body:
On 2/10/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: Gurch [mailto:matthew.britton at btinternet.com]
> >Sent: Friday, February 9, 2007 07:47 PM
> >To: 'English Wikipedia'
> >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] expunging copyright violations (Was: Re: Admin burnout)
> >
> >John Vandenberg wrote:
> >> On 2/10/07, Guettarda <guettarda at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> ...
> >> I expect that this would require an "Request for Expunction" process,
> >> which amounts to more bureaucracy, but if its creation allows for more
> >> admins, the net effect is fewer backlogs.
> >>
> >> Is something like this possible with the current MediaWiki and dump
> >> creation software?
> >>
> >> --
> >> John
> >
> >This is pretty much just
> >http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Oversight, is it not?

I thought something like this should exist and went looking using
words such as "expunction"; I should have tried "expunged".  I'll go
read up on it now.

> >-Gurch
>
> The mission of Oversight would need to be expanded to deal with copyright violations.
> Right now it covers only posting of sensitive personal information. Currently copyright
> violations are simply replaced, usually not even deleted. Oversight hides even from
> administrators. Would that be necessary or appropriate?

WP:CP says that articles should be speedied if it cant be readily
solved by reverting.  In the three cases that I have come across
copyrighted material that had a commercially interested source (e.g.
EB), the articles were deleted.  I think it is fair enough as well;
the copyvio tag is essentially a prod, and if nobody does anything
about it, the article can always be rewritten.

--
John


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/10/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
>> Couldn't that logic be applied almost equally to allowing everybody to edit?
>>
>>
> Nope. Firstly the damage you can do through editing is less.
>
> Secondly the software, tools and our social structures are built
> around being ready to undo editing vandalism. We have very little in
> the way of methods of taking down problem admins fast.
>

As to the first, that's why I said "almost", but I gather you mean that
a rogue with the sysop bit can cause vastly more cleanup work than a
regular editor. Is that right?

As to the second, isn't that a chicken and egg problem? All of those
things evolved around having to deal with editorial vandalism. If you
rule out any improvement that requires similar evolution, it seems like
a generic argument for stasis. If the argument had been applied at the
beginning, it would have ruled out open editability, period.

If the problem is that the current structure hasn't evolved to deal with
Y, where Y is a potential harm from an otherwise good X, then isn't the
solution is to allow a controlled amount of X to allow the structure to
evolve? Or at least to see if the cost of mediating Y ends up being
under the benefit of X?

William


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikitech-l] Report

body:
Filip Maljkovic wrote:
> Of course, I didn't send this. Someone has a lot of free time on his hands.
>
> Filip

No. It's a virus.
Both the message "from you"
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/29871
and "from Angela"
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/29752
have the ''X-Content-Filtered-By: Mailman/MimeDel 2.1.8'' header, ie it
had an attachment which has been removed.

Plus the content "Here is the note.", "Here is the report." is the
tipical subject a virus would set.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting orphaned unfree images

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> Should we really expect everybody to check on everything they care about
>> every 24 hours?
>>
>> The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a
>> reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a
>> little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone
>> because I'd taken the weekend off.
>>
>
> We don't need everybody to check, just one person out of everyone that
> wants the image kept needs to check. If there is only one person that
> wants the image kept on an article, then there isn't consensus to keep
> it, is there?
>

I guess the articles I tend to edit must be unusually low traffic if you
feel 24 hours is sufficient to conclusively determine consensus on some
editorial question. Sorry for butting in.

William


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] Vision for Commons, 2007

body:
Stan Shebs wrote:
> So why do you think people won't create throwaway email addresses? They
> do that all the time now.
>
> Stan

How do you know they do it "all the time"? I don't think the "common
users" which make an account, upload a photo from their idol homepage
and never ever enter on Commons again are smart enough to make a
throwaway email address...


subject: [Commons-l] Dual-Licensing Commons

body:
nilfanion wiki wrote:
> An image is uploaded to Commons as CC-by-sa-2.5. A third party then
> makes use of the image, under the terms of the CC license. In addition
> to the image, they copy the description on the Image: page to use as
> their caption. As the text of the page is licensed under the GFDL, would
> this downstream user have violated the GFDL?

The content of image-pages is probably ineligible. Were it a rich
description about the place? it should be on wikipedia, not in commons :P

Anyway, setting on the license notice "and dual license your image
description under GFDL and the image license" could be ok.
But what to do then with image page edits? The change of that user about
the description... and if it's GFDL, should the history of no source,
deletion requested, not copyvio appear?


from_name: Florian Straub

subject: [Commons-l] One new and one old tool

body:
"Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote on Saturday, February
10, 2007 3:50 AM:

> On 10/02/07, Florian Straub <flominator at gmx.net> wrote:
>> Seems I had a little double output there ....
>>
>> I fixed it and added a small bonus to it, see for yourself :)
>
> OK, looks better.
> I am surprised you can't get the Flickr user's name. Are you using the
> Flickr API? I think it should be possible. Since both the licenses we
> use are "BY" (attribution) I think getting the username is a good
> idea.

I did and it always worked. Which picture did you try?

> Also, in the permission field I would either put 'see below', or put
> 'licensed under the Creative Commons [Attribution|Attribution
> ShareAlike] license, version 2.0".

Is that really necessary?

> Also, in the case of trying to get the info for a non-free license, it
> should probably refuse to produce any output, instead of 'NO FREE
> LICENSE - DON'T UPLOAD TO COMMONS' (which is nice, but I hardly expect
> people to read and follow such instructions :))

Good point ... I'll think about it.

Regards,

Flo


from_name: dungodung at gmail.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] Report

body:
Hi!
Here is the report.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Robert Scott Horning

subject: [Foundation-l] OrphanWiki

body:
Ray Saintonge wrote:

>Thanks for the comments.  I couldn't find the case that I was thinking
>of involving Scientology.  Since I am proposing that works would remain
>in OrphanWiki for at least three years unless a real owner shows up we
>would have plenty of time to sort out what to do after that period.
>
>I would in fact be delighted if the owner showed up.  In reality
>anything included in the project would be there because we don't expect
>anybody to show up.  The legal rights may belong to one or more people
>who haven't got a clue that they have them.
>
>Such a project may tread on legally uncertain ground.  Strict criteria
>would be needed for determining what would be included.  Most important
>wuld be the research that the proposer(s) has made to track down the
>rights owner.  This metadata would also be a part of the wiki so that
>anyone can help with the research.  That way the research becomes part
>of the record, even if we decide that the material itself does not meet
>our standards for inclusion.  This could be useful for those operating a
>different and unrelated project to ours who want to make a decision
>about the risk of including the material on their own site.
>
>If the OrphanWiki site becomes popular enough the site could become a
>standard place to stop in attempts to track down rights owners.  Perhaps
>too we could get it to the point that iincluding material or metadata in
>OrphanWiki would defeat any claim that the owner didn't know about the
>rights.
>
>The mission of making materials free is bigger than just repeating
>material that we know to be free.  We want free outputs.  The freeness
>of inputs or intermediate processes is far less important.
>
>Ec
>
As you said earlier, I think something like this should certainly be
done as a project completely independent of the Wikimedia Foundation, or
even independent of even any of the current members of the board of
trustees of the foundation, including avoiding any potential ties to
Wikia as well.

This is clearly a project that intends to make a very strong political
statement about copyright and orphaned works, and trying deliberately to
set something up so somebody will say "sue me in court, please!"  My
real concern is if you rub the noses of some legislators/congressmen
into the idea of orphaned works being legal to reproduce, that you may
find legislation that would extend the "statute of limitations" that you
are depending upon here.  Of course the debate over any such legislation
would bring these issues to the front, and even having Congress consider
that there are problems with copyright law would be a significant
political step at all.  Free content users and communities are
significantly better organized than when the Sonny Bono Copyright Act
was passed, so I'm sure it would turn out to be a rather lively
discussion all around.

I'm not sure I would want to participate in any such campaign like this
project, but it is a very interesting idea.  Legally, this would require
a bunch of legwork before you even started, and it might be nice to get
a couple of lawyers who might be willing to sign on pro-bono or be
"sponsors" of this project before you got started in a significant way.
 To start this without such support is merely inviting trouble and would
have to be found sooner rather than later anyway.

I'm curious about what would be seeded into a project like this to get
it going, and who might be willing to use the content, particularly with
those who have pointed out (IMHO correctly) that reuse of this content
would reopen the legal issues and reset the legal time frames for
copyright violations and legal challenges.  Without a "killer app" that
goes beyond the politics of this situation, I don't see how this could
grow to become anything other than another marginally insignficant Wiki
in the sphere of other numerous crazy internet dreams.  The Uncyclopedia
has massive use (and abuse) of fair-use content (claiming parody
exemption), and they have much more fun in the process of getting that
site put together.  I guess I would like to know how this might be any
different.

--
Robert Scott Horning


list: wikimedia-l

subject: [Foundation-l] OrphanWiki


from_name: Brianna Laugher

subject: [Foundation-l] Clearing up Wikimedia's media licensing policies

body:
Is there any chance I could get some input on the issues I raised? Or
does it take 200 messages to get Board attention? :P

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2007-February/027549.html

Re: Kat's statement that "[N]o project may have content policies less
restricive, or that allow licenses other than those allowed on
Wikimedia Commons[...]"

*in interpreting country-specific "public domain" laws, Commons has on
occasion chosen to interpret the laws in a more restrictive way than
local projects. In such cases, the local project sometimes chooses to
keep their less restrictive interpretation and transfer the images
from Commons to that project. (Specific example: IT.wp and
{{PD-Italy}})
* German logos - DE.wp regards the threshold of originality for
copyright to apply as much higher than Commons and EN.wp in general,
meaning that many logos Commons deletes as "copyrighted", DE.wp keeps
as "PD-ineligible, although trademarked"

Also, the wording in Kat's statement implies that "Foundation policy"
can be equated
with "licenses allowed on Wikimedia Commons". One one hand, the WMF is
unlikely to want to start handing out an explicit list of acceptable
licenses, so that is understandable. But on the other it means that
the nuances of Foundation policy are being decided on one wiki and
having conseuqences for all wikis. Correct me if I'm wrong but this is
the first time this happens, I think.
If this is correct, will the WMF be supplying some legal assistance
from time to time for Commons? Or - ?

cheers
Brianna


subject: [Commons-l] Wikinews (en) and commons (RE: pfctdayelise's post)

body:
bawolff wrote:
> you are aware that some projects (french wikipedia to name one) use
> The commons featured pictures as their featured pictures. Maybe you
> should try to encourage more to.
Sadly, things like POTD can't be used on all wikis, as they are based on
commons templates (which can't be transcluded).

> I should probably start uploading our free images to commons (Most of
> them are well categorized and sourced), but its not exactly at the top
> of my priority list (My current priority is to bug the crap out of
> people who didn't source their (locally uploaded) images)

The moving of free images could be bot-done... as far as categories
still applied.

> Also it currently doesn't help that we don't have a commons ticker on
> wikinews. It was disabled because the page got  too long, and updates
> kept failing, which is my fault because i didn't archive it enough,
> mostly because I didn't get through it all.  However it was still very
> useful (or even the deleted template [[commons:template:Used On
> Wikinews]] would be quite useful in combination of related changes.

You can request a CommonsTicker which automatically removes old data.


subject: [Commons-l] Making a home wiki field in user login

body:
bawolff wrote:
> Flo said:
>> My additional wish would be a way to contact one time contributers. There
>> are several ways to achieve this:
>> * Creating a field "home wiki" on the resistration form.
> ...
>
> How hard could that be? Create a field in the log in page saying ''I
> ussually contribute to project x'', preferably this could be done
> semi-automatically via referrer headers or wikipedia linking with a
> url like http://common.wikimedia.org/wiki/special:userlogin?from=en.wikipedia
> . The thing gets automatically filled out, and the user can change it
> if he wants. Then when he creates an account, his user page has a
> template on it automatically that says, "so and so is usually at foo,
> leave a message both here and there". Then if orphanbot [or whatever
> you call your bots that send messages] comes a long, sees it, and
> leaves a message at both commons and the local wiki.
>
> --bawolff

Easy, but it'd involve a change in db fields.


subject: [Wikitech-l] Report

references:
<45cda4a3.7810dbed.2a8f.15bbSMTPIN_ADDED@mx.google.com>	<45CDA522.6040604@gmail.com>
	<eqkn8q$jk8$1@sea.gmane.org>

body:
The infected person had ips 59.180.115.236 & 59.180.49.182
59.180.*.* block is owned by MTNL Mumbai Route
Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, New Delhi
If you are a list suscriber from India, please check you computer from
virus.


from_name: Gurch

subject: [WikiEN-l] Help with Admin Burnout

body:
Marc Riddell wrote:
> To any & all,
>
> I am doing some thinking about how the WP Community could help Admins who
> are struggling with the work. My goal is to come up with a formal mechanism
> that these Admins can turn to for help and support before they choose to
> simply give up and leave the Community. It could serve as a form of
> intervention before a burnout occurs.
>
> What I am in need of right now are examples of persons who have experienced
> such problems within WP so I can understand what occurred, and get a feel
> for the extent of the problem.
>
> If you know of any such person (including yourself) please post that
> information here, or, if you prefer, send me a private email to
> michaeldavid86 at comcast.net
>
> I would also appreciate any thoughts or suggestions you might have along
> these lines.
>
> Hope you can help,
>
> Marc Riddell

Editor Review wouldn't be a bad starting point; would probably have
worked for me, had additional reasons to go not materialized.

-Gurch


list: wikipedia-l

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] precisions about the recent WMF "fair use"
	decision

body:
Brianna Laugher wrote:
> That's a fantastic idea that I can't believe we haven't done already.
> Hopefully it might also reduce the dodgy copyrighted images that get
> uploaded for image-free biographies, too.
>
> Go forth!
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:No_free_image_man_%28en%29.svg
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:No_free_image_woman_%28en%29.svg
>
> cheers,
> Brianna
> user:pfctdayelise

We had some of this kind on other languages: [[Image:Falta.svg]]


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research

body:
Seems clearcut to me. It's not a reliable source because it promotes
original research that isn't peer reviewed by experts. It's like publishing
your own website about your own thoughts and then use that as a source for
edits on the article. It still amounts to inserting original research.

Mgm

On 2/10/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>
>
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: William Vogeler [mailto:wvogeler at cox.net]
> >Sent: Friday, February 9, 2007 08:04 PM
> >To: wikien-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> >Subject: [WikiEN-l]  Original research
> >
> >Hi Jimmy:
> >
> >As a new user at Wikipedia, I created a journal for Amateur Astronomy at
> Academic Publishing Wiki. I was encouraged by the project because it is a
> forum for original research in a Wiki environment.
> >
> >I then linked from Wikipedia articles to Academic Publishing Wiki and the
> journal I created there, but I was reprimanded by Wiki editors who said that
> I had violated policies against promoting websites and spamming. I tried to
> reason with the editors about it, but they unanimously concluded that it is
> against Wikipedia policy to allow links to Academic Publishing Wiki.
> >
> >I invite you to review the debate at my discussion page
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Wvogeler. If you feel so inclined,
> I would appreciate your thoughts on the subject. Thank you.
> >
> >Sincerely,
> >
> >WVogeler
>
> For some reason the link to his user talk page doesn't work. But there is
> such a user. He carried on an extensive dialog with user Vsmith. Follow the
> link back and try user contributions and you can access his talk page. The
> site he speaks of is on Wikia at
>
> http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Amateur_Astronomy
>
> and is a part of
>
> http://academia.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page
>
> These sites are transparently dedicated to original research.
>
> You can contact Jimmy at jwales at wikia.com
>
> This debate is not new and it is well settled that original research
> cannot be published on Wikipedia, or even considered a reliable source if it
> is not published in a peer reviewed source.
>
> Please see Wikipedia:No original research
>
> Fred
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Marc Riddell

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
on 2/10/07 2:23 PM, phoebe ayers at phoebe.wiki at gmail.com wrote:

> Because Heaven knows we wouldn't want people who had been hanging around the
> project for a long time to be admins.
>
> KP's point, below, about only people who have lots and lots of time to edit
> becoming admins is a good one -- it means, for the most part, that people
> with very busy outside lives will never get the chance. We're losing a whole
> swath of potential admins this way.
>
> The thing about adminship (to sort of address Marc's questions) is we don't
> really have any other "official" way to recognize editors. Sure, there are
> barnstars and the like; but these are pretty meaningless outside of a narrow
> context. There are cabals, but since TINC, well, you're out of luck :) Being
> able to say "I'm an administrator on the English Wikipedia!" is a kind of
> code for "I've devoted a lot of time to the project, and people recognize
> and value my contributions -- I'm an important person!"
>
> It doesn't really matter what the actual work is. The current administrators
> on this list are talking about the pain and suffering of having to use the
> mop & bucket (which is, as far as I can tell, entirely true) but ignoring
> the fact that by having the sysop bit they have recognition within the
> project that it's not possible to get in any other way. There's no "trusted
> editor bit" that can be set. There's no "you've been editing for three
> years, now you're level x". You can make a tremendous number of valuable
> edits on the projects (or perhaps a smaller number of really good edits over
> a long time), but there's no way to up your privileges or even recognize you
> officially without making you an admin. And what if I want that recognition,
> but don't really have any interest in deleting speedys or mucking through
> endless policy? Perhaps then you get trouble, or at least an inefficient
> system where people play to "admin criteria" rather than "let's make this a
> good encyclopedia criteria".
>
> I give a lot of talks on wikipedia to the outside world, and I get asked all
> the time if I'm an admin -- not because the people asking really have any
> conception of what that means, but because they assume that if I know a lot
> about the site I must be in the "in crowd" and the only thing they know
> about on Wikipedia that constitutes an "in-crowd" is adminship. We must
> change this, and find some other recognition mechanism for devoted,
> conscientious and level-headed editors that does not depend on their
> knowledge of what the heck "A7" means or whether they've made x number of
> edits to the wikipedia namespace.

Excellent & informative post!

Thank you,

Marc Riddell


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> I guess the articles I tend to edit must be unusually low traffic if you
>> feel 24 hours is sufficient to conclusively determine consensus on some
>> editorial question. Sorry for butting in.
>>
>
> It's enough time to determine if more time is needed. Admins are
> selected for their good judgement - try trusting them. The deleting
> admin just needs to click on the link to the article in the fair use
> rationale (if it doesn't state the article [and it's not just that the
> image page has been edited recently], then the image should be deleted
> straight away), and see if the removal was controversial. If some
> controversy starts after the 24 hours is up, then the image can be
> re-uploaded, or undeleted. Neither is much work. I would imagine any
> admin would undelete an image under such circumstances if asked.
>

I don't think either one is much work for the admin, but I think it's
the kind of thing that can take the wind out of an editor's sails,
especially a relative newbie, for whom this will be a fair bit of work.
What's the harm you're seeing it waiting a week?

Oh, and generally I do trust admins to use good judgment. But especially
given that they're overworked, it seems like we should pick defaults
that are reasonable, and require as little use of that good judgment as
possible.

Thanks,

William


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout (deputy admins)

body:
geni wrote:
>> Adminship should not have anything to do with trust at all.
>>
>
> You have no choice:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ALog&type=delete&user=&page=
>
> There is nop humane way to check to see if all those deleations were
> correct and within policy.
>

I thought the theory was that editors check that work, yes? We trust
editors to check each other, and I had assumed that the same mechanism
was the main check on administrative error and malfeasance.

William


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>> So some knocks out the image 00.01 sunday with the result that no one
>> notices before 00.01 monday and image gets deleted when it should not
>> have been. No 7 days means it is generaly fairly safe to assume that
>> any contrivery will be mentioned on the page or is all over.
>>
>
> And for those 7 days we are breaking the law. Copyright violation is
> illegal, and having an unlicensed image on Wikipedia without it being
> acceptable under fair use (and if it isn't used on any pages, then it
> isn't acceptable under fair use) is copyright violation.
>
> IANAL, but I think we can justify 24 hours of violation while we work
> out what we should do, I don't think we can justify 7 days. Not when
> it is so easy to undo a deletion.
>

If it comes down to a legal question, perhaps you could ask for a legal
opinion? I can think of a couple of reasonable justifications, and I'm
sure others can think of many more. But I've never found amateur
lawyering to be particularly productive.

William


from_name: Rich Holton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Timwi wrote:
> Rich Holton wrote:
>> I propose an experiment:
>>
>> Select at random 100 editors who meet some minimal criteria* and make
>> them admins. Make it clear to them that they may turn down adminship
>> without prejudice.
>>
>> Then, we watch these 100 "probationary" admins for 3 months. If they
>> abuse their admin powers in that time, their admin status is removed.
>
> Within no time, you'll have people impose ridiculous criteria on what a
> probationary admin needs to do in order to "pass the test". Before you
> know it, people will be demoted simply for being on holiday and not
> showing up in a month.
>

Well, you may be right about what would happen, but that is certainly
not my proposal. Under my proposal, if the person did nothing different
from what they had been doing, or even if they did far less than they
had been doing, they would still be kept as an admin.

I know that there have been objections amounting to the fear of 'bots or
sleeper vandals becoming regular admins--apparently this is one of the
reasons the RfA requirements continue to creep.

Remember that under my suggestion, we're talking a total of 6 months
that a sleeper vandal would have to "sleep" before they entered the
ranks of "normal" admins (3 months of keeping your nose clean, followed
by three months of continued good behavior as an admin). And remember,
someone setting out as a sleeper vandal would not be guaranteed of
becoming an admin after three months, it's still up to the random
selection. Is it impossible for someone to game this process? Sure. Is
it likely? Hardly.

-Rich


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:35:11 +0000, geni <geniice at gmail.com> wrote:

>We have spare admin resources? We have backog of over 1000 images
>needing deletion (see [[CAT:CSD]]) could you ask these people to help
>doing something about it?

OK.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:0008811297923.jpg

An album cover, with a fair use rationale, used in the right place,
but tagged for speedy as "no source" - do I delete it or not?

Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/10/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> OK.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:0008811297923.jpg
>
> An album cover, with a fair use rationale, used in the right place,
> but tagged for speedy as "no source" - do I delete it or not?
>

Heh that has always been a bit of a grey area. Technicaly yes since it
does not mention the music lable. In practice I would be woundering
why User:Sfgsn6 only has edits to the image namespace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Sfgsn6

--
geni


subject: [Commons-l] Vision for Commons, 2007

body:
Stan <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote on Friday, February 09, 2007 11:20 PM:

> Florian Straub wrote:
>> "Stan Shebs" <stanshebs at earthlink.net> wrote on Friday, February 09, 2007
>> 10:35 PM:
>>> Florian Straub wrote:
>>>
>>>> My additional wish would be a way to contact one time contributers.
>>>> There
>>>> are several ways to achieve this:
>>>> * Creating a field "home wiki" on the resistration form.
>>>> * Making email adresses mandatory & auto activate email notification
>>>>
>>>>
>>> So why do you think people won't create throwaway email addresses? They
>>> do that all the time now.
>>>
>>
>> Then we might also have to activate email confirmation.
>>
> People throw it away after receiving the confirmation, or when they're
> done with uploads.

No uploads without confirmation?

> Exactly what problem are you proposing to solve, anyway? If it's
> identity, then you're talking government-issued IDs, and I'm pretty the
> Foundation doesn't want to be in the business of collecting and securing
> all that personal information. If it's verifiability, then if I stole
> the picture the first time, I'll just keep up the pretense in subsequent
> email inquiries.

The problem I wanted to solve was the amount of people that would
change/correct the image description / license, if we could reach them when
they're not active in Commons.

Regards,

Flo


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] How touching...

body:
One of the Wikipedia Review posters has referred to my messages as
"the only stuff that makes WikiEN-L worth reading"...  Awwww... I
guess I have to take it as a compliment, even though the writer
(Somey) also notes my 'near-complete lack of concern for things like
"facts" and "the truth"'.

http://wikipediareview.com/index.php?showtopic=6652

I should be happy I've got such avid fans that they keep watch for
anything I say on this list and write about it over on their forum.
I bet this message generates a few more on their side too.

--
== Dan ==
Dan's Mail Format Site: http://mailformat.dan.info/
Dan's Web Tips: http://webtips.dan.info/
Dan's Domain Site: http://domains.dan.info/


subject: [Commons-l] Fwd: Share-Alike with images

body:
On 2/10/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't see what's odd about that. It's a work, copyrighted by you, under
> CC-BY-SA, and based on a public domain work. It's no different than the same
> situation would have been if the music had been not 51 but 300 years old.
> And little different than the same situation where you had not put it under
> CC-BY-SA.

But CC-By-SA is claiming the film is a derivative of the sound
recording despite film and sound being seperate under uk law. So even
though I have made no changes to the music CC-By-SA is trying to claim
it is under copyright again because is it is part of a film.

Another way to look at this is that CC thinks that the soundtrack of a
51 year old film in the UK is not PD.

--
geni


body:
 "Platonides" <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote on Saturday, February 10, 2007
4:31 PM:

> bawolff wrote:
>> Flo said:
>>> My additional wish would be a way to contact one time contributers.
>>> There
>>> are several ways to achieve this:
>>> * Creating a field "home wiki" on the resistration form.
>> ...
>>
>> How hard could that be? Create a field in the log in page saying ''I
>> ussually contribute to project x'', preferably this could be done
>> semi-automatically via referrer headers or wikipedia linking with a
>> url like
>> http://common.wikimedia.org/wiki/special:userlogin?from=en.wikipedia
>> . The thing gets automatically filled out, and the user can change it
>> if he wants. Then when he creates an account, his user page has a
>> template on it automatically that says, "so and so is usually at foo,
>> leave a message both here and there". Then if orphanbot [or whatever
>> you call your bots that send messages] comes a long, sees it, and
>> leaves a message at both commons and the local wiki.
>>
> Easy, but it'd involve a change in db fields.

Not necessary. We could create a link to a userpage that includes a
template, the username and project the way we do it at the deletion requests
...

Regards,

Flo


body:
"Brianna Laugher" <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote on Saturday, February
10, 2007 12:15 PM:

> On 10/02/07, bawolff <bawolff+wn at gmail.com> wrote:

<snip>

>> Another thing that might be of help, is to have a special upload page
>> for wikinews. (
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/special:upload?uselang=wikinews )
>> There are some things for wikinews that don't apply elsewhere, and
>> it'd be good to have a custom page.
>
> :O
>
> That's a totally brilliant idea. OMG we could even have
> ?uselang-ownwork on the Commons sidebar, that would be brilliant...
>
> Well I support creating this (although it probably wouldn't be linked
> prominently from anywhere in Commons - but Wikinews is enough, I
> imagine) - shall we do it? Let me know what info you want. (Also I
> would call it ENwikinews just in case other wikinewses do it too)
>

Sounds great. Maybe we could simplify the "home-project" idea as well by
using unique links to edit someones userpage ...

Regards,

Flo


from_name: Bence Damokos

body:
Maybe a crosswiki message notification system after SUL would be the ideal
solution?
On 2/10/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> bawolff wrote:
> > Flo said:
> >> My additional wish would be a way to contact one time contributers.
> There
> >> are several ways to achieve this:
> >> * Creating a field "home wiki" on the resistration form.
> > ...
> >
> > How hard could that be? Create a field in the log in page saying ''I
> > ussually contribute to project x'', preferably this could be done
> > semi-automatically via referrer headers or wikipedia linking with a
> > url like
> http://common.wikimedia.org/wiki/special:userlogin?from=en.wikipedia
> > . The thing gets automatically filled out, and the user can change it
> > if he wants. Then when he creates an account, his user page has a
> > template on it automatically that says, "so and so is usually at foo,
> > leave a message both here and there". Then if orphanbot [or whatever
> > you call your bots that send messages] comes a long, sees it, and
> > leaves a message at both commons and the local wiki.
> >
> > --bawolff
>
> Easy, but it'd involve a change in db fields.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Commons-l mailing list
> Commons-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/commons-l
>
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from_name: jkelly at fas.harvard.edu

body:
   William,

Quoting William Pietri <william at scissor.com>:

> The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a
> reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a
> little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone
> because I'd taken the weekend off.

  You're clear that we're discussing uploads of unusable unfreely licensed media
here, right?  Nobody's suggesting that the free content work of Wikipedia
contributors be deleted more quickly.

                          Jkelly


from_name: Bryan Derksen

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
> I'm not sure why we give people so long - they can upload the image
> again if they find a use for it. I would suggest reducing it to 24
> hours (enough to account for images being removed from articles
> without consensus, any longer is unnecessary), but I'm not really
> involved in the image side of things, so I'll leave it to someone
> else.

Images might be orphans due to vanadalism on some other article, and
there's no way to check that directly from the image page itself. If
orphaned fair use images were more rapidly deleted then vandalism on the
low-traffic pages that use them becomes a lot more destructive.

And it's not necessarily that easy to reupload an image. The original
uploader might be long gone from Wikipedia, or he might not have
retained a local copy of it, etc.


from_name: Delirium

subject: [Foundation-l] Fwd: Share-Alike with images

body:
Erik Moeller wrote:

>The simple fact is that a photo by itself is not likely to be modified
>much, especially if it's of very high quality to begin with. That's
>why I think it's important that we establish a clear and unambiguous
>reciprocity when images are used in larger works. Perhaps the
>movie-specific phrase in the current SA license text could be
>generalized:
>
>"For the avoidance of doubt, where the Work is semantically combined
>with another (a film with time-synchronized music, an article with
>pictures, and so on), the combined Work will be considered a
>Derivative Work for the purpose of this license."
>
>

This would be problematic for our own uses unless the CC-BY-SA / GFDL
compatibility issues are resolved.  The wording of the cc-by-sa requires
any derivative works to be distributed "only under a license identical
to this one", but our own encyclopedia is licensed under a non-identical
license, the GFDL.  So we wouldn't be able to use CC-BY-SA images within
Wikipedia under that license change, unless they're dual-licensed under
the GFDL as well...

-Mark


from_name: Andre Engels

body:
2007/2/10, geni <geniice at gmail.com>:

> Then CC-BY-SA is going to produce some truly moronic results under UK law.
>
> Copyright on sound recordings in the UK lasts 50 years. So I take a 51
> year old bit of music and use it as a backing for a film. Then I try
> to release it under CC-By-SA
>
> It is now a derative of that bit of music but copyright on films lasts
> rather longer than 50 years in the uk so the copyright situation that
> results is rather odd.

I don't see what's odd about that. It's a work, copyrighted by you, under
CC-BY-SA, and based on a public domain work. It's no different than the same
situation would have been if the music had been not 51 but 300 years old.
And little different than the same situation where you had not put it under
CC-BY-SA.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
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body:
jkelly at fas.harvard.edu wrote:

>Quoting Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
>
>
>
>>Shouldn't the image be deleted if it's orphaned? A fair use rationale
>>is only for a particular use, as this image isn't being used, the
>>rationale is nonsense.
>>
>>
>
>  I agree with this, of course.  But en: treats unfree content as deserving of
>many of the same protections from deletion as free content, and deleting a
>"fair use" image that we're not actually using will provoke people into
>accusations of ignoring process, abuse of admin tools, and may even wind up at
>Deletion Review.
>
>
The point of giving the original uploader a few days to respond is to
verify that it really is the case that it's a fair-use image no longer
being used.  If we zap things instantly, we can't distinguish, for
example, a case where it's a perfectly legitimate fair-use image but
momentarily not being used because somebody vandalized the page it was
used in.  I don't see what's wrong with proposing it for deletion,
waiting a week or so, and deleting it if the allegation turns out to be
correct.

-Mark


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Rich Holton wrote:
> If there are things that admins can do NOW that could cause us to have
> to roll-back two weeks, then there is an immediate problem NOW, not
> connected to any change in our selection procedure for admins. No
> selection procedure will be 99.98% effective, and the damage of
> attempting to achieve that is just too great.

Geni said "weeks of cleanup OR a rollback of the database", not both. I
don't see what possible vandalism could require a rollback to a point
before the vandalism actually started happening. The vandalism would
have to be pretty stealthy to be ongoing for two weeks.

> So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how
> to cause such damage? Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so
> such damage is impossible?

Bit of a false dilemma there. Considering these methods of admin
vandalism have been available for quite some time and I don't know of
any actually being used, how about leaving things as they are?

I can think of an approach right off the top of my head to cause major
havoc using my admin powers that I wouldn't be able to undo with any
conventional tools. I've been an admin since mid 2002 and was at one
point the most prolific human editor (before AWB came along, grumble
mumble :) so hopefully I've got enough trust built up to avoid being
de-admined for admitting this.


from_name: Stan Shebs

body:
William Pietri wrote:
> The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a
> reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a
> little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone
> because I'd taken the weekend off.
>
In fact I have a real-life example, where I was on vacation for a couple
weeks, during which some vandal blanked half of a stamp-related article,
which included the only refs to some fair-use scans I had made. Nobody
but me watching the article apparently, so the vandalism went
unreverted; then somebody came along and marked the now-unused images as
orphans, them somebody else deleted, all before I got back. Apparently
nobody thought it odd that a longtime WP admin would be uploading unused
fair-use images! Fortunately I had local copies - stamp scanning and
post-scan cleanup is sufficiently laborious that without the backups, I
probably wouldn't have troubled to redo the work.

Stan


from_name: Stephanie Daugherty

body:
Delirium wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
>
>
>> The simple fact is that a photo by itself is not likely to be modified
>> much, especially if it's of very high quality to begin with. That's
>> why I think it's important that we establish a clear and unambiguous
>> reciprocity when images are used in larger works. Perhaps the
>> movie-specific phrase in the current SA license text could be
>> generalized:
>>
>> "For the avoidance of doubt, where the Work is semantically combined
>> with another (a film with time-synchronized music, an article with
>> pictures, and so on), the combined Work will be considered a
>> Derivative Work for the purpose of this license."
>>
>>
>>
>
> This would be problematic for our own uses unless the CC-BY-SA / GFDL
> compatibility issues are resolved.  The wording of the cc-by-sa requires
> any derivative works to be distributed "only under a license identical
> to this one", but our own encyclopedia is licensed under a non-identical
> license, the GFDL.  So we wouldn't be able to use CC-BY-SA images within
> Wikipedia under that license change, unless they're dual-licensed under
> the GFDL as well...
>
> -Mark
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
IANAL, but this shouldn't be an issue except possibly in print, because
unlike text, images are a single file that will at most be reuploaded,
and the only thing that would be a "derivative work" would be another
image based on the original one. Therefore, the text of an article using
CC-BY-SA images wouldn't have to be covered under that license, but
anywhere where the image wasn't a discrete component (ie, print, or any
format that distributes the entire pages as images (PDF?) it might apply.

Legal counsel could probably advise further on this, but I don't think
it's too big of a deal.

-Stephanie


subject: [Commons-l] Vision for Commons, 2007

body:
Platonides wrote:
> Stan Shebs wrote:
>
>> So why do you think people won't create throwaway email addresses? They
>> do that all the time now.
>>
>> Stan
>>
>
> How do you know they do it "all the time"? I don't think the "common
> users" which make an account, upload a photo from their idol homepage
> and never ever enter on Commons again are smart enough to make a
> throwaway email address...
>
I don't have numbers for commons, but throwaway accounts are a routine
practice for websites, plug the words into Google and observe the
million hits, including the many sites offering throwaways as one of
their services. Even the below-100s want to keep from getting spam, and
this is one of the ways they're told to do it. The more insistent we are
about getting an email address, the more likely it will be a throwaway.

Stan


from_name: Cheney Shill

subject: [WikiEN-l] Your comments on wikien-l regarding adminship

body:
Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:

> Cheney Shill wrote:
> > --- Kelly Martin <kelly.lynn.martin at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I've already explained this elsewhere, so I'll only
> give a quick
> >> summary here. Wikipedia does something _right_ by
> letting everyone
> >> edit. The underlying philosophy is that everyone
> starts out as
> >> innocent
> >
> > This is equivalent to saying existing users have
> superior knowledge to new users.
>
> I'm sorry, I don't understand how.

Look up the word innocent.  If Kelly's underlying philosphy
is that you're a child and she's an adult, where does that
leave you on the knowledge tree?

> > You're claiming that the same thing you claim is wrong
> about the
> > admin approval, to be suspicious of the admins intent,
> reliability,
> > and knowledge, is actually being applied, at the very
> least, to every
> > new user.
>
> Well yes... who else do you think it is applied to?
> Clearly not the admins :-p

Ahhh, to be an admin with a free ride to edit with a
complete disregard for policy.

> > It seems the ruling policy, NPOV, is inherently
> suspicious
> > and it's not really a problem to be suspicious from the
> > ground up.
>
> I honestly don't see what NPOV has to do with anything in
> this thread.

If the underlying policy of Wikipedia is suspicious, then
what's the problem with applying suspicion to deciding who
becomes an admin?  You'll have to read Kelly's post for
this to make sense.  If it still doesn't, ask Kelly to
explain what her post has to do with this thread.

~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (now a Wikia supported site)

--spam may follow--

____________________________________________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Everyone is raving about the all-new Yahoo! Mail beta.
http://new.mail.yahoo.com


body:
Stephanie Daugherty wrote:

>IANAL, but this shouldn't be an issue except possibly in print, because
>unlike text, images are a single file that will at most be reuploaded,
>and the only thing that would be a "derivative work" would be another
>image based on the original one. Therefore, the text of an article using
>CC-BY-SA images wouldn't have to be covered under that license, but
>anywhere where the image wasn't a discrete component (ie, print, or any
>format that distributes the entire pages as images (PDF?) it might apply.
>
>
That is one possible interpretation of the current license, but I'm
responding to Erik's proposal that the cc-by-sa license be changed to
explicitly say that aggregating an image with text makes the resulting
illustrated text a derivative work of the image.

-Mark


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Unsourced album cover (was: Admin burnout)

body:
>   If you're interested in what, in theory, should happen when one is cleaning
> out image CSDs, take a look at it now -- I edited the page to identify the
> copyright holder (we need to do this), added our standard fair use rationale
> for an album cover.  I then orphaned the image, because it wasn't being used in
> the way the rationale specifies -- it was decorating a discography listing on
> the artists' page, not being used in an article about the album.

Shouldn't the image be deleted if it's orphaned? A fair use rationale
is only for a particular use, as this image isn't being used, the
rationale is nonsense.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
On 10/02/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> This is a discussion from cc-licenses, the Creative Commons mailing
> list, that might be of interest to some. See the thread here:
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/cc-licenses/2007-February/004960.html

Hmm... I wouldn't consider some writing illustrated with an image of
mine to be a deriviative work of my image. I agree with Rob who said
"The combination is collective/aggregate, not derivative." That would
mean some articles on Wikipedia are CC-BY-SA as well as GFDL, and no
one's ever suggested that...
If CC's "SA" were to acquire this meaning, we'd have to disallow it
for all Wikimedia projects that are GFDL, wouldn't we?

Rob also said "People just don't expect to see their BY-SA photographs
"linked" to proprietary articles..." well I would be happy to! I guess
"proprietary" works are not exactly equivalent to "commercial" works,
but they are pretty close. I always push this point to other users,
that using CC-BY-SA means accepting your work might turn up in
commercial works...if you accept that, it's not a big shock to get to
proprietary works.

I think of derivative works of images as
crops
image adjustments such as colour balance
montages
conversions to other formats (eg SVG)
... that's about it.

You're welcome to fwd my comments back to the CC list.

cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/11/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>> As to the first, that's why I said "almost", but I gather you mean that
>> a rogue with the sysop bit can cause vastly more cleanup work than a
>> regular editor. Is that right?
>>
>
> I can think of attack lines that would force a rollback the database
> or weeks of cleanup.
>
> They do exist.
>
>> As to the second, isn't that a chicken and egg problem? All of those
>> things evolved around having to deal with editorial vandalism. If you
>> rule out any improvement that requires similar evolution, it seems like
>> a generic argument for stasis. If the argument had been applied at the
>> beginning, it would have ruled out open editability, period.
>>
>> If the problem is that the current structure hasn't evolved to deal with
>> Y, where Y is a potential harm from an otherwise good X, then isn't the
>> solution is to allow a controlled amount of X to allow the structure to
>> evolve? Or at least to see if the cost of mediating Y ends up being
>> under the benefit of X?
>>
>> William
>
> You want to try dealing with vandels who you can't effectively block
> and can hit every page one wikipedia? Admins are to a large extent our
> solution to problem editing. The same solution won't work for problem
> admins. You are free to suggest ways of dealing with that but remeber
> they need to be >99.98% effective.
>

If there are things that admins can do NOW that could cause us to have
to roll-back two weeks, then there is an immediate problem NOW, not
connected to any change in our selection procedure for admins. No
selection procedure will be 99.98% effective, and the damage of
attempting to achieve that is just too great.

Sleepers are certainly possible through the current RfA process. You
don't think someone determined enough to want to damage Wikipedia in the
way you're describing couldn't jump through the RfA hoops?

So, shall we remove the admin bit from anyone who admits to knowing how
to cause such damage? Or shall we immediately take steps to make it so
such damage is impossible?

-Rich


from_name: Ray Saintonge

body:
luke brandt wrote:

>Hey guys,
>
>There's been a lot of info to digest over the past couple of days, but
>one thing I've always wondered about is the definition of 'freedom'
>being used by Erik and others. I just looked at Benjamin's blog entry here:-
>
>http://mako.cc/copyrighteous/ip/20070104-00
>
>and noted these words: "... A free culture is not a culture without
>property; it is not a culture in which artists don't get paid. A culture
>without property, or in which creators can't get paid is anarchy, not
>freedom. ..." quoted seemingly with approval, which strike me as
>displaying an attitude of which the Adam Smith Institute -
>http://www.adamsmith.org/blog/ - would heartily approve. Not that
>there's anything necessarily right or wrong with that, or Lawrence
>Lessig's characterization of 'anarchy'... it's just that we need to look
>very carefully at the assumptions being made in the terminology
>employed, so we know where the conclusions come from. just my 2 cents.
>Take care - luke
>
The first clause in the quotation is remarkable for its ambiguity.  My
first inclination was to read this as indicating that property is
essential to the definition of culture, or that a society that does not
believe in capital does not have a culture.  A more acceptable
interpretation is that a culture does not exclude the existence of
property.  In other words

>A free culture is not a culture - without property
>
>A free culture is not - a culture without property
>
Having artists be paid is acceptable in both circumstances.  In
accounting terms, property is an asset on the balance sheet; getting
paid belongs in the revenue portion of the financial statements.

Ec


body:
Stephen Bain wrote:
> On a tangential note, I proposed last month that all the "waiting
> periods" in the image criteria be removed, since they were only added
> in the first place because image undeletion didn't exist at the time.
> The only good argument I heard against the proposal was that bots like
> OrphanBot need some waiting period in which to do their business. I
> don't see why images can't simply be put into a pool for bots like
> OrphanBot to work on, then put into another pool to be deleted
> immediately - with no further delays - once the bots are done.

Waiting periods gives more opportunity for human review. I usually turn
this issue around and ask why we _shouldn't_ have a waiting period. The
length of a queue doesn't alter the throughput; the same amount of
deletion can be done with a queue or without one, and with the same
amount of work.


body:
On 10/02/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > Also, the wording in Kat's statement implies that "Foundation policy"
> > can be equated
> > with "licenses allowed on Wikimedia Commons".
>
> The current draft resolution makes reference to the "Definition of
> Free Cultural Works" for the purpose of identifying free licenses:
> http://freedomdefined.org/Definition
>
> This would help to separate the process from any specific Wikimedia project.

which was basically written by you... so this becomes 'ask Erik's
interpretation' :)

This line:
No other restrictions or limitations: The work itself must not be
covered by legal restrictions (patents, contracts, etc.) or
limitations (such as privacy rights) which would impede the freedoms
enumerated above.

makes me think we would have to delete all trademarks, and all
national/state symbols, and things like the Red Cross symbols (
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Red_cross ) , because they are
covered by "legal restrictions or limitations" that don't allow them
to be used to misrepresent the thing they stand for. Correct
interpretation or not? Is this what WMF truly intends?

cheers
Brianna


body:
2007/2/10, geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
>
> On 2/10/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I don't see what's odd about that. It's a work, copyrighted by you,
> under
> > CC-BY-SA, and based on a public domain work. It's no different than the
> same
> > situation would have been if the music had been not 51 but 300 years
> old.
> > And little different than the same situation where you had not put it
> under
> > CC-BY-SA.
>
> But CC-By-SA is claiming the film is a derivative of the sound
> recording despite film and sound being seperate under uk law. So even
> though I have made no changes to the music CC-By-SA is trying to claim
> it is under copyright again because is it is part of a film.
>

No, it does not claim the music is under copyright, only the film is under
copyright. You are allowed to use non-copyrighted work in copyrighted work.

--
Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
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from_name: Fred Bauder

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Error

body:
I have begun an essay at [[Wikipedia:Error]] to consider how the knowledge learned from analysis and prevention of aviation and medical errors might be applied to Wikipedia.

Fred


body:
On 2/10/07, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
> >   If you're interested in what, in theory, should happen when one is cleaning
> > out image CSDs, take a look at it now -- I edited the page to identify the
> > copyright holder (we need to do this), added our standard fair use rationale
> > for an album cover.  I then orphaned the image, because it wasn't being used in
> > the way the rationale specifies -- it was decorating a discography listing on
> > the artists' page, not being used in an article about the album.
>
> Shouldn't the image be deleted if it's orphaned? A fair use rationale
> is only for a particular use, as this image isn't being used, the
> rationale is nonsense.

You have to wait 7 days before zapping orphans.

--
geni


from_name: Gerard Meijssen

subject: [Commons-l] Sound files

body:
Hoi,
A lot of wiktionarians are involved in recording pronunciations at the
moment. At issue is that pronunciations that are recorded for scientific
purposes are universally saved as wav files. Given that with the shtooka
software we can record vast amounts of pronunciations, it is a waste to
destroy something that can have an incredible value because of an
insistence on .ogg files.

I would urge us to allow for the recording in .wav files in order to
ensure that this data keeps its relevance for scientific usage.

Thanks,
    GerardM


list: wiktionary-l

subject: [Wiktionary-l] Sound files


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Error

body:
>-----Original Message-----
>From: George Herbert [mailto:george.herbert at gmail.com]
>Sent: Saturday, February 10, 2007 02:04 PM
>To: fredbaud at waterwiki.info, 'English Wikipedia'
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Error
>
>On 2/10/07, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info> wrote:
>> I have begun an essay at [[Wikipedia:Error]] to consider how the knowledge learned from analysis and prevention of aviation and medical errors might be applied to Wikipedia.
>>
>> Fred
>
>Interesting.  The environments are different enough that the lessons
>do not directly apply, but the analysis techniques and a lot of the
>component types of failures noted are going to be common.
>
>I am somewhat familiar with the aviation side of the error and failure analysis.
>
>--
>-george william herbert
>george.herbert at gmail.com
>

I am making some progress with this exploration, found a program called WikiGuard (Good way to get into trouble blocking people) and thought about what happens if something escapes notice completely.

Fred


from_name: Rich Holton

subject:
[Wikipedia-l] precisions about the recent WMF
	"fair	use"	decision

body:
David Monniaux wrote:
> Andrew Gray a ?crit :
>> Bear in mind that copyright is not related to your right not to have
>> your image used in a defamatory or misleading manner - whatever rights
>> the law gives you in this regard you retain whether you hold the
>> copyright or not.
> Actually, it is.
>
> Proof: the Wikimedia Foundation *copyrights* its logos under *unfree
> licenses* exactly for that reason: for being able to control their use
> more effectively than through trademark law solely.
>
> Some European government agencies do the same: they copyright their
> photos and make them available under "unfree" licenses because they fear
> that free licenses may hinder their ability to prevent people from using
> them in inappropriate ways (read here: advertisements that appear to
> make them endorse stuff).
>
> *** Before dismissing these fears as unfounded, please note that the
> Wikimedia Foundation does exactly that. ***
>
> The US government enacted legislation that expressly punishes using
> government symbols without proper organization; but this legislation
> happens to be outside copyright law. Apparently, some European agencies
> don't enjoy that kind of protection, thus their attachment to copyright.
>

I think you'll find that Andrew was using "your image" to mean "your
visage" or "your likeness", or "your face". Not "your electronically
stored graphic".

-Rich


body:
It's not a new idea. My main problem with it is that it reduces the
trust the community has in admins as a whole. Admins can only do their
job if the rest of the community lets them, and the rest of the
community will only do that if they trust them. Having a way for
people to get admin tools without the strict processes of RfA would
diminish that trust and make the whole project unworkable.

To summarise: Adminship is not about being trustworthy, it's about
being trusted.


from_name: Matthew Woodcraft

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Guettarda wrote:
> There are a lot of reasons not to give people admin powers after just 50
> edits.  I'm guessing that one of them is copyright.  Right now there are a
> lot of deleted copyvios.  If anyone who registers (just about) has access to
> those copyvios, then aren't we back to publishing the copyvios?

Really, that's something we should fix anyway. If we don't have
permission from the copyright hiolders, we shouldn't have this material
on our servers at all.

-M-


body:
On 10/02/07, bawolff <bawolff+wn at gmail.com> wrote:
<snip history of en.wikinews>
> Today there is not really any active anti-commons feelings. Mostly
> because commons has became a lot nicer. (pfctdayelise especially
> helped get commons in people's good books again imho). People no
> longer delete stuff whilly nilly, and if they do, they can always
> undelete. However there's still not a great deal of pro-commons
> feelings. When I first came to wikinews, the general opinion was, "if
> its free, you better be sure to upload to commons". Now a days its,
> "if you want to you can, but don't go out of your way".

Thanks for writing this great detailed overview. It is useful to be
reminded of the impact (positive and negative) that our work can have,
and quite humbling.

EN.wn is far from the only project that has been seriously annoyed at
Commons. Some projects/people still are. See this Jan 2007 thread:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Meta:Requests_for_deletion&oldid=527485#Bookshelf_logos
MaxSem who is a steward stating, "Meta must not depend on Commons...
We already had problems with Commons, when they deleted an image for
being a resized duplicate. No more problems, everythig should be under
control of local admins."
Aphaia, who is on the COMcom, edits the Foundation website, heavily
involved with translation efforts at the Foundation-level, says, "I
have seen they deleted logos which were used on other our websites and
they claimed they had made checks. Consequently we found sometimes red
links on foundationwiki and others. I think they are trying to improve
the project on a good faith, but at the same time their work isn't
reliable enough trust all images we need locally.... Forgotten past
events could easily happen I am afraid.... [Once] failed, they
promised improvement but the similar happened again - not once but
multiple times. So I claim it is generally too risky to have Commons
host our crucial materials. They do not care if the image they are
going to delete is really not used. If they check Wikipedia and not
used it is just okay for them. I am fed up with such their excuses. I
think therefore we cannot take the further risk specially after our
project becomes larger than those incidents happened, and our mistakes
can take attention from the external people."

I sincerely hope we have improved since then, due to better CheckUsage
tools and wider awareness. But it is clear that trust gained is
fragile and needs to be treated with serious respect, because it can
be lost so easily and once lost, might never be regained.

Anyway back to the EN.wikinews...
There are advantages for all projects that choose to upload all [free]
media to Commons only. The main one is: massively reduced maintenance
work. Image maintenance (as in, checking stuff is properly sourced and
licensed, and possibly categorising) is a big pain, and not really the
point of any project (except Commons). In farming the work off to us,
you are saving your admins a big task. That's my opinion, anyway.

> I should probably start uploading our free images to commons (Most of
> them are well categorized and sourced), but its not exactly at the top
> of my priority list (My current priority is to bug the crap out of
> people who didn't source their (locally uploaded) images)

See above... :)

> Also it currently doesn't help that we don't have a commons ticker on
> wikinews. It was disabled because the page got  too long, and updates
> kept failing, which is my fault because i didn't archive it enough,
> mostly because I didn't get through it all.  However it was still very
> useful (or even the deleted template [[commons:template:Used On
> Wikinews]] would be quite useful in combination of related changes.

Well, you can fix your CommonsTicker, right? It sounds like you need a
bit of help maintaining the page though... you should call on your
fellow Newsies!

> Another thing that might be of help, is to have a special upload page
> for wikinews. (
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/special:upload?uselang=wikinews )
> There are some things for wikinews that don't apply elsewhere, and
> it'd be good to have a custom page.

:O

That's a totally brilliant idea. OMG we could even have
?uselang-ownwork on the Commons sidebar, that would be brilliant...

Well I support creating this (although it probably wouldn't be linked
prominently from anywhere in Commons - but Wikinews is enough, I
imagine) - shall we do it? Let me know what info you want. (Also I
would call it ENwikinews just in case other wikinewses do it too)

> >* Introduce user recognition system.
> Maybe take some inspiration from
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Contributing_Reporter_Awards

Yep, that is very much what I had in mind, except for a variety of
tasks. Is anyone in "charge" of giving the awards? How does that work?

> * Some degree of press recognition and fame :)
>
> Help if google images saw you. I see more images that are local
> uploads to wikinews come on Google images then stuff from commons.

Yes. Sigh...

thanks again for this great email!
cheers
Brianna


subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
Glen S <wikiglen at gmail.com> wrote:

>
http://daveydweeb.com/2007/02/07/citizendium-isnt-interested-in-your-opinion/
>
> I was shocked when I read it... that is, until I read
> Sanger's response
> beneath it... then I was absolutely dumbfounded. With a
> guy with that
> attitude at the helm, I'm expecting the CZ project to
> fizzle out VERY quicky.

I'm not saying it's correct, or non-biting, or good-faithy,
or open, but Wikipedia takes the same approach as CZ when
it comes to publishing internal issues on your blog or
otherwise making them public.  In fact, if you read the
recommendation on this list regarding how to keep
Microsoft-like pay-off incidents (known as wikilobbying)
quiet, it would be fairly obvious that WP and CZ share far
more in common than they differ.

~~Pro-Lick
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/User:Halliburton_Shill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pro-Lick
http://www.wikiality.com/User:Pro-Lick (now a Wikia supported site)

--spam may follow--

____________________________________________________________________________________
Need Mail bonding?
Go to the Yahoo! Mail Q&A for great tips from Yahoo! Answers users.
http://answers.yahoo.com/dir/?link=list&sid=396546091


from_name: Platonides

subject: [Wikipedia-l] es.wikipedia reaches 200.000 (new milestone)

body: es.wikipedia has reached at 22:19:58 10/02/2007 200.000 articles.


from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Sanger and CZ

body:
Glen S wrote:
> Tell me, have any of you read this:
> http://daveydweeb.com/2007/02/07/citizendium-isnt-interested-in-your-opinion/
>
> I was shocked when I read it... that is, until I read Sanger's response
> beneath it... then I was absolutely dumbfounded. With a guy with that
> attitude at the helm, I'm expecting the CZ project to fizzle out VERY
> quicky.
>

Wow. That makes me sad. I was rooting for them, hoping that they would
make a useful competitor. "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens
another," and all that. When I read the linked post, I was suspicious,
as David Still's quoting clearly doesn't present the full picture. But
then I read this bit from Sanger:

    If I ?micromanage everything,? it is because no one else will
    actually step up to do any of the relevant managing at all.

How unfortunate.

For those wanting more background on the link, here is daveydweeb's
original post, which has a lot of apparently sincere content along with
some inconsiderate and overdramatic language:

http://daveydweeb.com/2007/02/03/and-yet-still-so-far-to-go/

Here's where he posts on the Citizendium forums, apologizing for the
language and trying to get more discussion about the content:

http://forum.citizendium.org/index.php/topic,514.msg4122.html

Of course, that did get me to go look at Citizendium again, only to find
they won't show me anything. Sadder still.

William


from_name: Tom M

body:
On 2/10/07, Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com> wrote:

> There are at least three copyrights potentially at play:
>
> * Any copyright(s) subsisting in the music,
> * Any copyright(s) subsisting in the moving image,
> * The copyright in the film, created by synching the music and moving image.
>
> If the music is under CC-BY-SA, then the copyright in the synching is
> thus also under CC-BY-SA because the licence treats it as a derivative
> work. They remain as separate copyrights

That is incorrect, the film might be in copyright violation of the
music, and a possible remedy might be releasing the film under the
same license.  The implication that it is automatically under that
license is however, incorrect.

LetterRip


from_name: Andrew Garrett

subject: [Wikitech-l] Semi-protection: require edit count?

body:
Rob Church wrote:
>
> On 10/02/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> > Since we now have a field to keep an edit count, it should be
> > reasonably easy to say that semi-protection also requires a minimum
> > of, say, 20 edits. Still not a protection against gaming, but better
> > than no check, I think. Thoughts?
>
> Done, I think - the autoconfirmed group membership can depend on edit
> count, too, and semi-protection is just protection of pages against
> non-autoconfirmed users.

Correct. I implemented this ($wgAutoConfirmCount) a few weeks ago, just
hasn't been activated on any wikis.

Andrew Garrett
(werdna)


list: textbook-l

from_name: Iamunknown

subject:
[Textbook-l] Recent events surrounding the Social and Cultural
	Foundations of American Education wikibook

body:
I have been monitoring the upload log for the past week, and have noticed
that the contributors to [[Social and Cultural Foundations of American
Education]] have been:

1. uploading a lot of images without information indicating the source or
copyright status (some uploaded images have a bare description akin to "I
got this from yahoo.com") and
2. uploading images, including them in a single revision of a module, and
then removing them immediately thereafter but not tagging them with
{{delete}}.

I have gotten really frustrated lately, and am trying to remain calm and not
bite them on their talk pages. In order to do that, I am maintaining
strategic distance. I know that [[User:PbakerODU]] is the leader for the
class project. Could an administrator ask that he educate his students about
Wikibooks image use policy and Wikibooks policy in general and about the
{{delete}} template. I would myself, but I've become so exasperated that I'm
afraid I would just get angry.

I would sincerely appreciate that.
--Iamunknown


subject:
[Foundation-l] Cherokee Language Classes Offered to
 Support	Cherokee Wikipedia

body:
Hoi,
I think you are doing absolutely wonderful work. It think this is an
exemplary project.. It is a project that deserves emulation
Thanks,
     GerardM

Jeffrey V. Merkey schreef:
> I am setting up an on-line Cherokee Language class that describes the
> structure, syntax, and methods for converting English articles into the
> Cherokee Language to open up the Cherokee Wikipedia to more interested
> editors.  I have received numerous requests from other Wikipedia editors
> and admins on creating such a  class.  Since the rules of Wikipedia
> prohibit using the Wiki's themselves for such content, I will host the
> classes, tests, and instruction lessons on wikigadugi.org.
>
> I am faced with two possible paths to make the Cherokee Wikipedia
> successful.   Be a big fish in a small pond, or try to make the pond
> bigger by raising all ships at the same time.  I am choosing the later
> approach and will try to instill competence in the language with
> interested editors.   There are a lot of Cherokee people who have
> varying degrees of competence in the language, and the solution is to
> instill greater awareness in the language and teach and transfer the
> knowledge to others.
>
> The basic tools for machine assisted translation are also completed.  We
> now have a version of squid that translates all browsed web content into
> the Cherokee Language.  I will be enabling this translating proxy at
> wikigadugi to allow editors to assist in translating content for the
> Cherokee Wikipedia.  I will have materials completed and online sometime
> in March, and will begin the classes.  To sign up for classes, create an
> account on the Cherokee Wikipedia and I will post a page there for class
> signup for those interested in learning to speak and write in Cherokee.
>
> Wado
>
> donada gohvi.
>
> Jeff


body:
Bence Damokos wrote:
>
> Maybe a crosswiki message notification system after SUL would be the
> ideal solution?

I proposed it time ago. But yet, we need SUL before :P (which will help
us a lot, BTW)


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Gurch wrote:
 > Bryan Derksen wrote:
>  > I can think of an approach right off the top of my head to cause major
>  > havoc using my admin powers that I wouldn't be able to undo with any
>  > conventional tools.
>
> If the servers were being exceptionally responsive, you might just
> manage 40 edits/actions before you were stopped, assuming someone using
> IRC noticed your first action (which, if they are intended to have the
> effect you suggest, is pretty likely).

No, you misunderstand what I mean by "major havoc". For implicitly
hard-to-revert damage subtle is much "better" primarily because it isn't
noticed right away. Inserting just one paragraph of copyvio into an
existing article compared to cut-and-pasting whole websites, for
example. This can go unnoticed for months or even years and possibly
taint a lot of subsequent work.

> About the worst
> you could do is try to do history merges on pages with long edit
> histories (which are still reversible, just tedious to do), but the
> amount of time they take you'd be lucky if you finished *one* in three
> minutes. Also, attempting this on a page with a very long history will
> likely just return a database timeout error (as does attempting to clear
> a very large watchlist, for example), inconveniencing nobody but yourself.

I sometimes do history merges as part of my routine activities on
Wikipedia, usually correcting old cut-and-paste moves that weren't
noticed until lots of additional work had been done. If I were to start
occasionally merging inappropriate histories while still using
plausible-sounding delete/move/undelete summaries and leaving behind
correct-looking current versions it might be a while before anyone
noticed. Especially if I'm not stupid enough to try doing it to [[George
W. Bush]] and [[Main Page]].

The point is that this is something bad admins can do that's not easily
undoable. If lots of vandals were admins the whack-a-mole approach of
responding to their actions after the fact would become untenable, so
some care must be taken with giving the ability out.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> Remember that under my suggestion, we're talking a total of 6 months
> that a sleeper vandal would have to "sleep" before they entered the
> ranks of "normal" admins (3 months of keeping your nose clean, followed
> by three months of continued good behavior as an admin). And remember,
> someone setting out as a sleeper vandal would not be guaranteed of
> becoming an admin after three months, it's still up to the random
> selection. Is it impossible for someone to game this process? Sure. Is
> it likely? Hardly.

The flaw in that logic is in thinking that there is anything different
between a "normal admin" and a "provisional admin" besides the name.
There isn't. Adminship is a bit in a database, either you have that
bit and are able to do enormous damage to Wikipedia, or you don't.
There is no need to sleep for 6 months when you can do the damage
immediately. It would take a few minutes at the very best to desysop a
provisional admin that started vandalising - how much damage do you
think an AdminVandalBot could do in that time? I imagine it would be
hours normal-admin time to cleanup.


subject:
[WikiEN-l] Deleting orphaned unfree images (was: Unsourced
	album cover)

body:
>   I agree with this, of course.  But en: treats unfree content as deserving of
> many of the same protections from deletion as free content, and deleting a
> "fair use" image that we're not actually using will provoke people into
> accusations of ignoring process, abuse of admin tools, and may even wind up at
> Deletion Review.

It it process. It's CSD I5. You tag it, wait 7 days, and then delete
it. Not a very speedy form of speedy deletion, but it's on the list.

I'm not sure why we give people so long - they can upload the image
again if they find a use for it. I would suggest reducing it to 24
hours (enough to account for images being removed from articles
without consensus, any longer is unnecessary), but I'm not really
involved in the image side of things, so I'll leave it to someone
else.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Category:Jews -> Category:Jewsih people

body:
Yonatan Horan wrote:

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews#Specific_diseases
>
>I suggest you look at that. In addition to that, I remember seeing some
>research papers published on Ashkenazi Jews and will look for them if you
>really see the need. Just to support the above point, my cousin who is an
>Ashkenazi Jew has Familial Dysautonomy and my other cousin who is also an
>Ashkenazi Jew has Crohn's Disease.
>
>-Yonatan
>
>On 2/9/07, Mets501 <mets501wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>>>Jewish is not only a religion but also a race. Someone can be an atheist and
>>>
>>>
>>>still Jewish. For example, I personally don't really believe in god but I'm
>>>
>>>
>>>still a Jew.
>>>
>>>Yonatan
>>>
>>>
>>Judaism is not a race.  There is nothing biologically which separates a
>>Jew(ish person) from a non-Jew(ish person).
>>It is OK to call it a culture, but not a race.
>>--Mets501
>>
I respectfully hold that treating Jews as a race is fraught with
problems.  The epidemiological evidence cited may very well suggest
racial characteristics among the Ashykenazim, but that says nothing
about the Sephardim.  To what extent do they share the same congenital
diseases?  I would even suggest that Ashkenazim and Sephardim are
racially more different than Catholics and Protestants.  The genetic
disease have most likely evolved as a byproduct of inbreeding over
multiple generations.  The belief, as expressed in the article that you
cite, that a Jew does not cut ties with being a Jew by the simple
expedient of disclaiming being Jewish can have devastating political
ramifications when applied by those with a strong dislike of Jews.

Ec


body:
ikiroid wrote:

>I was at a seminar awhile back for a certain disorder that one of my family
>members has, and a during Q & A a Rabbi in the audience commented about how
>nice it was to see science paying attention to a disease in which a
>significant percentage of those who had it were "Ashkenazi Jews" [sic]. In
>science, certain ethnic groups which contain "Jew" in the title (such as
>Ashkenazi) are considered distinct gene pools.
>
"Ashkenazim" alone would suffice, but I can understand that in a group
with mixed religious backgrounds the word might not be a familiar one.

Ec


from_name: geni

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
On 2/10/07, William Pietri <william at scissor.com> wrote:
> Couldn't that logic be applied almost equally to allowing everybody to edit?
>
>
> Curiously,
>
> William
>

Nope. Firstly the damage you can do through editing is less.

Secondly the software, tools and our social structures are built
around being ready to undo editing vandalism. We have very little in
the way of methods of taking down problem admins fast.

--
geni


from_name: Timwi

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
geni wrote:
> On 2/10/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>Then leave it to those who don't. There will be enough. Especially if
>>you let more people be admins.
>
> We have spare admin resources? We have backog of over 1000 images
> needing deletion (see [[CAT:CSD]]) could you ask these people to help
> doing something about it?

No, I can't, because these people fail the current RfA system.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> Couldn't that logic be applied almost equally to allowing everybody to edit?

It can, but it's a matter of degree. The amount of damage, and the
time for cleanup, is much less with regular editing, and (very
importantly) the gain is much greater. Inexperienced editors do a lot
of good for Wikipedia, inexperienced admins wouldn't do much good at
all.


subject: [WikiEN-l] - category clutter on biographical articles

body:
Cool Cat wrote:

>Based on this discussion I wrote an Essay, feel free to comment/expand
>
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Do_not_write_articles_using_categories
>
>
>
The general principle of avoiding excessive categories is sound.  The
art is in getting cleaning up the excesses without upsetting a lot of
people, and causing a lot of flame wars.  Patience can be your friend.

Ec


subject: [WikiEN-l] Deleting orphaned unfree images

body:
> Should we really expect everybody to check on everything they care about
> every 24 hours?
>
> The 7 days here or 5 for proposed article deletion seems like a
> reasonable balance between friendliness and tidiness, but I'd be a
> little frustrated to find that something I was working on was gone
> because I'd taken the weekend off.

We don't need everybody to check, just one person out of everyone that
wants the image kept needs to check. If there is only one person that
wants the image kept on an article, then there isn't consensus to keep
it, is there?


from_name: NSLE (Wikipedia)

subject: [WikiEN-l] In hospital

body:
Seriously, can we please just ignore his posts and not feed him?

On 10/02/07, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
>
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Ryan Wetherell stated for the record:
> > With all due respect, how is this relevant to any Wikimedia project,
> > much less the English Wikipedia?
> >
> > --Ryan
> >
> > P.S. I notice we don't have a [[C. Bean Transport]] article yet.
>
> It is relevant to his hope that a tale of misfortune and injustice will
> cause us to be overcome with pity and forget what a liar he is.
>
> - --
> Sean Barrett     | Back off, man, I'm a scientist.
> sean at epoptic.com | --Dr. Peter Venkman
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
>
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> =7sku
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subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
> It would take a few minutes at the very best to desysop a
> provisional admin that started vandalising - how much damage do you
> think an AdminVandalBot could do in that time? I imagine it would be
> hours normal-admin time to cleanup.

Of course, when making this assessment you are assuming the current
MediaWiki software. Unfortunately, the current software is inefficient
at undoing large amounts of activity. For example, the User
Contributions page should have an "undo all of this user's
contributions" button, especially if it isn't many. At the same time,
this undoing of all contributions should also be undoable with a single
command. There should also be a selective feature, e.g. undo only all
image uploads or undo only the article edits that involve adding an
external link. All of these are non-trivial to code, which is why no-one
has done it yet, but it would make cleaning up after vandalism much more
efficient, even if the vandal is himself an admin.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
Joshua Brady wrote:
> On 2/9/07, Timwi <timwi at gmx.net> wrote:
>
>>Joshua Brady wrote:
>>
>>> * Wikipedia doubles every 6 months, we need an admin pool to
>>>compensate it, and we need those who will focus on handling admin
>>>issues, not waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue use. So
>>>lets not look at a new admin based on his edit count, but his
>>>contributions and WILLINGNESS.
>>
>>Here is this wrong sentiment again. Just because you need admins who
>>"will focus on handling admin issues", you are (incorrectly) concluding
>>that people who only "waive the mop around for 2 months and discontinue
>>use" are somehow worthless and therefore shouldn't be made admins. Even
>>if someone helps out with some admin tasks for only 2 months, surely
>>they're worth more than they would be if they couldn't do any of it
>>because they're denied access to the admin functions. You never know if
>>one of them stays on and becomes the focussed admin you need.
>
> Out of everything I posted, how did you draw the conclusion that I
> said anything to the effect that, those who "wave the mop around for 2
> months and discontinue use" were worthless?
>
> I simply stated that we need more admins who were willing to stick it
> out for the long haul.

So essentially you're saying nothing more than "more constructive
contributors is better than less"? In that case, you are merely stating
the obvious.

Timwi


subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
The Cunctator wrote:
>
> Oh, I agree with that.

Glad to hear that :)

> I just was saying I don't think admins getting burned
> out and taking a wikibreak is necessarily a huge problem.

Okay, maybe we're in agreement, but let me clarify: I don't think it's a
huge problem _in itself_, but it is a problem now (maybe not a huge one,
but whatever) because it is made too difficult for new admins to fill up
the gaps. Otherwise people wouldn't make such a big deal out of someone
leaving.

Timwi


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

body:
We should see if there's an article we can use it in with a reasonable fair
use claim.
If we can't delete it. We're in our right with policy backing us. We can
delete images that were uploaded without correct copyright information.
Inform the user and list it as usual. If anyone claims process is being
ignored then...

On 2/10/07, jkelly at fas.harvard.edu <jkelly at fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
> Thomas,
>
> Quoting Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
>
> > Shouldn't the image be deleted if it's orphaned? A fair use rationale
> > is only for a particular use, as this image isn't being used, the
> > rationale is nonsense.
>
> I agree with this, of course.  But en: treats unfree content as deserving
> of
> many of the same protections from deletion as free content, and deleting a
> "fair use" image that we're not actually using will provoke people into
> accusations of ignoring process, abuse of admin tools, and may even wind
> up at
> Deletion Review.
>
>                                  Jkelly
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2007-02-11

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

This is MediaWiki version 1.10alpha (r19877).

Reading tests from "maintenance/parserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Cite/citeParserTests.txt"...
Reading tests from "extensions/Poem/poemParserTests.txt"...

   1 previously failing test(s) now PASSING! :)
      * <references> after <gallery> (bug 6164)  [Fixed between 10-Feb-2007 08:15:30, 1.10alpha (r19856) and 11-Feb-2007 08:15:29, 1.10alpha (r19877)]

  18 still FAILING test(s) :(
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (single parameter)  [Has never passed]
      * URL-encoding in URL functions (multiple parameters)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Link containing double-single-quotes '' (bug 4598)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <noinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: message transform: <onlyinclude> in transcluded template (bug 4926)  [Has never passed]
      * BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Inline HTML vs wiki block nesting  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Mixing markup for italics and bold  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: 5 quotes, code coverage +1 line  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: dt/dd/dl test  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Images with the "|" character in the comment  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, without trailing slash or name.  [Has never passed]
      * TODO: Parents of subpages, two levels up, with lots of extra trailing slashes.  [Has never passed]

Passed 493 of 511 tests (96.48%)... 18 tests failed!


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
> It's not a new idea. My main problem with it is that it reduces the
> trust the community has in admins as a whole. Admins can only do their
> job if the rest of the community lets them, and the rest of the
> community will only do that if they trust them. Having a way for
> people to get admin tools without the strict processes of RfA would
> diminish that trust and make the whole project unworkable.
>
> To summarise: Adminship is not about being trustworthy, it's about
> being trusted.

I think you got this backwards. If the RfA process is so strict and
everyone then "trusts" the people who are made admins, surely that makes
it much easier for those admins to wreak havoc (whether intentional or
not). Surely *that* makes the whole project more unworkable.

Adminship should not have anything to do with trust at all. Adminship
should be synonymous with innocence. Not being allowed the admin tools
should be a penalty, and a penalty should only be applied when someone
does something wrong, no sooner.

Timwi


body:
MacGyverMagic/Mgm wrote:
> There's a reason why adminship isn't given to everyone. If you do it the
> other way around, abuse can cause a lot more damage before the person
> abusing the rights get blocked which will result in a lot more housekeeping
> to undo damage. It's nice in theory, but it simply doesn't work in practice.

Where's your evidence for that last sentence?

As far as I'm aware, this theory has never been put to practice, so I
don't see how you can make such a claim.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Admin burnout

body:
> Of course, when making this assessment you are assuming the current
> MediaWiki software. Unfortunately, the current software is inefficient
> at undoing large amounts of activity. For example, the User
> Contributions page should have an "undo all of this user's
> contributions" button, especially if it isn't many. At the same time,
> this undoing of all contributions should also be undoable with a single
> command. There should also be a selective feature, e.g. undo only all
> image uploads or undo only the article edits that involve adding an
> external link. All of these are non-trivial to code, which is why no-one
> has done it yet, but it would make cleaning up after vandalism much more
> efficient, even if the vandal is himself an admin.

Trying to code automated fixes to admin vandalism can have only
limited effectiveness. A skilled vandal could easily find some form of
vandalism that you haven't coded a way to undo yet. Or, better yet,
use your "undo all contributions" button as a form of vandalism in
itself. (If you restrict access to that button, then you've just
recreated all the problems we have now, just with different names.)


subject: [WikiEN-l] "About Wikipedia" in navigation sidebar

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> Ok, I stand corrected. What about my other suggestions?
>

Heh. That required seriously thinking about each one, rather than just
posting the one I happened to know about. :-)

I think they're all plausible suggestions, and I like most of them,
especially renaming the community portal and making the printable
version a tab or something else up at the top. I personally would keep
"Recent changes", as it demonstrates to newbies that people can make
things happen.

At least in my professional life, I'd user-test all of the suggestions
to see how they play in Peoria. Then the ones that passed that I'd to
A/B testing with a modest percent of the traffic to see which ones were
clearly better by the numbers.

Historically, are either of those things done with Wikipedia?

Thanks,


body:
> I think you got this backwards. If the RfA process is so strict and
> everyone then "trusts" the people who are made admins, surely that makes
> it much easier for those admins to wreak havoc (whether intentional or
> not). Surely *that* makes the whole project more unworkable.

When I say it's about trust, and not trustworthyness, that's because
most people that use Wikipedia *are* trustworthy, and aren't going to
wreak havoc. That is the premise to all these discussions about making
it easier to become an admin - that more people are trustworthy than
those than get through RfA. If that's not true, then RfA isn't broken,
and we have nothing to discuss.

I accept that making many more people admins would not result in many
wreaking havoc, however, it would result in an ungodly number of false
complaints about admins wreaking havoc. That is what I mean when I say
the community needs to trust admins.

> Adminship should not have anything to do with trust at all. Adminship
> should be synonymous with innocence. Not being allowed the admin tools
> should be a penalty, and a penalty should only be applied when someone
> does something wrong, no sooner.

If we were in Utopia, I would agree with you 100%, however, we are in
the real world, and we need to base our decisions on logic, not
ideology.


body:
Thomas Dalton wrote:
>
> Basically, you are suggest removing the concept of administrators
> entirely, giving everyone access to all the tools, and then
> introducing a new kind of block that take some tools away from users
> that do something wrong.

Essentially yes, except that I'm not entirely opposed to the idea that
the admin tools would not be available immediately (just like the
"autoconfirmed" state is not granted immediately). My only gripe is that
the process is not automatic, i.e. adminship is decided by people, and
as a result people are able to (and do) put ridiculous criteria in
place, thereby actively stopping most people from ever getting a chance
to play with the tools.

> The system we use for editing pages (the one you think should be
> extended to admin powers) results in an enormous amount of vandalism,
> which takes a lot of effort to clean up.

I don't deny that some changes to the software would be nice that would
make reverting a user's actions easier. Until we have those, I would
agree that admin vandalism is difficult to clean up, but it's not an
insurmountable problem. Remember we used to have huge problems with
page-move vandalism because it was difficult to revert? So now we have
new features to revert it more easily. The same will happen to reverting
admin actions or mass actions if we need it badly enough.

> Using the same system with admin powers would result in an equal
> amount of admin vandalism, which takes more effort to clean up, does
> more damage, and is not at all worth it.

You have not provided any evidence for that.

> Also, if adminship is opened up that much, we would have to introduce
> a new level of admin anyway to handle blocks (which would actually be
> desysopings, as everyone would be able to unblock themselves),

There are two flaws in your logic. First, if your adminship bit is
removed, how do you "unblock" yourself? So no, you don't need an extra
"super-admin" level to do de-sysoppings, you can just allow admins to do
it. Second, your argument would equally apply to page deletion (you can
publish any crap because if anyone deletes it you can just undelete
it!), and yet admins can all delete *and* undelete and it still works
(because they largely follow a certain policy).

Timwi