body:
On 02/04/07, Mohamed Magdy <mohamed.m.k at gmail.com> wrote:
> Robert Leverington wrote:
> > Currently many users of MediaWiki are unable to use the maintenance
> > scripts due to their hosts not providing shell or telnet access - I
> > myself have this problem. I am writing to ask your opinions on
> > creating a special page (or series of special pages) to combat this
> > problem.
> >
> > I could implement it as a special page in which users fill out a form
> > and it performs the task. This would be the best solution because
> > having multiple special pages would clutter the list and probably only
> > one user would be using it.
> >
> > Although it could easily be implemented as an extension I think that
> > if it could be accessed via a single wg setting users would not come
> > to the mailing lists and IRC channel asking about how they can do such
> > a thing and improve the user experience.
> >
> > Yours,
> > Robert.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
> >
>
> It would be a nice thing..but I don't think it will be needed on
> wikimedia wikis..

This is the main reason I am asking here, it could be enabled via a
simple configuration option, e.g. $wgEnableOnlineMaintenace = true;
(by default false). If this would not be accepted into the main
codebase I would write an extension instead.

>
> Won't it time-out if used from the web?
>
> Have you tried php shell http://mgeisler.net/php-shell/
> It time-out too

The php timeout can be increased via a built in MediaWiki function.

>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

Robert.


list: wikien-l

source: pipermail-mbox

from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

body:
"David Gerard" wrote

> On 01/04/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> > On Sun, 1 Apr 2007 16:46:33 +0200, "Andries Krugers Dagneaux"
> > <andrieskd at chello.nl> wrote:
>
> > >I understand that. But topic banning an editor whose edits on that topic
> > >were desribed by the arbcom as "generally responsible" and without diffs
> > >that show disruptive editing on that topic is neither fair nor does it
> > >help the encyclopedia.
>
> > Wasn't the problem here one of conflict of interest, though?
>
>
> No, it's that the editors in question have been attempting to get
> Andries kicked off those articles for the last three years and they
> finally rules-lawyered it through.
>
> This was *not* a good ArbCom decision, not at all.

Well, since 2005, really. My position on this was made public during the case (the most recent SSB case, that is). I didn't vote for the topic ban. (This of course has not spared me criticism from User:Andries, for the unrelated comments about the actual position of AC. We see here how hard it is to help some people by actually giving them the facts.)

I think COI did enter, because the word 'activism' was used in the case; and while activism might be in some cases against 'WP is not a soapbox', in this case it is more usefully seen in the light of [[WP:COI]] under what it has to say about 'Campaigning'.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


from_name: MacGyverMagic/Mgm

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quote of the day

body:
I don't know what this is called specifically, but it's definitely a logical
fallacy.

Mgm

On 4/2/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 12:05:54 +0200, "Erik Moeller" <erik at wikimedia.org>
> wrote:
>
> >"If you use GFDL, nobody can use anything that restricts commercial
> >use. GFDL restricts knowledge."
>
> Priceless!
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Jake Nelson

subject: [WikiEN-l] Lock new article creation for three months

body:
Summary of thread:
Bad ideas:
1. Disabling page creation
2. Disabling account creation
3. Making more admin-only powers

Good ideas:
1. Shutting down AFD temporarily
2. Tagging new pages as reviewed, to reduce duplication of effort

-- Jake Nelson
[[en:User:Jake Nelson]]


list: wikitech-l

from_name: Tels

subject: [Wikitech-l] Top 10 Firefox bugs which affect MediaWiki

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Moin,

On Monday 02 April 2007 11:20:53 Mark Clements wrote:
> "Tels" <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote in
> message news:200704021316.53086 at bloodgate.com...
>
> > The TOP bug for me are the button/login bars on the top. With old
> > Firefox, the buttons "edit", "move" etc. where on the same line with
> > the "login" button (if horizontal space permitted it). Now the "login
> > link" is on it's own line, focing the other buttons down. This wastes
> > just screenspace, which is important for small screens, like laptops;
> > esp. if you have a widescreen laptop - because there is enough space
> > for both bars horizontally aligned, but less space vertically.
>
> Is that a Firefox bug, or just a change in the MW CSS?  Have you tried
> old versions of MW in the newest version of Firefox, or vice versa?

Not recently, but I noticed the change after upgrading Firefox (some years
back). I also build a website that relied on that effect (the two bars next
to each other) and upgrading Firefox "broke" this.

Konqueror did it right, back then. A quick check with current Konqueror and
current Opera now shows all of them rendering it the same, "wrong" way. So
maybe the CSS is just "wrong", and the browsers show it correctly. However,
I am no expert in CSS so cannot decide this :)

All the best,

Tels

- --
 Signed on Mon Apr  2 13:58:59 2007 with key 0x93B84C15.
 View my photo gallery: http://bloodgate.com/photos
 PGP key on http://bloodgate.com/tels.asc or per email.

 "The need for a Steam account to play HL2 is like having to login to MS
 Passport to play Minesweeper."

  -- Tels
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux)

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pGjYsYvJHDMv7w74mVjmEoz5f9oz/mRotTU+H9kzqJWsPsK4FhGyTSCcvVhTgHQt
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from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Tels wrote:
> The TOP bug for me are the button/login bars on the top. With old Firefox,
> the buttons "edit", "move" etc. where on the same line with the "login"
> button (if horizontal space permitted it). Now the "login link" is on it's
> own line, focing the other buttons down.

I just checked in Firefox 1.0.8; it looks *exactly* the same as 1.5.0.7
and 2.0.0.3. Can you clarify how old a Firefox you mean?

- -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
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Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFGEUU4wRnhpk1wk44RAoeFAJ4723oXJKEZsnCzMXEnidbhjKaGFQCfQ0Cu
rkUrckzbYJSSQNQkZ/htA6Q=
=yfoc
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subject: [Wikitech-l] Saving pages from WP with stylesheet

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Erik Moeller wrote:
> On 3/25/07, Simetrical <Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Dunno, but I'll observe that that syntax was probably used rather than
>> <link> to stop CSS 1 clients from downloading the stylesheet.
>
> Is that for bandwidth or display reasons?

To keep Netscape 4.x from completely screwing up every page's layout and
crashing on most of them.

On the one hand, occasional mild aesthetic inconvenience for a small
minority of people who use an obscure feature of some browsers...

On the other hand, complete failure of the site to function for a small
minority of people who use an older, and *almost* but not quite dead
browser.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)

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Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

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from_name: David Gerard

subject: [WikiEN-l] Fairness in Wikipedia

body:
On 02/04/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> I think COI did enter, because the word 'activism' was used in the case; and while activism might be in some cases against 'WP is not a soapbox', in this case it is more usefully seen in the light of [[WP:COI]] under what it has to say about 'Campaigning'.

In which case the editors bringing the case should *definitely* all
have been topic-banned, because they were hard-working volunteer
advocates for the cause. Which is considerably closer to any
reasonable use of the word "campaigning."

The decision is still awful, and Andries is entirely right to be
pissed off enough about it to leave.

- d.


list: foundation-l

from_name: Yann Forget

subject: [Foundation-l] A successful request not yet fulfilled

body:
Hello,

Mark Williamson wrote:
> I, for one, think it entirely unfair that you guys can just usurp a
> so-far very successful process.
>
> I think most people will agree that there were flaws with requests for
> NEW languages, but I think you will find it more difficult to find
> people who think we had any problem with Wikisource and Wikinews
> requests.
>
> I think (and this is just my opinion, but I would imagine at least
> someone out there agrees with me) that you should leave Wikinews and
> Wikisource be as they were before to process their own requests.
>
> Mark

I, for once, ;o)
agree with Mark here.
The process of new Wikisource creation is working quite well so far,
I don't see the need to change that.

Regards,

Yann


list: wikimedia-l


from_name: Erica

body:
On 4/2/07, Jake Nelson <duskwave at gmail.com> wrote:
> Summary of thread:
> Bad ideas:
> 1. Disabling page creation
> 2. Disabling account creation
> 3. Making more admin-only powers
>
> Good ideas:
> 1. Shutting down AFD temporarily
> 2. Tagging new pages as reviewed, to reduce duplication of effort
>
> -- Jake Nelson
> [[en:User:Jake Nelson]]
>

I wouldn't mind a one day/week new page hiatus. If a user tried to
create a new page, an auto-message could explain the one day/week
cleanup idea, plus "If you must write a new page, create it in your
userspace today and move it tomorrow. (+brief instructions on how to
create a user subpage)". One day/week of no new articles might give
admins a chance to gain some ground on various continually-backlogged
speedy delete cats. And people could still write new pages in their
userspace. (I am assuming this is all technically feasible.)

2 more cents,
Erica
User:Fang Aili


from_name: Mohamed Magdy

subject: [Wikitech-l] Using Special Pages for maintenance scripts

body:
Robert Leverington wrote:
> Currently many users of MediaWiki are unable to use the maintenance
> scripts due to their hosts not providing shell or telnet access - I
> myself have this problem. I am writing to ask your opinions on
> creating a special page (or series of special pages) to combat this
> problem.
>
> I could implement it as a special page in which users fill out a form
> and it performs the task. This would be the best solution because
> having multiple special pages would clutter the list and probably only
> one user would be using it.
>
> Although it could easily be implemented as an extension I think that
> if it could be accessed via a single wg setting users would not come
> to the mailing lists and IRC channel asking about how they can do such
> a thing and improve the user experience.
>
> Yours,
> Robert.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
>

It would be a nice thing..but I don't think it will be needed on
wikimedia wikis..

Won't it time-out if used from the web?

Have you tried php shell http://mgeisler.net/php-shell/
It time-out too


from_name: Platonides

body:
????????? ??????? wrote:
>> To be honest, from my point of view, as a bot operator/programmer, I am
>> quite happy with this bug.
>
> But for folks using Wikipedia in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarus,
> Bulgarian, Serbian, it is ugly.
>
> Example,
>
> http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%86%D0%B0
>
> is Main Page URL. Do you want to type it?

Then simply type http://ru.wikipedia.org/

The non-escaped title is always at the top of the page.
Also note that on the status bar the unescaped version is shown (when
you see where will a link send you), probably a great improvement.

While i agree showing the full name on the URL is much nicer when you
see the URL (eg. on a printed article), it leaves the door open for
abuse and impersonators, as you don't have a way to detect the
difference between the users (now you can go to their user page and see
the URL). I was once confused because assumed the satus bar would give
me the escaped one. If the URL is also 'niced', how to tell?

Another thing to take into account is how would url-editing work.
Currently, if i write the url in non-utf8 characters (like the common
Windows-1252), it's detected as not utf8, the non US-Ascii ones gets
escaped and i get to the desired page. If i reedit the escaped url
adding non-utf8 chars, the whole url is treated as not being in utf8, so
the already-utf8 characters are treated as native and reencoded...
landing on the wrong page. You can avoid this by rewriting the %xx with
your encoding, but if you can't see the difference, what will you do
when users get to a page title full of ? when they didn't typed that?

Platonides


from_name: Andre Engels

subject: [Foundation-l] Language Prevention Committee created

body:
2007/4/2, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:

> There are two languages, Marathi and kiRuanda that are now properly
> supported in MediaWiki. There are many more languages that demonstrate how
> bad the old procedure is for starting new projects.
>
> There is nothing stopping people working on content. We are quite content to
> have new languages start in the Incubator.

The incubator was intended to *start* languages. Not to keep them indefinitely.

> The arguments that are used to get new projects now ignore all the reasons
> why localisation is so important and why there is a language committee in
> the first place. It is made out as if the situation was so great before. We
> have had "languages" forced on us that do not exist, languages that take the
> codes because it was voted that way. We have ugly political situations like
> the Belarus where people are not willing to work together. Situations where
> a NPOV cannot be expected.

That's all good and well, and no doubt the language committee would
improve those things, but NONE of those have anything to do with
localisation. If there are reasons why localisation is important,
those are not the reasons. Do I think that localisation is important?
Yes, though not as much as you do. But I do not think that
localisation is so important that we should keep projects on hold
until it has been reached. You have not been close to convincing me
otherwise.

> It is quite clear that the situation is not good. It is equally clear that
> the solution is simple. It just takes a friendly developer to take the hour
> it takes to create all the message files in the Incubator.

Alternatively, you could let the languages go through and trust that
there is a developer who will do that some time. As simple a solution,
and one that YOU can do. Just give the languages that you think are
ready their Wikipedia, and when a developer decides that it's a good
idea to create the message file, bring it to that wiki.

> When there are no
> friendly developers willing to do this, then it is for the board to give it
> the required priority. It is ultimately the board that gave us our mandate
> we are quite happy to think outside of the box and find solutions. It is
> plain stupid to pull the requirements when the existence of the localisation
> has proven so essential in getting projects to attract new editors.

Has it? Where is your evidence? And it doesn't seem that being on the
incubator is so much better than having an own wiki either. Why force
others to do what you want before you do what others want? If it is
your job to do that....

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


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Original research or common sense inferral?

body:
On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 06:18:49 -0700, "Seraphim Blade"
<seraphimbladewikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:

>Generally, "being right" is not a defense to NOR. NOR helps to
>preserve relevance and importance of information as well as
>correctness of it. If no one else has seen fit to investigate this
>matter or publish that conclusion, why should we be the first? If the
>guy's that concerned, tell him to suggest the story to a newspaper. If
>the paper decides it's correct and important enough to publish,
>there's the source!

I completely agree.

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


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!

body:
On 2/26/07, Walter van Kalken <walter at vankalken.net> wrote:
> 1) Non Thai people will not know them so they will probably be deleted
> from commons in no time, it would take time for the Thai and other
> communities to write articles on them as info on them is scarce and in
> English virtually non existing. (of most I wouldn't even be able to give
> their names, I know they are on tv regularly though)

Clearly identify what they are on the image page and they should not
be deleted.  Let me know if you have any problems. I'd be glad to
undelete such images for you and smack whoever deleted them with a
large fish.

> 2) I have seen people "upgrade" pictures resulting in horrible colours
> on paintings and other pictures. Usually this means imho pictures get
> maimed.

This happens, yes.  I've also seen people 'enhance' images turning
them into outright fabrications.. we solve this by more understanding
and awareness in our community.. not by refusing to participate.

> 3) I do not want these pictures to be used commercially (although I
> could solve this by uploading low quality small pictures)

Uploading lower resolution images is always an option, but why do you
care?   If someone wants to pay another person for a free images, that
is their decision.  I think it's more useful to think about
"commercial use" in terms of someones ability to choose to pay someone
than in terms of someones ability to get paid. This is because, in a
free society, the price and terms of goods with zero marginal cost are
ultimately determined by the buyers not the sellers.

> I also have pictures of Indian moviestars: Dharmendra Deol, Bobby Deol ,
> Sunny Deol, Shilpa Shetty and a lot of others with whom I played in the
> movie Apne. But the above reason keeps me from uploading to commons. I
> feel that many people have pictures of stars but they hesitate to upload
> them for some of the same reasons.

We'll lets figure this out. We'd love to have more useful images.


subject: [Foundation-l] a new free image!


from_name: Seraphim Blade

body:
The harm there is exactly why we -do- prohibit original research. How
do old issues of the NYT show something in general? What if the NYT
used to have a paragraph in its style guide that said you shouldn't
use the phrase except in a few rare cases, put into place in the early
50s, changed that in the mid-80s to state that it was acceptable, and
it's been used more and more in the paper to this day? What if it was
used all over the place, and the NYT was behind the curve? You're not
a statistician (at least, I presume not), and interpretation of raw
statistics is -always- more complex than it appears, especially when
having to look for (and eliminate) potential skewing factors like the
ones I mentioned above.

On 4/2/07, wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com <wikipedia2006 at dpbsmith.com> wrote:
> > From: Guy Chapman aka JzG
>
> > Look up a fact?  No problem.  Join the dots from a series of facts you
> > looked up?  Original research, in my book.
>
> I was recently working on an article (not in Wikipedia) on the phrase "Slippery slope," which these days usually means "a course leading inexorably to disaster." I wanted to support a statement that although there _are_ old uses of the phrase in its modern meaning, it became much more popular starting around 1980.
>
> My public library (and _many_ others) provide online access to a searchable full page-image database of complete back issues of the New York Times. In a few minutes, I was able to compile this:
>
> Hits on exact phrase "slippery slope", all article types, ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2003) (a database available to patrons of many public libraries)
>
> 1857-99: 5 (average about 1 per decade)
> 1900-49: 41 (average 8.2 per decade)
> 1950-59: 11
> 1960-69: 23
> 1970-79: 36
> 1980-89: 144
> 1990-99: 402
>
> Well, can I use this in an article? Under Wikipedia's present rules, I don't think so.
>
> And yet.
>
> It is certainly original research. But it's verifiable, sensu Wikipedia, in that it the database is very widely available so it's easy to confirm my results. In fact it's easier than verifying an obscure print publication with no online copy. And, in this particular case, my assemblage of facts is intellectually honest: it is reasonable to want to know the history of the phrase's use, and this is a reasonable way to find out. This is not a selective assembly of facts made for the purpose of suggesting a biassed conclusion.
>
> And I was _not_ able to find a published source that said in so many words that the phrase bloomed in popularity around 1980.
>
> Granted this _is_ original research, what exactly is the harm in it?
>
> Other than its being the first step on a slippery slope, of course.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


from_name: Earle Martin

body:
On 02/04/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Trivia: My mum went to [[Godolphin and Latymer School]].

Small world. I went to Latymer, which is why I keep an eye on this article.

> >"No approval was obtained from the [[College of Arms]] for this new
> >shield, and it is, therefore, unauthorised by the [[Law of Arms]]."
>
> And?  It's a logo.  Why would it need to be?

Well, I raised that on the talk page, and Chelseaboy (he of the
heraldic interests) commented "It is obvious from looking at the
shield (which is illustrated in the box at the top of the article)
that it is a shield [...] newly formed shields of arms (this is a
shield bearing a chevron and a cross, which are heraldic elements)
used in England require authorisation from the College of Arms before
display".

I wonder then if the logo of the [[Ministry of Sound]] (and probably
those of many other outfits) require authorization...

> In any case, isn't he trying to use Wikipedia to fix an external problem?

Well, he may be just trying to illustrate a point about the
logo/shield; if it's factual, I have no problem with it, even if
originally motivated by a dislike of the new symbol.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


body:
On 02/04/07, Andrew Gray <shimgray at gmail.com> wrote:
> It'd be much easier for someone to write a letter to the Old
> Latymerians (or whatever) newsletter complaining about it, and cite
> that ;-)

Heh. Well, I shall probably inquire with them myself.

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: Nicholas Moreau

subject: [Foundation-l] Only 2 h 23 m downtime in 2006

body:
Congrats, that's actually quite a small amount of downtime we had.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/02/top-twenty-sites-most-downtime/

Nick


body:
On 02/04/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 06:18:49 -0700, "Seraphim Blade"
> <seraphimbladewikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> >Generally, "being right" is not a defense to NOR. NOR helps to
> >preserve relevance and importance of information as well as
> >correctness of it. If no one else has seen fit to investigate this
> >matter or publish that conclusion, why should we be the first? If the
> >guy's that concerned, tell him to suggest the story to a newspaper. If
> >the paper decides it's correct and important enough to publish,
> >there's the source!
>
> I completely agree.

Yes, this is a good call. I will remove the section in question again
(and link to this discussion in the list archives from the talk page).

--
Earle Martin
            http://downlode.org/
http://purl.org/net/earlemartin/


from_name: Mark Williamson

body:
Since I apparently hate all projects besides Wikipedia (according to
an e-mail Mr Meijssen sent me), I'll stick with a nice "ditto" instead
of rehashing all of Andre's arguments.

Nice job, Andre :-)

Mark

On 02/04/07, Andre Engels <andreengels at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2007/4/2, GerardM <gerard.meijssen at gmail.com>:
>
> > There are two languages, Marathi and kiRuanda that are now properly
> > supported in MediaWiki. There are many more languages that demonstrate how
> > bad the old procedure is for starting new projects.
> >
> > There is nothing stopping people working on content. We are quite content to
> > have new languages start in the Incubator.
>
> The incubator was intended to *start* languages. Not to keep them indefinitely.
>
> > The arguments that are used to get new projects now ignore all the reasons
> > why localisation is so important and why there is a language committee in
> > the first place. It is made out as if the situation was so great before. We
> > have had "languages" forced on us that do not exist, languages that take the
> > codes because it was voted that way. We have ugly political situations like
> > the Belarus where people are not willing to work together. Situations where
> > a NPOV cannot be expected.
>
> That's all good and well, and no doubt the language committee would
> improve those things, but NONE of those have anything to do with
> localisation. If there are reasons why localisation is important,
> those are not the reasons. Do I think that localisation is important?
> Yes, though not as much as you do. But I do not think that
> localisation is so important that we should keep projects on hold
> until it has been reached. You have not been close to convincing me
> otherwise.
>
> > It is quite clear that the situation is not good. It is equally clear that
> > the solution is simple. It just takes a friendly developer to take the hour
> > it takes to create all the message files in the Incubator.
>
> Alternatively, you could let the languages go through and trust that
> there is a developer who will do that some time. As simple a solution,
> and one that YOU can do. Just give the languages that you think are
> ready their Wikipedia, and when a developer decides that it's a good
> idea to create the message file, bring it to that wiki.
>
> > When there are no
> > friendly developers willing to do this, then it is for the board to give it
> > the required priority. It is ultimately the board that gave us our mandate
> > we are quite happy to think outside of the box and find solutions. It is
> > plain stupid to pull the requirements when the existence of the localisation
> > has proven so essential in getting projects to attract new editors.
>
> Has it? Where is your evidence? And it doesn't seem that being on the
> incubator is so much better than having an own wiki either. Why force
> others to do what you want before you do what others want? If it is
> your job to do that....
>
> --
> Andre Engels, andreengels at gmail.com
> ICQ: 6260644  --  Skype: a_engels
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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


from_name: Matthew Brown

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
On 4/2/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 10:48:30 -0700, "Matthew Brown" <morven at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >In this case, the list of cars in the show was assembled from a
> >primary source using simple criteria: any car shown was listed.
>
> Um, no.  This is a classic case of "hard cases make bad law".

I was addressing the 'original research' part of the argument; I don't
think it was original research.  It's quite likely that the list is
copyrighted, however, since it is not a factually based list.  The
argument then becomes whether quoting that list in Wikipedia is
permissible fair use (or the more restrictive UK equivalent, if you're
located there).

-Matt


subject:
[Foundation-l] [Wikisource-l] A successful request not yet
	fulfilled

body:
What I think is necessary here is for you guys to tell the developers
that it is OK for them to create new Wikisources and Wikinewses that
have gone through the local request processes and been approved there,
because those processes are well-oiled machines and there won't be any
problems from them like there have been from the Wikipedia requests
(and like there could have been from the Wiktionary requests, but
haven't been yet).

Mark

On 02/04/07, Jesse Martin (Pathoschild) <pathoschild at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> We have not usurped anything. Users may continue using the
> oldwikisource process and petitioning developers to create wikis.
> Developers have shown a disinclination to do this, which is
> understandable, but that is their free choice and not an order by the
> subcommittee.
>
> The processes should eventually be merged when the subcommittee
> process has been streamlined, but the key word is "merged". The old
> and new will be combined to keep the best of each; for example, we
> might continue using oldwikisource while throwing out the votes.
>
> I don't see the old request process as being very successful, however.
> The Old English Wikisource is being requested for closure (with near
> unanimity) months after it was requested into existence. That wiki was
> created despite the continued hosting of Old English content on the
> English Wikisource, with no ready community, and with no test project.
> Since then there has been no community and no content development. Not
> really a smashing success.
>
> * Closure request:
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Old_English_Wikisource
>
> Yours cordially,
> Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)
>
> On 4/2/07, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > Mark Williamson wrote:
> > > I, for one, think it entirely unfair that you guys can just usurp a
> > > so-far very successful process.
> > >
> > > I think most people will agree that there were flaws with requests for
> > > NEW languages, but I think you will find it more difficult to find
> > > people who think we had any problem with Wikisource and Wikinews
> > > requests.
> > >
> > > I think (and this is just my opinion, but I would imagine at least
> > > someone out there agrees with me) that you should leave Wikinews and
> > > Wikisource be as they were before to process their own requests.
> > >
> > > Mark
> >
> > I, for once, ;o)
> > agree with Mark here.
> > The process of new Wikisource creation is working quite well so far,
> > I don't see the need to change that.
> >
> > Regards,
> >
> > Yann
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikisource-l mailing list
> > Wikisource-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>

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


from_name: Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

body:
Hello,

We have not usurped anything. Users may continue using the
oldwikisource process and petitioning developers to create wikis.
Developers have shown a disinclination to do this, which is
understandable, but that is their free choice and not an order by the
subcommittee.

The processes should eventually be merged when the subcommittee
process has been streamlined, but the key word is "merged". The old
and new will be combined to keep the best of each; for example, we
might continue using oldwikisource while throwing out the votes.

I don't see the old request process as being very successful, however.
The Old English Wikisource is being requested for closure (with near
unanimity) months after it was requested into existence. That wiki was
created despite the continued hosting of Old English content on the
English Wikisource, with no ready community, and with no test project.
Since then there has been no community and no content development. Not
really a smashing success.

* Closure request:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_closing_projects/Closure_of_Old_English_Wikisource

Yours cordially,
Jesse Martin (Pathoschild)

On 4/2/07, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Mark Williamson wrote:
> > I, for one, think it entirely unfair that you guys can just usurp a
> > so-far very successful process.
> >
> > I think most people will agree that there were flaws with requests for
> > NEW languages, but I think you will find it more difficult to find
> > people who think we had any problem with Wikisource and Wikinews
> > requests.
> >
> > I think (and this is just my opinion, but I would imagine at least
> > someone out there agrees with me) that you should leave Wikinews and
> > Wikisource be as they were before to process their own requests.
> >
> > Mark
>
> I, for once, ;o)
> agree with Mark here.
> The process of new Wikisource creation is working quite well so far,
> I don't see the need to change that.
>
> Regards,
>
> Yann
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikisource-l mailing list
> Wikisource-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikisource-l
>


body:
On 4/2/07, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
> Congrats, that's actually quite a small amount of downtime we had.
>
> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/02/top-twenty-sites-most-downtime/

On thing to keep in mind, the user expirence for contributors and
anon-readers who have not edited during their browser session are
quite different...

In any case, they are reporting on 2007 year to date, not 2006.

The loss of our netblock back in aug 2006 resulted in more than 2
hours of outage alone.


from_name: William Pietri

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
Phil Sandifer wrote:
> The issue becomes how it's being reported, then. Is the list of cars
> being compiled in relation to cars, or in relation to the list-
> makers? If it's the latter, it's much more like FA cup results.
>

I'm not quite following.

Are you saying that if we are compiling the list rather than them, then
it's more like putting up the game scores?

That makes some sense to me. We don't kick at plot summaries. Or in TV
show episode pages, we list the songs used for shows where music is a
significant element. That seems to be documenting somebody else's
creative work rather than stealing it, which seems legit to me. IANAL,
natch.

William


body:
On 4/2/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> Yup.  Sadly, without rules like that, the editors who self-evidently
> lack Clue will fight tooth and nail to keep crap, on the grounds that
> there is no policy which says it must go.

Unfortunately, creating policy that works with such people is a
constant whac-a-mole, and with unfortunate side effects to editors
with clue.

-Matt


from_name: The Cunctator

body:
On 4/2/07, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
> I find the emphasis on PR troubling.  Wikipedia is a work in progress
> and is emphatically not finished.  We won't be able to fake this
> convincingly anyway, so why are we thinking of trying?

Because after 6 years, we have reached the End of History.


body:
On 4/2/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> William Pietri wrote
>
> > That's not to say it isn't the right thing to do if the model really is
> > a failure. But I'm not there yet.
>
> The original WP wiki model was
>
> :Talk pages + NPOV + IP edits allowed
>
> and was a roaring success. So much so that
>
> :FTA (Floor the accelerator)
>
> was added to enWP. That gets us to where we are today in the somewhat modified form
>
> :Talk pages + dispute resolution + NPOV + NOR + RS + BLP +  no IP page creation + COI + ... + TMOO (too many other acronyms)
>
> but FTA still applies pretty much to enWP, though Jimbo was for easing off last year.
>
> It looks like FTA has had its day. That surely is the main conclusion from this discussion. There are numerous ways to look at this change (of which locking new articles would seem to be one of the least flexible and attractive).

I soundly disagree with you that's the main conclusion from this discussion.

In fact, looking at your above summary, I might think the proper
conclusion to draw is that the bureaucratic overhead of contributing
to Wikipedia has grown out of control.


from_name: Thomas Dalton

subject: [WikiEN-l] Quote of the day

body:
> I don't know what this is called specifically, but it's definitely a logical
> fallacy.

I believe the technical term is "utter nonsense".


from_name: Brion Vibber

body:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Rob Church wrote:
> On 02/04/07, Tels wrote:
>> I really don't see how software that outdated, buggy, insecure and
>> incomplete like Netscape 4.0 can even be considered to be supported.
>> However, that is not my decision to make.
>
> If we stopped supporting outdated, bug-ridden, insecure and incomplete
> browsers, we'd lose the vast number of users who browse Wikipedia,
> voluntarily and involuntarily, via Internet Explorer.

Ba-dum ching!

Seriously though, given the choice between a mild aesthetic change for
saving web pages to disk in some browsers (who actually does this
anyway?) and *completely destroying the ability to view the site* for
people stuck on older machines...

Well policy-wise I guess it comes down to
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_be_a_dick :)

Of course it'd be *nice* to cleanly work with the save function of more
popular browsers, but as long as we're forced to make the choice, not
crashing the old-but-hard-to-upgrade minority still gets priority.

- -- brion vibber (brion @ wikimedia.org)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.3 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFGEVspwRnhpk1wk44RAkhuAJ9h7qTzBxlDaTkCalFLirwhdrrf3ACgghVy
Y94IFvhpOiaWfgMOiPqd/sI=
=BPMU
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


from_name: Fastfission

subject:
[WikiEN-l] Cool tool that lets you check for copyright renewals on
	books

body:
This is a new, neat tool that helps you find whether certain US
published books are out of copyright even if they are published after
1923. As most copyright savvy people know, there was a period of time
after that in which copyrights had to be officially renewed to stay
valid, meaning that a lot of works published after that time are
officially in the public domain in the United States. But these are
hard to find, since renewal notices are hard to peruse and in many
cases not machine-searchable at all.

But no longer! Stanford has created a Copyright Renewal Database,
making it quite easy to check if any book published first in the U.S.
between 1923 and 1963 are in the public domain. It could potentially
clear up copyright ambiguities for certain things taken from these
works.

http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/

FF


from_name: Sam Korn

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

references:
<4ln1139lv0ous9kou0fqe2cnm6h6i5d1c7@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140704020403w761b6a7av3cf6cd0d26dc2453@mail.gmail.com>
	<ulp1131qd7fpnrpir0md9phvuo6n6ro0gf@4ax.com>
	<46111F07.6050106@shaw.ca>

body:
On 4/2/07, Bryan Derksen <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
> And I agree with David, this really looks like you're just searching for
> any excuse you can get to get rid of that list. Copyvio and OR are
> almost diametrically opposed to each other as reasons to delete
> something; copyvio means it's a direct copy of something creative that
> someone else came up with and OR means it's something creative that was
> come up with ''de novo''. They can't both be true. Accusing this stuff
> of being both in the same message seems like you're just throwing
> everything against the wall to see what sticks.

I read Guy's argument to be "if collating the information is creative,
it's original research; if it's not, it's a copyright infringement;
either way, delete".

Which is reasonable.

The counter-argument is for how it can be non-creative and exempt from
copyright.  I don't have that argument.

--
Sam


from_name: Luiz Augusto

body:
On 4/2/07, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> I also agree with this, and see no need to merge the
> process into Incubator.
>
> Birgitte SB

Sorry, but I don't see anyone trying to move text units from the
[[:oldwikisource:]] to the [[:incubator:]]. I think that [[:oldwikisource:]]
is working as a great place for texts with no sufficient users to make a new
community getting hosted *and* a Incubator-like for new Wikisource wikis and
no one (neither I) is trying to change it.

I have proposed at
http://wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:Scriptorium#Wikisource:Language_domain_requests_versus_m:Meta:Language_proposal_policyto
move the *requests* for new Wikisources to the Meta-Wiki, due to the
current delay to open any new wikis using a simple vote. I'm dejected to see
someone requesting to open a new wiki since the July 2006 and up today
voting on it [1], awainting to start to work on a specific wiki.

[1]
http://wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Wikisource:Language_domain_requests&diff=next&oldid=215486


body:
On 4/2/07, charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> "The Cunctator" wrote
>
> > I soundly disagree with you that's the main conclusion from this discussion.
>
> I'm open to other conclusions.
>
> > In fact, looking at your above summary, I might think the proper
> > conclusion to draw is that the bureaucratic overhead of contributing
> > to Wikipedia has grown out of control.
>
> It probably is harder to be a newbie. But you can still turn up and edit 99.9% of the articles without having an account. It is not plausible to me that there is a solution to compiling the largest repository (of its kind) of human knowledge ever, without some sort of trade-off. 'Open for business' is still hanging there on the door.
>
I think a powerful fallacy in your line of reasoning is the assumption
that the encyclopedia in its current state is anywhere near the point
of being comprehensive.

We should be expending every effort to prevent Wikipedia from being
less welcoming or harder for newbies. Signs that Wikipedia is becoming
less welcoming for newbies indicate the primary points of decay in the
system.


subject: [Foundation-l] Language Review Committee

body:
> The requirement that people starting new Wiki's actually BE NATIVE
> SPEAKERS OF THE LANGUAGE AS A
> FIRST OR SECOND LANGUAGE AND ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO SPEAK OR WRITE IT

Nobody disputes this. I don't think anyone arguing here actually has
their own project proposal. All of the projects under discussion: the
Kabyle Wiki, the Latgalian Wiki, the Saterlandic Wiki, et al., are all
supported and proposed by native speakers of these languages.

> that a MEDIAWIKI
> MESSAGES FILE be created is very reasonable and a great barrier to entry

It is this requirement that is currently disputed.

Also, please don't use so many caps, it is considered to be the
internet equivalent of "yelling" and is totally unnecessary.

Mark

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


from_name: Jeff V. Merkey

subject: [Foundation-l]  Language Review Committee

body:
Mark Williamson wrote:

>Since I apparently hate all projects besides Wikipedia (according to
>an e-mail Mr Meijssen sent me), I'll stick with a nice "ditto" instead
>of rehashing all of Andre's arguments.
>
>Nice job, Andre :-)
>
>Mark
>
>
>
This thread has gone on for some time with very little constructive
suggestions, and lots of accusations flying back and forth.
I am not certain I understand all the objections.

The requirement that people starting new Wiki's actually BE NATIVE
SPEAKERS OF THE LANGUAGE AS A
FIRST OR SECOND LANGUAGE AND ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO SPEAK OR WRITE IT and
that a MEDIAWIKI
MESSAGES FILE be created is very reasonable and a great barrier to entry
to keep out those who are not competent with a
target language.  It seems those complaining about it the most are folks
who may not be fluent enough to be able to complete
a Messages File for MediaWiki.

Just because people have a few college classes in "outer frabanian" or
some other obscure languages does not warrant the foundation
going through the expense and time of setting up a wiki for a group of
folks who A) are not part of the culture the language
is concerned with B) don't speak it or are immersed in it well enough to
understand the underlying cultural impacts.

The whole idea is to promote other languages to a target audience of
speakers, not to create "busy projects" for folks with nothing
better to do with their time who are marginally interested in a
particular language.

Jeff


list: commons-l

from_name: Platonides

subject: [Commons-l] InstantCommons demo

body:
Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> We need to be mindful that one of the major differentiators between
> commons and other user contributed online image repositories is our
> responsiveness to copyright infringement concerns. We are remarkably
> more responsive than most other user contributed image repositories,
> and and automated image-live-mirror system without automated
> revocation puts that status in jeopardy.

I think the problem is that our image table has no metadata information
about the image, it only knows if we have it or not. We would need at
least another bit: a good/bad flag.
We could have more states:
- Not found.
- Untagged/Unknown.
- Copyright violation.
- No source/license.
- Fair use
- Non suitable license for commons (nd, nc...)
- Duplicated
- Superseded
- Free license

Added within the templates we use, the change could be transparent for
the users.

They could even be available for the deleted images (identified by their
sha1 on the FileStore).

When we have this data ready we will be able to do a better job.
Images without a valid license wouldn't be shared via IntantCommons, and
could apply to WMF projects too (can't show the image because it doesn't
have enough information, give it a "Copyrighted" style...).

InstantantCommons users should check (with a maintencance script) their
images are still free, and decide upon the reason (eg. delete fair use,
keep superseded) what to do. We should also provide an automatic system
to automatically check the files once a month, with 'proper' defaults
(they will always be able to keep violations, but don't make easy that
configuration).


from_name: charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com

body:
William Pietri wrote

> That's not to say it isn't the right thing to do if the model really is
> a failure. But I'm not there yet.

The original WP wiki model was

:Talk pages + NPOV + IP edits allowed

and was a roaring success. So much so that

:FTA (Floor the accelerator)

was added to enWP. That gets us to where we are today in the somewhat modified form

:Talk pages + dispute resolution + NPOV + NOR + RS + BLP +  no IP page creation + COI + ... + TMOO (too many other acronyms)

but FTA still applies pretty much to enWP, though Jimbo was for easing off last year.

It looks like FTA has had its day. That surely is the main conclusion from this discussion. There are numerous ways to look at this change (of which locking new articles would seem to be one of the least flexible and attractive).

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


body:
Erik Moeller wrote:
>> Dunno, but I'll observe that that syntax was probably used rather than
>> <link> to stop CSS 1 clients from downloading the stylesheet.
>
> Is that for bandwidth or display reasons? It would be lovely if we
> could work around this issue in Firefox and IE somehow, as it directly
> impacts the usefulness of saved pages for millions of readers. Aside
> from the relation between layout and readability, a person who has no
> idea what a stylesheet is may, from the very drastic visual
> differences, infer that something went seriously wrong with the saving
> process, and just give up.

In fact it did go wrong. They may give up if they want, but they will
surely notice that the page content is saved (which imho is what they
will want).

They aren't bandwidth reasons, but compatibility ones.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
Bryan Derksen wrote

>OR doesn't ban any conceivable creative act or we'd be in serious
> trouble. Its scope has crept larger over the years, but I still think
> it's stretching it rather far out of the bounds of common sense to claim
> that watching a set of shows and noting down a list of all the cars that
> are covered in them is OR.

Collation without selection or interpretation is not (usually) original research. It is adjacent to it: take a list of collated names, separate out men and women (for example) and you may have done some original research; the bare presentation may 'tell a story' against our content rules. The hypothetical (I hope) TV watcher shouldn't be trying to present a thesis that the program is favouring Japanese cars ...

As usual, I'm not much interested in drawing the line more precisely.

Charles

-----------------------------------------
Email sent from www.virginmedia.com/email
Virus-checked using McAfee(R) Software and scanned for spam


body:
Also, I'm wondering if you might not have an underlying hidden reason
for this message; it seems to be a veiled attack on my involvement
with the Navajo Wikipedia.

1) The Wikipedia existed already before I did anything; it was just 100% empty.
2) I figured that minimal, poorly-written content made the place more
inviting than 0 content.
3) As far as I can tell, my Navajo proficiency is still greater than
your own, and you have yet to produce any tangible results re:nv.wp,
despite your assertion that you and I are no longer the only people
working there - a look at Special:Recentchanges reveals that the only
recent edits have been vandalism, bot edits, and my reversion of
vandalism.
4) I would never had requested a Navajo Wikipedia if I had had the
opportunity, precisely for the reasons you have outlined. Last year, I
took 2 semesters of the O'odham language taught by Sharon Selestewa
and Gary "Ju?um" Frederick. I have not requested a Wikipedia in that
language, nor do I plan to, although I think such a site would be
wonderful.
5) Your indirect labelling of American indigenous languages as
"obscure" shows how much of an activist of language use and
reclamation you are...

Mark

On 02/04/07, Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com> wrote:
> > The requirement that people starting new Wiki's actually BE NATIVE
> > SPEAKERS OF THE LANGUAGE AS A
> > FIRST OR SECOND LANGUAGE AND ACTUALLY BE ABLE TO SPEAK OR WRITE IT
>
> Nobody disputes this. I don't think anyone arguing here actually has
> their own project proposal. All of the projects under discussion: the
> Kabyle Wiki, the Latgalian Wiki, the Saterlandic Wiki, et al., are all
> supported and proposed by native speakers of these languages.
>
> > that a MEDIAWIKI
> > MESSAGES FILE be created is very reasonable and a great barrier to entry
>
> It is this requirement that is currently disputed.
>
> Also, please don't use so many caps, it is considered to be the
> internet equivalent of "yelling" and is totally unnecessary.
>
> Mark
>
> --
> Refije dirije lanm? yo paske nou posede pw?p bato.
>

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


from_name: David Gerard

body:
On 02/04/07, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:

> I, for once, ;o)
> agree with Mark here.
> The process of new Wikisource creation is working quite well so far,
> I don't see the need to change that.

The statements of some of the language subcommittee in this
connection, however, read rather too much like bureaucratic empire
building. I would hope this is not in fact the motivation, and that
furthermore they will proceed to act in a manner that does not
resemble empire building.

- d.


from_name: Guy Chapman aka JzG

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:19:35 -0600, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>I see nothing wrong with Wikipedia being the first source to bring
>together a group of facts from disparate sources

[[WP:SYNTH]] does, I think.

[[WP:ATT]] talks a lot about *secondary* sources.  This is collected
by watching *primary* sources.  And the categorisation in the four
categories of coolness is the creative work of the programme makers.

You seem to be under the impression that I am so bored and underworked
that I can go cruising round looking for things to build up into
problems.  If I want some Wikiwork to do all I need do is log on to
OTRS, I have no need to go looking for problems.  That said, when I
find them, I try to deal with them.

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


from_name: Andrew Gray

body:
On 02/04/07, Earle Martin <wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:

> > And?  It's a logo.  Why would it need to be?
>
> Well, I raised that on the talk page, and Chelseaboy (he of the
> heraldic interests) commented "It is obvious from looking at the
> shield (which is illustrated in the box at the top of the article)
> that it is a shield [...] newly formed shields of arms (this is a
> shield bearing a chevron and a cross, which are heraldic elements)
> used in England require authorisation from the College of Arms before
> display".
>
> I wonder then if the logo of the [[Ministry of Sound]] (and probably
> those of many other outfits) require authorization...

I'm not sure it's so much "require authorisation" as making the point
that it *isn't* a shield of arms. It looks like one, it feels like
one, but it *isn't* one. My understanding is that if you're using it
as a shield, it has to be authorised; in this case, it isn't, so it's
simply a pretty and confusing logo.

Really depends what you present it as, I suppose.

Something similar happened with the [[University of Durham]]; it
remarketed itself under a new name and a new badge recently, but the
official crest stayed the same.

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


body:
On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 14:48:24 +0100, "Earle Martin"
<wikipedia at downlode.org> wrote:

>Well, I raised that on the talk page, and Chelseaboy (he of the
>heraldic interests) commented "It is obvious from looking at the
>shield (which is illustrated in the box at the top of the article)
>that it is a shield [...] newly formed shields of arms (this is a
>shield bearing a chevron and a cross, which are heraldic elements)
>used in England require authorisation from the College of Arms before
>display".

I don't think a logo is necessarily a shield of arms.

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


body:
On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 10:43:59 -0400, Phil Sandifer
<Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

>>> Generally, "being right" is not a defense to NOR. NOR helps to
>>> preserve relevance and importance of information as well as
>>> correctness of it. If no one else has seen fit to investigate this
>>> matter or publish that conclusion, why should we be the first? If the
>>> guy's that concerned, tell him to suggest the story to a
>>> newspaper. If
>>> the paper decides it's correct and important enough to publish,
>>> there's the source!

>> I completely agree.

>I completely disagree.
>Straightforward interpretation of primary sources is not original
>research. It never has been, and it needs to remain that way because
>of the number of notable articles about which there are not good or
>usable comprehensive secondary sources.

So: the user looks at the logo, states that it's a shield, *therefore*
it is a shield of arms, *therefore* it requires to be approved, it is
not on the list, *therefore* it is not approved, *therefore* it is not
pukka.  There are enough links in the chain of logic there from source
to conclusion that it's reasonable in this case to require some
secondary sources.

Look up a fact?  No problem.  Join the dots from a series of facts you
looked up?  Original research, in my book.

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


from_name: silvia

subject: [Commons-l] Unsubscribe from the mailing list

body: Unsubscribe from the mailing list


from_name: Bryan Derksen

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 10:37:57 -0700 (PDT), Ken Arromdee
> <arromdee at rahul.net> wrote:
>
>> Procedures like making simple logical deductions, arranging in alphabetical
>> order, or collecting lists of items are not interpretations.
>
> Not always, anyway.  Lists of people by sexuality or ethnicity, for
> example, have been known to stray into the area of creative
> interpretation.

That's a case where subjective interpretation may be necessary in order
to determine whether an item is a member of the list.

In this case, the criterion for list membership is "has been on the Top
Gear Cool Wall". This is no more a matter of subjective interpretation
than coming up with a cast list for an ongoing TV show.

If there's a show where season 1 stars Joe Bloe and Jane Foo, and season
2 stars Jane Foo and Billy dePlume, would it be original research to
have the cast list

* Joe Bloe
* Jane Foo
* Billy dePlume

in the article about that show, even if nobody else had ever published
the list in a secondary source before?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
Matthew Brown wrote:
> I was addressing the 'original research' part of the argument; I don't
> think it was original research.  It's quite likely that the list is
> copyrighted, however, since it is not a factually based list.  The
> argument then becomes whether quoting that list in Wikipedia is
> permissible fair use (or the more restrictive UK equivalent, if you're
> located there).

It seems analogous to listing the recipients of other awards, which
we've done quite freely throughout Wikipedia. If listing award
recipients violates the copyright of the award-givers in an
impermissible way this could have some rather drastic effects on other
articles.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question ("compilation copyright")

body:
On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:34:03 -0600, Bryan Derksen
<bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:

>But if this list was compiled by Wikipedia editors (as JzG claimed when
>arguing that it's OR) then the _editors_ own the compilation copyright
>and are perfectly within their rights to release it under the GFDL.

No.  The list exists in the form of a series of judgments made by the
show's presenters, to categorise various cars in various places.  The
Cool Wall is the Top Gear "car coolness" chart, just as the 100
greatest people list is the author's own view and can't be reproduced
without violating his copyright.

The reason you have to watch shows is that they blank it at the start
of each series, cars move down or up sometimes, and they don't publish
the list on the website.  It's not that big a thing that they consider
it worth republishing, I think.

It's still the Top Gear Cool Wall, as arbitrarily decided by Top Gear
presenters on the Top Gear show.  I'd need a pretty compelling
argument that this was not covered by copyright, and I've yet to see
one.  Which is not to say none exists, I just have yet to see one.

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


from_name: John Vandenberg

body:
On 4/2/07, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The "save page" issue gave me the idea that we could submit an
> official input from the WMF to the Mozilla Foundation on 10 key issues
> that affect users of MediaWiki (an thereby, WMF). We have a fairly
> good relationship with Mozilla & I think they'd be willing to give
> these issues some priority if we ask nicely. A quick search on
> bugzilla.mozilla.org suggests there are plenty of issues; if someone
> wants to take the lead on this, I've started a stub here:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_10_Firefox_bugs

Nice idea; maintaining a list of commonly encountered bugs on wiki
should help reduce the number of dups raised on b.m.o (see Bug 372474)
by wiki users.

--
John


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 15:14:14 -0700, William Pietri
> <william at scissor.com> wrote:
>
>> Are you saying that if we are compiling the list rather than them, then
>> it's more like putting up the game scores?
>> That makes some sense to me. We don't kick at plot summaries. Or in TV
>> show episode pages, we list the songs used for shows where music is a
>> significant element. That seems to be documenting somebody else's
>> creative work rather than stealing it, which seems legit to me. IANAL,
>> natch.
>
> A bi like documenting a book by reproducing it in its entirety :-)

No, we're not reproducing the contents of Top Gear in its entirety. Not
even remotely close.

Is <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/79th_Academy_Awards> a reproduction of
the 79th Academy Awards show in its entirety? It lists the winners.


from_name: Stephen Bain

subject: [WikiEN-l] Weekly cycles to Wikipedia traffic

body:
On 4/2/07, Daniel R. Tobias <dan at tobias.name> wrote:
> Looking at the Alexa stats for Wikipedia:
> http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=wikipedia.org

I prefer our own stats. The graphs are much nicer, and there's other
data (which cluster the request is to, for example) which proves
instrumental in my analysis.

This is the latest weekly graph for requests:

http://hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org/~leon/stats/reqstats/reqstats-weekly.png

...and here's the latest monthly graph:

http://hemlock.knams.wikimedia.org/~leon/stats/reqstats/reqstats-monthly.png

Note that the week (maroon line) begins on a Monday. The highest
traffic is Monday to Thursday, and sometimes to Friday, with lower
traffic on weekends. The weighted peak each day, across all clusters,
is around 12:00 to 18:00 UTC.

Take a look at the weekly graph. You'll see that the knams and
knams-img clusters peak earlier in the day, maybe 12:00 UTC, while the
pmtpa and images clusters peak later, maybe 18:00 UTC. It's hard to
see when the yaseo and yaseo-img clusters peak, but if you look
closely, they peak at maybe 06:00 UTC. Lopar doesn't make it into the
graphs

This might not make much sense until you consider that the pmtpa and
images clusters are in Florida (pmtpa stands for Powermedium, Tampa),
the knams and knams-img clusters are at Kennisnet in the Netherlands
(knams is Kennisnet, Amsterdam) and the yaseo and yaseo-img clusters
are in Seoul (yaseo is Yahoo!, Seoul).

My theory is that more people are using Wikipedia at work and during
school hours than they are in their own time. The various clusters
serve traffic closest to them at different times in the UTC day, but
always corresponding to the local middle-of-the-day period.

--
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

references:
<4ln1139lv0ous9kou0fqe2cnm6h6i5d1c7@4ax.com>
	<fbad4e140704020403w761b6a7av3cf6cd0d26dc2453@mail.gmail.com>
	<ulp1131qd7fpnrpir0md9phvuo6n6ro0gf@4ax.com>
	<46111F07.6050106@shaw.ca>
	<fea213pr58fq7tbjvs8n2lrjfq99ff8nno@4ax.com>
	<56B5C430-6A31-4442-814E-5F2B2C92F8B4@gmail.com>

body:
On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 12:11:49 -0400, Phil Sandifer
<Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:

>Personally, I advocate following the last good version here, which is
>to say, continuing as we were instead of paying heed to people who
>nitpicked this important qualification out of existence in favor of a
>guideline on how to write a bad encyclopedia.

In other words, you prefer to be able to draw entirely from primary
sources where no reliable secondary sources exist.  Which we already
know, of course.  That is a matter of Wikiphilosophy.

It doesn't deal with the fact that we are republishing a
categorisation of vehicles originally presented by someone else, in
its entirety.  I don't know of any other media where anybody on this
list would seriously argue that presenting the entirety of the
contents of some recently published primary source not in the public
domain, was acceptable.

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


subject:
[WikiEN-l] So as not to destroy the Wikipedia in order to save
	it:

body:
Andrew Gray wrote:
> Doesn't require "stable versions", even, just a clearer segregation of
> drafts and published articles. 'Course, how we keep it up to date is a
> good question...

Since stable versions appears to finally be on the verge of actually
being implemented, how about waiting to see what we can do with that
first? It'd be much easier to transfer articles back and forth between
"dev" and "live" branches if all that needed to be done was to fiddle
with flags in the revision history.


from_name: Ken Arromdee

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
On Mon, 2 Apr 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> >Procedures like making simple logical deductions, arranging in alphabetical
> >order, or collecting lists of items are not interpretations.
> Not always, anyway.  Lists of people by sexuality or ethnicity, for
> example, have been known to stray into the area of creative
> interpretation.

That's because the individual items in the list are interpretations, not
because collecting a list is a type of interpretation.


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
On Mon, 2 Apr 2007, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> If, on the other
> hand, we argue that it is not a copyright violation because the list
> itself is not presented as part of the show's content, then the list
> in the article is a novel synthesis from original materials.

That doesn't follow, because Wikipedia's definition of "novel synthesis"
isn't a legal definition.  It's entirely plausible that a list can be "novel"
in a legal sense, yet non-novel by Wikipedia standards.

This smells highly of an attempt to delete listcrufy by whatever means and
stretching definitions.  I've seen a lot of stretched definitions lately,
and they can really hurt us in the future.  You are creating Wikipedia's
Commerce Clause.


body:
Seraphim Blade wrote:
> One can use editorial judgment regarding how to present sourced
> information coherently and logically without original research.

Quite true, I've never felt otherwise.

But why can this only apply to secondary sources (as you appear to imply
in some of your other postings on this thread) and not also primary
ones? I've done plenty of work on Wikipedia with primary sources that's
required editorial judgment and I can't think of any instances where
it's been disputed.


from_name: Phil Sandifer

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
On Apr 2, 2007, at 5:34 PM, Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:

> On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 13:13:10 -0400, Phil Sandifer
> <Snowspinner at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The issue becomes how it's being reported, then. Is the list of cars
>> being compiled in relation to cars, or in relation to the list-
>> makers? If it's the latter, it's much more like FA cup results.
>
> The article is on the Top Gear Cool Wall.  It lists the cars which Top
> Gear put on the Top Gear Cool Wall, grouped by the section of the wall
> in which the Top Gear presenters and audience decided to place them.
> It is broadcast as part of Top Gear, a copyright BBC programme.  There
> is no objective standard by which the list could be independently
> derived, the way it is derived is an intrinsic part of the Top Gear
> show.  Specifically, one of the criteria is "would Kristin Scott
> Thomas be seen driving this?"  And this is not based on asking her, as
> was made abundantly clear when she appeared on the show and trashed a
> number of the cars which Clarkson had rated as cool using the Scott
> Thomas test.
>
> Put that way it looks a bit less ambiguous than even I had thought...

I disagree entirely. If this is a list within an article on the
content of the list then I don't see a meaningful difference between
it and the FA cup results being yanked from the FA website. In both
cases we're taking primary source information directly. We're not
offering it as a list about the coolness of the cars - we're offering
it as information about the tastes of the cool wall, which is wholly
sensible for an article about the Cool Wall.

I'd agree with you entirely if we were talking about cars here, but
we're not - we're talking about the ranking system itself. Thus the
subjective judgment of the rankings is immaterial to the discussion.

-Phil


from_name: Nick Jenkins

body:
> The "save page" issue gave me the idea that we could submit an
> official input from the WMF to the Mozilla Foundation on 10 key issues
> that affect users of MediaWiki (an thereby, WMF). We have a fairly
> good relationship with Mozilla & I think they'd be willing to give
> these issues some priority if we ask nicely. A quick search on
> bugzilla.mozilla.org suggests there are plenty of issues; if someone
> wants to take the lead on this, I've started a stub here:
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Top_10_Firefox_bugs

I did a quick search on Mozilla's bugzilla - restricted to bugs logged against
Firefox, and that are UNCONFIRMED / NEW / ASSIGNED / REOPENED / VERIFIED
[i.e. not RESOLVED or CLOSED], and where any comment contains the word
"wikipedia", and where it has more than 2 votes [to cut out the stuff that's
not impacting too many people].

That gives 17 bugs: http://tinyurl.com/34qsov

Scanning quickly through those gives some issues which look to no longer
affect the wikipedia, some which are specific to Linux and where the
Wikipedia is just used as an example, some that include a Wikipedia
article as a reference, etc.

Probably the one that most seemed like a potential for the list was
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=366797 ( Revise the Location Bar )
which seems to cover not showing unreadable URLs in the address bar, like:
http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D1%96%D0%BA%D1%96%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D1%96%D1%8F
... and instead showing stuff like: http://uk.wikipedia.org/wiki/?????????
(and if that URL gets mangled by some email software, it was a 9 letter Ukrainian
word, written in a non-ASCII alphabet). But the point is, if you spoke Ukrainian,
you could probably read the second version, versus having no hope of reading the
urlencoded version. Of course, there are security concerns about non-ASCII
alphabets that contain characters that look similar to ASCII ones, especially
in the domain name portion, but presumably these can be resolved somehow
(e.g. there's something similar in operation now I think for detecting very
similar looking Wikipedia usernames, including using non-ASCII chars).

All the best,
Nick.


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 18:18:17 +0100, "David Gerard" <dgerard at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> This appears to be the sort of obsession with replacing editorial
>> judgement with rules that makes Wikipedia into a red tape obstacle
>> course.
>
> Yup.  Sadly, without rules like that, the editors who self-evidently
> lack Clue will fight tooth and nail to keep crap, on the grounds that
> there is no policy which says it must go.

I think it's more likely that they disagree with the premise that it
actually _is_ crap. And they very well might be right since labeling
something "crap" can be highly subjective. Assume good faith, please.


body:
Guy Chapman aka JzG wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:34:03 -0600, Bryan Derksen
> <bryan.derksen at shaw.ca> wrote:
>
>> But if this list was compiled by Wikipedia editors (as JzG claimed when
>> arguing that it's OR) then the _editors_ own the compilation copyright
>> and are perfectly within their rights to release it under the GFDL.
>
> No.  The list exists in the form of a series of judgments made by the
> show's presenters, to categorise various cars in various places.  The
> Cool Wall is the Top Gear "car coolness" chart, just as the 100
> greatest people list is the author's own view and can't be reproduced
> without violating his copyright.

So I take it you'll be putting
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/79th_Academy_Awards_nominees_and_winners>
up for deletion, then? That list also records a copyrighted series of
judgments. Doesn't matter if it's more widely known, it's still
copyrighted under this interpretation.

You're taking an extreme fundamentalist position here that IMO can't
possibly work if Wikipedia is to have meaningful coverage of anything
post-1920s.


from_name: Brianna Laugher

body:
Hi,

Regarding this, there is something I don't quite understand. zh-cn and
zh-tw show similar translation completion stats of about 35%, but if I
go to zh.wikipedia.org, I sincerely doubt I will find many English
system messages.

So is the problem that some projects don't propagate their changes
from the MediaWiki namespace back to the MessagesXX.php files (which
is what "qualifies" as being translated)?

I think it must be. In the stats dv has 0% but dv.wikipedia.org looks
pretty sweet. certainly more than 0%. :)

So, is there some reason it would be a bad idea to run a script to
gather up these messages and just make the MessagesXX.php from them?
Could it really be so hard?? (I mean, Unicode aside... ok, maybe it
could be...)

cheers
Brianna
user:pfctdayelise

PS> I have a suspicion MediaWiki is the most i18sed software out
there, open source or otherwise. does anyone know of any more complete
or comprehensively translated software?

On 02/04/07, Titoxd at Wikimedia <titoxd.wikimedia at gmail.com> wrote:
> Last I had seen, you could get most of the messages from the local Special:Allmessages page, with the output format set to PHP. Either way, having an extension is always cool. ;)
>
> By the way, if anyone is curious about this, but don't know if their language is fully translated, they can check the http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Localization_statistics page, which is almost self-explanatory...
>
> Another way to get internationalization of messages is through BugZilla. It isn't as efficient as sending the message file, but it is better than having no file...
>
> ???????,
>
> Titoxd.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:foundation-l-bounces at lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Rob Church
> Sent: Monday, April 02, 2007 12:24 AM
> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org; mediawiki-i18n at lists.wikimedia.org
> Subject: [Foundation-l] MediaWiki i18n "call to arms"
>
> Hello, bon jour, guten tag, saluton, etc.
>
> I can't greet everyone fairly, because I don't speak 200-odd languages.
>
> Unfortunately, MediaWiki doesn't, either, and that's what this email's
> all about.
>
> I'm well aware that foundation-l has had a recent, er, "heated
> discussion" about internationalising the software with respect to
> starting new wikis, and I'd rather not stir up a beehive with regards
> to that.
>
> We've got some fantastic people working on the internationalisation
> front for MediaWiki; credit must go to Niklas Laxstr?m for his
> patient, unending work in this field. I'd also like to mention Rotem
> Liss, who has been providing updates for the Hebrew language for a
> long period, now, as well as our volunteers giving us updates in
> German, Russian, Chinese and Japanese; a big, firm "thanks" is in
> order.
>
> The problem is that we don't have all the bases covered; there are
> vast numbers of languages not being maintained, and that's a bit of a
> problem for a software product that's supporting an organisation with
> international goals in mind.
>
> While individual communities can and do perform translations in their
> MediaWiki namespaces, reliance on this means that each new wiki we
> launch needs to perform this step, as opposed to having the interface
> available in their language, from the fore. I believe that not having
> software that speaks to you in your language is an immense barrier to
> contribution.
>
> I'd therefore like to rally a call to arms; we need translators!
> Thanks to (again, what an i18n legend this dude is) Nikerabbit's work
> on Betawiki (http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/) means we will (I
> hope) soon have a clean extension on the Wikimedia Incubator which
> will make this stuff easier; it's the same process as editing the
> MediaWiki namespace now, except what we get out of it allows us to
> tweak and bundle up the translations into the right form for MediaWiki
> to use.
>
> Of course, if you're able to get to grips with our message file format
> and you can work a Subversion client, you are more than welcome to
> update the localisation for your language, or indeed, any other
> language you feel you can contribute to, and submit patches. If you
> submit on a consistent and regular basis, then commit access is also
> forthcoming - we're grateful for people who can speak languages we
> can't, who can help us out in a major area.
>
> Contributions to MediaWiki internationalisation fall under the GNU
> GPL, which is for all intents and purposes, ideologically similar to
> the GNU FDL. If you are the maintainer of a language, you will be
> credited for it, and you *will* have our immense respect and
> gratitude, as well as that of all our users.
>
> There's a guide to getting started with internationalisation at
> http://nike.users.idler.fi/betawiki/Translating:Intro, and anyone
> interested in helping out is strongly recommended to contact (look,
> shall we just make him the official i18n co-ordinator?) Nikerabbit;
> who can often be found on IRC (#mediawiki, irc.freenode.net).
>
> Thank you for your attention, and I apologise for cross-posting,
>
>
> Rob Church
> MediaWiki developer
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] MediaWiki i18n "call to arms"


from_name: Simetrical

body:
On 4/2/07, Brion Vibber <brion at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> Rob Church wrote:
> > On 02/04/07, Tels wrote:
> >> I really don't see how software that outdated, buggy, insecure and
> >> incomplete like Netscape 4.0 can even be considered to be supported.
> >> However, that is not my decision to make.
> >
> > If we stopped supporting outdated, bug-ridden, insecure and incomplete
> > browsers, we'd lose the vast number of users who browse Wikipedia,
> > voluntarily and involuntarily, via Internet Explorer.
>
> Ba-dum ching!
>
> Seriously though, given the choice between a mild aesthetic change for
> saving web pages to disk in some browsers (who actually does this
> anyway?) and *completely destroying the ability to view the site* for
> people stuck on older machines...

You could also use <link> to include but wrap the whole thing in
@media screen,projection {} or whatnot.  That should work equally
well, I suppose, unless there's something that supports @import but
not @media or vice versa (both are CSS2).


body:
On 02/04/07, Seraphim Blade <seraphimbladewikipedia at gmail.com> wrote:

> In reply to Phil, as to how that guts NOR: The entire point of NOR is
> that you do -not- use your own "editorial judgment" when writing an
> article, you use information in reliable secondary sources. It also
> helps to ensure that information is relevant-sometimes, something can
> be technically true, but also irrelevant. I'd ask the same
> question-why should we adopt the role of "first reporter"? If someone
> wants to do that, isn't that what Wikinews is for?

This appears to be the sort of obsession with replacing editorial
judgement with rules that makes Wikipedia into a red tape obstacle
course.

Unfortunately, good sense and quality cannot in fact be Taylorised.

- d.


from_name: Gregory Maxwell

subject: [Commons-l] InstantCommons demo

body:
On 4/2/07, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> Plus, the message wording must clearly state that it *Was* pulled from
> commons, better with some legal wording as "we're not responsible about
> it" and preferably, with a link to the user which uploaded it (similar
> to what was done on en: stating what there are archived versions).

Yes, we have some good users who can craft a lovely clear message when
the time comes.

> Another problem i see is a vandal uploads 'goatse' to commons marked as
> GFDL, and immediatly inserts it on one hundred MediaWiki installs. We
> will delete it almost immediatly but he now has it on a lot of mirrors.
> Requiring the file to be at least X minutes old would benefit this, but
> makes InstantCommons useless for those who want their users to upload at
>   Commons (which may or may not be a good idea).

Another reason why autodeletion and deletion cause codes are
important...  "Maintaining a user submitted image library is *hard*,
let the experts at Wikimedia Commons handle it for you" ....  The
initial access to the content is just a little part of the cost of
having media on your website.  :)

The delay makes sense.. Based on our deletion rates a ~10day delay
would be best..

Perhaps the way to deal with that is to include an over-ride on the
receiving site and figure a way to auto-fire it for content submitted
by the sites users?


subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
On Apr 2, 2007, at 6:14 PM, William Pietri wrote:

> Phil Sandifer wrote:
>> The issue becomes how it's being reported, then. Is the list of cars
>> being compiled in relation to cars, or in relation to the list-
>> makers? If it's the latter, it's much more like FA cup results.
>>
>
> I'm not quite following.
>
> Are you saying that if we are compiling the list rather than them,
> then
> it's more like putting up the game scores?
>
> That makes some sense to me. We don't kick at plot summaries. Or in TV
> show episode pages, we list the songs used for shows where music is a
> significant element. That seems to be documenting somebody else's
> creative work rather than stealing it, which seems legit to me. IANAL,
> natch.

I think you're roughly getting my point, yes. :)

-Phil


from_name: Luiz Augusto

body:
On 4/2/07, Birgitte SB <birgitte_sb at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Due to past conversations I have had with people
> involved with incubator, I read the comment about
> "merging processes" differently than you did.  Perhaps
> I am mistaken, and that is not what was meant in this
> case.
>
> However there are people who have been clear with me
> that they think  [[:oldwikisource:]] should be
> completely merged into [[:incubator:]] in the long
> term.

With long term you is trying to say "starting at the 2859 year"? If yes, it
is fine to me. The world have more than 5,000 languages and the Wikimedia
Foundation at this time have 63 Wikipedias, the most google-friendly
project, with less than 100 articles [1]. I think that the [[:incubator:]]
is a temporary hosting, not a hosting for someone trying to found more
people speaking on a specific language that have Internet access, knows
something related to free culture, historical texts, OCRing and wiki culture
like [[:oldwikisource:]] is for some languages.

Personally I don't like to see the process of
> starting new Wikisources taken over, because outside
> people simply fail to appreciate the reality of
> wikiSOURCE, where the content already exists in
> tangible form (with corresponding dialects and
> orthographies already pre-determined for each edition
> of a text).  Processing requests at meta has led to
> people being encouraged to start a new wikisource for
> a variation of a language without ever trying to work
> in the existing wiki (or even talking to them). [1]
> The people I have spoken to from incubator also seem
> unable to see the intrinsic differences between a
> wikisource and a wikipedia.  From what I can see they
> are planning a one-size fits all process, with no
> differences in handling based on projects.  Despite
> the fact that there are strong arguments for having
> one Wikisource where there are several Wikipedias with
> related languages.  If plans have changed, or I am
> simply mistaken, please correct me.
>
> [1]
>
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Requests_for_new_languages/Ancient&diff=prev&oldid=360204
>
> The full page seems to have been lost on meta, so I
> linked one of my contributioins there

My propose is a attempt of a {{merge}} between the current Wikisource
Multilingual policy + langcom policy + proposed policies to the Wikisource
Multilingual [2].

The problem is the pun "Wikimedia" naming the foundation. The press
generally ignores the others projects due to it. Google and Yahoo! sometimes
aren't friendly with theirs search results for non-Wikipedia projects,
specially for non-English languages. The Wikimedia Foundation tries to do
attention to all projects, but sometimes Wikipedia suck all of their energy
due to the media coverage to Wikipedia and the lack of media coverage for
non-Wikipedia projets. The result: users with only basic knowledge thinks
that Wiktionary is a mini-Wikipedia with the same rules and needs, Wikibooks
is a Wikipedia for big articles and the Wikisource is the big trashcan for
texts that newbies adds to the Wikipedia articles.

Moving the requests to the Meta-Wiki is IMHO the best solution because:

* You don't need to someone remeber the existence of a wiki that may have
requests for new languages placed on then, neither to prays to someone check
that page/wiki regularly during the small amout of seconds per month that
Wikipedia isn't sucking all attention
* You can simply vote as against on meta if no one is placing text-units on
the correct place (specially if something on [2] may give a chance to move
from proposal to policy)
* You stop the behaviour "let's go to the [[:oldwikisource:]] only to vote
for new languages and to delete old stuff" specially because you can vote as
against if no one is adding texts neither in the right place neither in the
wrong place, again specially if something on [2].... forcing to that wiki
having someone rather than Volapuk and India national languages speakers
adding periodically new texts.

[1] - http://s23.org/wikistats/wikipedias_html.php

[2] -
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikisource-l/2007-April/000224.html


from_name: teun spaans

subject: [Foundation-l] check user...

body:
sounds like sound advice :-)

On 4/2/07, Samuel Klein <meta.sj at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> I passed on part of this thread to Jonathan Zittrain, an eminent lawyer
> and net scholar who enjoyed a misspent youth administering online fora,
> and has thought about related issues a great deal.  His comments below.
>
> I see this as an issue of being clear about what is expected, what may
> be required of people as a result of their actions in a role (in the
> descriptions of checkuser responsibilities), and what may happen with
> user data (in the privacy policy).   There is nothing in any of this
> that should limit the participation of younger community members.
>
> SJ
>
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Jonathan Zittrain  <...zed at law.harvard.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] check user... (fwd)
>
> In any case, it doesn't seem to me a youngster problem.  It's a broader
> agency
> problem -- volunteers are harder to rein in than "real" employees.  I see
> the
> same issue with CDA 230 immunity, since the way Wikipedia works
> necessarily
> blurs the line between who is Wikipedia and who is "another speaker," when
> Wikipedia only speaks through its volunteers.  (Substantively speaking,
> that
> is.)
>
> I think the real solution would be a privacy policy that just lays all
> this
> out, and says there will be circumstances in which disclosures can take
> place,
> and people should take that into account from the start.  Then you don't
> have
> to exclude the kids.
>
> > Bias against clever youngsters....  annoying.   S
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2007 16:59:24 +0000
> > From: Fred Bauder <fredbaud at waterwiki.info>
> > To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
> > Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] check user...
> >
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: wiki_tomos at inter7.jp [mailto:wiki_tomos at inter7.jp]
> >> Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2007 11:33 PM
> >> To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> >> Subject: [Foundation-l] check user...
> >>
> >> I think check user generates certain legal risk to the Foundation
> especially
> >> when he is a minor.
> >>
> >> Wikimedia Foundation has a privacy policy. It seems the Foundation is
> >> expressively promising that certain information will not be released
> >> to the third party unless specific conditions are met.
> >>
> >> And here, "third party release" does not include, at least the
> >> way I read the privacy policy, release of personal information
> >> from Wikimedia Foundation to a check user. It suggests that,
> >> at least in the context of privacy policy, the check users are
> >> insiders for the Foundation, not a third party.
> >>
> >> This, in turn, means that the Foundation has a legal responsibility
> >> to make check users to understand and follow its privacy policy.
> >>
> >> So when check user breaks the promise - i.e. violate the Foundation's
> >> privacy policy, one may question if the Foundation is partly
> responsible
> >> for the violation.
> >>
> >> If a check user is legally a minor, he may be able to legally get away
> with
> >> breaking promises he has made, including the compliance with privacy
> policy.
> >> I am not sure if minors really are less reliable than adults, but if
> they
> >> are equally unreliable, then the Foundation is more responsible for
> minors'
> >> violation of privacy policy than adults.
> >>
> >> So, not because minors are less reliable, but because adults can bear
> >> more legal risk when they abuse their check user privilege, it is
> legally
> >> safer for the Foundation to limit the check user to adults.
> >>
> >> How significant this difference? That is perhaps open to debate.
> >>
> >> I personally think that the better course of action to mitigate the
> >> legal risk is to treat check users as outsiders in the privacy policy.
> >>
> >> I am not a lawyer, so be reminded that my reasoning could be flawed..
> >>
> >>
> >> Best,
> >>
> >>
> >> Tomos
> >
> > Your legal reasoning is fine, although a parent could sign off on the
> legal
> > liability. I think our problem is not with allowing a 15 year old to do
> > responsible work, but with the understandable skepticism we will face if
> we
> > ever have to explain it to a court or in the public press.
> >
> > Fred
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>


subject: [Foundation-l] check user...


from_name: Ilya "Voyager" Schurov

body:
????????? ??????? wrote:

>> To be honest, from my point of view, as a bot operator/programmer,
>> I am quite happy with this bug.
> But for folks using Wikipedia in Russian, Ukrainian, Belarus,
> Bulgarian, Serbian, it is ugly.
BTW, there's an extension "Human URL" that solves an issue.

http://www.outraged-artists.com/flockd/profile.php?name=Human+URL

http://www.google.com/search?q=Human%20URL

--
With best regards,
Ilya V. Schurov.


from_name: Aphaia

subject: [Foundation-l] [Meta] [[m:Translation requests]] is renewed

body:
Hello there,
New [[m:Translation requests]] is launched today (thank you for your
advice, the editors who advised me not to do on April 1st :) at
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/TR

The newly introduced features are including:
- Submission page and instruction, which would make your submission easier.
- [[m:Translations]] page integrated completely.
-- All coming requests will be put into  [[m:cateogory:Open requests
for translation]], which generates a list of requests by
DynamicPageList Extension.
-- All languages can have now their own translation request list. If
you don't find your favorite language list on
[[m:Translations#Requests by language]], please add it :)
-- [[m:Translation FAQ]] is now available ... your input will be welcome.

Some templates like [[m:Template:Translation requests/curreqs]] will
have been unused. TR subpages for special interests including
[[TR/WMF]] will be gradually reformed and turned into sorts of portal.
But those are not fixed, and always open for your ideas.

There might be still something to fix. Please help improving the newly
launching portal: if you find it uncomfortable, sorry for your
inconvenience - but please turn it whatever you feel nice, it is a
wiki!

Comments will be welcome on [[m:Talk:Translation requests]] as well
this mailing list.

Links mentioned on the above:
TR: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/TR
Talk: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Translation requests
Submission: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_requests/Request_submission
Translations (all open requests should be found there):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translations
FAQ: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Translation_FAQ
TR/WMF: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/TR/WMF

Cheers,

--
KIZU Naoko
  Wikiquote: http://wikiquote.org
  * habent enim emolumentum in labore suo *


from_name: The Cunctator

subject: [WikiEN-l] Copyright question

body:
I didn't know you were a copyright lawyer.

On 4/2/07, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman at spamcop.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 2 Apr 2007 10:48:30 -0700, "Matthew Brown" <morven at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >In this case, the list of cars in the show was assembled from a
> >primary source using simple criteria: any car shown was listed.
>
> Um, no.  This is a classic case of "hard cases make bad law".  If the
> list is taken to have been presented as part of the content of the
> show, then it is almost certainly a copyright violation (I have
> contacted the rights holders to check, of course).  If, on the other
> hand, we argue that it is not a copyright violation because the list
> itself is not presented as part of the show's content, then the list
> in the article is a novel synthesis from original materials.
>
> It rather depends on whether you count a list which identifies the
> vehicles by photograph rather than text label, as being equivalent to
> the same list translated into text labels,
>
> Each week Clarkson and the Hamster stand up and invite the audience to
> help them decide whether the Ford Blah is cool or not; the decision
> made, it goes on the wall.
>
> The Top Gear criterion of "coolness" has been the basis of derivative
> works published by the BBC (e.g. Hammond's "What Not To Drive"), but
> the only way to get the list as text is either to watch every show and
> write them down, or to recognise the pictures.  Of course, I believe
> it doesn't actually matter which you do, because reproducing the list
> *in its entirety* is to a very /very/ high degree of probability a
> violation of the BBC's copyright.
>
> It's further complicated by the fact that the BBC don't appear to
> consider it important enough to put on their website.  So the one
> authoritative single source that might exist for the list as text, but
> which would at the same time unambiguously make it copyright, does not
> exist.
>
> I also apply the simple man's copyright test: if something you produce
> is based entirely on copying from another source which asserts
> copyright, it's probably copyright violation.  Needless to say, Top
> Gear has a copyright statement at the end of every broadcast.
>
> Guy (JzG)
> --
> http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> WikiEN-l mailing list
> WikiEN-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
>


body:
On 02/04/07, Nicholas Moreau <nicholasmoreau at gmail.com> wrote:
> Congrats, that's actually quite a small amount of downtime we had.
>
> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/04/02/top-twenty-sites-most-downtime/

That's 2h 23m in 2007 to date, rather - in three months not twelve.

If memory serves, 2006 would be substantially more - wasn't it early
2006 we were down for a day or so, or was that early 2005?

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


from_name: Rob Church

body:
On 02/04/07, Tels <nospam-abuse at bloodgate.com> wrote:
> I really don't see how software that outdated, buggy, insecure and
> incomplete like Netscape 4.0 can even be considered to be supported.
> However, that is not my decision to make.

If we stopped supporting outdated, bug-ridden, insecure and incomplete
browsers, we'd lose the vast number of users who browse Wikipedia,
voluntarily and involuntarily, via Internet Explorer.

Rob Church