from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Encarta article list

body:
Quick, someone download the database dump before they update it....

OK, maybe you can nix the "quick" part.

Anthony

On 8/28/05, Zachary Harden <zscout370 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> >From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
> >Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> >To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
> >Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Encarta article list
> >Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 14:44:44 -0700
> >>
> > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Encarta_Encyclopedia_topics
> >
> >Please delete this list immediately.  Opinions of our legal team are
> >divided about the issue, and I feel that in a case like this,
> >conservatism and caution are called for.
>
> Due to the above message from Jimbo, and taking no chances, I went ahead and
> deleted the Encyclop?dia Britannica 2004 list, which was designed in a
> similiar fashion to the Encarta list. I am not sure what other lists can go,
> but I think we should not take chances with them if the WMF legal are having
> issues.
>
> Rgds,
>
> Zach Harden (User:Zscout370)
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikipedia-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: James R. Johnson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Personal wiki

body:
Thanks for the links, but I'd rather run MediaWiki, since I've gotten
EasyPHP up and running, and downloaded the MW software already.  My question
is, once I run EasyPHP, what do I do to then get MW up and running, and get
the wiki started?

Thanks,

James

-----Original Message-----
From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Phroziac
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 9:22 AM
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Personal wiki

www.qwikiwiki.com

On 8/28/05, Mattis Manzel <mattismanzel at yahoo.de> wrote:
> Check tiddlywiki: http://www.tiddlywiki.com/
>
> mattis
>
> James R. Johnson schrieb:
>
> >I'm not trying to run a server or anything like that, but simply use a
wiki
> >on my computer (not published to the internet) for a few things I've
> >written.
> >
> >James
> >
> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org
> >[mailto:wikipedia-l-bounces at Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of James R. Johnson
> >Sent: Saturday, August 27, 2005 10:43 PM
> >To: wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Personal wiki
> >
> >Hi all,
> >
> >            Is there a site where I can download and run a wiki on my own
> >computer?  Preferably mediawiki, but something that's as easy as Firefox
or
> >Media Player to install.
> >
> >
> >
> >Thanks,
> >
> >
> >
> >James
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Wikipedia-l mailing list
> >Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> >http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________
> Gesendet von Yahoo! Mail - Jetzt mit 1GB Speicher kostenlos - Hier
anmelden: http://mail.yahoo.de
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
signature
_______________________________________________
Wikipedia-l mailing list
Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l


list: wikien-l

from_name: Lisa Golding

subject: [WikiEN-l] Plz Read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

body:
Hi,
   I'm doing an assignment for science on cells.  There is only two
questions that is bothering me and i can't find any infomation on the net or
books or anywhere.  The questions are:-
1) is acidophilous the same as acidophilus and y?
2) Where would you find organisms called Acidophilous?
3) Are they harmful?

thankyou for taking time to read this message because i know you must be
very busy.

The only problem is that i will need an answer by Sunday 28th of august

thankyou very much
your sincerly
lisa

_________________________________________________________________
REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings
http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au


subject: legal paranoia (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Encarta article list)

body:
Where did the initial list come from?  Does anyone have a copy of it?

Publishing this outside of Wikipedia would be significantly harder,
because the list of red/blue links would have to be kept up to date,
but it is a potential solution.  Another, which is arguably even more
useful, is to pick a certain subset of the list (say 50 entries) to
work on at any time.

But first we need a copy of the list, preferably the full 100,000 article one.

On 8/28/05, Bogdan Giusca (discutii) <disclist at dapyx-soft.com> wrote:
> First, some statistics: we currently have a list of 13,000
> articles, out of 100,000 articles which Britannica has. The list
> began in February 2005 with 28,360 articles.
>
> A solution for this problem would be hosting the list outside
> the Wikimedia servers and the US, as in some countries (Sweden,
> for example), publishing the list in itself would be fair use and not
> be punishable under copyright infrigement because it does not create
> any loss of profit to Britannica, since nobody buys an encyclopedia
> only for the index.
>
> Sunday, August 28, 2005, 8:06:01 PM, you wrote:
>
> D> Case law has consistently held that an index of a work
> D> may be independently subject to copyright.  We are
> D> certainly not using an insubstantial portion of their
> D> index.
>
> D> I've discussed this here and other places before, but
> D> I do not believe we have a defensible fair use claim
> D> in this case.  Since I have always been on the losing
> D> side of those arguments, I am just surprised something
> D> changed.
>
> D> -DF
>
> >> And it seems to me, as we've discussed on here
> >> before, that it would easily fall under the "fair
> >> use" clause. We are using an insubstantial part of
> >> their encyclopedia; we are using it for our own
> >> internal purposes (it is in the Wikipedia
> >> namespace, is it not?); we are non-profit; we are
> >> not claiming copyright; we are not defrauding them >
> D> in any way; we are not even looking at the content >
> D> itself, just bibliographic information.
> >>
> >> FF
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Inserting a user from an outside script

body:
Henno van Arkel wrote:
> Hi,
>>What is the problem ? If it can't authenticate you might want to add
>>some debugs statements in User:checkPassword .
>
> I compared the user info to a working account, the password's the problem.
>
> I've read the code, and from what I gather, the password is created as:
> $password = md5(md5("{$user_id}-{$user_password}"));
> (password salt set to true of course).

Try: $password = md5("{$user_id}-".md5($user_password));

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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from_name: Erik Zachte

subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Tome Raider files at download.wikimedia.org

body:
>>> Zipping is only done as a quick way to determine download was
>>> succesful, without need for md5sum.

>I think this is silly. The 32 bit CRC used in ZIP is even weaker than MD5.
>Zipping the files puts a burden on the generator (takes time)

Yep, 5 seconds

> and the user (takes time, space)

Time: 5 seconds
Space: never fill your PC up till the last Gb, same is true for all
wikimedia downloads.

> and in this case actually increases the download.

Yep 0.1%

>Plus the determination whether the download was successfull needs to be
>done without ZIP or MD5sum, anyway, because these could be easily forged.

I'm talking transfer errors only.

>Digitally sign the files, and put up instruction on how to verify the
>signature.

I have other things to do.

Erik Zachte


from_name: Haukur Þorgeirsson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
> While I think almost everyone will agree that off site actions are
> *different* from on-site actions, and should certainly not be treated in
> the same way, I have so far found no persuasive argument that *no* off
> site actions should be taken into account in the banning of Wikipedia
> users.

I don't personally hold such an absolute position. In exceptional cases,
like the one you describe below, I'd agree that off-site actions should be
taken into account.

> As an example, once upon a time a particularly demented and evil person
> posted photos of my family (wife and little girl) with disgusting
> insults on a website attacking Wikipedia.  He posted links to a
> quicktime movie of my house, and made ominous suggestions about my home
> address and his "followers".  I was out of town and frightened enough to
> have Terry go and spend the night on the couch guarding the family.
>
> That person is permanently banned from Wikipedia, period.  I don't think
> anyone disputes the ethics of this.

I certainly don't. I'd have done the same.

> I consider the Amelekite case to be in the same genre, although slightly
> (but only slightly) less obvious.

I consider them very different indeed. Amelekite made absolutely no
attempt to link Wikipedian user names to real identities of people. Nor
did he even imply that this was possible. Nor did he call for harassment
of the people in question, even within Wikipedia. He called for monitoring
of their actions and fighting what he perceived as their bias. He made no
threats whatsoever, direct or implied.

He did use nasty vocabulary in referring to the people on his list. If
he'd done it inside Wikipedia I would not have objected to a block. But
since it obviously wasn't his intention that his rude words would ever
reach the ears of the people he applied them to I feel that we should give
less weight to them (but certainly some weight). I also feel we should
give weight to the facts that he

a) edited in good faith on Wikipedia, as shown by his contribution log

b) called for any new recruits to the 'pedia to respect our rules and the
Neutral Point of View

c) promoted legitimate user names and adherence to the rules as the best
way of avoiding blocks.

Summing all this up I find the block unwarranted. I can understand that
reasonable people may disagree and may want to give more weight to other
aspects of the issue. It's a close call.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Legal paranoia

body:
> From: Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com>
>
> And it seems to me, as we've discussed on here before, that it would
> easily fall under the "fair use" clause. We are using an insubstantial
> part of their encyclopedia; we are using it for our own internal
> purposes (it is in the Wikipedia namespace, is it not?); we are
> non-profit; we are not claiming copyright; we are not defrauding them
> in any way; we are not even looking at the content itself, just
> bibliographic information.

There is paranoia, and then there is prudence.

SCO's various lawsuits may not have much merit, and it is possible
that their case could be on the verge of a spectacular legal
meltdown. However, they have managed to cause an enormous amount of
expensive trouble. In SCO's case, they are attacking deep-pocketed
companies like IBM and Autozone, so there is no point in doing so
unless they really hope to win.

If a traditional encyclopedia wanted to attack Wikipedia--and I don't
think you need to be paranoid to assume such a wish--they don't need
to win, but only to bankrupt the entity they're suing. Their case
doesn't need to be good enough to win. It only needs to be good
enough that court couldn't refuse to consider it.

Using the list of articles from other encyclopedias, merged, edited,
what-have-you, sounds like gloriously complicated legal territory to
me. It's concrete evidence of copying _something._ Sort of. Kind of.

Could they win? I don't think it matters. Anyone knows who won
Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce?

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


list: foundation-l

from_name: Anthere

subject: [Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia meeting today

body:
Dan Grey wrote:

> So if you want to ask every Wikinews community about something, you
> post on the wikis. You go to the Water cooler on en. and post your
> query, and you repeat that exercise on each language edition.
>
> Otherwise you *will not* reach the people who actually contribute. You
> may _wish_ that posting to the mailing list is sufficient to do that -
> BUT IT IS NOT.
>
>
> Dan

Hi Dan.

I'll be frank. I think your request is not really reasonable. We have
more than 100 languages. 8 projects. Thousands of editors. You can not
expect Angela to go put messages one by one in possibly 300 village
pumps. If you do expect that we do that, I suggest that we add a couple
of full time employees to do so on the Foundation budget.

The "cheap" option is that everyone here makes an effort to ensure the
information is spread everywhere.

Editors are not informed ? {{sofixit}} Here is the link to do so :
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler

Please help.

Anthere


list: wikimedia-l


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
> Summing all this up I find the block unwarranted. I can understand that
> reasonable people may disagree and may want to give more weight to other
> aspects of the issue. It's a close call.

I might add a bit to that. Originally I felt that the block could not be
defended but as the discussion progressed I came to see that it was a much
closer call than I'd originally thought and that there are good arguments
both ways. Though there is clearly no consensus, I'm willing to defer to
what appears to be the majority opinion.

Regards,
Haukur


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject: [WikiEN-l] Encarta article list

body:
On 28/08/05, Sean Barrett <sean at epoptic.org> wrote:

> > Please delete this list immediately.  Opinions of our legal team are
> > divided about the issue, and I feel that in a case like this,
> > conservatism and caution are called for.
> >
> > I would delete it myself, except that I'm on a plane.
>
> I win!  I got 11 of them; Danny got 9.  Tabbed browsing is wonderful.

Does this include the pages like "Articles missing from both Encarta
and Britannica"?

(and if not, do you want to quickly knock them off too?)

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


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrapping up (not-sees)

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:

> It is not possible for 10,000 NeoNazis (if such
> numbers exist) to storm
> into Wikipedia and take it over by subverting our
> organic democratic
> processes because I will not allow it.  Period.  So
> we don't have to
> overdesign those processes out of a paranoia of a
> hostile takeover.

I think my point has always been that *you dont have
to personally disallow it* - we, the community wont
tolerate it, and theres no need to fear any great
surge in one particular strain of irrationality than
any other.

> But this also means that we don't need to over-react
> right now.  We can
> wait and see.  They'll talk a big game but just
> review those message
> boards and then look around here.  A battle of wits
> between Wikipedians
> and Nazis?  I know who I'm betting on.

Personally speaking, I think your sense of balance is
rather wise.

> I very much agree with that.  I think posting hate
> speech about
> Wikipedia users on another site is sufficient
> grounds for banning,
> whether our current rules say so or not.

My issue is the ability of sysops to impose "bans" at
all, even if its based on policy. Blocks are one
thing, but bans should have review. I think the Arbcom
should accomodate a separate "case-review" facility,
and that the Arbcom should grow to accomodate the
growing need for clear and documented review.

SV

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


from_name: Zachary Harden

subject: [WikiEN-l] Encarta article list

body:
>From: Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com>
>Reply-To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>To: English Wikipedia <wikien-l at Wikipedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Encarta article list
>Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 14:44:44 -0700
>>
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Encarta_Encyclopedia_topics
>
>Please delete this list immediately.  Opinions of our legal team are
>divided about the issue, and I feel that in a case like this,
>conservatism and caution are called for.

Due to the above message from Jimbo, and taking no chances, I went ahead and
deleted the Encyclop?dia Britannica 2004 list, which was designed in a
similiar fashion to the Encarta list. I am not sure what other lists can go,
but I think we should not take chances with them if the WMF legal are having
issues.

Rgds,

Zach Harden (User:Zscout370)


subject: [WikiEN-l] Threats (was not-sees)

body:
--- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Hateful people like this sometime do evil things.
> This means we have to
> be extremely thoughtful in thinking practically
> about the best way to
> deal with them.  But it also means that we should
> not waste 1 second
> worrying about whether we are somehow being
> inappropriately intolerant.
>
> I am not tolerant of people who post my name in a
> menacing way in a
> thread which contains a discussion of 'taking over
> wikipedia' and using
> force against Jews and so on.

Its hard to argue against the point about the former.
The latter issue, which ventures into generalties, is
a bit less difficult to take issue with --though its
understandable that the group should want to make an
example of extremists. It would be nice if we could be
equal and not selective in our treatment of
extremists.

SV

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


from_name: Kovács Endre János

body:
Hi,

Keep in mind that some of us may have lower-spec PC's. I guess unpacking
would take around 3 minutes on my box. It is an unnecessary step, too.
Checking an MD5 sum is not any more difficult than unpacking a zip file.
Nothing explains why the file should be zipped.

Regards,
Endre

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik Zachte" <epzachte at chello.nl>
To: "Wikitech-L" <wikitech-l at wikipedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 2:06 PM
Subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Tome Raider files at download.wikimedia.org

> >>> Zipping is only done as a quick way to determine download was
> >>> succesful, without need for md5sum.
>
> >I think this is silly. The 32 bit CRC used in ZIP is even weaker than
MD5.
> >Zipping the files puts a burden on the generator (takes time)
>
> Yep, 5 seconds
>
> > and the user (takes time, space)
>
> Time: 5 seconds
> Space: never fill your PC up till the last Gb, same is true for all
> wikimedia downloads.
>
> > and in this case actually increases the download.
>
> Yep 0.1%
>
> >Plus the determination whether the download was successfull needs to be
> >done without ZIP or MD5sum, anyway, because these could be easily forged.
>
> I'm talking transfer errors only.
>
> >Digitally sign the files, and put up instruction on how to verify the
> >signature.
>
> I have other things to do.
>
> Erik Zachte


from_name: Nathan Reed

body:
So will http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikinews/License be updated to
reflect the September 17 closing date... along with perhaps some new
thoughts on licensing from the meeting?

Before we post to the water cooler, it would be nice to have a current page.

Perhaps an addition to the site notice would be helpful too.

-N.

On 8/28/05, Anthere <anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dan Grey wrote:
>
> > So if you want to ask every Wikinews community about something, you
> > post on the wikis. You go to the Water cooler on en. and post your
> > query, and you repeat that exercise on each language edition.
> >
> > Otherwise you *will not* reach the people who actually contribute. You
> > may _wish_ that posting to the mailing list is sufficient to do that -
> > BUT IT IS NOT.
> >
> >
> > Dan
>
>
> Hi Dan.
>
> I'll be frank. I think your request is not really reasonable. We have
> more than 100 languages. 8 projects. Thousands of editors. You can not
> expect Angela to go put messages one by one in possibly 300 village
> pumps. If you do expect that we do that, I suggest that we add a couple
> of full time employees to do so on the Foundation budget.
>
> The "cheap" option is that everyone here makes an effort to ensure the
> information is spread everywhere.
>
> Editors are not informed ? {{sofixit}} Here is the link to do so :
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews:Water_cooler
>
> Please help.
>
>
> Anthere
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

body:
Henno van Arkel wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've searched on the meta-wiki and googled for the last two days, but
> I can't seem to manage to be able to create a wiki-user from an
> outside script.
>
> My questions are:
>
> 1) I'm using the following code to generate the wiki password (as far
> as I can tell it's identical as in the wiki source [1.5]).
>
>  $wiki_password = md5($wiki_user_id . "-" . md5($_POST['password1']) );
>
> 2) the table user_rights. Setting the correspondent id to 'user' or
> 'sysop' doesn't solve the problem either. The right value for this is
> just "user" is it not?
>
> 3) Right now, in the user table, I'm setting user_id, user_name,
> user_real_name, user_password, and user_email. Do I need to set
> user_options as well? Any others?
>
> Any help much appreciated,
> Henno

What is the problem ? If it can't authenticate you might want to add
some debugs statements in User:checkPassword .

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Phroziac

body:
Sounds like gaming the system to me though :/

On 8/28/05, Bogdan Giusca (discutii) <disclist at dapyx-soft.com> wrote:
> First, some statistics: we currently have a list of 13,000
> articles, out of 100,000 articles which Britannica has. The list
> began in February 2005 with 28,360 articles.
>
> A solution for this problem would be hosting the list outside
> the Wikimedia servers and the US, as in some countries (Sweden,
> for example), publishing the list in itself would be fair use and not
> be punishable under copyright infrigement because it does not create
> any loss of profit to Britannica, since nobody buys an encyclopedia
> only for the index.
>
> Sunday, August 28, 2005, 8:06:01 PM, you wrote:
>
> D> Case law has consistently held that an index of a work
> D> may be independently subject to copyright.  We are
> D> certainly not using an insubstantial portion of their
> D> index.
>
> D> I've discussed this here and other places before, but
> D> I do not believe we have a defensible fair use claim
> D> in this case.  Since I have always been on the losing
> D> side of those arguments, I am just surprised something
> D> changed.
>
> D> -DF
>
> >> And it seems to me, as we've discussed on here
> >> before, that it would easily fall under the "fair
> >> use" clause. We are using an insubstantial part of
> >> their encyclopedia; we are using it for our own
> >> internal purposes (it is in the Wikipedia
> >> namespace, is it not?); we are non-profit; we are
> >> not claiming copyright; we are not defrauding them >
> D> in any way; we are not even looking at the content >
> D> itself, just bibliographic information.
> >>
> >> FF
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


subject: [Wikitech-l] Re: Mediawiki software localisation -- Pootle

body:
Rowan Collins wrote:
> There are no .po files, or any other standard format, involved or
> available in the current system.

There is maintenance/lang2po.php that is a wrapper around xgettext and
msgmerge to generate some .po files. The file generated are far from
being complete though :o)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
On 8/28/05, Laura Scudder <laurascudder at gmail.com> wrote:
> Supposedly even our newspaper underwear ads are off-limits.  Every
> time I ship a package there the postman asks me if I checked the
> newspaper I packed it with.  I wouldn't want little kids reading
> Harlequins, but I would certainly never think to worry about content
> in the local paper.

I doubt that too may little kids *want* to read Harlequins! Saucy
newspaper ads are another matter, but even so, if the Iranian
Government is spending the people's money on employing inspectors to
check for brassiere adverts, then you've got to wonder about their
priorities.

However, I can't see Iranian moral crusaders being much of a threat to
Wikipedia. Nor neoNazis, for that matter, though considering some of
the recent posts exulting in vandalism of their Nazipedia, I'd say
that they now have a powerful incentive and moral justification to
mount an underhanded campaign of their own.

--
Pete, awarding fifteen minutes of eternal fame to whoever coined that
word "Nazipedia"


body:
Nikola Smolenski wrote:
 > Maybe it would be possible to make a list of strings which are
expected to be
> customised, and which are not. For example, "From Wikipedia, the free
> encyclopedia" will always be customised while "Article", "Discussion",
> "Edit", "Recent Changes"... will never be. Then, LanguageXx.php could
> periodically be refreshed with only "safe" strings filled in. Language files
> for Navajo and other languages which only have translations in MediaWiki
> namespace could be created from scratch in this way.

Splitting the strings can probably easily done as we have two functions
for messages:
  - wfMsg : a message in whatever language user selected.
  - wfMsgForContent() : a message using site language.

wfMsg is more or less the UI messages and can probably be removed from
the MediaWiki namespaces. Then we will just have to manage the Content
messages ;)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
My internet coonection stopped an hour for the meeting :~( and I had
wanted to be there :(

Waerth/Walter


subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant
 brainstorming - a game with rules.

body:
NOTE: this is a fictional view of the foundation in 5 years.

Delphine M?nard wrote:
> ==WMF in 5 years==

WMF is no more. Instead it's a new division  of the UNESCO. Some people
are now working full time under the organisation be it for development,
articles reviewing, promotion. Some are external consultants.

Wikibooks is 20 times bigger than Wikipedia.

Budget: several milions of dollars.

Wikipedia.org is also available under:
 encyclopedia.unesco.org

Users keep asking brion: "When will mediawiki 4.0 will be released ?".

I can join IRC with 'hashar at unesco/wikipedia' hostmask and finally make
a living with something that really interest me 8-)

--
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar
http://www.livejournal.com/community/wikitech/
IM: hashar at jabber.org  ICQ: 15325080


from_name: Sabine Cretella

body:
>Splitting the strings can probably easily done as we have two functions
>for messages:
>  - wfMsg : a message in whatever language user selected.
>  - wfMsgForContent() : a message using site language.
>
>wfMsg is more or less the UI messages and can probably be removed from
>the MediaWiki namespaces. Then we will just have to manage the Content
>messages ;)
>
>
>
Following this: if these strings are always the same - that is to say
they are always separated by <space>:<space> it is easy to write a
parser - so you do not need to separate since it can be done within the
CAT-Tool. That's also why I am asking for sample files to try them out -
to see what happens if I work with them using the actual parsers.
Actually the parser for the UI of OmegaT has a = as separator - I don't
know how easy it is to adapt this to the format we need for mediawiki
software, but as I said I would like to try it out.

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: messi

body:
2005/8/28, Erik Zachte <epzachte at chello.nl>:
> > and in this case actually increases the download.
>
> Yep 0.1%

Well, if you put the file in the archive without compressing it (zip
-0) you only add about 200 bytes, the ZIP file header.


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject:
[Foundation-l] Re: Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant
	brainstorming - a game with rules.

body:
> ==WMF in 5 years==

> *Board and management
The board has at least 7 members. One of them is Jimbo, 2 are
appointed by the pre-existing board,  2 are elected by the projects
community, 2 are elected by the chapters. None of them are paid.

> *Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)
A full office with the following positions, all of them paid (those
are in no particular order, **means those people work under the one
above *)
*chief executive officer
**sales manager (selling services to for profit companies)
**secretaries to answer the phone and deal with daily stuff
*grants manager
*fundraising and sponsor officer
*chief financial officer
**accountant
*chief technical officer
**developpers and technical team
*philantropic activities and lobbying officer
*press/PR officer
**outside press agency (just to write the press releases, translate
them, send them out etc. not to talk to the press)
*chapter coordinator
*legal officer
**outside legal company (lawyer firm, ? la Ally Mc Beal)
*translation coordinator
**outside translation company

The point in having external companies is simple, if they're not good,
we change, and we've got a good chance that those will work with WMF
for little money, since WMF will be so big and known.

(for roles, see more below)

> *Budget
I don't know how much the budget is, but it's huge, and twice a year
WMF issues a budget update (past expenses, previsional budget for next
half year). The past expenses budget is very detailled (every single
cable is accounted for, or almost), the previsional leaves room for
unexpected things.
The budget consists of an overall wmf budget and chapter budgets,
those are coordinated towards the greater goal of sustaining the
projects. There's one *overall buget* and sub-budgets for specific
projects (not Wikimedia projects, more like "Hardware project" or
"Print project"...)

> *Fundraising scheme

2 fundraising drives a year aimed at individuals.  Each of these
fundraising drives is based on specific budget needs, possibly the
little projects described above.

The rest of the money (and the bigger part of it) comes from grants
and big sponsors, and from selling services.

Fundraising is closely coordinated with chapters.

> *Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed
The philantropic activities/lobbying officer acts with
governments/organisations both to make sure content is available (see
content below) and stays free, and to make sure it reaches the right
people. I see this as one of the main things to develop to reach WMF's
goal of "make it available to the greater numbers". In the long run,
we will not just be sustaining our projects, but many other projects
designed to bring our content to the greater numbers.

> *Projects
Projects live their own life, the foundation is here to make sure no
legal, technical etc. threats endanger them.

> *Content objectives
The WMF will then be strong enough, and have enough political power
and weight to ensure the collaboration of world wide organisations and
governements to give content to the projects. Talking to the national
libraries, international organisations (ESA, UNESCO, EU etc.) to make
their content available, maybe buy content to make it free, in short,
make sure that content that should be free is free, and content that
is already free stays free.

> *Software objectives
I have no clue, but basically, the developping team makes sure the
software scales and the projects can continue growing.

> *Relationship between chapters and parent organisation
the WMF acts as an umbrella organisation for all chapters. Major deals
with international companies and institutions are made by the WMF and
are brought to the local level through the chapters. Chapters take
care of local deals with local institutions and local companies.
Information flows both ways.

> *Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)
Press and PR will be a large part of how the rest of the staff/team is
seen and what image the Foundation and the Wikimedia projects give to
the outside world. Partnerships are chosen so they can help the WMF
reach a larger audience, both in readers and sponsors. I imagine
advertising for fundraising drives in major newspapers, grand press
conferences etc.

> *Other (anything we did not think of)
Well, we did not think of it, so I don't know :-).

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Rowan Collins

subject: [Wikitech-l] Mediawiki software localisation -- Pootle

body:
On 28/08/05, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
> Maybe it would be possible to make a list of strings which are expected to be
> customised, and which are not. For example, "From Wikipedia, the free
> encyclopedia" will always be customised while "Article", "Discussion",
> "Edit", "Recent Changes"... will never be. Then, LanguageXx.php could
> periodically be refreshed with only "safe" strings filled in. Language files
> for Navajo and other languages which only have translations in MediaWiki
> namespace could be created from scratch in this way.

Nice idea, but I'm not sure such a distinction can really be made -
projects may have all sorts of reason for inserting particular jargon,
links, or just plain style in various parts of the interface, and it
seems a shame to deny them the right to do this. In fact,
MediaWiki:edit is a case in point - the English default is "edit", but
the English Wikipedia uses "edit this page", because lots of
descriptions elsewhere refer to "clicking the edit this page link".

I think a better idea would be to have a collaborative tool for
translations (be it wiki-style or anything else) which was able to
compare current default messages with custom messages from a
particular wiki, and allow users (who can understand the language in
question) to manually "merge" the changes which are appropriate for
the distributed default. Ideally, there should also be a way of
flagging which messages have been changed in the English "master"
version and/or a way of comparing with a "parent" language (so, for
instance, Catalan might be worth comparing against both Castillian
Spanish and English).

I haven't time right now to see if any existing tools could be adapted
for this purpose - tempting though a wiki-based system seems, a
permissive setup of an existing l10n tool might be more suitable.

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
On 28/08/05, Sabine Cretella <sabine_cretella at yahoo.it> wrote:

> Again: OmegaT (and if possible also other tools) will be integrated in
> UW (we are already talking about the reference implementation) - we can
> have a tmx management at a certain stage - please base this stuff on TMX
> since this means almost all localisation tools on Lista-Standard can be
> used for localisation (also commercial tools like D?j?Vu -
> http://www.altril.com - but of course I prefer Open Source tools) - so
> please have a look at this and send me sample files to try out what the
> actual OmegaT-version does and what needs to be changed (I suppose it is
> fairly easy to adapt the file parser).

I will have a look at the tools and resources you've mentionned if and
when I get time.

As for example files, please see the links in my previous post
(http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2005-August/031182.html).
Specifically, you can get any of the files by using URLs like
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/wikipedia/phase3/languages/LanguageDe.php
(replacing the "LanguageDe.php" bit for German with "LanguageFr.php"
for French, etc, like the wiki domain prefixes, or just "Language.php"
for English).

[...]
> whenever there is a new version to translate the sofware will then give
> you the inserted translation pair source/target as 100% match or if
> wording was slightly changed as partial match.

That sounds like it could be the right kind of thing - after all, I
doubt MediaWiki is the first to face this conflict between i18n and
customization (c11n?), so there *ought* to be tools out there that
attempt to deal with it to some extent.

> I know that this is not the ordinary wiki-tool and I know that it might
> seem strange to whoever is not a translator used to CAT-Tools, but it
> really is a great tool built for localisation/translation work.

Like I say, a wiki-like tool is tempting, but is probably rather like
"reinventing the wheel" compared to using an existing specialist tool.
[And we can always customise it to *look* like MediaWiki - we've got
"MonoBook" skins for Bugzilla and even LiveJournal already, after all
;p]

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


from_name: Rob

subject: [WikiEN-l] Pseudodoxia (neo-Nazi Wikipedia)

body:
I guess you could say somebody burned down their
Reichstag. ;)

Skyring skyring at gmail.com:

Without wanting to offer the least scintilla of
support for Nazis or
their hateful views, they have seen their project
vandalised, probably
to a far greater extent than anything they ever wanted
to do to
Wikipedia. They have been handed an incentive and
moral imperative to
retaliate.

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Personal wiki

body:
On 28/08/05, James R. Johnson <modean52 at comcast.net> wrote:
> Thanks for the links, but I'd rather run MediaWiki, since I've gotten
> EasyPHP up and running, and downloaded the MW software already.  My question
> is, once I run EasyPHP, what do I do to then get MW up and running, and get
> the wiki started?

It should just be a case of going to
http://localhost/mediawiki-1.4.8/config/index.php (if that's the path
where you've unzipped it) and following the instructions. Most of the
default settings it creates should be fine; if not, look at
LocalSettings.php and includes/DefaultSettings.php (find settings in
the latter and copy them to the former; *do not edit
DefaultSettings.php itself*).

--
Rowan Collins BSc
[IMSoP]


body:
Rowan Collins wrote:

>On 28/08/05, Nikola Smolenski <smolensk at eunet.yu> wrote:
>
>
>>Maybe it would be possible to make a list of strings which are expected to be
>>customised, and which are not. For example, "From Wikipedia, the free
>>encyclopedia" will always be customised while "Article", "Discussion",
>>"Edit", "Recent Changes"... will never be. Then, LanguageXx.php could
>>periodically be refreshed with only "safe" strings filled in. Language files
>>for Navajo and other languages which only have translations in MediaWiki
>>namespace could be created from scratch in this way.
>>
>>
>
>Nice idea, but I'm not sure such a distinction can really be made -
>projects may have all sorts of reason for inserting particular jargon,
>links, or just plain style in various parts of the interface, and it
>seems a shame to deny them the right to do this. In fact,
>MediaWiki:edit is a case in point - the English default is "edit", but
>the English Wikipedia uses "edit this page", because lots of
>descriptions elsewhere refer to "clicking the edit this page link".
>
>I think a better idea would be to have a collaborative tool for
>translations (be it wiki-style or anything else) which was able to
>compare current default messages with custom messages from a
>particular wiki, and allow users (who can understand the language in
>question) to manually "merge" the changes which are appropriate for
>the distributed default. Ideally, there should also be a way of
>flagging which messages have been changed in the English "master"
>version and/or a way of comparing with a "parent" language (so, for
>instance, Catalan might be worth comparing against both Castillian
>Spanish and English).
>
>I haven't time right now to see if any existing tools could be adapted
>for this purpose - tempting though a wiki-based system seems, a
>permissive setup of an existing l10n tool might be more suitable.
>
>
>
Again: OmegaT (and if possible also other tools) will be integrated in
UW (we are already talking about the reference implementation) - we can
have a tmx management at a certain stage - please base this stuff on TMX
since this means almost all localisation tools on Lista-Standard can be
used for localisation (also commercial tools like D?j?Vu -
http://www.altril.com - but of course I prefer Open Source tools) - so
please have a look at this and send me sample files to try out what the
actual OmegaT-version does and what needs to be changed (I suppose it is
fairly easy to adapt the file parser).

In a tmx it is not said that the source and target must be 100% the same
text - it can also be a "basic contents" - "special contents" thingie.
Really it is hard to explain this.

let's say in source you have "abc" in English
and in target you have "abc" + further text that is wanted by the local
project in Italian

whenever there is a new version to translate the sofware will then give
you the inserted translation pair source/target as 100% match or if
wording was slightly changed as partial match.

is that understandable? If not please tell me - so I will try to explain
better. It is just like we sometimes find it in "Allmessages"

For further info on OmegaT:
http://www.omegat.org/omegat/omegat.html

For further info on tmx + tbx:
http://www.lisa.org

I know that this is not the ordinary wiki-tool and I know that it might
seem strange to whoever is not a translator used to CAT-Tools, but it
really is a great tool built for localisation/translation work.

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com


from_name: noahp4485 at aol.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Please remove me from mailing list


from_name: Bogdan Giusca (discutii)

body:
First, some statistics: we currently have a list of 13,000
articles, out of 100,000 articles which Britannica has. The list
began in February 2005 with 28,360 articles.

A solution for this problem would be hosting the list outside
the Wikimedia servers and the US, as in some countries (Sweden,
for example), publishing the list in itself would be fair use and not
be punishable under copyright infrigement because it does not create
any loss of profit to Britannica, since nobody buys an encyclopedia
only for the index.

Sunday, August 28, 2005, 8:06:01 PM, you wrote:

D> Case law has consistently held that an index of a work
D> may be independently subject to copyright.  We are
D> certainly not using an insubstantial portion of their
D> index.

D> I've discussed this here and other places before, but
D> I do not believe we have a defensible fair use claim
D> in this case.  Since I have always been on the losing
D> side of those arguments, I am just surprised something
D> changed.

D> -DF

>> And it seems to me, as we've discussed on here
>> before, that it would easily fall under the "fair
>> use" clause. We are using an insubstantial part of
>> their encyclopedia; we are using it for our own
>> internal purposes (it is in the Wikipedia
>> namespace, is it not?); we are non-profit; we are
>> not claiming copyright; we are not defrauding them >
D> in any way; we are not even looking at the content >
D> itself, just bibliographic information.
>>
>> FF


from_name: Henno van Arkel

body:
Hi,

> What is the problem ? If it can't authenticate you might want to add
> some debugs statements in User:checkPassword .

I compared the user info to a working account, the password's the problem.

I've read the code, and from what I gather, the password is created as:
$password = md5(md5("{$user_id}-{$user_password}"));
(password salt set to true of course).

If I try to create the valid account's password like this though, I
get a different result.
The problem lies here...

I guess I'll keep digging the code with a fresh pair of eyes tomorrow...

Take care,
Henno


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Legal paranoia

body:
> If a traditional encyclopedia wanted to attack Wikipedia--and I don't
> think you need to be paranoid to assume such a wish--they don't need
> to win, but only to bankrupt the entity they're suing. Their case
> doesn't need to be good enough to win. It only needs to be good
> enough that court couldn't refuse to consider it.
>
That's not all that's needed.  There also needs to be a threat that
the lawsuit could bankrupt Wikimedia in the first place.  Over a list
of titles I just don't see it, even if we just gave up on the merits,
which are in our favor as well.

Even then there is relatively little incentive for a traditional
encyclopedia to attack Wikipedia in the first place.  So they bankrupt
Wikimedia?  That's just going to make Wikipedia grow even bigger.
Fine, the legal entity of Wikimedia would be bankrupt, but Wikipedia
is much more than a legal entity and it will survive with or without
Wikimedia.  Besides, the support would come pouring in from all over
the place.  We'd probably get plenty of legal support donated to us.
Maybe this wouldn't be the case if we blatantly flaunted the law
(although it still might be), but in a case like this where we're
actually in the right, the support would be tremendous.

The only reason we should even consider backing down on this is if
there's a serious legal argument that keeping this list would somehow
taint the rest of the encyclopedia.  I highly doubt this is true, but
I'm not a lawyer, and if a lawyer says this is plausible it's
something we should look at hard.

But otherwise, if it's just a list, I don't see the problem.  The
worst reasonable case scenario is that we have to take it down.  A
long drawn out legal battle; a chance to set a precedent that can be
used in the future; that'd probably be a good thing.

Anthony


body:
Hi Rowan,

as for now I can only work on it in substituting .php with .txt :-( with
an older version I was able to force the software to open files with a
different parser, even if the format was not 100% the same.

So here are the results :-)

Source file (I cut part of it):

************************

<?php
/**
 * @package MediaWiki
 * @subpackage Language
 */

if( defined( 'MEDIAWIKI' ) ) {

#
# In general you should not make customizations in these language files
# directly, but should use the MediaWiki: special namespace to customize
# user interface messages through the wiki.
# See http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
#
# NOTE TO TRANSLATORS: Do not copy this whole file when making translations!
# A lot of common constants and a base class with inheritable methods are
# defined here, which should not be redefined. See the other LanguageXx.php
# files for examples.
#

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Language-specific text
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------

if($wgMetaNamespace === FALSE)
	$wgMetaNamespace = str_replace( ' ', '_', $wgSitename );

/* private */ $wgNamespaceNamesEn = array(
	NS_MEDIA            => 'Media',
	NS_SPECIAL          => 'Special',
	NS_MAIN	            => '',
	NS_TALK	            => 'Talk',
	NS_USER             => 'User',
	NS_USER_TALK        => 'User_talk',
**************************************

Target file

**************************************

<?php
/** German (Deutsch)
 * @package MediaWiki
 * @subpackage Language
 */

if( defined( 'MEDIAWIKI' ) ) {

#
# In general you should not make customizations in these language files
# directly, but should use the MediaWiki: special namespace to customize
# user interface messages through the wiki.
# See http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace
#
# NOTE TO TRANSLATORS: Do not copy this whole file when making translations!
# A lot of common constants and a base class with inheritable methods are
# defined here, which should not be redefined. See the other LanguageXx.php
# files for examples.
#

#--------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Language-specific text
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------

if($wgMetaNamespace === FALSE)
	$wgMetaNamespace = str_replace( ' ', '_', $wgSitename );

/* private */ $wgNamespaceNamesEn = array(
	NS_MEDIA            => 'Media',
	NS_SPECIAL          => 'Spezial',
	NS_MAIN	            => '',
	NS_TALK	            => 'Diskussion',
	NS_USER             => 'Benutzer',
	NS_USER_TALK        => 'Benutzer_Diskussion',
	NS_PROJECT          => $wgMetaNamespace,

*************************************

resulting TMX file

************************************

-
    <tmx version="1.1">
<header creationtool="OmegaT" creationtoolversion="1"
segtype="paragraph" o-tmf="OmegaT TMX" adminlang="EN-US" srclang="EN-EN"
datatype="plaintext">
  </header>
-
    <body>
-
    <tu>
-
    <tuv lang="EN-EN">
<seg>/**</seg>
</tuv>
-
    <tuv lang="DE-DE">
<seg>/** German (Deutsch)</seg>
</tuv>
</tu>
-
    <tu>
-
    <tuv lang="EN-EN">
<seg>    NS_SPECIAL          => 'Special',</seg>
</tuv>
-
    <tuv lang="DE-DE">
<seg>    NS_SPECIAL          => 'Spezial',</seg>
</tuv>
</tu>
-
    <tu>
-
    <tuv lang="EN-EN">
<seg>    NS_TALK                => 'Talk',</seg>
</tuv>
-
    <tuv lang="DE-DE">
<seg>    NS_TALK                => 'Diskussion',</seg>
</tuv>
</tu>
-
    <tu>
-
    <tuv lang="EN-EN">
<seg>    NS_USER             => 'User',</seg>
</tuv>
-
    <tuv lang="DE-DE">
<seg>    NS_USER             => 'Benutzer',</seg>
</tuv>
</tu>
-
    <tu>
-
    <tuv lang="EN-EN">
<seg>    NS_USER_TALK        => 'User_talk',</seg>
</tuv>
-
    <tuv lang="DE-DE">
<seg>    NS_USER_TALK        => 'Benutzer_Diskussion',</seg>
</tuv>
</tu>
</body>
</tmx>

**************************************

Now the problem here is the parser in order to exclude the first part of
the translation unit and the comments that should not be touched:
example:

    NS_USER             =>
    NS_USER_TALK        =>

should not be seen

and these parts should not be seen

#
# In general you should not make customizations in these language files
# directly, but should use the MediaWiki: special namespace to customize
# user interface messages through the wiki.
# See http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_namespace

************************************

If we are talking about people who know what they may not touch, the
tool can already be used as is. If necessary I can try to create
alignment files and store to tmx using D?j?Vu - there is also a
OpenSource alignment tool, but I never used it up to now since I have
that commercial tool as well. Of course: we can try it out.

I hope this helps to understand what I am talking about.

Now considering wikidata/Ultimate Wiktionary: it can be a repository for
localization data - it just needs correct attribution (in wiki language:
the correct category)  - this is not possibile immediately but we are
already thinking about this since it is "only" an interface issue
between OmegaT and UW (only is in " since I don't know how easy this is
- my personal programming experiences date back to basic, turbo pascal
5/6 and dbase III+ and IV and even there only easy stuff ... so it's
many years now I did not do anything, but at least I can imagine how
things could work).

For the parts above I changed the .php extension to .txt extension,
created the project, translated some lines and then exported to target
and saved translation memory. It is not difficult but for now only
people who know what they may not touch can work on it.

If we have the interface between UW and OmegaT one can also make changes
on UW that can then be reflected during the following translation. Or
one can add translations directly in UW so more than one person
contemporarily can work on the project (proof reading also is easier)
and when there's the new version you just recall the tmx you need from
UW and have the file translated adding the new segments to the TMX and UW.

I am working with version 1.4.6 beta2 since there seems to be a bug with
the matches in the latest version and Maxym is not yet back from holiday
- so if someone wants to try the software keep that in mind. If you have
questions: you can contact me directly or we can use a wiki (don't know
where on the wikimedia projects, please tell me), and of course there's
also the OmegaT mailing list (omegat at yahoogroups.com).

Should I add this information somewhere? Where? Meta?

Ciao, Sabine

___________________________________
Yahoo! Messenger: chiamate gratuite in tutto il mondo
http://it.beta.messenger.yahoo.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Legal paranoia

body:
> > Could they win? I don't think it matters.
>
> This is the primary argument in favour of copyright paranoia.  Is our
> position based on principles or on fear?  If our only argument is fear
> of successful litigation, what is that but paranoia?  I don't think we
> should simply take on issues solely for the purpose of setting up
> litigation; we should show some care in choosing our battles.
> Principled positions give us more flexibility.
>
What is called copyright paranoia comes in many forms, and I see this
one as the least legitimate one.  One form of copyright problems is
having dubious copyright text interspersed in an article.  I think
this is the worst one, because it can so easily taint the entire
article and even spread to other parts of the encyclopedia through
copy and paste.  It's also the easiest to fix, because text of this
sort can easily be rewritten.  Then there are dubious claims of fair
use in the encyclopedia, in ways that are easily removed (especially
images, but also quotes, song lyrics, etc).  This isn't really a legal
problem for Wikipedia, it's a problem for those who might want to
reuse the encyclopedia, and therefore a problem with the free status
of the encyclopedia.

Finally, there's what we're seeing here, a copyright problem in a
side-page which isn't even in the encyclopedia itself.  For another
example, consider a fair use image being used on someone's user page.
Assuming this doesn't taint the actual encyclopedia, there really
isn't much of a problem at all.

Now yes, this all rests on the assumption that having a list in the
Wikipedia space doesn't taint any of the article space.  But I haven't
heard any educated arguments that this assumption is invalid.

Anthony


from_name: Ben E.

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speaking of insecure egos...

body:
What do you mean by this? Would you like an admin to clean up your user/user
talk pages? Or do you have another request?

[[User:Bratsche|Ben]]

On 8/27/05, Skyring <skyring at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> It's pretty tough when I can't even clear my own talk page. Can
> someone take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Skyring
> and see if they can work out what sort of official policy the relevant
> admin is following, apart from WP:BLOODYMINDEDNESS?
>
> --
> Peter in Canberra
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


body:
Umm, who let this one through?

In other news, you (Lisa) might benefit from reading these Wikipedia
articles:

   1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acidophilus
   2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactobacillus_acidophilus
   3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactobacillus

Please note that you will need to create your own response to your school
assignment, and not copy out the articles directly, since that would be
plagarism and wrong. Also, you might want to check if your instructors
accept Wikipedia articles as sources. Increasingly, schools are not
accepting Wikipedia as a source due to the unique nature of building
content. After all, you can edit this page. If you are interesting in
contributing to Wikipedia, I encourage you to create an account.

Cheers,
[[User:Bratsche|Ben]]

On 8/27/05, Lisa Golding <charliesangels671 at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I'm doing an assignment for science on cells. There is only two
> questions that is bothering me and i can't find any infomation on the net
> or
> books or anywhere. The questions are:-
> 1) is acidophilous the same as acidophilus and y?
> 2) Where would you find organisms called Acidophilous?
> 3) Are they harmful?
>
> thankyou for taking time to read this message because i know you must be
> very busy.
>
> The only problem is that i will need an answer by Sunday 28th of august
>
> thankyou very much
> your sincerly
> lisa
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings
> http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Bratsche-It means "viola!"


body:
send "unsubscribe" to wiki-en-l-request at wikipedia.org to do that ;)

On 8/28/05, noahp4485 at aol.com <noahp4485 at aol.com> wrote:
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


body:
oops, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org ;)

On 8/28/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> send "unsubscribe" to wiki-en-l-request at wikipedia.org to do that ;)
>
> On 8/28/05, noahp4485 at aol.com <noahp4485 at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> >
>
>
> --
> signature
>

--
signature


from_name: Christopher Larberg

body:
On Sun, 2005-08-28 at 21:53 -0400, Phroziac wrote:
> oops, wikien-l-request at wikipedia.org ;)
>
> On 8/28/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> > send "unsubscribe" to wiki-en-l-request at wikipedia.org to do that ;)
> >
> > On 8/28/05, noahp4485 at aol.com <noahp4485 at aol.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
> > > WikiEN-l mailing list
> > > WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> > > http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
> > >
> >
> >
> > --
> > signature
> >
>
>

Should we maybe consider making the e-mail footer more explicit?
Perhaps, "go to the site linked above to unsubscribe" or something like
that? A number of other mailing lists have a "To unsubscribe" section in
their footers, and it seems the current one used for Wikimedia mailing
lists isn't informative enough, as I've seen numerous "please
unsubscribe me" mails sent directly to the lists. Just a thought.

--Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:User:Slowking Man]])
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body:
On Sun, 2005-08-28 at 22:33 -0400, Phroziac wrote:
> This would probably get a better response if posted on the Reference
> desk on Wikipedia.
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk
>
> On 8/27/05, Lisa Golding <charliesangels671 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >    I'm doing an assignment for science on cells.  There is only two
> > questions that is bothering me and i can't find any infomation on the net or
> > books or anywhere.  The questions are:-
> > 1) is acidophilous the same as acidophilus and y?
> > 2) Where would you find organisms called Acidophilous?
> > 3) Are they harmful?
> >
> > thankyou for taking time to read this message because i know you must be
> > very busy.
> >
> > The only problem is that i will need an answer by Sunday 28th of august
> >
> > thankyou very much
> > your sincerly
> > lisa
> >
>
>

As a future note, putting "Plz Read!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" or similar
in the subject line of an e-mail is usually the most sound way to make
sure it isn't read.

--Christopher Larberg ([[w:en:Slowking Man]])
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from_name: Michael Turley

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Legal paranoia

body:
On 8/5/05, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> In a claim of fair use, one needs to consider the four factors.  Let's
> analyse the use of such lists in terms of those factors.
>     1.  Purpose and Character.  It is a non-profit usage that stimulates
> creativity.
>     2.  Nature of the copied work.  A factual list of article titles,
> without regard to how those titles are expressed, in a standard manner.
> Indeed, our given-name-first way of listing personal names is "more
> original" than the usual way of listing names.
>     3.  Substantiality.  A mere list of titles is certainly minor
> compared to the whole articles, and our list will be diminishing in size.
>     4.  Market effect.  May marginaly have a positive market effect
> since it's a list of things we DON'T have.  A person wanting the
> information  would need to look it up in the source work.

Each of these four factors do not have to be considered separately to
the exclusion of the others,IIRC, the courts consider them both
separately and in combination.

Addressing #1 & #4 together:  Our use is non-profit usage that
stimulates creativity, certainly, which in turn directly results in
the reduction of the market values of EB and Encarta.  How can that
possibly be fair use?  I don't think it can.

I see several other potential problems that damage Wikipedia's claim
to fair use.  I think we're right to take them down at this time.

--
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused


body:
This would probably get a better response if posted on the Reference
desk on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reference_desk

On 8/27/05, Lisa Golding <charliesangels671 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>    I'm doing an assignment for science on cells.  There is only two
> questions that is bothering me and i can't find any infomation on the net or
> books or anywhere.  The questions are:-
> 1) is acidophilous the same as acidophilus and y?
> 2) Where would you find organisms called Acidophilous?
> 3) Are they harmful?
>
> thankyou for taking time to read this message because i know you must be
> very busy.
>
> The only problem is that i will need an answer by Sunday 28th of august
>
> thankyou very much
> your sincerly
> lisa
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> REALESTATE: biggest buy/rent/share listings
> http://ninemsn.realestate.com.au
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
signature


from_name: Alphax

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

Jimmy Wales wrote:
> Alphax wrote:
>
>>>>Note to anyone considering doing the same. Do not use your wikipedia
>>>>password when you set up an account.
>>>>
>>
>>
>>Aren't passwords hashed in Mediawiki anyway??
>
>
> Yes, but it would be a trivial change to the code to also record a
> plaintext version of the password.
>

Brion told me as such on #mediawiki when I asked about it. Anyway, the
site appears to be dead now.

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
OpenPGP key ID: 0xF874C613  |    X   Against HTML email & vCards
http://tinyurl.com/cc9up    |   / \
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (MingW32)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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z48aFTIX5dkisXtfNmUdmZQ=
=M0Rj
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: steve v

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
--- El C <el.ceeh at gmail.com> wrote:

> At the event, I am only familliar with two offsite
> hate and/or hit
> lists: this one, and the Sollog one. It's crucial,
> then, to remain
> more-or-less grounded to what is actually taking
> place, as opposed to
> abstract ideals.
>

Well, keep in mind that certain users in the past have
made listed accusations against Wikipedians as being
of a certain opinion (to pick a random example),
which, from a certain point of view was indeed a kind
of "hate list." That was tolerated for a substantial
amount of time before people wized up to how
ridiculously improper it was to do so.

Certainly Im a bit less big on blowing flame back on
personal attacks as I was in those days, but I do
remain clear on that particular history and understand
the atmosphere of incivility that accusations and
harrassment (and yes their flaming) can bring about.
So, I undersand the issue of wanting to nip
persecution in the bud, but as far as the less
rationally-based comments for this topic go, the "pot
meet kettle" description still stands firm.

We agree its good to keep the moral highground, but my
moral highground *isn't situational --call it
"abstract ideals" if you like.

SV

____________________________________________________
Start your day with Yahoo! - make it your home page
http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs


from_name: El C

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speaking of insecure egos...

body:
>WP:BLOODYMINDEDNESS

I offered Skyring to have my blocking notice deleted in its entrirety,
so I fail to see the merit of the characterization:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3ASkyring&diff=21027669&oldid=20891855

I didn't mean sanguine, so I don't see why should I become signatory
to having said that. Further, Skyring knows I am especially weary of
him modifying my comments on Wikipedia to begin with.


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Legal paranoia

body:
Daniel P. B. Smith wrote:

>> From: Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com>
>>
>> And it seems to me, as we've discussed on here before, that it would
>> easily fall under the "fair use" clause. We are using an insubstantial
>> part of their encyclopedia; we are using it for our own internal
>> purposes (it is in the Wikipedia namespace, is it not?); we are
>> non-profit; we are not claiming copyright; we are not defrauding them
>> in any way; we are not even looking at the content itself, just
>> bibliographic information.
>
> There is paranoia, and then there is prudence.

How do you distinguish between them?  Prudence is a frequent argument to
excuse paranoia.

In a claim of fair use, one needs to consider the four factors.  Let's
analyse the use of such lists in terms of those factors.
    1.  Purpose and Character.  It is a non-profit usage that stimulates
creativity.
    2.  Nature of the copied work.  A factual list of article titles,
without regard to how those titles are expressed, in a standard manner.
Indeed, our given-name-first way of listing personal names is "more
original" than the usual way of listing names.
    3.  Substantiality.  A mere list of titles is certainly minor
compared to the whole articles, and our list will be diminishing in size.
    4.  Market effect.  May marginaly have a positive market effect
since it's a list of things we DON'T have.  A person wanting the
information  would need to look it up in the source work.

> SCO's various lawsuits may not have much merit, and it is possible
> that their case could be on the verge of a spectacular legal
> meltdown. However, they have managed to cause an enormous amount of
> expensive trouble. In SCO's case, they are attacking deep-pocketed
> companies like IBM and Autozone, so there is no point in doing so
> unless they really hope to win.

SCO's suits are for patent infringement not copyright infringement.

> If a traditional encyclopedia wanted to attack Wikipedia--and I don't
> think you need to be paranoid to assume such a wish--they don't need
> to win, but only to bankrupt the entity they're suing. Their case
> doesn't need to be good enough to win. It only needs to be good
> enough that court couldn't refuse to consider it.

Before an actual litigation thay would need to go through the
inexpensive take down order process.  That would give us an opportunity
to reconsider any good-faith fair use position that we may have taken.

> Using the list of articles from other encyclopedias, merged, edited,
> what-have-you, sounds like gloriously complicated legal territory to
> me. It's concrete evidence of copying _something._ Sort of. Kind of.
>
> Could they win? I don't think it matters.

This is the primary argument in favour of copyright paranoia.  Is our
position based on principles or on fear?  If our only argument is fear
of successful litigation, what is that but paranoia?  I don't think we
should simply take on issues solely for the purpose of setting up
litigation; we should show some care in choosing our battles.
Principled positions give us more flexibility.

Ec


from_name: admin Yellowikis

subject: [Wikitech-l] Community Wikis

body:
Business 2.0 has an article about venture capitalists that are looking
for business opportunites in specific areas. One in particular (below)
sounds like a wiki. Anyone who wants join with me to make a prototype,
write a business plan and pitch it to Norwest Venture Partners contact
me off list (paul at yellowikis.org).

http://www.business2.com/b2/web/articles/print/0,17925,1096807,00.html

<Ctrl-c>

$3M  SOCIAL NETWORKS MEET THE TOWN CRIER
WHO: Jim Lussier, Norwest Venture Partners, Palo Alto
WHO HE IS: A former exec at Accenture and Beyond.com, Lussier handles
software and services for Norwest, which manages $1.8 billion in
venture funds and won big with investments in PeopleSoft (PSFT) and
Tivoli Systems. Lussier led recent deals with travel-services company
G2 Switchworks and P2P radio broadcaster Mercora.
WHAT HE WANTS: A kind of souped-up Craigslist for every neighborhood,
everywhere. Just type in a zip code, and this website will present not
just garage sale listings and classified ads, but headlines and photos
from dozens of local news sites run by busybodies willing to provide
free content and keep it constantly updated.
WHY IT'S SMART: The idea taps into the same social-networking allure
that helped make Flickr a $35 million Yahoo (YHOO) acquisition -- that
is, user-driven content, organized so that all visitors get a slick
stage to showcase their stuff. In this case, the stuff isn't just
photos but local knowledge: updates on a rash of burglaries, say, or a
ranking of preschools. (The most popular contributors might receive a
small percentage of ad revenue.) The site could also offer a
marketplace for everything from baby-sitting to tree trimming. Sure, a
number of regional websites already offer something similar, but this
site would aggregate the content under one umbrella and provide a
platform to scale it across the nation. If all goes as planned,
Lussier says, paid ads could bring in as much as $100 million a year.
WHAT HE WANTS FROM YOU: A website template finished within six months
on a $500,000 budget. (Lussier estimates that a team of two or three
can do the job.) If it shows promise, Norwest will provide another
$2.5 million to tackle the real challenge: developing a core group of
users who can light the viral fire. "Building that community happens
when people get value out of the service," Lussier says. "They need to
feel compensated for their time by the information they get back out."
SEND YOUR PLAN TO: jlussier at nvp.com

<Ctrl-v>
--
Yellowikis is to Yellow Pages, as Wikipedia is to The Encyclopedia Britannica


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
> I consider the Amelekite case to be in the same genre, although slightly
(but only slightly) less obvious.

>--Jimbo

Yes. And it is not in the spirit of Wikipedia, in my opinion, to view
this "slightly less obvious" dimension as a total amensty for that
user, as "the same genre," esp. vis-a-vis the distress felt by the
victims.

Another unfortunate and un-contextual current of thought claims
non-Jews (or non-Jimbos) are or stand the risk of being treated more
poorly (unequally). But I maintain that evidence needs to be submitted
with specific examples in order to identify and undertake the
necessary corrections.

At the event, I am only familliar with two offsite hate and/or hit
lists: this one, and the Sollog one. It's crucial, then, to remain
more-or-less grounded to what is actually taking place, as opposed to
abstract ideals.

El_C


subject: [WikiEN-l] Wrapping up (not-sees)

body:
It's easy enough to point  to --and stray in-- inward-looking
abstractions and generalities when there is nothing concrete to fall
back on but conjecture. Let us humble ourselves before this truism.

>I think the Arbcom should accomodate a separate "case-review"
facility, and that the Arbcom should grow to accomodate the growing
need for clear and documented review.

What would that entail, slightly more concretely? I think an
intermidatory process may work more efficiently. If there is a need
for immediate review of administrative action, there is, in addition
to the normal channels of DR, [[WP:AN]], [[WP:AN/I]] ([[WP:3RR]] when
applicable), and [[WP:PE]]. Is there a great need for, not simply more
arbitrators, but a specific admin review mechanism? (an open question)
What benefits are there from a separate format, according to this (at
this juncture, very vague) proposal? I remain very much open to
persuasion (either way) on that front.

A cursory reading of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Stevertigo/Evidence
, to use a totally non-random example, reveals excelent editorial
skills but very poor admin descision-making, in any fair venue, I
would argue. So, platform-wise, I think it's important to keep in mind
that admin actions and editorial preferences are or are alleged to be
almost always the decisive factor behind administrative abuse, that it
dosen't take place in a vaccum. As a rogue admin who has for long
escaped sanctions (but my time will come again, sooner than I may
expect, too). For example, I have purposfully chose not to rollback
vandalism off of (legitimate) Wikipedia accounts held by Nazis, and I
have rollbacked vandlism off of a Nazi account without knowing it was
one at the time, and regretted having done so. Lacking the moral
highground is, indeed, a harsh mistress.

But I digress. Again, there needs to be policy proposals of far more
concrete (or at least, illustrative as per specific examples) nature
in order for us to much more safely speculate and guage on what is
likely to translate into a worthwhile advance.

El_C


subject: Merge, DON'T delete (was Re: [WikiEN-l] Encarta article list)

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: RIPEMD160

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> --- Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
>
>>Please delete this list immediately.  Opinions of our legal team are
>>divided about the issue, and I feel that in a case like this,
>>conservatism and caution are called for.
>
>
> A single source list like this may very well be in a legal gray area. But would
> not a list that was derived from multiple sources minus articles we already
> happened to have be OK? Certainly this would be legal given the fact that in
> the U.S. an alphabetical list of names with addresses by it has *no* copyright
> protection.
>
> I don't feel that out-right deleting is in order. A merger with the other lists
> first *is*.
>

I agree. AFAICT, the lists had already been trimmed for things that we
already had articles. I support temporary undeletion and merging of
these lists. All Encyclopedia lists if neccessary, even 1911EB (though
it should be noted next to these that a 1911EB article exists, since
these are PD already).

- --
Alphax                      |   /"\
Encrypted Email Preferred   |   \ /     ASCII Ribbon Campaign
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from_name: Essjay -Wikipedia-

subject: [WikiEN-l] RE: WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 25, Issue 92

body:
>I think the Arbcom should accomodate a separate "case-review"
facility, and that the Arbcom should grow to accomodate the growing
need for clear and documented review.

There is something of this in the blocking policy.

>From WP:BLOCK:

~Personal attacks which place users in danger

~Blocks may be imposed in instances where threats have been made or actions
performed (including actions outside the Wikipedia site) which expose other
Wikipedia editors to political, religious or other persecution by
government, their employer or any others. In such a case a block for a
period of time may be applied immediately by any sysop upon discovery.
Sysops applying such sanctions should confidentially notify the members of
the Arbitration Committee and Jimbo Wales of what they have done and why.
See No personal attacks.

~This provision is rarely used.

"Sysops applying such sanctions should confidentially notify the members of
the Arbitration Committee and Jimbo Wales of what they have done and why."
Sounds to me like there is a proceedure built in for the ArbCom and Jimbo to
review such blocks. Whether or not this proceedure is followed, or even if
most admins are aware of it, I cannot say, but there does seem to be a
saftey valve in the system. I know that if I ever placed such a block, I'd
make the notification, whether it was policy or not, because the actions
leading to the block are the sort of things the "higher-ups" should be aware
of.

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

_________________________________________________________________
Don?t just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/


subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: A neo-Nazi wikipedia

body:
>We agree its good to keep the moral highground, but my moral
highground *isn't situational --call it "abstract ideals" if you like.

Everyone has ideals, only the most narrow-minded, agenda-driven of
minds consider the basis for these to be limited to... shal we say,
situational isolationism.

The issue isn't with the ideals (abstract or otherwise), but rather,
to whenever there is a risk for these to serve merely as a pretext for
a highly a *selective* approach, one wherein these ideals are
juxtaposed, transposed, and superimposed to any concrete case in an
un-balanced, inaccurate, and un-objective way.

Rationality goes hand in hand with relationality. Unfortunately,
empathy often isn't enough to bring a sympathy which is balanced, be
it for those absorbed in abstract ideals, petty proceduralism, or
both. The forest *and* the tress, in other words. Either one, in
itself, is obviously insufficient and self-defeating.

El_C


from_name: Anthere

body:
==WMF in 5 years==

*Board and management

The board will be made of 9 people. Jimbo, 4 elected by editors (amonst all editors), 2 elected by chapters boards (amongst their board members), 2 named by the current board (amongst or not amongst editors). Turn every 2 years by half.

The president and the chair are two different people.

They are not paid, but are reimbursed of their costs, both direct and indirect (which mean if they have to work part time to have a decent life and get some sleep sometimes, they should receive tokens of presence to compensate, or any relevant system we can think of). Getting sleep or being able to buy a new computer so as to keep in touch with the community should not stay the privilege of the officers, unless you guys want the board to be only chosen within upper middle retirees.

The entire board meets twice a year in meat space at least.

In 5 years, they are no more supposed to work on a daily basis (?), but are responsible of deciding of the strategic goals of the Foundation, create or delete departments, define roles and name (hire) the officers and generally speaking control the big principles are respected.

*Staff (the positions, the roles, whether they're paid or not)

Part of the staff will be paid and part volunteered. A chief executive may exist or the role be occupied by the one person on the board (with help of several secretaries, people to answer the phone or deal with horrible OTRS).

Departments and positions will be

?        Finance

o       with at least a chief financial officer and an assistant

?        Technical

o       Hardware. The hardware officer will probably have several assistants under his orders, depending on the number of servers and world locations.

o       Wiki Software : it is not obvious what this person will be, since the software is itself independent. I see him as someone rather exploring the future of the software.

o       Business technical : the person will take care of all the business opportunities we should work on (such as feeds)

?        Fundraising

o       Separated from finances (though obviously working closely with him). Work closely with Communication Department as well.

?        Legal

o       Due to the variety of situations, may not have one coordinator, but be constituted of a team of experts, with a group of coordinator. There should be experts in all countries where we have a DB center hosted.

o       Plus help from at least one pro-bono firm in the USA.

o       Will recover different activities (trademarks management and contract use, is different from a legal threat for an insulted editor)

?        Grants department

o       One coordinator, plus a collection of regional experts. High coordination with local chapters required.

?        Press

o       A coordinator assisted by several persons in charge of each project promotion (or special project promotion). The press coordinator is not here to do interviews, but to organise the press team, handle the interviews of the others, improve our press coverage. The press department will in 5 years cover a good part of Asia and Africa. High coordination with local chapters required.

?        Publishing/printing/pressing

o       A director of publication, in charge of printing/pressing of our content, as well as helping with its distribution. Will need assistants, as well as local coordinators. High coordination with local chapters required.

?        Communication/Public relation

o       One officer in charge of our public image and communication. This is a different job than Press, though both obviously work hand in hand. The guy helps the Fundraising department find the best messages to drain pockets. He works on the Foundation website to ensure all information is relevant, sufficient and updated (so this guy will basically bug every department to get the information). He coordinates the newsletter. Work with the Press department for press releases. Tells Jimbo when to put a tie and when not (right, you get the idea I am sure). The communication is not ensured by an external company, or only partly, as they do not fully understand our concept.

o       Lobbyists might assist here

?        Chapter office

o       Two different officers. One will be in charge of communication/information between the different chapters, while the other one will directly work with the Finances departement for the common budget.

?        Event coordinator

o       Wikimania is done once per year. It requires an organiser, who can choose himself his team. It might be a temporary office rather than permanent.

?        Ombudsman

o       This one will address complaints, from within and without the Foundation, about acts or practices which might appear abuses of authority. This one should exist well before 5 years ! (but do not abuse her patience)

The translation departement will exist. Translations will be done by volunteers and external firm hired.

The research team still exist and expended, but is not part of the WMF departement proper.

In 2005, the role of business development was taking care of by Jimbo. 5 years later, due to the size of the organisation, Jimbo is no more sufficient to coordinate all this.

*Budget

Budget is done once per quarter for micromanagement, with a one year plan and two-three year plan for strategy. The board is mostly interested in the yearly and more budget, but oversees once per quarter whether the quartely budget is respected or not. It may change the management according to these results, or suggests adjustements.

The management works thanks to quarter and yearly budget, and has to do a very detailed report of all funds used once a quarter (as well as detailed report of activity, successes and failures, and expected activity for the next quarter). The management must try to alert the board when expected expenses are rocketing.

Detailed budget for example means the public will know which travels by who were done and generated expenses (two levels of details will be provided). The Finances department will work closely with the Communication department to ensure reports are satisfactorily.

We have at the same time a general budget and a detailed per chapter budget. But we are still fighting to convince the german tax office that german donators are giving to the common good.

In 5 years, we can bear a control by a tax office
 we now have external check of our finances and financial reports, and all is well (hopefully).

*Fundraising scheme

The Fundraising Department coordinates the scheme. In 5 years, at least 20 local chapters exist, and most raise their own money. Thanks to a lot of lobbying and being well known now, it is possible to have a bit of money circulate between chapters and Foundation, but not much yet. So managing money from fundraising is still a bit of a mess.

Fundraising does not stick to a very fluttery message any more, but explain exactly what the funds will be used for (and give appropriately links to informative and colorful pages). It is also possible to give for specific actions (this is actually mandatory in some countries, so we now avoid illegal fundraising).

We had a least one serious control by the tax department in one country, to check our collected money and how we use it, and it has been a tough time

We are now in the top 10 websites and get supports from many different big companies. The more diverse, the more independent we succeed to stay. No company got an exclusivity. We are still not doing any advertisement, which makes us a real exception. We succeed to make at 10.000 dollars from our cafeshop (at least, a bit more than we do right now). Generally, fundraising are used to pay for hardware, while grants let us quite free to pay the other things

*Philantropic activity and outreach to get our content widely redistributed

We have a good publishing scheme, which allow us to get some money back from any book or DVD sold and to directly put some of the funds in a special pocket for philantropic activity. This is publicly mentionned (in campaigns such as ?5 wikireaders bought = 1 full encyclopedia in an african school ?, with of course, pictures and interviews from one school and some kids). This is not done directly by the Foundation, but the publishing department made contacts with some local organisations to know best what is needed, helped set up some publishable version and ensured the funds are used efficiently and in a transparent way.

We now make abundant use of charities that promotes intellectual progress and education, in particular at the regional scale (such as OSI).

*Projects

We have a couple of new projects, such as wikiversity or wikidata. We also have a full map project, with a gis incorporated in the wiki. Wikibooks is now as big as Wikipedia. Wikispecies has been closed and Wikiquote is not very active due to repeated legal issues. Wikidata is the big hit of the moment, with academics so excited they now promote our projects. Major organisations use wikidata to host their information and now publish realistic graphs, such as global warming evolution over eras, or population growth estimates by 54 different methods.

Thanks to new technologies, any reader can become a listener and hear a voice read him an article to him (yeah, automatically !)

Several Wikipedias in african languages are now over 100.000 languages. Wikinews in french finally has more than 5 contributors.

Most of this happened thanks to the contributors of course :-). The Foundation brought help through funding (such as the free GIS) or promotion (in Africa). It also helped by lobbying major organisations. Help was also brought by simply explaining people why information should be free during big events, presentations or interviews.

*Content objectives

The projects are still open to editing by anyone, even anonymous. However, on most projects, there is now a link over each article linking the ?last approved version? Some projects have chosen to display by default the approved version, and the editor has to change reading mode/editing mode. Each article displays a link to all wikireaders published including that page. 20 languages wikipedia are now considered first prime. The other languages are still growing and improving.

Jimbo is still trying to push his 1.0, but only the press is regularly talking about it.

*Software objectives

The software got very complicated with all the new features, so it is possible to use a simple or advanced version. Readers in reader mode do not see all the scary complicated editing features, but only the basic ones. The features enabled are different depending on projects. We now have a wiki/blog and a wiki/GIS

We are still waiting for single login, but maybe we just stay just to see if it will ever happen (the second Foundation is watching carefully that the feature is never developped so that we keep dreaming).

*Relationship between chapters and parent organisation

Local chapters have the rights to use funds for themselves as long as the uses are fully transparent and in compliance with our most important rules. For the other issues, and in particular  future of a wikicouncil, my crystal ball is very smoky here. Joker.

*Relationships with the outside world (PR, partnerships, etc.)

The bigger we are, the more loved and hated we are. Some big organisations try to damage our images through sneaky changes of our content (to make them false), through legal lawsuit for various reasons and active lobbying in the press and such. Some attacks happen when some fear we set up a monopole. We work doubly to maintain our public image and make some good partnerships, very diverse, and avoiding highly controversial partners. We stick very much to transparency and do not try to hide things from the press.

* Legal

We had several lawsuits. One was related to the concept of freedom and brought us much advertisement :-)

On the other hand, we lose an incredible amount of time and energy with complaints from people featured in the encyclopedia.

We now have good policies for logos and trademark uses.

---------------------------------
Yahoo! Mail
 Stay connected, organized, and protected. Take the tour


from_name: Lars Aronsson

subject: [Wikitech-l] Community Wikis

body:
admin Yellowikis wrote:

> WHAT HE WANTS: A kind of souped-up Craigslist for every neighborhood,

Except that Craigslist doesn't depend on venture capital.

--
  Lars Aronsson (lars at aronsson.se)
  Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se


from_name: Skyring

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Raul's 6th law of Wikipedia confirmed

body:
On 8/29/05, Phroziac <phroziac at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, if the vending machine was in a location where nobody would
> see you take them (i doubt that ever happens..), nothing's keeping you
> from just taking them all ;)

Whoever collected the money would soon notice that takings were down.
It's one thing to lose the odd paper (or rather the money for one
paper), but quite another to lose the lot.

Sure you could do it, but you couldn't do it for long.

--
Pete, not sure how to bring this particular thread back on topic


body:
On 8/28/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Mark Wagner wrote:
> > I've turned a spellcheck bot loose on Pseudodoxia.  I figure it's
> > politer to do that than to replace user pages with goatse, or move
> > articles around at random.
> >
> > Sample results:
> >
> > Page title: Chordate
> > Corrected taxon to tax-on
> > Corrected Subphylum to Sublet
> > Corrected Tunicates to Tunics
> > Corrected Lancelets to Lancets
> > Corrected Hagfishes to Garfishes
> > Corrected Coelacanths to Volcanoes
> > Corrected Urochordate to Crochet
> > Corrected notochord to blotched
> > Corrected Cephalochordates to Schoolchild's
> > Spellcheck successful
>
> Please do not do things like this.  We're the good people.  Let's never
> forget that.

I can't see how you can possibly hope to recover the moral high ground
here without making a massive public apology to the Nazipedia folks.

Without wanting to offer the least scintilla of support for Nazis or
their hateful views, they have seen their project vandalised, probably
to a far greater extent than anything they ever wanted to do to
Wikipedia. They have been handed an incentive and moral imperative to
retaliate.

--
Peter in Canberra


from_name: Stan Shebs

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright situation

body:
Alphax wrote:

>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>Hash: RIPEMD160
>
>Skyring wrote:
>
>>Pete, awarding fifteen minutes of eternal fame to whoever coined that
>>word "Nazipedia"
>>
>
>*checks archive*
>
>On 20/08/2005 16:27, Alphax wrote:
>
>>"Stormfront Wikipedia" is unnacceptable on the simple grounds of
>>trademark infringement. "Stormfrontpedia" would be acceptable.
>>"Nazipedia" might get them into trouble in whatever juridstiction their
>>servers are located in :)
>>
>>
>
>*wins*
>
Sorry, Robert Klein used the term a couple years ago, in one
of his periodic announcements of departure from WP, the complaint
being that WP was allowing in too much anti-Jewish bias. I guess
it's a good sign when all the partisans hate you equally... :-)

Stan


from_name: Daniel P. B. Smith

subject: [WikiEN-l] Re: Legal paranoia

body:
> From: Anthony DiPierro <wikispam at inbox.org>
>
> Even then there is relatively little incentive for a traditional
> encyclopedia to attack Wikipedia in the first place.

I agree, but this assumes that the attacker is a) well-informed, b)
rational, c) primarily interested in his own business interests. My
personal interpretation is that the SCO business shows that this is
not always true.

> Besides, the support would come pouring in from all over
> the place.  We'd probably get plenty of legal support donated to us.

Agreed. And that sort of thing probably helped get Dmitri Sklyarov
out of jail. But my point is, he was _in_ jail for a couple of months.

> in a case like this where we're
> actually in the right, the support would be tremendous.

> The only reason we should even consider backing down on this is if
> there's a serious legal argument that keeping this list would somehow
> taint the rest of the encyclopedia.  I highly doubt this is true, but
> I'm not a lawyer, and if a lawyer says this is plausible it's
> something we should look at hard.

The context of my comments was Jimmy Wales' comment in regard to the
Encarta list:

 >Opinions of our legal team are
 >divided about the issue,.

Lawyers looked at it and said _they weren't sure._ This is a
discussion about what a prudent persons does when the lawyers say
_they're not sure._ You can interpret this to mean: "They're not sure
there's a problem, so let's not worry about it, and certainly lets
not worry about a list of _Britannica_ articles, or a _modified_ list
of Encara articles. Or you can interpret this to mean "That means
they're not sure this is OK so let's back away a bit?"

When the lawyers say they're not sure, the question is whether the
glass is half prudent or half paranoid,

> But otherwise, if it's just a list, I don't see the problem.  The
> worst reasonable case scenario is that we have to take it down.

I think _that's_ a very good point.

> A long drawn out legal battle; a chance to set a precedent that can be
> used in the future; that'd probably be a good thing.

And that's where I part company with you. I am interested in helping
to write an encyclopedia, not help fight in long drawn out legal
battles.

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/


subject:
[Foundation-l] Fwd: Your message to foundation-l awaits moderator
	approval

body:
gnaaaaaaaaa....

I *knew* it :-(((((

foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org wrote:
Subject: Your message to foundation-l awaits moderator approval
From: foundation-l-bounces at wikimedia.org
To: anthere9 at yahoo.com
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 10:46:34 +0000

Your mail to 'foundation-l' with the subject

Re: Wikimedia Foundation in 5 years - Giant brainstorming - a game
with rules.

Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.

The reason it is being held:

Message body is too big: 48826 bytes with a limit of 40 KB

Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive
notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to cancel
this posting, please visit the following URL:

http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/confirm/foundation-l/60db2dd24b12bb8a6f81b9b386d797b278fe30eb

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