up a snarking lot.


body:
Sherool wrote:

>While such licences are free-ish I don't think they would fall fully
>within the definition of free content (thouh IANAL). Either way they would
>not be compatable with the GFDL licence, since it does not put any
>restrictions on who can use a work or for what purpose, and unless I'm
>mistaken GFDL compatability is the acid test for wether or not something
>is allowed on Commons.
>
>
Note that we already have "free" content on the Commons that is, really,
unfree to use in some ways for reasons other than copyright. For
instance, take a free photograph of somebody and use it in an
advertisement; in many countries, you can get sued for abusive use of
that person's image.

Whether content free for educational and informational usage but not for
advertisement should be accepted on commons is a different question from
whether they should be accepted in the projects. My personal point of
view is that the projects should accept such content, for this content
is on a much sounder legal ground than a lot of our "fair use" claims.

-- DM


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 8/14/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> e.g. the War on Blogs, wherein some editors have got it into their
> heads that ALL BLOGS ARE EVIL AND MUST NEVER BE USED IN REFERENCES
> rather than e.g. regarding them as, say, lesser sources than
> peer-reviewed academic papers and assuming the reader can read. The
> response to crap sources is to say "those are crap sources, cut it
> out" rather than countering foolishness with foolishness.

Exactly.  Some blogs are very credible and reliable, because they are
written by well-known people in their fields with their own personal
reputations on the line.  The same goes for newsgroup postings, back
in the 'golden age' of Usenet.

> On non-contentious topics, the right way to do it would be to shift it
> to the talk page for discussion and an attempt at sourcing, e.g. the
> stuff on the early [[Casio Exilim]]s being crap in low light is
> observed by a pile of Exilim owners (e.g. me) but I can't find a good
> source - so out it goes as original research, but it's on the talk
> page should I or someone find something verifiable showing this to be
> an issue.

Hmm, one would have thought that some review somewhere would have
picked that up, but I guess that's why it's worth leaving it on the
talk page, because someone eventually will find  a source saying that.

> On contentious topics, there is good reason to be hard-arsed about
> sources. But that doesn't mean you go overboard and legalistic because
> someone who hates blogs edit-warred that wording into WP:V.

I think it's largely a case of policy being driven by the hard cases -
the one-tenth of one percent of articles, or fewer, that are truly
contentious edit war battlefields.

-Matt


subject: [WikiEN-l] CITE nazis

body:
On 8/14/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> Exactly.  Some blogs are very credible and reliable, because they are
> written by well-known people in their fields with their own personal
> reputations on the line.  The same goes for newsgroup postings, back
> in the 'golden age' of Usenet.

To follow up to my own posting, one of my concerns about pushing too
hard about 'reliable sources' is that it discourages people from
sourcing AT ALL and encourages mis-sourcing.

-Matt


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Invited by admin to leave en if concerned about free
	reusability

body:
On 8/14/06, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:
> We do. People keep trying to neutralise it but the comunity is a pain
> to go against.

Exactly - while a group of 50 admins could get away with quite a lot
in terms of rewriting policy, say, it would be hard to impose it on
the community, woudln't it?

-Matt


from_name: Simetrical

subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
On 8/14/06, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> It could be easy to make it. Let's say you have a bot proxy scanning ips
> that are being blocked on any project.

My impression is that portscans are sometimes grounds for IP-blocking,
at least by firewalls.  (Personally I think this behavior is
completely stupid, but I can only turn it off for myself, so . . .)
If there's actually no technical problem with our checking for open
proxies/Tor exit nodes ourselves (dedicated IP?), then okay, that
could be fairly easy.


from_name: David Monniaux

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>These are unfree licenses. Like any other 'non commercial' license
>they create a huge area of grey... For example, if we sell a Wikipedia
>DVD to help fun the project is that commercial exploitation?
>
>
One problem is that "commercial" does not mean the same to everyone.
I've discussed with people for whom evidently "commercial" meant
"advertisement", and encyclopedias, news articles and other educational
books, even distributed commercially, were not "commercial".

>This is no new revelation. Photographs of copyrighted art must be
>released under a free license by all copyright holders. Photographs
>which incidentally include copyrighted works do not concern us.
>
Have you checked internationally whether this last sentence applies, and
to which extent? There was a famous case in France when an
architect/sculptor sued a postcard publisher, and the supreme court
ruled against him by saying that the sculpture happened to be there but
was not in itself the topic of the photo, but the fact that it had to be
decided so high in the court system shows that it's a potentially
litigious area.

-- DM