from_name: maru dubshinki

body:
On 8/13/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/13/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/13/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > The accuracy of a quote in a book can easily be verified by going to a
> > > library and looking it up; often the quotes can even be found online.
> > > How does one verify the accuracy of a screencap?
> >
> > Presumably by obtaining the movie in VHS or DVD form. Many libraries
> > have collections of movies for loan, and there are commercial
> > providers as well (cf Blockbuster, etc)
> >
> > Once there, one can look for the scene.
>
> 24 frames per second, times 2 hours? That works out to over 170,000
> frames. Is the fact-checker supposed to skip through a frame at a
> time? And even then how can one assure that the screencap hasn't been
> altered in some subtle way? And then one must actually describe what
> one sees in the screencap, which, of course, is open to many different
> interpretations (i.e. original research).
>
> With a quotation, it's quite simple - get the book, open up to the
> page number listed, and read a couple of hundred words. Do the words
> in the article match what's in the book? Verified.
...
>
> Jay.

Not really. Which book, what edition? Consider the Bible - there are
dozens and dozens of possible original source manuscripts, and then
even more possible ways to edit their errors and ambiguities into a
generally acceptable text, and then one must decide on punctuation
(most of the languages concerned having none), and then one must
consider what books will be ruled canon, and then the actual
translation could be one of hundreds. How does one verify a Bible
quotation? And the Tripitaka is even worse in this regard. (The Koran
isn't such a textual problem, but that's because all the variant
versions were burned early on and the designated edition religiously
maintained until the relatively short time to the invention of the
printing press, IMO).

Or the Origin of Species - which of the six editions by Darwin
(varying substantially) would one be quoting from? Would a section
from the 1st overrule one from the 6th? Or would one split the
difference and go with #3?

Matter of fact, it's probably easier to 'verify' an image since most
films and such are released in one way, unlike texts which are
endlessly malleable. (No, Star Wars is not a good counterexample here,
and arguments that citing frame number FOO is a hopelessly brittle
solution apply with equal force to books where pages and layout can be
altered willy-nilly between editions).

~maru


list: wikitech-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Jay R. Ashworth

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

body:
On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 05:40:05AM -0700, mboverload wrote:
> Maybe I need to simplify it further:
>
> The only syntax people need to learn is [[link]].  That's it.  Maybe
> ''italics'' if they feel like it.  There's no need to do anything else.
>
> That's damn simple.

I'll extend it one more level: I think you need to be able to figure
our section headers.  But, indeed, those three things are enough for
75% of what a new editor might need to knew.

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 Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 05:08:56PM -0400, Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> It's a hyperbole, I agree, however, the basic gist is there. People have
> their own idea of "What looks right", and then, if given the tools to do
> so, will reformat the text to their vision, not necessarily preserving
> structural meaning.

Thank You.

This point hasn't really been made yet, and it's probably critical.

Theoretically, as I understand things like Semantic Wikipedia, the goal
is to precess specifically the Wikipedia databases roughly in that
direction.

As Ed notes, leaning in the direction of WYSIWIKI tends to precess
*away* from that, towards too much interest in how the wikitext's
rendering *looks*.

> A good example happened a while ago in a series of articles on a few
> bands. A few anonymous editors had been trying to spruce up the pages
> with lots of HTML, adding non-standard styling and the whole nine yards.
> Now, this was troublesome from a few editors who knew how to write HTML.
> Give that weapon to regular people.

Indeed.

> The bottom-line is WYSIWYG is an even worse offender of causing people
> to base things around presentation rather than structure. Granted,
> wikitext can be abused, but when all that extra possible styling is
> stuffed away in esoteric s and
s, it will prevent most Joe
> Averages from excessively formatting text.
>
> One may argue that Wikitext doesn't really enforce structure. At least
> we don't have people typing [font size=5][b]Header[/b][/font] (bbcode,
> see it a lot in tutorials).

I, personally, think that wikitext inherently suggests structure.

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 Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 11:56:54PM +0200, Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 8/13/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> > The bottom-line is WYSIWYG is an even worse offender of causing people
> > to base things around presentation rather than structure. Granted,
> > wikitext can be abused, but when all that extra possible styling is
> > stuffed away in esoteric s and
s, it will prevent most Joe
> > Averages from excessively formatting text.
>
> I'm not sure I share the attitude that the only way to avoid
> Wikipedians making incredibly ugly articles with too much character
> formatting is to make it difficult for them.

Can we agree to find a more neutral way to phrase "making it difficult
for them", given that neither side has anything more than anecdotal
data on whether, in fact, people do find working with wikitext more
difficult, and that clearly some people think that wikitext is *not*
more difficult.

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.


list: wikien-l

from_name: jayjg

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

body:
On 8/13/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/13/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/13/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > On 8/13/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > The accuracy of a quote in a book can easily be verified by going to a
> > > > library and looking it up; often the quotes can even be found online.
> > > > How does one verify the accuracy of a screencap?
> > >
> > > Presumably by obtaining the movie in VHS or DVD form. Many libraries
> > > have collections of movies for loan, and there are commercial
> > > providers as well (cf Blockbuster, etc)
> > >
> > > Once there, one can look for the scene.
> >
> > 24 frames per second, times 2 hours? That works out to over 170,000
> > frames. Is the fact-checker supposed to skip through a frame at a
> > time? And even then how can one assure that the screencap hasn't been
> > altered in some subtle way? And then one must actually describe what
> > one sees in the screencap, which, of course, is open to many different
> > interpretations (i.e. original research).
> >
> > With a quotation, it's quite simple - get the book, open up to the
> > page number listed, and read a couple of hundred words. Do the words
> > in the article match what's in the book? Verified.
> ...
> >
> > Jay.
>
> Not really. Which book, what edition?

Proper footnotes give the exact edition, and date.

> Consider the Bible - there are
> dozens and dozens of possible original source manuscripts, and then
> even more possible ways to edit their errors and ambiguities into a
> generally acceptable text, and then one must decide on punctuation
> (most of the languages concerned having none), and then one must
> consider what books will be ruled canon, and then the actual
> translation could be one of hundreds. How does one verify a Bible
> quotation? And the Tripitaka is even worse in this regard. (The Koran
> isn't such a textual problem, but that's because all the variant
> versions were burned early on and the designated edition religiously
> maintained until the relatively short time to the invention of the
> printing press, IMO).

The Bible is usually considered a primary source, and many differing
versions of quotations are all acceptable. If one wants to build some
sort of claim or theory based on those quotes, that would be, of
course, original research, and one would have to use some secondary or
tertiary source discussing that theory instead.

>
> Or the Origin of Species - which of the six editions by Darwin
> (varying substantially) would one be quoting from? Would a section
> from the 1st overrule one from the 6th? Or would one split the
> difference and go with #3?

Why would one have to, unless one was trying to build a novel theory?
And if one was doing so, then that would be original research.
Assuming one is not trying to build a novel theory, any quotation from
any version would do in general, so long as it is properly attributed.

> Matter of fact, it's probably easier to 'verify' an image since most
> films and such are released in one way, unlike texts which are
> endlessly malleable.

In fact, the exact opposite. What "tool" actually does the
verification - does one compare pixels between the original and the
uploaded version?

Jay.


body:
On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 06:29:30PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/13/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
> > All of this is quite a tangent from the original question about
> > WYSIWYG editors though. The basic question is "is it possible to have
> > a user-friendly, genuine WYSIWYG editing tool that does not conflict
> > with editors working directly in wikitext".

Certainly it is.  As has been noted, it's going to be difficult to make
it 100% until the syntax is formalized.

> And my counter-question is "What about a WYSIWYG editor that's good
> enough to make working directly in wikitext unnecessary for even the
> most hardcore power-users?"

*Why do you continue to presume that those hardcore power-users Won't
Want To Use Wikitext.*  I'm *not* one of them, and I damned sure want
to.

> > The follow-up question is
> > "is anyone going to write it?"
>
> That's a definite yes.  Jimbo hath spoken, and I think work is
> supposed to already be underway (but apparently not in our SVN repo).

Quite so.

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: Simetrical

body:
On 8/13/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> *Why do you continue to presume that those hardcore power-users Won't
> Want To Use Wikitext.*  I'm *not* one of them, and I damned sure want
> to.

I don't assume that.  I assume that many will be sufficiently averse
to WYSIWYG editors, based on prior negative experiences with them, to
not want to.  But I also assume that if there are no areas in which
the editor is genuinely lacking compared to wikitext editing, they'll
quickly get used to it, like it or not.

You're indifferent to those who are turned off by wikitext, and
suspect that they aren't too numerous.  I'm indifferent to those who
are turned off by WYSIWYG, and suspect that they aren't too numerous.
Fair's fair, hmm?


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
jayjg wrote:
 > 24 frames per second, times 2 hours? That works out to over 170,000
> frames.  Is the fact-checker supposed to skip through a frame at a
> time?

Back when I first created the {{cite episode}} template I included a
field for indicating how many minutes into the TV episode the moment
being cited was. Skipping to the right minute on a DVD and then watching
the show for one minute to spot the moment in question doesn't seem like
an onerous task to me.

The template has since been rejiggered to match a formal citation style
that doesn't include the minutes field. I think I was the only one who
noticed the omission and the only one who had ever used the minutes
field so it's probably not a big issue for the vast majority of people,
but if you like you can re-add it and I'll help out.

> And even then how can one assure that the screencap hasn't been
> altered in some subtle way?

You look at the screencap, and then you look at the freeze-framed
original. If there are differences between the two, you notice them
using pattern-recognition and -comparison wetware installed in your brain.

It's similar to how one would check to see if a quotation was altered in
some subtle way. Read the quote, then read the source.

> And then one must actually describe what
> one sees in the screencap, which, of course, is open to many different
> interpretations (i.e. original research).

Not if it's simply a factual description, for example noting down the
name written on the side of a starship. An actual example of this sort
of thing that happened in Wikipedia can be found at the article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictional_materials_in_the_Stargate_universe#Naqahdah
where there was some discussion about how the fictional metal's name was
spelled and a screencap was found showing a computer screen with the
word clearly displayed on it. There's no room for subjective
interpretation in this case.

Not saying that _all_ statements that can be made about a screencap have
no room for interpretation, just that the converse is not universally true.

>> A corollary of this is that screencaps of movies or TV programs not
>> available in purchaseable/rentable/loanable form should not be used as
>> source material, since they are effectively unverifiable.
>
> In my view *all* screencaps are effectively unverifiable.

I've got the DVD box set of the second season of Stargate sitting on the
shelf right next to me. I can verify that Naqahdah spelling with almost
trivial ease at any time.

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from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

body:
mboverload wrote:
> Someone explain to me how a screencap is ANY different than a quote from a
> book.
>

Quotes are factual (somebody said them), and facts cannot be copyrighted.

A screenshot is one of several thousand (~= 24 * 60 * 45) copyrighted
images, a story, the characters in the story, and an audio track which
make up an episode of a TV show.

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

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body:
On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> jayjg wrote:
>
> >On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>jayjg wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >>>On 8/12/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>>Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>>Joe Anderson wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>>>Cool Cat recently created an article called Starfleet
> >>>>>>Uniforms<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starfleet_Uniforms>,
> >>>>>>and it was nominated for deletion as cruft and OR.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>The screencaps/promo photos in the article, IMO, acted as a reputable
> >>>>>>source. I mean, how else (canonically) are you going to know about the
> >>>>>>uniform switch between TOS and TNG? Using a book is not canonical, and
> >>>>>>therefore is surely not [[WP:V]].
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>There are such things as Star Trek encyclopediae, which report canon and
> >>>>>real life (and probably not fanfic/other non-canon).
> >>>>>
> >>>>>While the TV shows are canonical (as are the movies (except where
> >>>>>continuity fails, cf. /Enterprise/)), using a screencap is close to
> >>>>>original research and on dangerous ground wrt. using "fair use" as an
> >>>>>excuse for copyright infringement. (****)
> >>>>>
> >>>>>
> >>>>So using a picture from the secondary source would be somehow more free
> >>>>than using a screen capture?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>No, the secondary source would describe the uniform switch from TOS to TNG.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>So would sample screen captures from episode of the two programs.  You
> >>would be able to see the difference without explanation.  This doesn't
> >>explain your gratuitous red herring about copyright infringement.
> >>
> >>
> >Copyright infringement? I don't know what you're talking about, I
> >never mentioned copyright infringement.
> >
> See (****) above.  If that was somebody else, I apologize for any
> implicitly wrong attribution.

Someone else.

>
> >>>>If one draws from a Star Trek Encyclopedia, comparing what is said there
> >>>>with the original source is still important.  How else are you going to
> >>>>know whether the Encyclopedia information is accurate?
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>"Wikipedia articles include material on the basis of verifiability,
> >>>not truth. That is, we report what other reliable sources have
> >>>published, whether or not we regard the material as accurate. In order
> >>>to avoid doing original research, and in order to help improve the
> >>>quality of Wikipedia articles, it is essential that any primary-source
> >>>material, as well as any generalization, analysis, synthesis,
> >>>interpretation, or evaluation of information or data, has been
> >>>published by a reputable third-party publication (that is, not
> >>>self-published) that is available to readers either from a website
> >>>(other than Wikipedia) or through a public library. It is very
> >>>important to cite sources appropriately, so that readers can find your
> >>>source and can satisfy themselves that Wikipedia has used the source
> >>>correctly." WP:NOR
> >>>
> >>>
> >>I see.  So you believe that slavish adherence to the ravings of policy
> >>wonks is more important than accuracy.  By your analysis above, if the
> >>material in a Star Trek Encyclopedia is just plain dead fucking wrong we
> >>would not be allowed to point that out because you consider it to be
> >>original research.  When it gets that far it strikes me as though the
> >>lunatics have taken over the asylum.
> >>
> >>
> >Um, you might not be aware of just how many crackpots there are that
> >insist that the facts printed in books are wrong.
> >
> Of course, and it's not enough just to say that it's wrong.  Saying so
> requires evidence, and a specific reference to the episode or novel
> would be evidence.  As long as the episode is available it's verifiable.

Sigh. Original research.

>
> >>>>I seriously question the notion that using material from the original
> >>>>movie or book is original research.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>I don't see how you possibly could question it; it's clear as day (see
> >>>above). Where have the screencaps in question been published?
> >>>
> >>>
> >>It's clear as day that they were published when the movie was released.
> >>
> >>
> >Published in what sense?
> >
> Made public.

Made public and being published are not synonyms.

> >>>>The original research was done by the author of the book.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>That's right, and he's allowed to. Scientists, researchers, authors,
> >>>newspaper reporters - they all do original research.  We don't, we use
> >>>the material the have published in reliable sources instead.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>Then I'm glad that you agree that since the author of the Star Trek
> >>novel or movie script did the original research our use of that material
> >>is not original research.
> >>
> >>
> >Huh? Writing a work of fiction is not "original research". Writing
> >*about* a work of fiction *is* original research. When the authors of
> >the Star Trek encyclopedia write about the series, they are engaging
> >in original research.
> >
> >Ray, how could putting words in my mouth that you clearly know I don't
> >mean help further a discussion?
> >
> Tit for tat.  Why did you say "That's right." in relation to the author
> of the book when I was clearly referring to the writer of the novel or
> episode?  The actual writing of the work of fiction (or any book for
> that matter) is not research at all; the research preceeds the writing.
> Certainly the novellist had to do some original research so that the
> novel could make some sense.  That encyclopedia is a secondary source,
> and not original research.

I have no idea what you're talking about any more. Novelists write
novels. An encyclopedia is a secondary source, filled with original
research.

Jay.


body:
On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 09:48:50PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/13/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > *Why do you continue to presume that those hardcore power-users Won't
> > Want To Use Wikitext.*  I'm *not* one of them, and I damned sure want
> > to.
>
> I don't assume that.  I assume that many will be sufficiently averse
> to WYSIWYG editors, based on prior negative experiences with them, to
> not want to.  But I also assume that if there are no areas in which
> the editor is genuinely lacking compared to wikitext editing, they'll
> quickly get used to it, like it or not.

I disagree, entirely.

> You're indifferent to those who are turned off by wikitext, and
> suspect that they aren't too numerous.  I'm indifferent to those who
> are turned off by WYSIWYG, and suspect that they aren't too numerous.
> Fair's fair, hmm?

I am not indifferent to those who are turned off to wikitext.  I
actively think they're lazy, and disinclined to learn about the world
around them.

But I realize that they exist, and I understand that some of them have
contributions to make to Wikipedia.

As for people who are turned off by WYSIWYG... you're generalizing from
me, and I don't think that's reasonable, either.  I'm not "turned off"
by WYSIWYG.  I just feel that there are good reasons why it's not
necessarily the best solution *in this particular use case* --
particularly if it's implementation *penalizes* the people who prefer
not to use it.

Please, let's not mischaracterise my opinion just because we don't
agree with it.

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 8/13/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> I am not indifferent to those who are turned off to wikitext.  I
> actively think they're lazy, and disinclined to learn about the world
> around them.

That only strengthens my point, if anything.

> As for people who are turned off by WYSIWYG... you're generalizing from
> me, and I don't think that's reasonable, either.  I'm not "turned off"
> by WYSIWYG.

You would prefer not to edit in WYSIWYG.  That constitutes being
"turned off" by it, in the way I intended to use the phrase.


body:
On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 10:16:06PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/13/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > I am not indifferent to those who are turned off to wikitext.  I
> > actively think they're lazy, and disinclined to learn about the world
> > around them.
>
> That only strengthens my point, if anything.

But don't bother to quote the part of my message wherein I prove
reasonable.

Nice rhetoric there...

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: George Herbert

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bye.

body:
On 8/13/06, NSLE (Wikipedia) <nsle.wikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
> >
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

This all looks incredibly messy; however, it appears that a number of
people who should have gone to the foundation / office and stepped
away from the situation instead got neck-deep in it.

I'm going to refrain from any comment about the pretty obscure and
convoluted particulars at this moment.

However, it may be time for a "in extreme cases of claimed real world
user misbehavior the Office has first and only jurisdiction" policy.

--
-george william herbert
george.herbert at gmail.com


body:
On 8/13/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> But don't bother to quote the part of my message wherein I prove
> reasonable.
>
> Nice rhetoric there...

Okay, fair cop.  I also realize that people who dislike WYSIWYG exist,
and I understand that some of them have contributions to make to
Wikipedia, but I still strongly doubt that even you would not quickly
become as comfortable with WYSIWYG as you are with wikitext right now,
and therefore I don't consider your current opinion terribly
important.  Of course, I also don't make the decisions around here,
which I'm sure you're thankful for.  :)

On a somewhat different topic . . . the WYSIWYG editor we use will be
open-source, yes?  If so, and if it's under development, where's the
repo?  If not . . . that's a surprise, I must say.


from_name: Nathan

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bye.

body:
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.

- Nathan


subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
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?

Titoxd.

-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Starling [mailto:t.starling at physics.unimelb.edu.au]
Sent: Sunday, August 13, 2006 7:13 PM
To: wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

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: Edward Z. Yang

body:
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Hash: SHA1

Rob Church wrote:
> Rob Church

Rob! You're back! :-)

> But then, if it doesn't *hurt* in the short term, and someone
> has the balls to hack a few test implementations and ideas together,
> good for them.

Hmm... so the core MediaWiki developers had nothing to do with this?
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from_name: Joseph Hiegel

subject: [WikiEN-l] Bye.

body:
"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."

  Since someone would probably think it indecorous of me to give you an on-Wiki barnstar for this, please accept this * as my own special thanks for your expressing quite succinctly the concerns that, well, many of us have apropos of Cyde...

  Cordially,

  Joe
  [[User:Jahiegel]]

Gallagher Mark George <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:

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

_______________________________________________
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] Bye.---oops, that wasn't supposed to go to the list

body:
Okay, sorry all; that obviously wasn't supposed to go to the list.  I'll now crawl under my desk and hide...

  Joe

Joseph Hiegel <jahiegel at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
  "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."

Since someone would probably think it indecorous of me to give you an on-Wiki barnstar for this, please accept this * as my own special thanks for your expressing quite succinctly the concerns that, well, many of us have apropos of Cyde...

Cordially,

Joe
[[User:Jahiegel]]

Gallagher Mark George wrote:

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

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

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


from_name: Rod A. Smith

subject: [Wikitech-l] Exposing template arguments to MW extensions

body:
An extension for English Wiktionary needs access to the arguments of its
invoking template. The
following diff shows my proposed change to Parser.php
to expose those arguments:

Index: includes/Parser.php
===================================================================
--- includes/Parser.php (revision 16050)
+++ includes/Parser.php (working copy)
@@ -3000,7 +3000,9 @@

     if( $this->mOutputType == OT_HTML ) {
      # Strip <nowiki>, <pre>, etc.
+     array_push( $this->mArgStack,
$assocArgs );
      $text = $this->strip( $text, $this-
>mStripState );
+     array_pop( $this->mArgStack );
      $text = Sanitizer::removeHTMLtags(
$text, array( &$this, 'replaceVariables' ), $assocArgs );
     }
     $text = $this->replaceVariables( $text,
$assocArgs );

The change above works on my installation, but is there
some standard place for me to add a phpunit test for that change?

--Rod


body:
On Sun, Aug 13, 2006 at 10:24:58PM -0400, Simetrical wrote:
> On 8/13/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > But don't bother to quote the part of my message wherein I prove
> > reasonable.
> >
> > Nice rhetoric there...
>
> Okay, fair cop.  I also realize that people who dislike WYSIWYG exist,
> and I understand that some of them have contributions to make to
> Wikipedia, but I still strongly doubt that even you would not quickly
> become as comfortable with WYSIWYG as you are with wikitext right now,
> and therefore I don't consider your current opinion terribly
> important.  Of course, I also don't make the decisions around here,
> which I'm sure you're thankful for.  :)

Well, not if you're gonna come with the "I don't consider your opinion
terribly important" stuff... but at least you're honest.  :-)

> On a somewhat different topic . . . the WYSIWYG editor we use will be
> open-source, yes?  If so, and if it's under development, where's the
> repo?  If not . . . that's a surprise, I must say.

Someone posted links; I haven't looked yet: there was no source there?

But if it's all original code, no, there's nothing essentially
unethical about not doing your initial development out of the fishbowl.
It may not be the *smartest* move, but there are arguments on both
sides.

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 03:31:04AM +0100, Rob Church wrote:
> Obviously we missed the part where they decided to use the waterfall
> method of development, but not to worry - I'm sure the decision on
> what brand of coffee will be drunk is IMMINENT, and we all know that
> is a VITAL step.

Hee.

> Christ, there's a lot of throwing words around on this list. I turn my
> back for a month or two and you lot start fighting without me? I call
> that downright rude!

Sorry, Rob.  I know we should have waited and all...

> On a more serious note, let's all just chill out for a second and
> remember that everyone is bound to have a different opinion regarding
> interacting with the software; editing is, after all, the main
> functionality within MediaWiki, and as a consequence, the editing
> interface is one of the most critical. Which means that any changes
> being made to it, or to supplement it or <insert chosen verb
> arrangement here> need careful thought, and discussion...
>
> ...sure. But then, if it doesn't *hurt* in the short term, and someone
> has the balls to hack a few test implementations and ideas together,
> good for them.

Certainly.  Never argued that.  I was just trying to rein in a little
people's flights on completely replacing the internal storage format
with, say, XML, in the service of that sort of work.

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 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>
> >mboverload wrote:
> >
> >
> >>Someone explain to me how a screencap is ANY different than a quote from a
> >>book.
> >>
> >>
> >Quotes are factual (somebody said them), and facts cannot be copyrighted.
> >
> Wow!  Some people really work hard to prove they haven't got a clue.

Ray, do you imagine that this kind of rudeness is helpful?

Jay.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 8/13/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> The bottom-line is WYSIWYG is an even worse offender of causing people
> to base things around presentation rather than structure. Granted,
> wikitext can be abused, but when all that extra possible styling is
> stuffed away in esoteric s and
s, it will prevent most Joe
> Averages from excessively formatting text.

I'm not sure I share the attitude that the only way to avoid
Wikipedians making incredibly ugly articles with too much character
formatting is to make it difficult for them.

Steve


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-08-14

body:
An automated run of parserTests.php showed the following failures:

Running test TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Template with thumb image (with link in description)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Parsing optional HTML elements (Bug 6171)... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting... FAILED!
Running test TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold... FAILED!
Running test TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line... FAILED!
Running test TODO: HTML Hex character encoding.... FAILED!
Running test TODO: dt/dd/dl test... FAILED!

Passed 413 of 429 tests (96.27%) FAILED!


body:
On 8/14/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> There's a difference between making things difficult and not making
> shortcuts for those things.  You could look at wikitext as HTML on
> steroids: non-SGML shortcuts for the most commonly used formatting, but
> after that you have to use HTML.
>
> If we make a WYSIWIG editor, I wouldn't give users a box to pick colors
> with. I probably wouldn't let them change font either (though switching
> to monospace is acceptable) or let them change font size.  If they want
> to do that, let them switch to HTML mode and write the HTML themselves.

I would probably do that too, but simply because font-changing is an
incredibly rare thing to want to do at Wikipedia, and therefore of
little value in the GUI. I don't think I've ever changed typeface, and
only occasionally changed point size, mostly for tables. Changing font
color is occasionally useful for tables - but it would be much better
to have predefined styles for that.

All of this is quite a tangent from the original question about
WYSIWYG editors though. The basic question is "is it possible to have
a user-friendly, genuine WYSIWYG editing tool that does not conflict
with editors working directly in wikitext". The follow-up question is
"is anyone going to write it?"

Steve


list: foundation-l

from_name: Kelly Martin

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary

body:
On 8/14/06, - Essjay - <essjaywiki at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to see new steward elections very soon, though the
> Board election may make that difficult.

I think it would be a good idea to hold a call for new stewards after
the conclusion of the board elections.

Kelly


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary


body:
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.

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from_name: - Essjay -

subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary

body:
On 8/9/06, Angela <beesley at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> This might just be a sign that new steward elections are required.
>
>
I've thought this since *at least* May, when I ran stats and found that Jon
Harald Soby was responsible for roughly 40% of all steward actions in April
& May. The fact that a good number of our stewards also hold other positions
(developer, Board, CFO, Office) makes it difficult for them to really be
active in the day-to-day steward work, though they definately have need for
the access. I'd like to see new steward elections very soon, though the
Board election may make that difficult.

Essjay
-----
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Essjay
Wikipedia:The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/


subject: [Foundation-l] Emergency on Wiktionary


from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Brad Patrick wrote:

>Brion Vibber wrote:
>
>
>>Does someone handling e-mail and press inquiries actually have to be in St. Pete?
>>
>>
>>
>Of course not.  Someone answering the office main number and helping
>with basic office stuff probably ought to be *in* the office, though.
>It's working so far.
>
Even someone answering the officenumber doesn't have to be in the
office. Together with my father and a friend we have started a voip
telephony company last year. This year we decided to also do
retailtraffic and we are currently testing with numbers that for
instance are Dutch local numbers but can be teminated (through voip)
anywhere in the world.

This can be done with numbers in many countries now. So people can call
you on a local number but you can be anywhere in the world as long as
your comp is on.

As far as I know the same is possible with US numbers.

Waerth


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


from_name: Anthere

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

body:
Erik Zachte wrote:
> Anthere:
>
>>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update
>>
>>It is still here.
>>Summary : we need to update the bylaws. On the page mentionned above, a
>>new text is proposed. Please comment.
>>
>>This text, amongst other things, removes the notion of membership. If
>>you do not comment, nor propose another way to handle membership, the
>>Foundation will not legally have members. You will not be Foundation
>>members.
>>
>>Another issue I think matters is making it even clearer what our mission
>>is. I think we all agree we are working so that our content stays
>>available to the largest number of people on earth. We aim at lowering
>>the barriers of language (in being multilingual) as well as financial
>>barriers. And we seek reusability as a dogma.
>>
>
>
> **Board involvement**
>
> I would like to thank Anthere for all the time she spends on keeping the
> community involved in foundation issues. One of the reasons that she is so
> busy may well be that some other board members are less involved in this.
>
> I wholly concur with GerardM's statement that there is always more to do for
> a board member than time allows. Not the least to keep communication
> channels open in both directions, to the community at large, to committees,
> projects, external organisations (with others of course).
>
> Being part of the community, instead of just overseeing it from a distance,
> takes time, a whole lot of it. This is different from normal spare-time
> Wikimedia involvement of any volunteer: many of those discussions will be
> from the perspective of a board member, explaining decisions and I would
> hope proposals for decisions, asking for input and feedback. How can one
> honestly expect a person to be part of and represent the community if he or
> she spends just a few hours a week on that task? Somehow people seem to
> think that organising a global movement at our scale can be done as a
> pasttime?
>
> **Purpose of Bylaws**
>
> About the Bylaws: can someone explain to me what the Bylaws are for? I would
> think laws, and bylaws for that matter, serve at least two purposes:
>
> 1 Serve as binding guidelines for conduct, in other words communicate wanted
> and unwanted behaviour a priori.
> 2 Act as a final frame of reference a posteriori for how to resolve
> conflict, when disputes arise over these guidelines.
>
> A lawyer can certainly improve on these impromptu definitions.
>
> 1 Is always useful, even when all affairs are conducted in harmony. If we
> decide on wanted behaviour lets put it down to writing.
> 2 Is what laws tend to be associated with in the first place. They give
> guidance in times of conflict, be it between nations, an individual and a
> state, a board and a community, etc. They form a frame of reference that
> (hopefully) is still recognized by contesting parties a posteriori, and if
> not, at least serves to show that the party in power is consistent in its
> behaviour.
>
> **Solidity of proposed Bylaws**
>
> So I ask myself: for whom are these guidelines in the Wikimedia Bylaws and
> to whom are they binding?
>
> Parts of the Bylaws are very detailed. For example article IV section 4
> about board meetings is the longest section and deals in detailed legalistic
> terms with how board members can not get around each other.
>
> I can't help but smile when I read:
>
> "Notice of any special meeting shall be given at least ten (10) days before
> the meeting by written notice delivered personally, or by email, chat, or
> fax to each Trustee at his business address, unless in case of emergency,
> the chair of the Board of Trustees or the vice-chair of the Foundation shall
> prescribe a shorter notice to be given personally or by communicating to
> each Trustee at his email address, residence or business address in like
> manner."
>
> Of course 'state of emergency' leaves plenty of room for interpretation.
> Lawyers thrive by the unavoidable ambiguities of language.
>
> Now the bylaws really come to life when a serious dispute occurs, let us say
> for arguments sake, between the board and the community. As I said earlier
> on several occasions: that is a hypothetical question, but of immense
> relevance, and to be discussed before the situation arises, in other words
> now.
>
> When a serious dispute occurs the community is pretty much powerless. They
> may have voted only for a minority of the board, as they effectively did up
> till now. This does not change with the proposed amendments to the Bylaws.
> Although the Bylaws allow for more than two community elected members
> (Article IV section 3) they give no guarantees, they don't even specify
> which proportion of the (possibly enlarged) board should be true
> representatives, it is all at the discretion of the board.
>
> Pretty much anything is at the discretion of the board: the bylaws allow the
> board to act as they please most of the time: they can fire anyone they
> appointed at will, instantaneous, without community discussion, or written
> notice 10 days in advance, etc etc. Not only whom they appointed though:
> "Any officer or agent elected or appointed by the Board of Trustees may be
> removed by the Board of Trustees whenever, in its judgment, the best
> interests of the Foundation would be served thereby." (Article V Section 3)
>
> Finally when things heat up the board should not feel restricted in any way
> by these bylaws, and the community should not feel either too reassured or
> worried by these bylaws, because they are pretty volatile, they can be
> changed on short notice by a simple majority in the board. If bylaws stand
> in the way of what a majority of the board thinks is best, well it takes a
> week or two delay only and the same minimal majority can have its way. For
> those of us that think these bylaws give any long term assurance and or
> guidance, this is not the case. Relevant section is article X, section 1, I
> quote:
>
> "These bylaws may be altered, amended or repealed and new Bylaws may be
> adopted by a majority of the entire Board of Trustees at any regular meeting
> or special meeting, provided that at least ten days written notice is given
> of intention to alter, amend or repeal or to adopt new Bylaws at such
> meeting."
>
> Oh just a minor oddity: at the time of writing these new proposed bylaws
> have only been added and edited by anonymi. Probably an oversight.
>
> Erik Zachte

Just a small comment right now. These new bylaws have been proposed by
Brad several months ago, with some minor modifications from me. They
have stand since then on the board wiki. With no approval from the board
in spite of a couple of attempts.

When the issue was raised up on this very list maybe a month or so ago,
several people complained with the idea the Foundation would not have
anymore members, and some asked me that these bylaws be made available
publicly. I consequently posted them on meta (the anon is me, I was not
from my computer and did not care log-in). This text is the copy of the
one currently on the board wiki.

ant


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


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.

A major activity that, IMO, is almost certainly not worth the effort.
We should use a few carefully vetted external blacklists with good
reps, and not ban anyone who's not on all of them.  That, combined
with local (and global?) whitelists, should be more than sufficient to
ensure that no one legitimate is locked out, or at least not for long.


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:

>On 8/13/06, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
>
>
>>Even someone answering the officenumber doesn't have to be in the
>>office.
>>
>>
>[snip]
>
>It's a little harder to deal with things like postal mail that arrive
>at the office without additional contortions.
>
>There is nothing wrong with having some office staff. Of course, as we
>scale up more remote workers will make sense... no one has argued
>otherwise.
>_________________________
>

IMHPOV we should have people in the office and not scattered around the
globe. I was just pointing out that there are alternatives possible as I
surmised from the reaction of Brad that he wasn't aware of this possibility.

Waerth


subject: [Foundation-l] board candidacies


list: textbook-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Textbook-l] Printed Versions of Textbooks

body:
I've posted a discussion at:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikibooks_talk%3APublication_of_the_Month#Future_directions_for_publication_of_Wikibooks_content

where I've discussed the idea of trying to set up an independent group
of Wikimedia users for the purpose of making physical publications of
Wikibooks content.

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 also don't want to be accused of abusing my position as an
administrator on Wikibooks, but instead just want to see this project
succeed and go places that it hasn't been to before.

About a year ago I made a printed version of the Wikijunior Solar System
book and passed it around to several parents in the neighborhood that I
lived in.  None of them are even semi-regular Wikimedia users, but
rather just ordinary parents.  They were very interested in getting a
copy of the content, but seemed to be confused about the idea of
copyleft content and such.  What they were looking for was essentially a
publisher that was selling this stuff, even if it was available on-line
only.  I've also been contacted by some home-schooling groups that
seemed to be especially interested in the Wikijunior books, although
some of the other stuff on Wikibooks seems to have some interest as well.

I've been waiting for what was the best time to start doing something
like this, and I feel the time has now come on Wikibooks to finally
really push forward and try to get some sort of publishing done with
this content.  To avoid issues with the tax-excempt status of the
Wikimedia Foundation, I do feel that this needs to be something done
outside of Wikibooks itself, with the majority of the discussion
happening on either mailing lists or perhaps a Wiki set up on an
independent server.

BTW, yes I am aware of http://wikipress.de/ but as they are primarily
dealing with German Wikipedia content being sold to people in the
European Union, and what I am talking about is English Wikibooks content
being sold to North America, I think there is a significant enough
difference to require another group being set up for this project.  I
also don't want to be doing duplication of effort here if there is
anybody else that is also working toward this goal.

If there isn't any commentary or interest from other individuals, I'm
going to go ahead and do this anyway myself and be bold, but I do want
to make other Wikibooks user aware of this effort.

--
Robert Scott Horning


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

references:
<ebn66u$nrt$1@sea.gmane.org>	<71cd4dd90608130540j362e69f8i3666a418864b4cf2@mail.gmail.com>	<ebn7m9$r61$1@sea.gmane.org>
	<44DFB1BF.609@telus.net>

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
> Anthere wrote:
>
>
>>Anthony wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>On 8/13/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>This text, amongst other things, removes the notion of membership. If
>>>>you do not comment, nor propose another way to handle membership, the
>>>>Foundation will not legally have members. You will not be Foundation
>>>>members.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>How long do we have to comment?  I'm thinking about writing my own
>>>proposal for a membership section, but this will take some time.

ah; The bylaws will be on october agenda. ant


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


body:
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.


from_name: geni

body:
On 8/14/06, jayjg <jayjg99 at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Bible is usually considered a primary source, and many differing
> versions of quotations are all acceptable.

That ah could be problematical. The obvious example being the changes
that we know have been made from older versions and in various
tranlations (there are direct factual conflicts between NIV and KJV).

> In fact, the exact opposite. What "tool" actually does the
> verification - does one compare pixels between the original and the
> uploaded version?
>
> Jay.

It would certianly be one option.

--
geni


from_name: mboverload

body:
On 8/14/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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

Tuff....shed.


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 8/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> Do that, and I won't edit. Do that, and people using older browsers
> (long live lynx) and screen readers, or not embracing "newfangled"
> script technologies, etc. can't. So hiding wiki markup and locking it
> out of sight is not an option, and it should not be. If Joe User wants
> to view his markup, he should be allowed to. WYSIWYG is *not* a quick
> fix for the parser.

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?  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.

Of course, I suppose discussions here about how WYSIWYG will work are
kind of pointless anyway, when it's being integrated into MediaWiki by
a third party as we speak . . .


body:
On 8/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
> ENTERPRISEY! Come on, I was bloody teasing! Surely the references to
> the waterfall method gave you some idea?
>
> I fear for the future of sarcasm; of parodies and piss-takes, etc.

Hey, at least I suspected.  :P


body:
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.


from_name: Erik Zachte

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

body:
Ray:
> Having detailed rules is not unusual.  Sometimes it's favourable.  I may
> disagree with some specific provisions, but I have no argument over the
> length of details.  Compared to by-laws that I have previously drafted
> myself for other organizations, these are short.

You completely missed the whole point: I am for precise and unambiguous
rules.
I just find it remarkable that in this potentially very important document
the one section where every care is taken to be precise and unambiguous is
how board members should schedule meetings without giving each other proper
notice.

Erik Zachte


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


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 14/08/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> wrote:
> On a somewhat different topic . . . the WYSIWYG editor we use will be
> open-source, yes?  If so, and if it's under development, where's the
> repo?  If not . . . that's a surprise, I must say.

Obviously we missed the part where they decided to use the waterfall
method of development, but not to worry - I'm sure the decision on
what brand of coffee will be drunk is IMMINENT, and we all know that
is a VITAL step.

Christ, there's a lot of throwing words around on this list. I turn my
back for a month or two and you lot start fighting without me? I call
that downright rude!

On a more serious note, let's all just chill out for a second and
remember that everyone is bound to have a different opinion regarding
interacting with the software; editing is, after all, the main
functionality within MediaWiki, and as a consequence, the editing
interface is one of the most critical. Which means that any changes
being made to it, or to supplement it or <insert chosen verb
arrangement here> need careful thought, and discussion...

...sure. But then, if it doesn't *hurt* in the short term, and someone
has the balls to hack a few test implementations and ideas together,
good for them.

Rob Church


body:
On 14/08/06, Edward Z. Yang <edwardzyang at thewritingpot.com> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Rob Church wrote:
> > Rob Church
>
> Rob! You're back! :-)

Not quite, see mediawiki-l archive. But I can't resist making a
tasteless comment and winding up an explosive situation once in a
while. Or something.

> > But then, if it doesn't *hurt* in the short term, and someone
> > has the balls to hack a few test implementations and ideas together,
> > good for them.
>
> Hmm... so the core MediaWiki developers had nothing to do with this?

We still have those? No, I was under the impression we were going to
do sensible things like formalise the parser specification and stuff
before we got onto that. At least, that's what our CTO advised and
explained to me, and I agreed. But if the President has given his
Orders...

The rationale behind the statement I made above was, "Proof of concept
doesn't hurt. Ideas, thoughts - scribbled notes on how something might
be done...it all saves time and patent applications for Wheel 2.0
later on, doesn't it?

Rob Church


body:
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


body:
I do not accept any arguement currently presented.

I found the WYSIWYG part of the creatures wiki.  Wow.  I can make text bold
AND italic at the same time which just two clicks.  Yay.

I still say utterly useless.


body:
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.

mboverload


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 14/08/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:

> A corollary of this is that screencaps of movies or TV programs not
> available in purchaseable/rentable/loanable form should not be used as
> source material, since they are effectively unverifiable.

No, that's not what 'verifiable' means. It's like deleting a book
reference from an article because it's out of print and your own
library doesn't happen to have it.

- d.


from_name: Birgitte SB

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

body:
--- Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:

> My idea is to form a group of members who care
> specifically about
> Wikimedia, not as just "that organization that
> provides
> Wiki[whatever]", but for its full potential.  Ant
> recently brought up
> a thread that she wanted to see more candidates for
> the board with
> interests other than just on the English Wikipedia.
> My response to
> that thread was more practical than idealistic - I
> feel that this is a
> symptom of the way the organization is currently
> being run (in essence
> ignoring the bylaws), and that simply encouraging
> more people to run
> for the board is not going to solve anything.  The
> membership of a
> membership-based organization is the base, and right
> now we don't even
> know who that membership is.
>
> I've been thinking a lot about what I'd like to see
> in the updated
> bylaws.  My current thinking is to have members of
> Wikimedia which are
> not tied in any way to the current projects (i.e.
> you don't have to
> have a log in anywhere, and you don't even have to
> have a computer).
> I think the part about not even needig a computer is
> important -
> Wikimedia is more than just the sum of its projects,
> and it exists in
> the real world, not on the Internet.
>
> The annual dues would be around $250 US, but a
> committee would be
> formed to introduce rules by which members could
> have the dues waived
> (or possibly reduced, but I'm not sure if that
> complication is worth
> it).  The idea is that volunteers on any of the
> various projects would
> be able to become members for free, but it wouldn't
> be automatic, and
> the rules could be different for the different
> projects.  The
> committee would have flexibility so that a peace
> core worker who
> distributes printed Wikimedia materials in some
> remote location, and
> can only get on the Internet once a week, can still
> be a member, and
> they can be a member for free.  I chose $250 because
> I think this is a
> big enough amount that it'll keep membership to
> people who truly care
> about Wikimedia, but I initially was thinking more
> like $100/year, and
> I'm still very flexible on this number.  I also
> think the number of
> members whose dues get waived will probably outweigh
> those who don't,
> as that seems to be within the spirit of the
> projects Wikimedia runs.
>
> Well, as I said this is just my current thinking on
> the matter.  If
> anyone has any comments I'd love to hear them.  If
> any lawyer-minded
> people want to propose some language which
> accomplishes this I'd love
> to hear that too.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
>
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

I question whether this would actually accomplish what
you would like it to.  How does a $250 price tag on
membership seperate people who care about  "that
organization that provides Wiki[whatever]" from people
"who care specifically about Wikimedia . . . for its
full potential"?  I just don't see why people in one
group would be any more willing to spend $250 than the
other group.  Are you suggesting this fee should be
waived for people who write a good essay about the
potential of WMF, or people who work in developing
nations, or based on some other factor?  I just don't
get how this proposal is supposed to solve the problem
you outline above.

BirgitteSB

P.S. I am not even sure this really is a definate
problem.  It could just be a sypmtom of WMF's not
properly educating the people from the communities
about the foundation's full potential.  Especially
since poor communication between the Foundation and
the communities is the underlying issue with many past
and current difficulties.  In any event I am assuming
it *is* an intrinsic problem for the above
disscussion.

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


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


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

body:
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


body:
On 14/08/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> Certainly.  Never argued that.  I was just trying to rein in a little
> people's flights on completely replacing the internal storage format
> with, say, XML, in the service of that sort of work.

Oh, I don't know. XML is very enterprisey. Do we want to be enterprisey?

Rob Church


body:
On 14/08/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> 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.

Yes, yes, I know. Users don't embrace concepts such as matching tag
pairs and making stuff clean, else we could let them use an XHTML
subset. C'est la vie.

However, I think it's more correct to state that a lot of parser
ugliness comes from bolting on behaviour and hacking stuff in at a
fast clip, to provide extras. A lot of the behaviour people depend
upon is due to bugs in the parser, which are now considered de facto,
but which shouldn't be happening.

> 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.

Indeed. There's also a long standing wish by many for world peace,
worldwide nuclear disarmament, an end to global poverty and fair trade
for everyone. But unfortunately, those things can't practically be
done in a single sweeping step.

I don't agree that hiding wiki markup is the productive step. As has
been pointed out often on this list, power users and people who are
comfortable with it are more productive with markup. Your solution is
"let's break the syntax and hide the mess behind a graphical user
interface", which I don't agree with.

Do that, and I won't edit. Do that, and people using older browsers
(long live lynx) and screen readers, or not embracing "newfangled"
script technologies, etc. can't. So hiding wiki markup and locking it
out of sight is not an option, and it should not be. If Joe User wants
to view his markup, he should be allowed to. WYSIWYG is *not* a quick
fix for the parser.

Rob Church


body:
On 14/08/06, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikitech at gmail.com> 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.

ENTERPRISEY! Come on, I was bloody teasing! Surely the references to
the waterfall method gave you some idea?

I fear for the future of sarcasm; of parodies and piss-takes, etc.

Rob Church


body:
On 14/08/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hoi,
> "Do that and I won't edit" .. here we have a power user speaking..

No. The statement means "if you take away the underlying ability to
edit wiki markup and force users to use a GUI and all sorts of
wonderful [E]TLAs in order to edit, then many users, this one
included, won't bother."

Not that I get a chance to edit anything Wikimedia-related these days anyway.

Rob Church


body:
On 8/14/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > And my counter-question is "What about a WYSIWYG editor that's good
> > enough to make working directly in wikitext unnecessary for even the
> > most hardcore power-users?"
>
> *Why do you continue to presume that those hardcore power-users Won't
> Want To Use Wikitext.*  I'm *not* one of them, and I damned sure want
> to.

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.

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 :)

Steve


from_name: Gregory Kohs

subject: [WikiEN-l] First post

body:
Did I submit this correctly, yesterday?  At the time, it seemed like my
first post, because my earlier, true "first post" hadn't yet appeared in the
mailing list.  I'm waiting on this important post to show up now, but I
don't want to re-submit and create havoc in the queue.

Greg

On 8/13/06, Gregory Kohs <thekohser at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have just completed an updated Talk page for the account MyWikiBiz.  I
> would very much like to see an intelligent, civil discussion of the whole
> "Paid to edit" issue that MyWikiBiz.com seems to have set off.  I have
> constructed what I think is a good format for that dialogue at:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MyWikiBiz
>
> I believe that this is an excellent opportunity to determine what is truly
> best for the Wikipedia community, then to put it before the Arbitration
> Committee and Jimmy Wales.
>
> Kindly,
>
>    Greg
>
> P.S.  I hope that this post gets through moderation.  If I've done
> something wrong, please let me know.
>
> --
> Gregory Kohs
> Founder, MyWikiBiz.com
> thekohser at gmail.com
>
> Cell: 302.463.1354
>


from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Open proxy blacklist

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
>> 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.

What we could use is a flagging system. Indications of known open proxies, or
known 'vandalism centers' such as libraries or schools which have been used
often by vandals, could flag edits and account creations made from such regions.

Admins should also be able to switch in emergency locks on such ranges
relatively easily, ranging from visible flagging, to adding a captcha, to a time
delay or rate limiter, to blocking editing for anons, to blocking editing for
new accounts, to blocking all editing.

Similar locks on edits adding certain phrases can also be useful for mass attacks.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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from_name: Anthony

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

body:
On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Anthony wrote:
>
> >On 8/13/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update
> >>
> >>
> >The proposed bylaws do not at all mention the chapters.  Is this
> >intentional?  It's my understanding that chapters are not legally
> >affiliated with Wikimedia except that they license the use of certain
> >trademarks.  Is this correct?  And is this pretty much what everyone
> >wants?  What do Jimbo and Brad (apparently the two main proponents of
> >a non-membership organziation) think the role of chapters should be?
> >
> I have yet to see a clear rationale for a memberless Foundation.  In
> some jurisdictions such a concept is unthinkable.
>
I get the sense that there's an effort to run Wikimedia more like a
private foundation than a public charity.  Of course a public charity
has tax advantages, so as long as Wikimedia can continue to be
recognized as such, they'll do it.  But with Brad talking about
getting billions of dollars in revenue it's unclear how such a broad
base of contributors will be able to be kept up very long.  Personally
when I heard him say that I imagined the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation making a large multi-million dollar contribution, and for
me it wasn't something that I got excited about.  Of course that's
probably just my imagination running away.  But the point is, I'd
rather see a billion member organization than a billion dollar one.
In fact, *all other things being equal* I'd rather see Wikimedia spend
(and receive) less money rather than more.

Anyway, look at the original bylaws.  Sure, there were members, but
they weren't given any real power.  A majority of the board was
appointed and served for life, and this board was given all the powers
of the organization.  It seemed clear to me at the time that as far as
the bylaws were concerned Wikimedia was Jimbo's gift to us - he
created it and then it he let the public have it, under certain
conditions.

Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, etc. have all grown since then, and
it's because of the community of volunteers and donors.  We still
don't have a good sense, I think, of what Wikimedia is.  The way I see
it membership is a way to define that, and late is better than never.

My idea is to form a group of members who care specifically about
Wikimedia, not as just "that organization that provides
Wiki[whatever]", but for its full potential.  Ant recently brought up
a thread that she wanted to see more candidates for the board with
interests other than just on the English Wikipedia.  My response to
that thread was more practical than idealistic - I feel that this is a
symptom of the way the organization is currently being run (in essence
ignoring the bylaws), and that simply encouraging more people to run
for the board is not going to solve anything.  The membership of a
membership-based organization is the base, and right now we don't even
know who that membership is.

I've been thinking a lot about what I'd like to see in the updated
bylaws.  My current thinking is to have members of Wikimedia which are
not tied in any way to the current projects (i.e. you don't have to
have a log in anywhere, and you don't even have to have a computer).
I think the part about not even needig a computer is important -
Wikimedia is more than just the sum of its projects, and it exists in
the real world, not on the Internet.

The annual dues would be around $250 US, but a committee would be
formed to introduce rules by which members could have the dues waived
(or possibly reduced, but I'm not sure if that complication is worth
it).  The idea is that volunteers on any of the various projects would
be able to become members for free, but it wouldn't be automatic, and
the rules could be different for the different projects.  The
committee would have flexibility so that a peace core worker who
distributes printed Wikimedia materials in some remote location, and
can only get on the Internet once a week, can still be a member, and
they can be a member for free.  I chose $250 because I think this is a
big enough amount that it'll keep membership to people who truly care
about Wikimedia, but I initially was thinking more like $100/year, and
I'm still very flexible on this number.  I also think the number of
members whose dues get waived will probably outweigh those who don't,
as that seems to be within the spirit of the projects Wikimedia runs.

Well, as I said this is just my current thinking on the matter.  If
anyone has any comments I'd love to hear them.  If any lawyer-minded
people want to propose some language which accomplishes this I'd love
to hear that too.

Anthony


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


from_name: GerardM

body:
Hoi,
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.

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.

Thanks,
    GerardM

On 8/14/06, Steve Bennett <stevage at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 8/14/06, Jay R. Ashworth <jra at baylink.com> wrote:
> > > And my counter-question is "What about a WYSIWYG editor that's good
> > > enough to make working directly in wikitext unnecessary for even the
> > > most hardcore power-users?"
> >
> > *Why do you continue to presume that those hardcore power-users Won't
> > Want To Use Wikitext.*  I'm *not* one of them, and I damned sure want
> > to.
>
> 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.
>
> 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 :)
>
> Steve
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


list: commons-l

from_name: Patrick-Emil Zörner

subject: [Commons-l] Stats on deletion

body:
--- Fredrik Josefsson <fred_chessplayer at yahoo.se> schrieb:

> I had the vision of creating a list for the amusement
> of the administrators, where there would be monthly
> awards (a ribbon) to those three that delete the most
> images, and userboxes one could use saying e.g. "this
> user has deleted over 4k images". I had hoped this
> would encourage deletions.
>
> The fierce restistance naturally takes the amusement
> away from the vision. If anyone else wants to fulfil
> my intention, go ahead.
>
> Fred
> aka Fred-Chess

It would have been polite to explain this before doing so and ask the
admins if they would or would not like to participate.

greetings

Paddy

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


from_name: Matt Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] giving medical advice

body:
On 8/13/06, Deon Wentworth <dwen92 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Forgive me.. perhaps I missed something.. but what does this have to do with
> medical advice?

I believe a while ago, when the thread began, it was actually on topic.

-Matt


from_name: Brad Patrick

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

body:
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?
- Your distinction re billion member organization vs. billion dollar
organization is intriguing.  How do we get there?
- How do non-editing, non-computer using people intersect with those who
presently self-affiliate with WMF et al.?
- 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.
- 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).

Cheers,

Brad

On 8/14/06, Anthony <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> On 8/13/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> > Anthony wrote:
> >
> > >On 8/13/06, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >
> > >>http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bylaws_update
> > >>
> > >>
> > >The proposed bylaws do not at all mention the chapters.  Is this
> > >intentional?  It's my understanding that chapters are not legally
> > >affiliated with Wikimedia except that they license the use of certain
> > >trademarks.  Is this correct?  And is this pretty much what everyone
> > >wants?  What do Jimbo and Brad (apparently the two main proponents of
> > >a non-membership organziation) think the role of chapters should be?
> > >
> > I have yet to see a clear rationale for a memberless Foundation.  In
> > some jurisdictions such a concept is unthinkable.
> >
> I get the sense that there's an effort to run Wikimedia more like a
> private foundation than a public charity.  Of course a public charity
> has tax advantages, so as long as Wikimedia can continue to be
> recognized as such, they'll do it.  But with Brad talking about
> getting billions of dollars in revenue it's unclear how such a broad
> base of contributors will be able to be kept up very long.  Personally
> when I heard him say that I imagined the Bill and Melinda Gates
> Foundation making a large multi-million dollar contribution, and for
> me it wasn't something that I got excited about.  Of course that's
> probably just my imagination running away.  But the point is, I'd
> rather see a billion member organization than a billion dollar one.
> In fact, *all other things being equal* I'd rather see Wikimedia spend
> (and receive) less money rather than more.
>
> Anyway, look at the original bylaws.  Sure, there were members, but
> they weren't given any real power.  A majority of the board was
> appointed and served for life, and this board was given all the powers
> of the organization.  It seemed clear to me at the time that as far as
> the bylaws were concerned Wikimedia was Jimbo's gift to us - he
> created it and then it he let the public have it, under certain
> conditions.
>
> Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, etc. have all grown since then, and
> it's because of the community of volunteers and donors.  We still
> don't have a good sense, I think, of what Wikimedia is.  The way I see
> it membership is a way to define that, and late is better than never.
>
> My idea is to form a group of members who care specifically about
> Wikimedia, not as just "that organization that provides
> Wiki[whatever]", but for its full potential.  Ant recently brought up
> a thread that she wanted to see more candidates for the board with
> interests other than just on the English Wikipedia.  My response to
> that thread was more practical than idealistic - I feel that this is a
> symptom of the way the organization is currently being run (in essence
> ignoring the bylaws), and that simply encouraging more people to run
> for the board is not going to solve anything.  The membership of a
> membership-based organization is the base, and right now we don't even
> know who that membership is.
>
> I've been thinking a lot about what I'd like to see in the updated
> bylaws.  My current thinking is to have members of Wikimedia which are
> not tied in any way to the current projects (i.e. you don't have to
> have a log in anywhere, and you don't even have to have a computer).
> I think the part about not even needig a computer is important -
> Wikimedia is more than just the sum of its projects, and it exists in
> the real world, not on the Internet.
>
> The annual dues would be around $250 US, but a committee would be
> formed to introduce rules by which members could have the dues waived
> (or possibly reduced, but I'm not sure if that complication is worth
> it).  The idea is that volunteers on any of the various projects would
> be able to become members for free, but it wouldn't be automatic, and
> the rules could be different for the different projects.  The
> committee would have flexibility so that a peace core worker who
> distributes printed Wikimedia materials in some remote location, and
> can only get on the Internet once a week, can still be a member, and
> they can be a member for free.  I chose $250 because I think this is a
> big enough amount that it'll keep membership to people who truly care
> about Wikimedia, but I initially was thinking more like $100/year, and
> I'm still very flexible on this number.  I also think the number of
> members whose dues get waived will probably outweigh those who don't,
> as that seems to be within the spirit of the projects Wikimedia runs.
>
> Well, as I said this is just my current thinking on the matter.  If
> anyone has any comments I'd love to hear them.  If any lawyer-minded
> people want to propose some language which accomplishes this I'd love
> to hear that too.
>
> Anthony
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

--
Brad Patrick
General Counsel & Interim Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
bradp.wmf at gmail.com
727-231-0101


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


body:
On 8/13/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, that's not what 'verifiable' means. It's like deleting a book
> reference from an article because it's out of print and your own
> library doesn't happen to have it.

I see your point, but are movies not available to the public in that
way available at all?

As long as the reference CAN be verified, I guess, it's good enough.

On the other hand, I have a problem with references theoretically
checkable yet in practice not.  I guess this only comes up if a
reference is put into serious question and nobody can verify it.

-Matt


body:
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


body:
Hoi,
"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 ?

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".

Thanks,
    Gerard

On 8/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 14/08/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > 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.
>
> Yes, yes, I know. Users don't embrace concepts such as matching tag
> pairs and making stuff clean, else we could let them use an XHTML
> subset. C'est la vie.
>
> However, I think it's more correct to state that a lot of parser
> ugliness comes from bolting on behaviour and hacking stuff in at a
> fast clip, to provide extras. A lot of the behaviour people depend
> upon is due to bugs in the parser, which are now considered de facto,
> but which shouldn't be happening.
>
> > 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.
>
> Indeed. There's also a long standing wish by many for world peace,
> worldwide nuclear disarmament, an end to global poverty and fair trade
> for everyone. But unfortunately, those things can't practically be
> done in a single sweeping step.
>
> I don't agree that hiding wiki markup is the productive step. As has
> been pointed out often on this list, power users and people who are
> comfortable with it are more productive with markup. Your solution is
> "let's break the syntax and hide the mess behind a graphical user
> interface", which I don't agree with.
>
> Do that, and I won't edit. Do that, and people using older browsers
> (long live lynx) and screen readers, or not embracing "newfangled"
> script technologies, etc. can't. So hiding wiki markup and locking it
> out of sight is not an option, and it should not be. If Joe User wants
> to view his markup, he should be allowed to. WYSIWYG is *not* a quick
> fix for the parser.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


body:
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 ?
Thanks,
    GerardM

On 8/14/06, Rob Church <robchur at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 14/08/06, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hoi,
> > "Do that and I won't edit" .. here we have a power user speaking..
>
> No. The statement means "if you take away the underlying ability to
> edit wiki markup and force users to use a GUI and all sorts of
> wonderful [E]TLAs in order to edit, then many users, this one
> included, won't bother."
>
> Not that I get a chance to edit anything Wikimedia-related these days
> anyway.
>
>
> Rob Church
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>


from_name: Ligulem

body:
Evan Prodromou wrote:
>
> Yes, people at SocialText and Wikia are being paid to write it.
>
> This is the software:
>
> http://www.wikiwyg.net/
>
> This is the adaptation to MediaWiki:
>
> http://wikiwyg.wikia.com/
>
> ~Evan

Cool stuff. Congrats!

Being able to edit directly in the final font and see the real line
breaks directly is incredibly useful. This solves the main problem of
editing in a different font: where the heck is that part of the sentence
I wanted to edit?

--Ligulem