list: wikitech-l

from_name: brion at pobox.com

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki automated test run failure 2006-05-21

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

Running test Table security: embedded pipes (http://mail.wikipedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2006-April/034637.html)... FAILED!
Running test BUG 1887, part 2: A <math> with a thumbnail- math enabled... FAILED!
Running test Language converter: output gets cut off unexpectedly (bug 5757)... FAILED!
Running test HTML bullet list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML ordered list, unclosed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested bullet list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, closed tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!
Running test HTML nested ordered list, open tags (bug 5497)... FAILED!

Passed 305 of 314 tests (97.13%) FAILED!


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: Philip Welch

subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits

body:
On May 20, 2006, at 10:27 PM, Prasad J wrote:

> You find the username Abu Hamza offensive, tomorrow if someone adopts
> the pseudonym Lynddie England, then what will your reaction be?

Exactly the same.

Just like if someone came here calling himself "David Duke".

--
Philip L. Welch
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Philwelch


list: foundation-l

from_name: Walter van Kalken

subject: [Foundation-l] What do we have lawyers for

body:
Do we have lawyers now to represent the board in its communication with
the edittors as Michael Snow claims? Are we just "third parties" the
plebs? Who if they want to speak to the gods need to consult their
lawyers first? I was always under the impression the lawyers were for
outside communcation, with non-wikimedians. If this has changed then
please say so.

Waerth/Walter


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Erik van den Muijzenberg

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand - @Jimbo

body:
On 20-mei-2006, at 23:32, Johan Bos wrote:

> I do mean both. And Jimbo wrongly states that it has anything to do
> with de
> desysop procedure. As you can read yourself in the logs at meta,
> Waerth
> desysoped HIMSELF at 24 January. After that he stayed Steward for two
> months, without resysoping himself at NL. At 24 March he has been
> de-stewarded, based on false information provided by Oscar.

As far as I recall the situation, Waerth at that time tried to force
me to
stop defending users that were bullied by him. He did so by trying to
bully
me. In the end Waerth and I were both blocked by Galwaygirl, because
she got fed up by the situation and didn't understand that Waerths
threats should not be negotiable (they simply should be stopped).

At that moment Waerth threatened to undo his block. (As far as I
understand the technicalities involved, he could do so, because he
was a steward.)
As a result he was de-stewarded by Dannyisme, on request of Oscar.

I don't recall you were there Johan, but it was a hectic situation,
so maybe
you were there after all. Jimbo was, but left in time. ;-)

+++ Muijz


from_name: Johan Bos

body:
Dear Erik,

I read the complete chatlog and what you are stating is NOT true.

Johan Bos (Jcb)

----- Original Message -----
From: "Erik van den Muijzenberg" <muijz at wikipedia.be>
To: "Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List" <foundation-l at wikimedia.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 21, 2006 12:22 AM
Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand - @Jimbo

> On 20-mei-2006, at 23:32, Johan Bos wrote:
>
>> I do mean both. And Jimbo wrongly states that it has anything to do
>> with de
>> desysop procedure. As you can read yourself in the logs at meta,
>> Waerth
>> desysoped HIMSELF at 24 January. After that he stayed Steward for two
>> months, without resysoping himself at NL. At 24 March he has been
>> de-stewarded, based on false information provided by Oscar.
>
> As far as I recall the situation, Waerth at that time tried to force
> me to
> stop defending users that were bullied by him. He did so by trying to
> bully
> me. In the end Waerth and I were both blocked by Galwaygirl, because
> she got fed up by the situation and didn't understand that Waerths
> threats should not be negotiable (they simply should be stopped).
>
> At that moment Waerth threatened to undo his block. (As far as I
> understand the technicalities involved, he could do so, because he
> was a steward.)
> As a result he was de-stewarded by Dannyisme, on request of Oscar.
>
> I don't recall you were there Johan, but it was a hectic situation,
> so maybe
> you were there after all. Jimbo was, but left in time. ;-)
>
>
> +++ Muijz
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
On 5/21/06, Stan Shebs <shebs at apple.com> wrote:

> I have actually looked at de: Star Wars articles, and some play fast
> and loose with freeness. For instance, [[Chewbacca]] is illustrated
> with a picture of someone wearing a Chewbacca costume

The situation is even worse. All the images in [[de:Figuren aus Star
Wars]] are hosted on Commons, and for one a deletion request (with
little participation) has failed. This is not free content and can not
be until the copyright of Star Wars expires. These are situations
where we can have either fair use pictures, or no pictures.

I'm re-nominating all of those for deletion.

Erik


from_name: Dan Rosenthal

subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
With all apologizes for top-posting, and with no discussion or position
to/on the merits of this debate (if any):

In my time spent in the middle east, I've met a large number of men with the
nickname Abu Hamza. I'm no arabic naming expert, but from what I understand,
Abu _________ is a common nickname scheme over there. I wouldn't be
surprised to find multiple Abu Hamzas in the arabic wikipedia community.
Coincidence in name is just that: coincidence, AFAICT

-Swatjester

On 5/20/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> > From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> > [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Prasad J
> >
> > There is really no point in trying to converse with people
> > who term any viewpoint which is against theirs as "trolling".
>
> I can think of at least one admin who could be described in such a
> fashion.
> If he doesn't like even the most innocuous change, it's vandalism and
> quickly reverted.
>
> Pete, not mentioning names
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

--
Dan Rosenthal
IWVO National Legislative Director


list: commons-l

subject: [Commons-l] Models, toys, and other objects can be copyrighted

body:
It seems like we've seen a bit of a silent creep of photos of objects
representing copyrighted cartoon or movie characters. Photographing an
_object_ of something which is copyrighted does not magically remove
it from being so. As a start, I've nominated several Star Wars
pictures for deletion:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Template:Deletion_requests#Various_Star_Wars_pictures

I've also updated Commons:Licensing:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commons:Licensing&diff=1965530&oldid=1953402

Please help to clean up photos of copyrighted characters on Commons.

Thanks,
Erik


from_name: maru dubshinki

subject: [WikiEN-l] SPAM-LOW: Re: Message: 1 Unblock Request

references:
<72cf88627c9749198de15b7ca9c1f20e@earthhopenetwork.net>
	<230C1620-A5EE-4E11-BA9D-612D8D1F301F@philwelch.net>
	<f96f3dec0605202037s6555a4fbhabc34b2917e6268e@mail.gmail.com>
	<446FED4B.9050302@student.canberra.edu.au>

body:
On 5/21/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> G'day Prasad,
>
> > You are so insulting it is unbelievable. Ranting in a delusional manner?
> >
> > Holy cow. If people on the mailing list, moderators or not, cannot see
> > this it is just staggering in it's implications.
> >
> > Yes Maggie, I agree with you, it does indeed appear that the
> > higher-ups at Wikipedia have masterminded an elaborate conspiracy
> > involving the Administrative cabal, the mailing-list Administrators
> > and the Illuminati with the sole purpose of preventing you from
> > editing Wikipedia.
>
> Don't forget the Syndicate, the Freemasons and especially the Queen.
> Oh, she's a terror, Her Maj is.
> --
> Mark Gallagher

Shh! Don't tell the outsiders about her- she'll beat us, she will!

~maru


from_name: Ray Saintonge

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Steve Summit wrote:

>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>
>>The statement that "fair use is a defense and not a right" is
>>the kind of confusing mumbo jumbo I'd expect to be spouted out by the
>>RIAA, not a Wikipedian.  Fair use is a fundamental right which is part
>>of the fundamental rights to free speech, free expression, free press,
>>etc.
>>
>>
>Is it?  I don't see it that way.  If you have evidence to cite in
>support of that claim, I'd be curious to see it.
>
I too believe fair use to be a right.  So far in this thread we have
seen that there are lawyers on both sides of the issue.  In such
circumstances convincing evidence may not be effective.  It's still a
good lesson on the reliability of lawyers' opinions.

>"Fundamental rights" aren't always quite as fundamental as we'd
>like them to be.  Free speech is (at least under U.S.-style
>democracies) a fundamental right.  But it's not universal, even
>in the West: it's not an absolute right in Germany, for example.
>
>Lots of things which feel like they ought to be fundamental
>rights, aren't.  For example, there's no fundamental right to
>privacy in the U.S., much though many of us wish there were.
>But it's not mentioned anywhere in the Declaration of
>Independence, the Constitution, or the Bill of Rights.
>
>Copyright is not a fundamental right; it's an artificial
>construction of government, usually with the expressed goal of
>promoting creative expression.
>
I would not use the term "fundamental" myself; I see copyright and fair
use as derivative rights based in the faundamental right of free
speech.  But that distinction does not materially affect my views.

>Me, I'd say that "fair use" isn't a fundamental right, either;
>rather, it is an exception to copyright, a further legal
>construction on top of an already legal construction.
>
>Arguments over fair use are often something else, in disguise.
>A lot of people, especially on the net, believe that the legal
>construction called "copyright" is wrong and invalid; they've
>heard only half of Stuart Brand's quote about "information wants
>to be free" and have amplified it into "all information must be
>free".  They believe that copyright law and its beneficiaries
>are to be variously ignored, taunted, teased, or hunted down
>and shot.  If the copyright holders seem to be gaining the upper
>hand, the information-must-be-free activists believe that
>(as in love and war) all is fair: defiance, guerilla action,
>perjury, obfuscation, or hiding behind specious fair use claims
>as a diversionary tactic.
>
I'll be the first to admit that many of the arguments we see supporting
a specific fair use are more in the nature of an excuse than a reason.
Copyright need not be inconsistent with information being free.  The
information is free; only the form of its expression is copyright.  Fair
use is a part of the copyright law, and as such should be given as much
weight as any other section of the law.  The application of fair use
does not imply perjury, obfuscation or any of the other tactical sallies
that you impute to free information advocates.

>Now, despite my seeming rhetoric, I am not trying to claim that
>the copyright-is-wrong activists are wrong, nor am I suggesting
>that Anthony DiPierro is a "copyright-is-wrong" activist.
>(I have no idea how Anthony DiPierro feels about copyright,
>but some of his arguments *sound* like the arguments of those
>activists, which is why I bring all this up.)
>
Sometimes arguments do resemble each other.  Both the honest person and
the liar will say, "I didn't do it." but clearly for different reasons.
Before we can seriously consider any copyright-is-wrong argument, we
really need to look at the rights that are already available to us under
the law.  There are enough there to obviate the need to make up any new
ones of our own.   I don't think that either Anthony or I would allow
ourselves to be backed into a position where we are caught defending a
completely meritless fair use claim.  What we are saying is that people
who want to go to court to defend their fair use claim, at their own
expense should be entitled to do so.  The outcome of such a suit should
not be secretly prejudged by someone who would not be a party to that suit.

That being said, and only speaking for mysaelf, there are conditions
that I would impose to prevent the sillier claims.
    1. The real name and address of the person responsible must be known
to Wikimedia (though not necessarily publicly).
    2. The person must make a statement of intent to defend his fair use
claims.
    3. The person must provide a proper fair use analysis to be put on
the relevant talk page.
    4. The person must understand that Wikimedia is required to comply
with any take down order received.
    5. The person must is entitled to receive a copy of any relevant
takedown order.

>If someone wants to believe that copyright is wrong and that all
>information must be free, that's fine.  (As Thomas Jefferson
>famously said, a little revolution every once in a while is a
>good thing.)  But, two things: (1) please don't use "fair use"
>to justify your abandonment of copyright law, because "fair use"
>is part of the very same copyright law you're trying to abandon.
>Also, (2) please carry out your activism somewhere other than
>Wikipedia, because Wikipedia, whether you like it or not,
>is a U.S. entity which is bound to honor U.S. copyright law.
>
Jefferson was not a strong advocate of copyright laws.  In his day
copyright was for 14 years plus a further 14 year renewal.  From
to-day's perspective that was very reasonable.  There is no dispute
about this being a U.S. law issue, and having it settled there would go
a long way towards having it settled elsewhere.

Whatever the outcome, there will still be issues about downstream
usability, but that's a different battle.

Ec.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Michael Snow wrote:

>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>
>
>>On 5/19/06, Michael Snow <wikipedia at earthlink.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Anthony DiPierro wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>>As it is, it is easy for a company with
>>>>>a huge legal staff to shut down small "fair users" with the threat of
>>>>>endless, if futile, litigation. Lessig talks about a number of
>>>>>instances where this happened in his book, _Free Culture_.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>Only if the fair users roll over and die, like Wikimedia is doing.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>Since you seem completely unaware of the occasions where the Wikimedia
>>>Foundation has received complaints from copyright owners and told them,
>>>"Fair use, so buzz off" (couched in more polite terms, of course),
>>>perhaps you're not in a position to make informed comments on what
>>>Wikimedia is doing.
>>>
>>>--Michael Snow
>>>
>>>
>>I really don't see what Wikimedia has done on other occassions has to
>>do with what they are doing on this occassion.
>>
>>
>From the message to which I was replying, you appeared to be talking
>about fair use law overall, not any particular instance. There have been
>several specific situations mentioned in this discussion. Perhaps next
>time you might be more precise if you're talking about only one, instead
>of making comments that sound like sweeping generalizations.
>
I've certainly been responding in the spirit of a general discussion.  I
have no personal interest in the owl picture, but if somebody else wants
to argue that one in court they should have every opportunity on their
own dime.

Ec


from_name: Delphine Ménard

subject: [Foundation-l] Design for wikipedia's front page (and corporate)

body:
On 5/21/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Delphine M?nard wrote:
>
> >The problem I see is that the monobook is the default design for every
> >single Mediawiki in the world. Which means that people have trouble
> >knowing whether they are on Wikipedia, on a mirror, or some strange
> >fake site, or on my grand-mother's wiki.
> >
> Congratulations to your grand-mother.  It is encouraging to hear that
> people of her generation have maintained sufficient mental alertness to
> manage a wiki.

I wish. ;-) Both my grand-mothers actually passed away many years ago.
Let's make that my great-uncle, who is an internet freak (I mean, 90
years and some and blogging!) He does not have a wiki though, and I
would drive myself crazy trying to explain to him how mediawiki works
anyway ;-). (which goes to support my point that userfriendliness is
not exactly our strong point ;-) )

Delphine
--
~notafish


from_name: Austin Hair

subject: [Foundation-l] correcting a big usability problem

body:
Section editing is certainly counterintuitive for most, especially for
sections more than a paragraph or two long?I invariably edit a section
after I've read it, meaning I have to scroll/page back up for the
link, and I remember it taking a while for me to get used to this.
What's more, the link actually comes before the section heading, so
only a graphical, CSS-enabled browser will display it in anything
approaching a reasonable way.

Although this thread was spawned by the one on site design, MediaWiki
usability really isn't an issue for foundation-l.  I'm sure it's of
interest to many here, however, and perhaps it'll result in more
widespread interest in improving it.

Austin


list: wikipedia-l

from_name: jam at croftj.net

body:
Yes Mark. I do speak, write, and can read in this language.
Please help by supporting:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages#Chavacano

Weekeejames

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 2
Date: Fri, 19 May 2006 04:17:32 -0700
From: "Mark Williamson" <node.ue at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Wikipedia-l] Request for a new Wikipedia in the
	Chavacano	Language
To: wikipedia-l at wikimedia.org
Message-ID:
	<849f98ed0605190417p3f8c9587u3d030c2a1a7ce82b at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Do you speak this language?

Mark

--------------------------------------------------------------------
mail2web - Check your email from the web at
http://mail2web.com/ .


from_name: Andrew Gray

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Zero information is preferred to misleading or false
	information

body:
On 21/05/06, Steve Bennett <stevagewp at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> >
> > It's still a matter of how you expose the hypocrisy.  In the case of the
> > Massachusetts congressman who openly campaigned for a maximum of four
> > terms, it was a verifiable fact that he was in his seventh term.
>
> I would still be careful - I doubt that we could not have found a source for
> someone else pointing out the hypocrisy. If it was up to us, we would have
> to be very careful that he had indeed promised that, that there were not
> significant mitigating circumstances in the meantime, that anybody actually
> cared etc.
>
> Politicians make lots of broken promises...it's appropriate to point out the
> ones that made headlines. Pointing out that a promise made as a backbencher
> to completely reform the nation's tax system was never carried out...well,
> you'd struggle to find a one line mention in a local paper about that.

My view, incidentally, is that it would be worthwhile mentioning that
as a backbencher he promised X, Y and Z - it shows where his interests
lay, which is always of note - but actually saying "and, of course, he
never managed it" is itself the "spin" You assume by default that a
backbencher's goals are never going to be carried out, and whilst on
the rare occasions when one manages it you say so*, actually pointing
it out seems like you're trying to make a point.

I guess this ties in well with the headlines thing - successes should
be remarked on, and Big Things which fail remarked on, but not the
things that no-one noticed...

* A. P. Herbert gave a maiden speech on his second day in the House
promising to reform the divorce laws - and had it done within a year!

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


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 5/21/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> I freely admit that my knowledge of copyright is lacking. It can apply
> to 3D objects like toys, models? machinery like i-pods? cars, why not?

Under US law, at least, copyright law is not generally read as having
any bearing on photos of such objects.  Trademark law does, however,
for some commercial uses, in terms of things like logos.  However,
Commons has in general decided that we are not going to concern
ourselves with trademark issues when they impact only certain types of
commercial use.  They do not prohibit the uses of such images even in
a commercial encyclopedia.

Trademarked characters (e.g. Star Wars) are generally regarded as
being more protected than other 3D objects (because they are derived
work of things generally regarded as copyright-protected art, I guess,
as well as trademarked characters).

Photos of cars, ipods, computers, et al. are not a problem.

Photos explicitly of logos MAY be a problem, however.

-Matt


subject: [Foundation-l] Chapters news

body:
I have just come back from various trips which allowed me to attend,
in my capacity of member of the Chapters committee, various Wikimedia
meetings across Europe.

Here is a little report on what I saw happening here and there.

==Wikimedia Polska==

I attended the annual Wikimedia Polska meeting in Wroclaw on April
30th-May 1st. The meeting consisted of two parts. The first part was a
conference which gathered Wikipedians as well as non-wikipedians to
talk about and around Wikimedia projects. It was all in Polish, so I
can't really report on the exact content of most of the talks, but I
also had ?ukasz (TOR) as a personal translator who sat by my side for
some of the talks given (and I hereby thank him).

*Tomasz Ganicz (Polimerek) did a very interesting presentation about
NPOV, original research and how those two ground principles are linked
and important for the building of Wikipedia.
*Jaros?aw Lipszyc presented his project of Polish wiki-textbooks
writen by schoolteachers, a project designed to make free textbooks
available in Polish schools.
*Zbigniew Braniecki (Gandalf), member of the board of Mozilla Europe
and developper in charge of internationalisation and localisation for
Flock presented Web 2.0 and how Wikipedia fits in. He explained how
Wikipedia was a precursor of Web 2.0 through its social implications,
and also how the Wikimedia projects and the Mediawiki software still
had to improve their usability and accessibility to join the social
and technical implications of Web 2.0
* ?ukasz Garczewski (TOR) gave a talk about the different activities
of Wikimedia Polska.
*I gave a talk on organisational issues, stressing the importance of
local initiatives through chapters as a means of ensuring
international outreach of the Wikimedia projects.

Among other interventions I did not follow as thoroughly, Rafa?
Pr?chniak of Creative Commons Poland gave a talk on Creative Commons
Licenses, Bogumi? Cieniek (A_Bach) a talk on Templates, their use and
their technical background... May those I forgot forgive me. My Polish
is rusty.

==Wikimedia Deutschland==
I attended the annual meeting of the board of Wikimedia Deutschland on
May 6th-7th 2006. Every year, all members of the board get together
for a week-end to work on the projects of the coming year.

Among the different issues raised:
*Officialization of the "Gesch?ftsstelle" for Wikimedia Deutschland.
Arne Klempert, until now Vice-president of Wikimedia Deutschland, has
been hired as Executive Director of WIkimedia Deutschland to start in
October 2006. The creation of the position of Executive Director was
given a go by the Member's general assembly in February 2006 and the
position advertised brought in about 70 applications.
*Run down on the Wikipedia Academy final preparations. Frank
Schulenburg gave a summary of the Wikipedia Academy, which seems to
have hit its target, namely academics, students, teachers who are
interested in learning about Wikipedia and how they can participate.
All about the Wikipedia Academy on the official website:
http://wikimedia-academy.de
*There are various projects in the air, in collaboration with partners
as diverse as schools, other non-profits and possibly companies.
*Participations in trade-shows and events in Germany were planned for
the year 2006
*The board of Wikimedia Deutschland also had a lengthy discussion
about the role (or lack of) of Wikimedia (the organisation) in the
conduct of the Wikimedia projects.

==Wikimedia Italia==
My flight to Belgrade had a stop over in Milano, which I used to have
an informal meeting with some members of the board of Wikimedia Italia
as well as with some wikipedians. Around a home-made pizza, we
discussed a few topics.
*Wikimedia Italia has had various offers from sponsors, especially on
the technical side, and needs to find out whether they are viable or
not, reviewing them with the technical committee.
*Wikimedia Italia has been working in partnership with the
"Politecnico di Torino" to develop an offline reader to put the
Italian Wikipedia on a DVD. The reader is in working state and works
with a browser, the technology being based on the html static
Wikipedia. The project is released under a BSD licence, and Wikimedia
Italia is looking for a publisher who could be interested in producing
the DVD.
*I realized something, ie. how boring it can be for people who are not
involved in Wikipedia to hear us all speaking about Wikipedia. Sitting
here, listening to very particular problems involving users or
articles I had no clue about, I had a thought for all our
companions/friends/parents who have to put up with this Wiki thing all
the time. I just want to take this opportunity to tell them I
understand.

==Wikimedia ?????? ? ???? ???? (Serbia and Montenegro)==
I was in Belgrade for two days, assisting a Free culture, free
software and free knowledge festival, originated by Wikimedia Serbia
and Montenegro and joined by other Free-movement organisation. Talks
and presentations included:
*Free art display - some real weird stuff, and some very nice art, I
particularly liked the illustration of 'an axe in honey", a Serbian
saying which displayed a major sized axe in a major sized pot of honey
;-).
*Free music and concerts
*Free software, open source distributions were presenting their products.
*Free knowledge (I gave a small talk about Wikimedia)
Many organisations joined this event which was in part driven by the
chapter, among which an organisation about free wireless internet, a
feminist organisation...

The festival was hosted by the Cultural Center DOB, a state funded
organisation, which is very interested in working with Wikimedia on a
longer time basis, their goal being to try and develop communities
around different topics, whether software, culture, knowledge etc.
Again, the presentations were in the local language, which gave me
little possibility of understanding them.
However, I had long talks about the Serbian Wikipedia, and very
interesting ones, as this Wikipedia is much smaller than those the
other existing chapters are tied to by language. Their problems and
solutions are both the same and very different, which is food for
thought how Wikipedias can help each other (or not).

All in all, these meetings were rich and interesting, and comfort me
in the idea that local representaiton is definitely the future of
Wikimedia. It is very important that we keep in touch with the
initiatives that originate around the Wikimedia projects locally in
order to ensure the maximum outreach, in as many countries as
possible.

I also hereby want to thank all my hosts, who were just perfect. :-)

Delphine
--
~notafish


subject: [Foundation-l] Chapters news


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Anthony DiPierro
>
> On 5/20/06, Fastfission <fastfission at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Riiight... do you have a point in this argument anymore, or are you
> > just doing it for sport?
> >
> I'll summarize my stance in this particular argument in case you can't
> follow:  The statement that "fair use is a defense and not a
> right" is the kind of confusing mumbo jumbo I'd expect to be
> spouted out by the RIAA, not a Wikipedian.  Fair use is a
> fundamental right which is part of the fundamental rights to
> free speech, free expression, free press, etc.  While it is
> difficult for a person to get an advance court ruling
> guaranteeing her right to fair use in a particular case, it
> is often possible - in fact the recent passage of 17 USC
> 512(f) as part of OCILLA provides a promising new avenue for
> fighting the chilling effects of copyright threat over
> materials distributed online.

Free speech is not an absolute right, even in the USA, and freedom of
expression does not extend to taking somebody else's work and presenting it
as your own. However, if you do this and are challenged, then you may be
able to use fair use as a valid defence for your actions. It is up to a
court to determine whether your usage of someone else's work is fair use or
not; you cannot make a definitive and inviolable ruling on your own say so,
otherwise copyright would cease to exist, because all anybody appropriating
another's work would need to do is claim the right of fair use, whether it
was or not.

It is up to a court to make a ruling, not you. Of course, you may make sure
that yourusage of somebody else's work is done in such a fashion that a
court would rule in your favour, but again, this is a defence, not a right.

--Peter in Canberra


subject:
[WikiEN-l] New Post to SlimVirgin and many of my posts bounce
	forno reason

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of
> Earthhope Action Network
>  --
>   Also, to moderators, many of my posts have been held back
> for no reason. These same posts were never included in the
> list posts.  I expect the same respect on this list that
> anyone else gets.

It's not a conspiracy. Well, not as much as you might imagine, anyway. I'm a
regular poster here who has been moderated from time to time (and indeed
booted right off the list at least once).

Why don't you suck up your pride, learn how we operate and use the system to
your advantage? Sure and it's all a corrupt clique of rouge administrators,
but what you need to remember is that Wikipedia is just a website, and
that's the way things operate here. Play by our rules and be happy, or go
off and complain about it. Either way it makes no difference and we've seen
it all before.

But, believe it or not, we'd rather you stayed around as a useful
contributor.

--Peter (Skyring)


from_name: Tony Sidaway

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
On 5/21/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
> It is fundamendal to WP:CSD that the reason for
> deletion be totally uncontroversial, as the process is almost entirely
> without review.

Not really.  For some reason fair use deletion are pretty
controversial and I doubt very much whether we'd delete many of them
if we relied on straw polls.  So we have a speedy for them because,
basically, there are a lot of people on Wikipedia who are willing to
pack a straw poll but not willing to do the thinking necessary to make
a reasonable decision.

>
> I have encountered many speedy-tagged articles that, upon a careful look,
> were either good articles or worthy of further consideration (e.g. through
> PROD).  It is incumbent on administrators who do speedy deletions to take
> such careful looks at every article; there are enough of us to take the time
> to do it right.  It would also be helpful if those tagging pages would take
> some care in what they tag, although I do understand that new pages patrol
> (for example) is a thankless and rushed job which is very important.

Absolutely.  What we *mustn't* do is delete good articles.  Crappy
articles we can live without and we should be happily deleting them.


from_name: Steve Bennett

body:
On 5/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> It's still a matter of how you expose the hypocrisy.  In the case of the
> Massachusetts congressman who openly campaigned for a maximum of four
> terms, it was a verifiable fact that he was in his seventh term.

I would still be careful - I doubt that we could not have found a source for
someone else pointing out the hypocrisy. If it was up to us, we would have
to be very careful that he had indeed promised that, that there were not
significant mitigating circumstances in the meantime, that anybody actually
cared etc.

Politicians make lots of broken promises...it's appropriate to point out the
ones that made headlines. Pointing out that a promise made as a backbencher
to completely reform the nation's tax system was never carried out...well,
you'd struggle to find a one line mention in a local paper about that.

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Prasad J

> I was not trolling. I do not support Islamic fundamentalism.
> Neither do I support electrocuting hooded Iraqi POWs (in
> blatant violation of the Geneva Convention) and later taking
> photographs with the corpses to send home as postcards.

Hang on. It looks to me like that statement above is trolling. If you look
at [[Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse]], then you will see that the
most we claim is "Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box, with a sandbag
on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate
electric torture."

You seem to be implying that this poor chap was actually electrocuted to
death when there doesn't seem to be any evidence supporting it.

Pete, who doesn't support such abstractions either


subject: [WikiEN-l] [WikiEn-l] Article surveys re-surveyed

body:
On 5/21/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> Get rid of the culture of fear where an editor avoids being bold to
> avoid arguments.

Yes. The trouble is, edit wars have an effect far wider than just the
article where they take place. Peopel hear about them, and expect to run
into them everywhere. The fact is, in the various random topics I've edited,
I've only ever hit two edit wars. Occasionally people revert changes, but
usually in good faith - the changes were simply incorrect.

On the other hand, I very, very frequently break up unstructured articles
into sections, wikify, or rearrange sections into some kind of order - the
very basic sort of editing that anyone can do, but that people seem afraid
to? It's actually really trivial to read an article paragraph by paragraph
and add a ==section heading== before each one summarising what it's about,
and it's so helpful. Once that's done you can actually begin to see the
article as whole and see what's missing, rather than just seeing that
there's lots of text, and maybe it has enough text?

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Proposal: limited extension of semi-protection policy

body:
On 5/21/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Semi-protection doesn't block just anons- it also blocks new users.
> And having to wait four days really kills the whole wikiwiki thing.

We should try and create the image that if Wikipedia is like a vast museum
where anyone can write anything on the walls, that they should avoid the
temptation to write next to the entrances - that's where everyone gathers,
and it's just too busy. Instead, they should find themselves a quiet corner
to themselves...

Steve


body:
From: Earthhope Action Network [mailto:contact at earthhopenetwork.net]
Sent: Sunday, 21 May 2006 4:04 AM
To: peter.mackay at bigpond.com; wikien-l at Wikipedia.org
Subject: RE: [WikiEN-l] New Post to SlimVirgin and many of my posts bounce
forno reason

Hi Peter, thanks for your email.

 Thanks, Maggie!

I didn't send you an email. I made a post to the list. Given that it seems
that you are now posting private emails to the list, don't try to recruit me
as a supporter.

Quite frankly, it looks to me like you are rapidly running out of any
sympathy. If you want to edit WP, I suggest you pull your head in, study up
on how the thing works, wait a suitable amount of time, open another account
and edit articles in a co-operative, useful and non-controversial fashion.
Even if somebody spots you as banned user Bloggs, they aren't likely to make
a fuss over your useful contributions.

Unless, of course, you return to making the same sort of edits that saw you
kicked off in the first place, in which case swift repetition will hardly
came as a surprise.

--Peter in Canberra


subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Ray Saintonge
>
> Steve Bennett wrote:

> >Which seems logical - otherwise there would be a massive
> loophole. We
> >could write O RLY on a non-free map of France, and use it in
> the France
> >article to discuss O RLY or whatever...
> >
> Better still in an article on Orly Airport. :-)

I was going to say something like that, but it looks like the orly bird
catches the worm.

Pete, late as usual


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
On 5/21/06, Tony Sidaway <f.crdfa at gmail.com> wrote:

> Not really.  For some reason fair use deletion are pretty
> controversial and I doubt very much whether we'd delete many of them
> if we relied on straw polls.  So we have a speedy for them because,
> basically, there are a lot of people on Wikipedia who are willing to
> pack a straw poll but not willing to do the thinking necessary to make
> a reasonable decision.

Not to mention that there's simply a huge number of image uploads per
day. "Speedy" deletion is exactly that, speedy, and in the case of
images it allows us to make qualified judgment calls within a
reasonable timeframe. I would even argue that in the case of images,
we could be a bit less conservative about deleting than we are now.
For instance, on Commons, images are often flagged to be deleted "7
days from now unless a source is provided". Most of those should be
speedy deleted with a brief note to the uploader.

Perhaps we need a middle ground between "speedy" admin actions and
full community review, such as a quorum by n admins.

Erik


from_name: Anthony DiPierro

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
On 5/20/06, Philip Welch <wikipedia at philwelch.net> wrote:
> On May 20, 2006, at 3:27 PM, Stan Shebs wrote:
>
> >> It seems like the "only accept canon depictions" is the rule to go,
> >> since it seems silly and arbitrary, and in any case, far less
> >> important than "only use free content". Artist depictions would be
> >> appropriate in this case, just like almost any other case where we
> >> only have fair use images to use.
> >>
> > Doesn't get you off the hook though, since an artist's depiction is
> > a derivative work. In fact, the more accurate the depiction, the more
> > of a copyright infringement it is. So you end up making a choice
> > between accuracy and freeness.
>
> Only if the artist chooses to reproduce one photograph or still.
>
> If the artists references multiple photographs and produces an image
> of Han Solo where Han is standing in a pose different from any of the
> photographs, or in a different or neutral setting, then it's not a
> derivative work of any one photograph.
>
This is very true, and in that case I think an original drawing is
preferable.  After all, an original drawing only copies the essential
facts which must be copied in order to have accuracy.  Using a
professional photo is only appropriate IMO when you are talking about
the photo itself (which is not to say that using the photo is not fair
use, but only that I don't think it's the kind of fair use that should
be used in Wikipedia).

However, this still does require some fair use (or fair dealing or
whatever) because you are copying the *character*, which is itself
copyrighted.

Of course, a text description of the character would *also* require an
argument of fair use (fair dealing, whatever).

Anthony


body:
On 5/20/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Erik Moeller wrote:
> >Perhaps we need a new tag for claims which should be moved within n
> >days unless cited, with its own category for maintenancy. But that
> >might further increase the use of tagging as opposed to talk pages.
> >
> Multiplying the number of tags only provides new opportunities for
> getting things wrong.
>
> Ec

It wouldn't be very hard to implement the *procedure* "claims should
be moved [to the talk page] [after] n days" without implementing a new
tag.  I'm sure someone could whip up a quick db search tool to create
a list.

As an aside, maybe in the longer term a timestamp could be built right
into "what links here".

Anthony


body:
On 5/20/06, Sue Anne Reed <sreed1234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Given how many web sites require registration these days, I don't feel
> there's a conflict between saying "anyone can edit" but you have to be
> registered to edit to certain articles. It's not like we're saying that
> only certain registered can edit, we would just be saying to you have to
> register to edit.
>
> Sue Anne

It's slightly more than that.  It's saying you have to register and
then wait a few days before you can edit.

As long as it's kept to only the most problematic articles, though,
the only argument I have against it would be a slippery-slope one.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] Creation of user photographs

body:
On 5/21/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
> I refer to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:PICT4101.JPG] which was
> clearly not taken by the subject, nor by using a tripod or other support
> such as a wall.
>
Maybe he paid $1 to some homeless guy walking the street, and so it's
a work for hire.

Anyway, you'd be better off asking him first, maybe he'll fix it.

Anthony


from_name: Mark Williamson

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Classical Belarusian in Wikipedia

body:
> Belarusian Wikipedia does not favor classic spelling over official. It

The evidence presented at RFNL seems to indicate otherwise. The rules
explicitly state that Classical is favoured. All official WIkipedia
pages are written in classical Belarusan. Hmm...

> contains articles on both spellings. There were some edit wars based on

The fact that it contains articles in both spellings is irrelevant.
That would be like if we wrote the English Wikipedia in IPA mostly,
but accepted some articles in official English orthography. Also,
several users have reported that their articles are deleted, only to
be rewritten minutes later by the admin in Classical spelling.

> spelling at beginning of 2005, but since that time both spellings
> coexists peacefully without major problems. Belarusian speaking Internet

If they coexist peacefully without major problems, why do so many
users want a change? They have been accused of being Russians, or
Rusophiles, or anti-Belarusan, but the truth is these people just want
a Wikipedia in their language, which you are trying to keep from them.

> community is not so big, so further spelling dividing will do more harm
> then good.

One could say the same thing of many communities. But when there is a
part that wants to break off, it's not your responsibility to stop it.

Mark

On 21/05/06, Kiryl Nieviarouski <k.nieviarouski at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Berto,
>
> my point is: Don't spitting Belarusian Wikipedia.
>
> We need one Belarusian grammar and we will reach it in effect. Time will
> juge which one is better or worse. But splitting wikipedia is not good.
>  Belarusian Wikipedia does not favor classic spelling over official. It
> contains articles on both spellings. There were some edit wars based on
> spelling at beginning of 2005, but since that time both spellings
> coexists peacefully without major problems. Belarusian speaking Internet
> community is not so big, so further spelling dividing will do more harm
> then good.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Kiryl
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
I don't know about the 1976 part -- I think that while it is perhaps
more difficult for people born before then to gain respect in the
community for whatever reason, there are many examples of people who
are well-respected and, if a cabal existed, would probably be members
of it, including but not limited to Jimbo, Ant, Danny, etc. etc.

Mark

On 21/05/06, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
> It has been obvious to me for a long time that this sort of thing is quite prevalent.  On the one hand it sort of makes a mockery of the open and free principles espoused by wikipedia.  But then again, it seem an inevitable development, afterall, we all know it can't be an out and out free for all.
>
>   So I accept that there is a place for it, but occasionally I get the feeling there is a cosy little club operating, to which not even 20,000 edits will open a door.
>   Furthermore, those born prior to 1976 need not apply - open and free indeed!
>   pippu d'angelo
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------
> Yahoo! Messenger with Voice: chiama da PC a telefono a tariffe esclusive
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


from_name: Prasad J

subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
There is really no point in trying to converse with people who term
any viewpoint which is against theirs as "trolling".


from_name: sean at epoptic.com

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
On 21/05/06, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:

> So I accept that there is a place for it, but occasionally I get the
> feeling there is a cosy little club operating, to which not even
> 20,000 edits will open a door.
> Furthermore, those born prior to 1976 need not apply - open and free
> indeed!
> pippu d'angelo

One of two longest-serving arbiters was born in 1959 and the other is
of a comparable age, so I can say for certain that you're ....

Oh, wait a minute.  It's secret.  Never mind -- I can't say anything.

--
 Sean Barrett     | Most people who need to be shot
 sean at epoptic.com | need to be shot soon and a lot.
                  | Very few people need to be shot
		  | later or just a little. --Sean Barrett


body:
You are so insulting it is unbelievable. Ranting in a delusional manner?

Holy cow. If people on the mailing list, moderators or not, cannot see
this it is just staggering in it's implications.

Yes Maggie, I agree with you, it does indeed appear that the
higher-ups at Wikipedia have masterminded an elaborate conspiracy
involving the Administrative cabal, the mailing-list Administrators
and the Illuminati with the sole purpose of preventing you from
editing Wikipedia.


subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
What's a secret? Nothing on Wikimedia is secret. Everything is open.
Jimbo is our infalliale leader but we may not call him our godking.
TINC. Do not question arbcom.

Mark

On 21/05/06, sean at epoptic.com <sean at epoptic.com> wrote:
> On 21/05/06, Giuseppe DAngelo <pippudoz at yahoo.it> wrote:
>
> > So I accept that there is a place for it, but occasionally I get the
> > feeling there is a cosy little club operating, to which not even
> > 20,000 edits will open a door.
> > Furthermore, those born prior to 1976 need not apply - open and free
> > indeed!
> > pippu d'angelo
>
> One of two longest-serving arbiters was born in 1959 and the other is
> of a comparable age, so I can say for certain that you're ....
>
> Oh, wait a minute.  It's secret.  Never mind -- I can't say anything.
>
> --
>  Sean Barrett     | Most people who need to be shot
>  sean at epoptic.com | need to be shot soon and a lot.
>                   | Very few people need to be shot
>                   | later or just a little. --Sean Barrett
> _______________________________________________
> Wikipedia-l mailing list
> Wikipedia-l at Wikimedia.org
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikipedia-l
>

--
Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.


subject: [Wikitech-l] [Foundation-l] correcting a big usability problem

body:
(from foundation-l)

On 5/21/06, Austin Hair <adhair at gmail.com> wrote:
> Section editing is certainly counterintuitive for most, especially for
> sections more than a paragraph or two long?I invariably edit a section
> after I've read it, meaning I have to scroll/page back up for the
> link, and I remember it taking a while for me to get used to this.
> What's more, the link actually comes before the section heading, so
> only a graphical, CSS-enabled browser will display it in anything
> approaching a reasonable way.

When I coded section editing, I tried different ways to present the
link; it was very hard to find something which works even with complex
table layouts. I would actually prefer a small icon to the "[edit]"
text (it could still have "[edit]" as an ALT attribute), but that has
the problem of not working well with different heading sizes.

Regarding the scroll-up problem, one way to deal with it at least for
advanced users would be to offer double-click editing on the section
level. You could then click anywhere within a section to edit it.

Erik


from_name: Kiryl Nieviarouski

body:
Mark Williamson ?????:

> OK, that's absolutely crazy. As cited on the Requests for New
> Languages page, there are also newspapers written in socalled
> "Narkamauka".

Today most belarusian people speaks Russsian in everyday life,
unfortunatly. This is result of massive rusification conducted by
Russian Emperia, then by USSR authorities and now by last dictator in
Europe, Mr. Lukashenko. This is why most belarusian newspapers written
in Russian. and Belarusian language in Belarus is spoken by minority of
population.

> What do they use at http://gov.by/ let me guess... NOT
> tarashkievitsa?

No, they don't. With some exceptions they use RUSSIAN ONLY! This is the
prove of discrimination of Belarusian Language alltogether, which
accordinly to our constitution is on of two (another one is Russian)
state languages!

Let's have a closer look:

http://www.president.gov.by/ President of Republic of Belarus - ENGLISH
and RUSSIAN only

Only site of Belarusian Government
http://www.government.by/ru/rus_news.html has Belarusian version, but by
default, Russian language version is opening.

http://www.minedu.unibel.by/ Ministry of Education of Belarus RUSSIAN
and ENGLISH only

http://osipovichi.gov.by/ Osipovichy Local Administration - RUSSIAN ONLY

http://www.gkpv.gov.by/  State Office of Border Guard of Belarus -
RUSSIAN ONLY

http://mintrud.gov.by/ Ministry of Work of Belarus- RUSSIAN ONLY

http://www.kultura.by/index.jsp Site of Ministry of Culture of Belarus -
RUSSIAN ONLY

http://www.minenergo.gov.by/ Ministry of Energy of Belarus- RUSSIAN ONLY

http://prokuratura.gov.by/ Belarusian National Prosecutor's Office -
RUSSIAN ONLY

http://www.vybor.by/ Central Comission for Elections and National
Referendum of Belarus - RUSSIAN ONLY

http://kgb.by/ KGB of Belarus (do you know what does it mean?) site is
entirely in Russian. Only contact info is translated to Belarusian and
English.

http://www.vpk.gov.by/ State Military-Industrial Cometee of Belarus-
RUSSIAN ONLY

http://www.minjust.by/ Ministry of Justice of Belarus - RUSSIAN ONLY

http://www.belstat.gov.by/ Ministry of Statistics and Analysis of
Belarus RUSSIAN and ENGLISH only

I can continue if you wish...

>
> Remind me, of all people educated in Belarus, which ones were taught
> to read in Classical Belarusan at school? NONE, they all learnt Modern
> Belarusan,

They all learnt Russian in school, because in Belarus there are no
schools or Universities where education is in Belarusian. Belarusian
Language and Literature is taught as a foreign language.

 that is the language read by the millions of speakers of
> the Belarusan Language.

Millions of speakers of Russian Language, you whant to say.

 Only a minority use the "Classical grammar",
> and even those people were educated in Official Belarusan.
>
> You try to put down the official language with names such as
> "narkamauka", and say it is "soviet imposed".

It's a shame, but unfortunatly (as facts prove) official language in
Belarus is Russian for now.

This situation will change when regime of Lukashenko will gone.

Regards,

Kiryl


from_name: Eugene Zelenko

body:
Hi!

> Mark Williamson node.ue at gmail.com wrote:

> Also, several users have reported that their articles are deleted, only to
be rewritten minutes later by the admin in Classical spelling.

Sorry, but you didn't correct. Claims about changing spelling was from
one user, and was about categories, not about articles.

With best regards,
Eugene.


from_name: Walter van Kalken

body:
sannse wrote:

>Johan Bos wrote:
>
>
>>Dear Jimbo,
>>
>>You should know one thing. I am a native Dutch speaker, so I could perfectly
>>follow all the communication around the troubles with Waerth. I also read
>>some of the communications towards you and I concluded that you have been
>>misinformed a bit. The internation messages which I read did totally not
>>represent the matter in a righteous way. Let me state one thing quite clear:
>>
>>?Waerth would never have abused his stewardship or his being a press
>>contact!
>>
>>
>
>"Would not"? or "did not threaten to"?  Because if you just mean the
>first, then I'm afraid I have to say the actions taken in removing
>Waerth as steward and press contact were 100% correct.
>
>
>
Please read my earlier answer to Jimbo Sannse and there you will see
that I did admit to saying those things, but that I never did it. Also
if things go wrong in the foundation and no-one reacts at first were do
you go then? Please answer that? I didn't have the three years that
discussions usually take. I feel it is a shamefull thing that people do
not take comments seriously untill they make the ultimate threat.
Basically someone is ignored and not being heard untill he says the
ultimate thing. It is extremely bad that this happened and everyone
ignored things and let this happen. It is actually still happening
because RonaldB is still ignoring all questions!

The foundation could learn a thing or two from this. One of them being
that complaints should be taken more seriously at an earlier stage,
especially if they have been uttered by an active member and not just by
him. Ignoring complaints and sticking your head in the sand only leads
to escalation, problems do not get solved by being ignored, people get
extremely pissed especially with the ignoring of a time-sensitive
subject. Although many people have told me that ignoring is the right
way to solve a problem (or should I say "challenge" for the political
correct ones out there) in the foundation, basically all people adhering
to that school of thought are damaging the situation and are damaging
the foundation. Because a next time it won't just blow over and fade
away like it has now.

Waerth/Walter


from_name: Erik Moeller

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
On 5/21/06, Peter Ansell <ansell.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
> I may be naive, but I think it is going over the top to generalise
> straw polls as unreasonable just because they come up with different
> decisions to what you expect.

They're not generally unreasonable, but you cannot vote away law and
precedent. Copyright is very complex, and it is unfair to expect the
average contributor to make an informed decision about whether or not
the use of a particular image meets fair use criteria.

I have no problem with someone like Anthony, who has many informed
opinions about copyright law, weighing into a debate or poll. But when
someone wants to upload lots of high resolution scans of comic books
and justifies this with "'''Keep.''' I did the scans myself. They are
useful to the article.", such votes can and should be ignored. This is
equally true for users who are deliberately ignoring policy because
they don't like it.

Blindly giving a lot of power to everyone is equally dangerous to
giving it to only a few. I oppose giving admins arbitrary power to
interpret community opinion, but they need to have _some_ flexibility
to do so. It's a delicate balance.

Perhaps in the long run, we'll have a "Fair Use" course in Wikiversity
and can make participation in that course an ''a priori'' requirement
for voting in a fair use related poll.

Erik


body:
You find the username Abu Hamza offensive, tomorrow if someone adopts
the pseudonym Lynddie England, then what will your reaction be? Just
like some Muslims support Hamza, there are Americans (I have met these
people on the internet) who condone what England did to POWs in Abu
Ghraib.


from_name: William Allen Simpson

body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> On 5/21/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
>> When I coded section editing, I tried different ways to present the
>> link; it was very hard to find something which works even with complex
>> table layouts. I would actually prefer a small icon to the "[edit]"
>> text (it could still have "[edit]" as an ALT attribute), but that has
>> the problem of not working well with different heading sizes.
>
> Would it be possible to (perhaps as an option) allow a tiny icon at
> the end of each section which lets you edit it?
>
I have never found it hard to edit at the beginning of the section,
the PageUp key works just fine.

The problem I've had is the edit box sometimes cannot be found, as it is
in some incongruous place after having been moved by floating images.  As
the section header can be very short (the edit link away on the right is
easy to miss), or very long with multiple lines (the edit link can appear
disassociated with the section heading).

An icon with alt text might be nice, but it should be placed at the *left*
of the section header, where it is quite firmly attached.

However, I'd rather the section header itself be a link that edits the
section.  No muss no fuss.

Unfortunately, that would conflict with some folks that stick a page or
category reference in the section header text, despite guidelines that
recommend against the practice.

All in all, the current practice is not perfect, but it's hard to come up
with something universally better....

>> Regarding the scroll-up problem, one way to deal with it at least for
>> advanced users would be to offer double-click editing on the section
>> level. You could then click anywhere within a section to edit it.
>
> Personally I've never found the double-click option at all intuitive
> or useful. I've only ever invoked it by accident. If there was a way
> of adding an entry to the right click menu, that would be better.
>
What right-click menu?  I'm a Mac user....

No, double click is *execute* not edit.


body:
On 5/21/06, Matt Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/21/06, Brianna Laugher <brianna.laugher at gmail.com> wrote:
> > I freely admit that my knowledge of copyright is lacking. It can apply
> > to 3D objects like toys, models? machinery like i-pods? cars, why not?
>
> Under US law, at least, copyright law is not generally read as having
> any bearing on photos of such objects.

Because photos of such objects are fair use.  If you're trying to say
that the design of a car or an i-pod is not copyrightable, then I
think you're incorrect.

> Trademark law does, however,
> for some commercial uses, in terms of things like logos.  However,
> Commons has in general decided that we are not going to concern
> ourselves with trademark issues when they impact only certain types of
> commercial use.  They do not prohibit the uses of such images even in
> a commercial encyclopedia.
>
Maybe it's time for commons to decide not to concern itself with
copyright issues when they only impact certain types of commercial
use, and do not prohibit the uses of such images even in a commercial
encyclopedia.

If so, it's important that such an issue be very carefully addressed.
You don't want commons to wind up like En.wikipedia.

> Trademarked characters (e.g. Star Wars) are generally regarded as
> being more protected than other 3D objects (because they are derived
> work of things generally regarded as copyright-protected art, I guess,
> as well as trademarked characters).
>
> Photos of cars, ipods, computers, et al. are not a problem.
>
I still don't see why a car or an I-pod is any less copyrightable than
an action figure.  A generic computer, perhaps, because its look is
purely functional.  But even then, I'm sure the design of the I-mac is
copyrighted - a lot of creative work went into making the I-mac *look
good*.

Anthony


subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
You find the username Abu Hamza offensive, tomorrow if someone adopts
the pseudonym Lynddie England, then what will your reaction be? Just
like some Muslims support Hamza, there are Americans (I have met these
people on the internet) who condone what England did to POWs in Abu
Ghraib. If a situation arises where a user identifies with a sadist
like Lyndie, will the Community react in such a strong manner.
Especially you Mr. Rosenthal-I have noticed that you have implied on a
certain occassion that it was "freakin shameful"  for users to refer
to U.S soldiers with disrespect. On a side-note let me make it clear
to you that I do NOT respect American soldiers and personally think of
them as a band of glorified mercenaries and you do not have any
authority whatsoever to refer to my opinion as "shamegul". Perhaps you
are accustomed to violating the human-rights of Iraqi POWs, but you
cannot do the same to me especially since I am not a U.S citizen and
hence owe no loyalty to the American military.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
On 5/21/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> a) an admin unthinkingly deletes it, "it's tagged; who am I to
>     disagree?".  Sometimes I've seen a salvageable article while going
>     through the CSD category and been busy rewriting it when another
>     admin thoughtlessly deletes it; that *really* irritates me.

You know about {{hangon}} ?

b) I remove the tag, and cop (at best) a polite query or (at worst)
>     unfettered abuse as a result.  "It's tagged; who are YOU to remove
>     it?"  It seems to be a grave insult to the CVUers and their ilk that
>     an admin would dare to disregard their recommendations.  I suspect
>     the only way to make them happy would be to either give them delete
>     buttons themselves, or write a bot that automatically deletes any
>     article that finds its way into the CSD category.

AfD it for them? Third opinion and all that...

Steve


body:
On 5/21/06, Erik Moeller <eloquence at gmail.com> wrote:
> When I coded section editing, I tried different ways to present the
> link; it was very hard to find something which works even with complex
> table layouts. I would actually prefer a small icon to the "[edit]"
> text (it could still have "[edit]" as an ALT attribute), but that has
> the problem of not working well with different heading sizes.

Would it be possible to (perhaps as an option) allow a tiny icon at
the end of each section which lets you edit it?

> Regarding the scroll-up problem, one way to deal with it at least for
> advanced users would be to offer double-click editing on the section
> level. You could then click anywhere within a section to edit it.

Personally I've never found the double-click option at all intuitive
or useful. I've only ever invoked it by accident. If there was a way
of adding an entry to the right click menu, that would be better.

Steve


subject: [Wikitech-l] Wiki markup <-> MS Word?

body:
Anyone written an MS word/javascript macro to convert to/from MS word
format? I was just thinking it might be kind of cool to be able to pop
the code of the page out into word, where ==Level 2== would be
converted into the Heading 2 format and so forth. It might even be
able to embed images within the article.

Then, when you were finished editing, it could convert it all back again.

Stupid idea? :)

Steve


subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
On 5/21/06, Mark Gallagher <m.g.gallagher at student.canberra.edu.au> wrote:
>
> >>a) an admin unthinkingly deletes it, "it's tagged; who am I to
> >>    disagree?".  Sometimes I've seen a salvageable article while going
> >>    through the CSD category and been busy rewriting it when another
> >>    admin thoughtlessly deletes it; that *really* irritates me.
> >
> > You know about {{hangon}} ?
>
> Why?  Article X is clearly not a speedy delete, and while I'm making it
> into a good stub (as opposed to a merely decent one) I remove the
> {{delete}} tag.  No admin should be speedying in the meantime, because
> *the article is not a speedy candidate*.

Ok, but at this point, you're saying that two separate people think the
article is speedyable - the person who put the tag, and another admin who
deleted it even without the tag. And from a pragmatic point of view, you had
to edit and save the article to rm the {{delete}} tag, and you had to
edit/save to add the new text - you wouldn't be losing a lot using
{{hangon}}. But it's your call.

>
> >>    unfettered abuse as a result.  "It's tagged; who are YOU to remove
> >>    it?"  It seems to be a grave insult to the CVUers and their ilk that

To Hell with that.  I don't AfD articles unless I want them deleted; if
> they want them on AfD, they can do the leg work themselves.

I can see how "to hell with that" might be taken as a "grave insult", yes.

Steve


from_name: Daniel R. Tobias

subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 189

body:
On 19 May 2006 at 00:45, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
> > It was a WP:OFFICE action. No further explanation is required.
>
> I thought only Danny could do that and he wasn't involved in this.
> There's no indication on UninvitedCompany's userpage that he can do
> OFFICE actions.

WP:OFFICE is getting to be the all-purpose way for the handful of
"bigwig insiders" with the proper Wikimedia Foundation connections to
cut off all debate on something and insist that something be done,
and nobody else has the right to object or even to know why.  It's
kind of like "national security" to the government.  Whenever it's
invoked, it's supposed to be the ultimate "trump card" that overrules
everything else, even including any supposed rules or principles
regarding how, and by whom, WP:OFFICE is supposed to be invoked in
the first place.  It's no longer even necessary that the "magic word"
WP:OFFICE even be recited in the course of such actions; they can be
retroactively declared as such later.

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


from_name: Berto

body:
Hi!

> Today most belarusian people speaks Russsian in everyday life,
> unfortunatly. This is result of massive rusification conducted by
> Russian Emperia, then by USSR authorities and now by last dictator in
> Europe, Mr. Lukashenko.
Yes, although I am not too sure about the causes.
....
> This situation will change when regime of Lukashenko will gone.
We have lots of similar cases in the west, with no need of help from
russians, soviets and Lukashenko. Even if and when you succeed in making a
political regime that you will like (no matter which one) you might find out
that this linguistic "corrosion" will keep up and possibly even get worse.
Be prepared for that. Do not ask too much from "demicracy" because you might
change a president, but you will not change the people just as quick. And
once you'll start to do it, you might want to use the very same pressure
means that were used to impose russian. So you will eventually end up in
discriminating russian speaking minorities (which will be many more people
that actual minorities),  as it happens in the baltic region and (to a
lesser extent) in Ukraine.

Not saying that you should sit down and let your language die. Just pointing
out that these are long and complicated games, in which you cannot succeed
unless you are extremely realistic and prepared to make a long series of
comprimises. Which is NOT the current atmosphere inside the belorussian
language community (as I'd say from the ongoing discussion). I am also
saying that a language is made of people, NOT of governments. Governments
cannot do anything, if and when the people are not ready to obey. Catalans
got their language against the government, the irish government could do (so
far) very little to revive gaelic, which is really close to the bielorussian
situation.

If I was you, I'd read less about governments, and more about the available
success (and failure) stories in language management. It's many of them,
most with a mixed result, and almost none of them is connected with a change
in power. Real changes are usually much more closely connected with issues
like mass media, what people considers "?????" (nice, good) and the
availability of financially interesting jobs in the language.

Just one popular TV serial in belorussian could make a lot of difference.
But it will not happen, even after the change of president. You know why?
Because you'll kill each other trying to decide what ortography should be
used for the titles... and in the meantime your youth clubs will speak
russian and english. Be really careful with this stuff. It's easy to have
your dreams vanish into nothing, unless you realise that only the people can
choose what is their language. And that they will always choose according to
"market economy". They will want a language that promises money, career, a
good marriage, fashion things and so on...

Having a belorussian wiki IS a small step in that direction, but it's just
one of them. And it's definitely not the decisive move. But if you cannot
even make such a small step withouth breaking your forces into a set of
opposite small armies, then you are sadly not going to go anywhere, no
matter how many presidents and constitutions you change.

B?rto


body:
Hi Berto,

my point is: Don't spitting Belarusian Wikipedia.

We need one Belarusian grammar and we will reach it in effect. Time will
juge which one is better or worse. But splitting wikipedia is not good.
 Belarusian Wikipedia does not favor classic spelling over official. It
contains articles on both spellings. There were some edit wars based on
spelling at beginning of 2005, but since that time both spellings
coexists peacefully without major problems. Belarusian speaking Internet
community is not so big, so further spelling dividing will do more harm
then good.

Regards,

Kiryl


body:
Hi Berto,

my point is: Don't split Belarusian Wikipedia.

We need one Belarusian grammar and we will reach it in effect. Time will
juge which one is better or worse. But splitting wikipedia is not good.
 Belarusian Wikipedia does not favor classic spelling over official. It
contains articles on both spellings. There were some edit wars based on
spelling at beginning of 2005, but since that time both spellings
coexists peacefully without major problems. Belarusian speaking Internet
community is not so big, so further spelling dividing will do more harm
then good.

Regards,

Kiryl


from_name: Ashar Voultoiz

subject: [Wikitech-l] MediaWiki Parser fuzz-tester source code

body:
Nick Jenkins wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> The source code to a MediaWiki Parser fuzz-tester is now available online at:
> http://files.nickj.org/MediaWiki/wiki-mangleme.phps
>
> Some of the problems it has found are listed at: http://nickj.org/MediaWiki
>
> With MediaWiki 1.6.5, the breakdown of stuff I'm currently seeing that
> messes up the flow of tags (as opposed to just failing HTML
> validation) is roughly:
> * 50% Table-Of-Contents insertion ( See Parser14 test at above URL)
> * 30% double links ( See Parser22 test at above URL)
> * 20% is <nowiki> or <pre> insertion + multi-line URLs ( See Parser20
> and Parser23 tests respectively ).

Hello Nick,

I reviewed your code, made some changes and commited it code in
MediaWiki trunk :

http://svn.wikimedia.org/viewvc/mediawiki/trunk/phase3/maintenance/

cheers,

--
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: Traroth

subject: [Foundation-l] Re :  Contact in Thailand

body:
Michael Snow a ?crit :

>Lawyers are not restricted to giving legal opinions and nothing else,
>sometimes they need to represent their clients in communicating with
>third parties, as Brad did here. Brad's intervention was helpful
>(because it got across his client's position), misrepresented nothing,
>and if it wasn't as polite as suits your tastes, it's because more
>polite ways of communicating this hadn't yet gotten the message across.

>--Michael Snow

Does it mean the Foundation will begin to communicate with the community by interposed lawyers ? That's nonsense.

Traroth


subject: [WikiEN-l] Creation of user photographs

body:
On 5/21/06, Peter Mackay <peter.mackay at bigpond.com> wrote:
>
> I was doing some research on ArbCom admonitions against personal attacks,
> and I came across a photograph on a user page where the subject of the
> photograph states that he is the creator.
>

Is "creator" well defined anywhere? If you have the idea to take a photo of
yourself against a particular background, choose the spot, set the camera
settings, frame it, then hand it to a passerby saying "can you press this
button when I say GO", and later download the photo, photoshop it, crop it,
upload it etc - are you really saying that that passer by is the "creator"
of the photo?

No idea if that's the case here, but I don't think the button pusher should
necessarily get all the credit, or even *any* credit if they've been told
exactly what to do.

Steve


subject: [Foundation-l] Re :  Contact in Thailand - @Jimbo

body:
sannse a ?crit :

>"Would not"? or "did not threaten to"?  Because if you just mean the
>first, then I'm afraid I have to say the actions taken in removing
>Waerth as steward and press contact were 100% correct.

>--sannse

Please stop to insinuate and say somethinh concrete. Your message seems to me like FUD.

Traroth


body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett

> On 5/21/06, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
>
> On the other hand, I very, very frequently break up
> unstructured articles into sections, wikify, or rearrange
> sections into some kind of order - the very basic sort of
> editing that anyone can do, but that people seem afraid to?
> It's actually really trivial to read an article paragraph by
> paragraph and add a ==section heading== before each one
> summarising what it's about, and it's so helpful. Once that's
> done you can actually begin to see the article as whole and
> see what's missing, rather than just seeing that there's lots
> of text, and maybe it has enough text?

I do this all the time. Irritating to see an otherwise fine article that has
most of the material in the lead section and the ToC is down at the end,
showing "External links" and so on.

Pete, bold enough to do this


body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Steve Bennett
>
> On 5/21/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Semi-protection doesn't block just anons- it also blocks new users.
> > And having to wait four days really kills the whole wikiwiki thing.
>
> We should try and create the image that if Wikipedia is like
> a vast museum where anyone can write anything on the walls,
> that they should avoid the temptation to write next to the
> entrances - that's where everyone gathers, and it's just too
> busy. Instead, they should find themselves a quiet corner to
> themselves...

I used to find a quiet corner where I could sit down in a cramped solitude
and write "Magnus frater te spectat" on the wall.

Pete, not sure what this says about him, but still feeling a cut above some
of the other contributors


from_name: Keith Old

subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
On 5/21/06, SCZenz <sczenz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> A reminder to everyone about speedy deletions...
>
> It has come to my attention lately that the speedy deletion criteria are
> being applied rather loosely in some cases.  Especially unfortunate are
> articles that are nominated for being "non-notable"; there is no such
> speedy
> criterion, there is only the criterion that articles about people/groups
> may
> be deleted if they have "no assertion of notability" whatsoever.  This is
> not just process wonkery--it is fundamendal to WP:CSD that the reason for
> deletion be totally uncontroversial, as the process is almost entirely
> without review.
>
> I have encountered many speedy-tagged articles that, upon a careful look,
> were either good articles or worthy of further consideration (e.g. through
> PROD).  It is incumbent on administrators who do speedy deletions to take
> such careful looks at every article; there are enough of us to take the
> time
> to do it right.  It would also be helpful if those tagging pages would
> take
> some care in what they tag, although I do understand that new pages patrol
> (for example) is a thankless and rushed job which is very important.
>
> In cases I've seen where I think mistakes were made, I have tried to start
> discussions with the individual editors involved.  My intention in sending
> this email is not to single them out, but just to bring this issue to
> everyone's attention.  In many cases where an article is clearly
> unsuitable,
> but doesn't clearly fit the speedy criteria, using the WP:PROD process is
> a
> good substitute for speedy deletion, and I urge everyone to use it more
> often.
>
> Thanks,
> SCZenz
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at Wikipedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>

That is what I try and do when I do speedy deletions. I try to follow the
general principle of if in doubt, don't delete. Generally, there is no
reason why they can't be kept around for a few days with the exception of
copyvios.

If necessary, I will even rewrite the article as a stub myself if the
subject of the article warrants it and I have enough information.

Regards

Keith Old

Keith Old
User:Capitalistroadster


subject: [WikiEN-l] blocked for a week for these edits

body: Glad to hear it.


from_name: Matt Brown

body:
On 5/21/06, Anthony DiPierro <wikilegal at inbox.org> wrote:
>
> The same would be true of the Ipod - functional aspects of the design
> would not be copyrightable, but creative asaesthetic aspects of the
> design would (though I doubt I can find a link specifically describing
> this in terms of the Ipod).

In practice, there is no case law (in the US, at least) suggesting
that photographs of such objects are considered copyright
infringement.

Thus, Commons should not consider this an issue.

-Matt


from_name: Mark Gallagher

subject:
[WikiEN-l] New Post to SlimVirgin and many of my posts bounce
 forno reason

body:
G'day Maggie,

> Hi Peter, thanks for your email. I cannot stay around here because I
> am banned indefinitley. I would like to still edit at Wikipedia. But
> I don't know how to go about it the process that will allow this.

The process for rescinding a community ban is as follows: convince an
administrator that your original ban was wrong.  Since it has been
reviewed many times by different, independent administrators and no-one
has yet unblocked you, I think it's safe to say we *all* agree you
should not be here.

An alternative is to convince us you're very sorry and that you will
never again repeat the behaviour that led to your block, but will
instead prove yourself to be a valuable member of the Wikipedia editing
"team".  Your posts to this list have proven exactly the opposite.  Many
people, including one (Peter Mackay) who was himself banned for a year,
have told you that your actions here are just making things much harder
for yourself, but you refuse to believe them.

Remember: *you* are the one asking for something from *us*.  You have
done your best to ensure we have no reason to give it to you.

> I would like to get a mediation process, a thing I like many people,
> have never had.

What benefits would mediation bring, exactly?  You were warned
repeatedly, and chose to disregard those warnings.  The community
decided it wasn't worth our while to follow the dispute resolution
process.  This was perfectly within policy.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

--
No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.1.392 / Virus Database: 268.6.1/344 - Release Date: 19/05/2006


from_name: Peter Mackay

subject: [WikiEN-l] 911

body:
> From: wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org
> [mailto:wikien-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of Prasad J
>
> There is really no point in trying to converse with people
> who term any viewpoint which is against theirs as "trolling".

I can think of at least one admin who could be described in such a fashion.
If he doesn't like even the most innocuous change, it's vandalism and
quickly reverted.

Pete, not mentioning names


from_name: Jimmy Wales

subject: [Foundation-l] Contact in Thailand - @Jimbo

body:
Johan Bos wrote:
> You should know one thing. I am a native Dutch speaker, so I could perfectly
> follow all the communication around the troubles with Waerth. I also read
> some of the communications towards you and I concluded that you have been
> misinformed a bit. The internation messages which I read did totally not
> represent the matter in a righteous way. Let me state one thing quite clear:
>
> ?Waerth would never have abused his stewardship or his being a press
> contact!
>
> Your conclusions are at least partly based on false information and you have
> been impeded too much by your disability of understanding Dutch.

I understand.  I have always been a big supporter of Waerth, and I
continue to support him.  I think that various things that have happened
in Dutch wikipedia have been unfortunate, and I also think that even
Waerth's biggest supporters (and there are many) would advise him to
respond in a more calm manner to various provocations.

--Jimbo


body:
Hi!

> It seems, that my attempts to reach some compromise on subject of
> disputable clauses in rules of Be: community failed. My final
> proposals and admins (EugeneZelenko) replies were (translated more or
> less verbatim from Be: talk):
>
> 1 Names of [allowed] orthographies are currently politically slanted
> and pejorative. So I suggested to change the clause to ?...besides the
> common/standard/normative (?school?) orthography the alternative
> [orthography] is allowed (according to "????????? ???????? ????????.
> ???? ????????. ???????? ????????????", 2005 [the (first) book
> containing the rules of alternative orthography])". [To name standard
> orthography] ?official? is not good, as this name has connotation of
> ?non mandatory? in our cultural practice.?

Why do you think that your opinion is only neutral one? There are
other alternative suggestion was made. So it's still subject for
discussion.

> 2 Current rules mention alternative orthography as preferred. So I
> suggested to remedy this by putting clause 1.1 into separate rule on
> orthography referenced from all other rules [concerned with text].
>
> I've got no clear reply from admins to these two proposals at all.

I think, nobody disagree that preference to any spelling should be
removed from rules.

> 3 Currently categories are done only in (and forcibly re-done into)
> alternative orthography. Admin points out that there exists bug 3311
> which prevents redirect of categories (therefore preventing making
> categories in both orthographies). I contended that in such a case the
> categories should be temporarily done only in standard orthography.
>
> Admin disagreed completely, named my proposal ?another POV?, suggested
> poll in community. Eligibility will be apparently limited to persons
> already being authors of certain number of articles before the certain
> date.

What is wrong with voting? Rules of the voting is not set yet finally
and still discussable.

> 4 Currently rules require asking ?author of article? for permission in
> order to be able to edit article when editing involves ?changing the
> orthography of the article?. I suggested cancelling this requirement
> and making one sentence the minimally possible unit of text in
> orthography different from rest of the text (allowing mix of
> orthographies in one text therefore).
>
> Admin and supporter (MaximLitvin) contend, propose to instead allow
> changing of the orthography of the complete article, together with
> keeping one orthography both in text and references (?!), and
> conditioning the very possibility of such a change by amount of text
> being newly added (variously, by some % of existing or by added being
> bigger than existing).

What is wrong with single spelling in article?

> I can't make myself to believe any more that those folks are acting in
> good faith, and I feel that the further discussion on rules in Be:
> would be pointless. Sorry to drop this in your lap in this manner, but
> it definitely seems the issue must go in your hands now.

Sorry, but I think discussion was in good faith. May be result are not
are same as you wanted, but it's how compromise could be reached. We
are still open for discussion.

With best regards,
Eugene.


body:
maru dubshinki wrote:
> I have to disagree with you here. Wikipedia is famous as the
> Encyclopedia "anyone can edit". If a random anon sees a page and tries
> to edit it, and cannot (while the main page still proclaims how
> everyone can edit), they are going to be dreadfully confused- lord
> knows enough are confused by the basic idea without adding on a second
> level of possible confusion. Perhaps two templates: the scary one for
> temporary semiprotection, and another, more discreet one for the more
> permanent ones?

I would support something like that, or better yet, perhaps having the
default for semi-protection be that the 'edit this page' tab is still
there and active, but when you click it and you can't edit, you get a
nice explanation there that yes, anyone can edit, but that for this
particular page, you can't edit it at this moment.  In this way, we only
bother telling people who are interested in editing, without having a
strange message for people who only want to read.

--
#######################################################################
#    Office: 1-727-231-0101       |  Free Culture and  Free Knowledge #
#    http://www.wikipedia.org     |     Building a free world         #
#######################################################################


body:
maru dubshinki wrote:
> On 5/20/06, Sue Anne Reed <sreed1234 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Given how many web sites require registration these days, I don't feel
>> there's a conflict between saying "anyone can edit" but you have to be
>> registered to edit to certain articles. It's not like we're saying that
>> only certain registered can edit, we would just be saying to you have to
>> register to edit.
>>
>> Sue Anne
>
> Semi-protection doesn't block just anons- it also blocks new users.
> And having to wait four days really kills the whole wikiwiki thing.

And in some cases, the whole wikiwiki thing is more trouble that it is
worth, by rather a long shot.

--Jimbo


subject: [WikiEN-l] WikiEN-l Digest, Vol 34, Issue 182

body:
On 19 May 2006 at 10:31, Molu <loom91 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>   P.S. I don't know what makes a top-posting or what doesn't. I
> don't know many different ways of sending emails.

On top-posting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top-posting
http://mailformat.dan.info/quoting/top-posting.html

On "many different ways of sending emails":
http://mailformat.dan.info/

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


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
> Well, I'm not sure if it will still be necessary after Mr. Bush leaves
> office. I think the semi-protection status should be re-evaluated by
> 2008 or 2009. The template explaining the status can go on the talk
> page in the meantime.

Yes!  I suspect that "the current US president" will almost always be
the most edited article in English Wikipedia.

> I can think of no case where we'll need semi-protection _permanently_.
> Just for a very long time, which can mean several years in extreme
> cases -- pending better technical solutions, of course.

That is probably right.  Yes.


body:
Steve Bennett wrote:
> If the semi-prot banner is removed for pages like GWB, I suggest we increase
> the friendliness of a user who does try and edit it. We do want new users,
> after all. Something like "Hi! Bet you thought Wikipedia was the
> encyclopaedia anyone can edit, right? Well, it is...but articles like this
> one are so popular that we've had to restrict it. On the other hand, there
> are over a million articles that need your help. Click here to find out
> which..."
>
> Or something.

Yeah, I am liking this idea.  Essentially the idea here it to move the
notification from the page where you read to the page where you have
attempted to edit but can't.  In this way, when someone tries to edit,
they get a friendly explanation of how to join the community.  But if
they are just trying to read, they don't have to see a notice that is
probably fairly useless and bewildering to them.

By the way, just to let everyone know, many many reporters I talk to
believe that we have permanently locked the George W. Bush entry from
editing.  The beleive this because of various bad reporting in the past,
but also because a glance at the page to someone who knows nothing about
Wikipedia leads them to think the page is locked.

--Jimbo


from_name: Alphax (Wikipedia email)

subject: [WikiEN-l] Getting rid of bad fair use

body:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
> On 5/20/06, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>> Alphax (Wikipedia email) wrote:
>>> geni wrote:
>>>> The effect will be limited. Even quite senior people don't appear to
>>>> be able to follow our copyright policy.
>>> And even those who claim they do still want to claim fair use in cases
>>> where it's plainly not.
>> If this is an oblique reference to me and the O RLY situation, I still
>> haven't come across a convincing argument for why fair use didn't apply.
>> It's hardly "plainly not" when even actual lawyers think it's fair use.
>>
>> All I've been asking for is some sort of explanation of the takedown. I
>> don't mind the image being gone for other reasons than invalid fair use,
>> if that's the case, I just want to know why.
>>
> As of now the image *is* in the article, in the form of [[Image:Orlypaper.jpg]].
>
> I suppose if you don't think the use is fair use, then the current
> image is a copyright violation of a copyright violation of a copyright
> violation.  :)
>

The newspaper image depicts the image as having gained notoriety outside
of teh internets, so it's informative, critiquing, yada yada.

(That's a "Yes, I think fair use applies now", BTW.)

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

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from_name: Brion Vibber

subject: [Wikitech-l] Special:Contributions: index missing?

body:
Timwi wrote:
> it appears that [[Special:Contributions/Timwi]] loads relatively
> quickly. However, if you choose a namespace in which I have very little
> contributions (e.g. Image talk, Category talk), it takes ages to appear.

Aye, that's why this feature was removed.

If somebody put it back, they should be shot.

> This leads me to believe that a relevant index is missing on the DB table?

The fields required to do this efficiently aren't there; the revision table has
no namespace information.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
G'day SCZenz,

> It has come to my attention lately that the speedy deletion criteria are
> being applied rather loosely in some cases.  Especially unfortunate are
> articles that are nominated for being "non-notable"; there is no such speedy
> criterion, there is only the criterion that articles about people/groups may
> be deleted if they have "no assertion of notability" whatsoever.  This is
> not just process wonkery--it is fundamendal to WP:CSD that the reason for
> deletion be totally uncontroversial, as the process is almost entirely
> without review.

I agree entirely.

> I have encountered many speedy-tagged articles that, upon a careful look,
> were either good articles or worthy of further consideration (e.g. through
> PROD).  It is incumbent on administrators who do speedy deletions to take
> such careful looks at every article; there are enough of us to take the time
> to do it right.  It would also be helpful if those tagging pages would take
> some care in what they tag, although I do understand that new pages patrol
> (for example) is a thankless and rushed job which is very important.

It's not people mis-tagging articles that bothers me: I can easily
remove the tags.  What bothers me is when:

a) an admin unthinkingly deletes it, "it's tagged; who am I to
    disagree?".  Sometimes I've seen a salvageable article while going
    through the CSD category and been busy rewriting it when another
    admin thoughtlessly deletes it; that *really* irritates me.

b) I remove the tag, and cop (at best) a polite query or (at worst)
    unfettered abuse as a result.  "It's tagged; who are YOU to remove
    it?"  It seems to be a grave insult to the CVUers and their ilk that
    an admin would dare to disregard their recommendations.  I suspect
    the only way to make them happy would be to either give them delete
    buttons themselves, or write a bot that automatically deletes any
    article that finds its way into the CSD category.

I did newpage patrol (well, I clicked on every orange bar that appeared
in CDVF and tagged as appropriate) myself before adminship was thrust
upon me like so much <ran out of steam; feel free to insert your own
simile/>.  I understand the pressures our patrollers are under.  I don't
begrudge them an improperly tagged article or two.

But those of us who come along and delete articles after they've been
tagged need to have our brains engaged before we hit that button.  And
if, instead of deleting an article, we simply remove the tag, the tagger
needs to Learn From The Experience instead of proving himself to lack
the maturity required for possession of such a button.

<snip/>

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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subject: [WikiEN-l] Speedy deletions

body:
G'day Katefan0,

> ... and don't forget our old friend the redirect.

That's another thing I love: seeing {{db|Misspelling of [[Joe Bloggs]]}}
on an article about [[Joe Boggs]].  Why not just merge them and redirect
the mispelling?

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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subject: [WikiEN-l] SPAM-LOW: Re: Message: 1 Unblock Request

body:
G'day Prasad,

> You are so insulting it is unbelievable. Ranting in a delusional manner?
>
> Holy cow. If people on the mailing list, moderators or not, cannot see
> this it is just staggering in it's implications.
>
> Yes Maggie, I agree with you, it does indeed appear that the
> higher-ups at Wikipedia have masterminded an elaborate conspiracy
> involving the Administrative cabal, the mailing-list Administrators
> and the Illuminati with the sole purpose of preventing you from
> editing Wikipedia.

Don't forget the Syndicate, the Freemasons and especially the Queen.
Oh, she's a terror, Her Maj is.

--
Mark Gallagher
"What?  I can't hear you, I've got a banana on my head!"
- Danger Mouse

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from_name: Giuseppe DAngelo

subject: [Wikipedia-l] Secret admin list

body:
It has been obvious to me for a long time that this sort of thing is quite prevalent.  On the one hand it sort of makes a mockery of the open and free principles espoused by wikipedia.  But then again, it seem an inevitable development, afterall, we all know it can't be an out and out free for all.

  So I accept that there is a place for it, but occasionally I get the feeling there is a cosy little club operating, to which not even 20,000 edits will open a door.
  Furthermore, those born prior to 1976 need not apply - open and free indeed!
  pippu d'angelo

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